The University of Minnesota has agreed to pay $75,000 to a former graduate student and research assistant who reported being sexually harassed by a professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
The settlement agreement, announced Friday by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, also requires the U to provide harassment and bystander training to students and faculty and to let the woman complete her degree tuition-free.
“What should have been a safe and sacred relationship between a professor and a student instead became an unsafe and abusive space. Sexual harassment must stop. Students deserve better,” Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in a news release.
The complaint involved tenured human rights professor James Ron, who resigned from the U in July 2020 under a settlement that paid him nearly $200,000.
The student worked under Ron for 10 months on a Human Rights Initiative project in 2017 to 2018.
She said Ron talked about his sex life following his divorce, asked her to cook for him and his children, invited her to move into his home as a renter and once commented on her makeup.
In May 2018, she complained to an associate dean that Ron told her, “It’s too bad about your boyfriend; I was waiting until you were no longer a student to ask you out.”
The student reportedly missed class once or twice because of Ron’s behavior. She also skipped an important symposium in New York City because, even though the dean told Ron he couldn’t attend because of his behavior, he still planned to travel to visit family, and the student didn’t want to risk running into him in New York.
The student ended up failing two of her four classes, citing stress caused by Ron’s behavior. The school agreed to cover her 2018 to 2019 tuition, and suspended Ron for the spring 2019 semester, but the woman instead withdrew from school and did not return.
The U reached the $75,000 settlement after the human rights department found probable cause that the U discriminated against her by subjecting her to a hostile work and education environment.
Interim dean Catherine Squires said in an email Friday to Humphrey School students and others that the school has “made ongoing efforts … to ensure our School is a place where we all thrive and feel welcome and supported, and one where inappropriate behavior is not tolerated.”