Man Harasses Asian Women in Square

An unidentified man has harassed a number of Asian female undergraduates in Harvard Square over the past two months, according to interviews with five of the women.

The most recent incident occured last Sunday, students said.

According to the women, who spoke on the condition their names would not be used, the man approached several of them more than once, and they said his behavior followed a clear pattern.

The man, who approached some students in the Coop and others as they were walking in the Square, would begin his exchanges with the students by trying to guess their native countries. He asked some of them for their e-mail addresses and, even though most refused to tell him, he would approach them again later, claim to have sent them an e-mail and ask whether they had received it.

Claiming to be a television actor and writer, the man told several students that he conducts research in Harvard Square and said he was looking for an Asian woman to star in a documentary he claimed to be writing.

“[The man] hasn’t been aggressively threatening, but hearing he’s been approaching Asian females specifically makes me think he’s not starting up harmless acquaintances,” said one student whom the man has approached. “He’s targeting a specific ethnic group and age group.”

By talking with each other and later forming an e-mail list, several of the women said they recognized a pattern. They met with Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officials and offered details for a sketch of the man, whom they describe as a 40- to 50-year-old white male of medium build with light-grey hair.

HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano said that the Cambridge Police Department is investigating the case, but a Cambridge police spokesperson was unavailable for comment yesterday.

One of the students approached by the man said he first approached her while she was studying alone at the Coop.

He asked her for personal information, including her e-mail address. She refused, but a few days later, when she ran into the man again in Harvard Square, he said he had sent her an e-mail and asked if she had received it.

“Since I had never given him my e-mail address,” she said, “I was thinking that he must be talking to more people than me and to people who look like me.”

The student described the incident to one of her friends and found out that the friend had been similarly approached. They noticed that their descriptions of the man who had approached them matched almost exactly.

“I started feeling uneasy, so I e-mailed every single Asian female I knew on campus and started a huge dialogue online,” the student said.

She said she quickly realized that she and her friend were not the only Asian females approached by the man.

The e-mail list she created includes scores of women, at least seven of whom said they had been approached in the Square.

In an interview, another one of the students told a story about her encounter with the man that paralleled the first student’s story. She also said the man first approached her in January at the Coop.

“The first time we met, he seemed like a friendly person with similar interests,” said the student, who added that the man was dressed “preppy, like a professor.”

One month later, the same student ran into the man again while walking through the Square.

Then the man asked her for her e-mail address— which she gave him—because he wanted to e-mail her information about Ponder Heart, a movie in which he claimed he had acted.

“At first I thought it was a more innocent interest,” the student said. “But then I got an e-mail from him with all of this flattery.”

In his e-mail, the man referred to himself as her “actor writer friend from Harvard Square.”

He called her “very attractive with a good personality” and went on to say, “I wish I knew you better because Mel Brooks invited me to come see The Producers.”

Another student said she encountered a man outside of the Coop in mid-February, whose description she recognized from the e-mails.

When the man approached her and tried to guess her ethnicity, she said she informed him that “the police had been notified about him” and that his behavior “disturbed” the women he had previously approached.

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.