Testimony Begins in Worker’s Lawsuit

Desiree Goodwin, a library assistant at the Graduate School of Design’s Loeb Library who filed a lawsuit against the University for gender and racial discrimination in the fall of 2003, began her testimony in the U.S. District court of Boston yesterday morning.

Goodwin, who is still employed at the library, alleges in her suit that she has applied for 16 professional librarian posts at several of Harvard’s libraries since she received her Masters of Library Science degree in 1999, but only received two interviews.

In the complaint, Goodwin claims that she was repeatedly passed over for promotions in favor of white men and women who were “less qualified, less experienced.” She alleges that her employer criticized her “sexy” attire and told her she would never receive a promotion at Harvard.

University spokesman Joe Wrinn declined to comment on the specifics of the case or go into legal strategy, although he did say that, to his knowledge, cases like Goodwin’s are uncommon in the University.

In addition to her lawyer, Jonathan Margolis, Goodwin was accompanied in court yesterday by Geoffrey Carens, a union representative with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) who stepped into the case when Goodwin filed a work grievance in addition to the lawsuit.

“Management denies that there is any racial, gender bias, or discrimination against people with disabilities, but that’s not true: it’s endemic,” said Carens. “Harvard’s famous for this old boy approach where people get ahead from personal connections and not what kind of job they do....That’s what I’ve seen in my job as a union representative.”

Following Goodwin’s court complaint, Wrinn said in a statement in September 2003, “The case is without merit. Gender and race were not factors, and the fact that the independent agencies established to investigate these types of charges dismissed this case indicates how this suit ultimately will be resolved.”

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro urged lawyers on both sides to settle the case, suggesting that the University offer Goodwin a better job to see how she does, but the lawyers could not reach an agreement, according to the Boston Globe.

In court yesterday, Margolis said that her case is not “about affirmative action.”

Harvard’s lawyers John P. Coakley and Richard J. Riley wrote in a memorandum filed with the court that the comments allegedly made to Goodwin “do not evidence discrimination,” although they may have been offensive, the Globe reported.

Genevieve Butler, a friend of Goodwin who works with the HUCTW, said in an interview yesterday that Goodwin, a Cornell graduate, had “gone through a lot of career development offered by the University” and earned Masters degrees in English and library science, but that the University had not acknowledged it.

Carens said Goodwin’s colleagues at Harvard have hurt her job chances by adding negative comments to her file at work. “Her supervisor, for example, wrote a letter that is very harshly critical of Desiree, and there was an incident reported by somebody that she worked with complaining about ‘lack of collegiality,’” Carens said.

Two years ago, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) both dismissed Goodwin’s case without a hearing. The EEOC found that her supervisor’s comments did not demonstrate racial or gender bias.

“We attended today in solidarity to show support and we think that it meant a lot to Desiree,” Butler said. “The University had a lot of opportunities to set it right, and it’s failure to set is right is just another blemish to the University’s reputation.”