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Harvard has its moral aspiration etched in stone — as visitors exit the Yard through Dexter Gate, thousands read the inscription: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

We now know Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers continued to consult with sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein after his conviction in Florida for sex crimes and even up to the day before Epstein’s 2019 federal arrest for sex trafficking. While we can’t say if the latest revelation Summers’ shamefully close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein constitutes a formal violation of University policy, even in the clearest cases, Harvard has failed to uphold a basic moral standard.

Harvard’s response to instances where demonstrated faculty misconduct occurred has followed a deeply concerning pattern: inadequate punishment, slow process, and eventual reinstatement for academics who have harmed students and colleagues alike.

To send a message — on campus and to the world at large — about the standard of behavior we expect from our affiliates, the Harvard Corporation must exercise its termination power to punish faculty who engage in such unprofessional, harmful behavior.

Take, for example, former Harvard professor John L. Comaroff. Allegations of sexual harassment were initially reported by The Crimson in 2020. Even after a University report found him culpable of violating sexual harassment and professional conduct policies, Comaroff was later allowed to return and teach an elective in 2022. Only after intense student advocacy did he retire without emeritus status.

Former Government professor Jorge I. Dominguez was first formally disciplined in 1983 after a junior female colleague and a graduate student accused him of sexual harassment. The University’s only response was temporary removal from administrative roles. Just two years later, he was appointed as a chair of one committee in the Government department and another in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, additional women came forward with harassment allegations dating as far back as 1979. It took four decades — and a public reckoning — for Harvard to finally impose lasting sanctions and strip him of emeritus status.

Professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. in the Economics department was allowed to return to teaching and research after a two-year suspension for violating sexual harassment policies. Similarly, professor Eric Rentschler was placed on a two-year leave by FAS. When Rentschler returns, he will be allowed to teach non-required classes and will only be barred from taking on student advisees for another two years — at which point Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra may decide to lift “some or all” of the sanctions.

This pattern — inadequately punishing faculty and then allowing them some degree of return to the University — demonstrates a disturbing trend. If you are a renowned academic, your bad behavior can be forgiven. Your actions, no matter how harmful, can eventually be overlooked.

This stands in stark contrast to the faculty handbook’s own standard, which clearly states that faculty must avoid behavior that “endangers the health, safety, or well-being of any person or group.” These expectations apply to all professors — including the tenured ones. The Harvard Corporation has the power to dismiss any teaching officer, including those with tenure, “only for grave misconduct or neglect of duty.”

In over 80 years, the Harvard Corporation has only exercised that power once.

Despite the troubling power dynamic that abusing one’s power as an educator presents, the figures mentioned were not given appropriate punishments. Additionally, tenured professors are no ordinary teachers. They hold high-visibility roles as mentors and representatives of this institution. Their proximity to students and the power dynamic that entails demand stronger, not weaker, accountability.

A temporary leave followed by a partial reinstatement reads less like justice and more like grade-school detention — a slap on the wrist, not a reckoning.

Meanwhile, the University expends enormous energy protecting its image. It dismantles diversity initiatives to shield itself from political attacks. It invokes concerns over free speech and ideological diversity, embraces the Chatham House Rule, and invests in a maelstrom of intellectual vitality initiatives.

For the sake of public relations, Harvard will overhaul DEI structures overnight, scrub its websites, and rename entire centers — yet it cannot bring itself to hold its most prominent faculty accountable.

On its website, the College boasts of a “vibrant community where you can feel supported and encouraged.” The University’s actions demonstrate the opposite.

Any punishment short of termination for faculty who commit serious misconduct communicates that we at Harvard do not care about the harm these individuals have caused. It demonstrates that the “moral bankruptcy” professor Summers has invoked isn’t in the student body or in The Crimson. It lies in the University’s own unwillingness to act.

If our administration cannot find the conviction to enforce its own standards — if it cannot hold even its most notorious faculty accountable — then the institution’s rot has spread to the top.

Ira Sharma ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is an Economics concentrator in Mather House.