But his case has continued to prompt soul-searching and angry questions from students about a university culture that allowed him to stay employed and even get promoted, despite repeated complaints about his behavior.
Now a committee formed by the government department has joined a growing number of students and faculty members calling for an external review of Harvard’s response to complaints against Domínguez. The committee issued a 52-page report detailing recommended changes — including hiring more female professors and creating an anonymous reporting system for harassment — to ensure that such a case does not happen again.
“Generations of students warned one another about Domínguez’s behavior and developed coping strategies for interactions with him,” the committee wrote in a letter delivered Wednesday to the university president, Lawrence Bacow. “Some students changed the focus of their research — at great cost — in order to avoid such interactions. This deplorable situation went on for more than 20 years.”
The report illuminated some of the wide-ranging solutions that universities are considering in the wake of the #MeToo movement, as many of them revamp their policies on sexual harassment. Their proposals have gone far beyond how they respond to allegations, calling for wholesale changes to the culture of academic environments.
The Harvard committee, made up of faculty, students and staff members in the government department, found in a survey of 355 students and faculty that women felt less comfortable in the department than men. It demanded improvements to the department’s response to harassment, but also a more “inclusive climate,” the recruitment of more women and minorities and less hierarchical governance.
Students learned to defend themselves against Domínguez’s behavior, the committee’s report said, by wearing heavy clothing or avoiding late afternoon meetings.
“We believe the university and the government department failed to uphold a basic commitment: the provision of a safe and productive work environment,” the report said.
Accusations against Domínguez, who joined the government department in 1972, date back decades. In the 1980s, Terry L. Karl, an assistant professor working under him, complained repeatedly to university officials that he had tried several times to kiss her, touch her or run his hands up her dress.
In 1983, the university punished Domínguez by stripping him of administrative duties for three years. But he remained at Harvard, and his star continued to rise. He served long stints in leadership positions and was regarded as one of the university’s premier authorities on Latin American politics.
But last year, after The Chronicle of Higher Education published articles detailing allegations of inappropriate conduct with a total of 18 women over more than three decades, Domínguez was placed on administrative leave. Days later, he resigned.
Since then, Harvard’s Office of Dispute Resolution has been conducting an investigation to determine whether complaints against Domínguez were handled in accordance with the policies in place at the time.
Bacow said the university would consider opening an external review after that internal investigation is complete, as the government department committee and many students have requested, according to Jonathan Swain, a Harvard spokesman.
The university has taken a number of steps to make it easier to report sexual assault and harassment on campus, Swain said, including increasing the number of Title IX coordinators. He said the university had already been updating its policies when the accusations against Domínguez resurfaced recently.
But some students have complained about the slow pace and secrecy of the university’s investigation. They also worry that the Office of Dispute Resolution will not get to the bottom of the problem.
Claire Sukumar, a junior who is studying government and who served on the committee, said an independent review was critical.
“It’s hard to investigate yourself,” she said. “It’s very difficult to view your own culture from the inside.”
The university was recently embroiled in a harassment investigation against another prominent professor, Roland Fryer of the economics department; a Harvard investigator found that he had engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” toward four women who worked in the Harvard-affiliated research lab he created.
The fallout from Domínguez’s case is still fresh in Harvard’s government department, where he taught for nearly half a century.
“He was my mentor,” said Steven Levitsky, a government professor who led the special committee that issued the report. “We sat on dozens of students’ dissertation committees together. We coedited a book together.”
But in the small world of Latin American studies at prestigious universities, Levitsky also knew Karl, who eventually landed at Stanford and advised his undergraduate thesis there.
After the Chronicle of Higher Education began investigating, the news spread through the tight-knit community of Latin American experts. Levitsky began calling up his former students to ask them whether any of them had had bad experiences with Domínguez.
“I learned very quickly an awful lot that I’d been ignorant about for 19 years,” he said.
Changing the culture of the department will be a long journey, Levitsky said. The yearlong work of the committee, he said, was just one step.