Khó cưỡng

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On Monday morning, members of the Yale Law School faculty received a terse (ngắn gọn; súc tích, dùng ít từ (văn); cộc lốc, cụt ngủn, ít lời) message from their provost (hiệu trưởng) informing (thông báo) them that Professor Jed Rubenfeld “will leave his position as a member of the YLS faculty for a two-year period, effective immediately (hiệu lực ngay lập tức),” and that upon his return, Rubenfeld would be barred (bị cấm) from teaching “small group or required courses. He will be restricted in social gatherings with students.” As of Tuesday morning, he was no longer listed on the Yale Law faculty site.

Three people familiar with the investigation that led to Rubenfeld’s suspension said it stemmed from the university finding a pattern of sexual harassment (quấy rối tình dục) of several students. The allegations (cáo buộc), which spanned decades (kéo dài hàng thập kỷ), included verbal harassment (quấy rối bằng lời nói), unwanted touching (động chạm không mong muốn, sờ soạng), and attempted kissing (ép hôn), both in the classroom (lớp học) and at parties (tiệc tùng tại nhà riêng) at Rubenfeld’s home.

In a phone conversation Tuesday, Rubenfeld told me, “I absolutely, unequivocally (không lập lờ, không mập mờ; rõ ràng), 100 percent deny that I ever sexually harassed anyone, whether verbally or otherwise. Yes, I’ve said stupid things that I regret over the course of my 30 years as professor, and no professor who’s taught as long as I have that I know doesn’t have things that they regret that they said.”

He added, “Ironically, I have written about the unreliability of the campus Title IX procedures. I never expected to go through one of them myself.”

In 2014, for example, Rubenfeld wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that said that the university that puts in place affirmative-consent standards “encourages people to think of themselves as sexual assault victims (nạn nhân của vụ tấn công tình dục) when there was no assault” and that it is “illogical” (phi lý) to claim “intercourse (giao hợp) with someone ‘under the influence’ of alcohol is always rape (hiếp dâm).”

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