Academic Partha Chatterjee denies sexual harassment charge, demands removal of name from list
Chatterjee was one of more than 70 male academics accused of sexual harassment according to a list being spread online.
Academic Partha Chatterjee released a statement on Tuesday, demanding that his name be removed from a list of Indian professors and scholars accused of sexual harassment.
The list, which began as a Google spreadsheet created by a law student in the United States named Raya Sarkar, features the name of more than 70 men in both Indian and foreign universities, with some including details of allegations ranging from online and emotional abuse to rape. The spreading of the list has led to a debate within academic circles and online about the ethics of such a list as well as the difficulties women face when dealing with harassment on campuses.
Chatterjee in his statement, published by The Wire, said that his name occurs twice in the list without any description of the complaint or dating of the alleged incident. He insisted that there has never been a sexual harassment complaint against him and denies ever having been involved in an incident in which he could have been accused of having sexually harassed a student. The academic demands that the nature of the allegation be revealed to him and, if not, asks for his name to be taken off the list.
“I believe it is fair for me to demand that the nature of the allegation against me be made known to me so that I could make a specific response to it. Otherwise, I demand that my name be removed from the list,” Chatterjee wrote in his statement.
Chatterjee’s full statement, as published in the Wire, is below:
I recently came to know of a circulating spreadsheet that claims to be a list of Indian male academics who have been accused of sexual harassment.
I find that my name occurs twice in that list.
In the first instance, my institution is named as the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, with the figure 1 under the column “Number of victims”; the rest of the columns including “Description of complaint” and “Year of violence” are blank.
The second entry mentions my institution as Columbia University with the “Number of victims” column left blank. It is unclear why the second entry appears on the list.
I wish to state that there has never been a single complaint of sexual harassment made against me. Moreover, I am certain that in 44 years of my association with the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, I have never been involved in an incident in which I could be accused of having sexually harassed a student.
I believe it is fair for me to demand that the nature of the allegation against me be made known to me so that I could make a specific response to it. Otherwise, I demand that my name be removed from the list.