John Comaroff

  • Retirement Celebration For John And Jean Comaroff

    An international retirement celebration was held to honor the long, widely celebrated careers of John and Jean Comaroff on July 6, 2024. Held on zoom and timed to permit participants to join from across the world, over one hundred and twenty-five took part; many who could not sent messages of appreciation and congratulation. Some forty…

  • John Comaroff Publishes A Reflection On Sovereignty, Postcoloniality And The Commodification Of Traditional Authority In South Africa

    A number of ‘customary’ African kings and chiefs – historically accountable to the will of their subjects – have sought to turn their offices into lucrative sources of accumulation; indeed, into a form of monopoly capital founded on the assertion of a political sovereignty unaccountable to any other. What historical conditions have laid the ground…

  • COMAROFFS PUBLISH NEW ESSAY ON GENERATIONS AND GENERATIONALITY

    John and Jean Comaroff recently published a pathbreaking new essay on a topic of critical importance in the contemporary world: generation and intergenerational relations. It focused on the social, material, cultural, political rationalities that different generations bring to those relations with each other – and why there is so much talk these days on “the…

  • FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY PUBLICATION OF THE DIARY OF SOL T. PLAATJE

    The Boer War Diary of Sol. T. Plaatje, edited by John Comaroff, was first published in 1973 by Macmillan, along with a limited leather-bound edition put out simultaneously. Comaroff came across the manuscript of the diary – now a famous publication in South Africa – when he was a doctoral student in the Mafeking District…

  • Case against Harvard over the alleged misconduct of John Comaroff ends in an agreed Dismissal

    On August 14, 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued the following statement announcing the end of the notorious, hugely publicized lawsuit filed by three students against Harvard, allegedly for its “decade-long failure to protect students from sexual abuse and career-ending retaliation” on the part of Professor John Comaroff: “Now come the…

  • Dismissal “with prejudice” of case against Harvard vindicates Professor John Comaroff

    The years-long campaign to smear and destroy the career and reputation of distinguished Harvard Professor of Anthropology and African and African American Studies John L. Comaroff collapsed on Wednesday with the dismissal “with prejudice” of the civil suit brought by three graduate students against Harvard University. While the settlement does not compel the plaintiff to…

  • Statement of Professor John Comaroff Upon His Retirement

    I have been blessed with a long, fulfilling career as a scholar and teacher. For several decades I have taught and mentored many hundreds of students, among them more than 200 Ph.D. candidates. Many have gone on to impressive careers in a variety of disciplines. Needless to say, I am very proud of them and…

  • WSWS Editorial on Harvard Lawsuit

    Cambridge – The WSWS Editorial Board has opined on the case of Czerwienski v. Harvard. Read the story here: 

  • Free Beacon reports on Harvard’s motions

    Cambridge – The Washington Free Beacon weighs in on the latest developments in the case of Czerwienski v. Harvard. Read the story here: 

  • Free Beacon reports on petition

    Reporter Aaron Sibarium covers higher education issues for The Washington Free Beacon. He reports on the petition being promoted by the Harvard Graduate Students Union to pressure the University. See the story here: 

  • Comaroff Attorneys Object to Union Petition

    Cambridge – John Comaroff’s attorneys object to a Harvard Graduate Student Union petition now circulating that demands sanctions and shunning, and threatens tenure revocation, on the basis of mere allegations. Attorney Ruth O’Meara-Costello expresses shock that HLS law students and a HLS law professor have joined in the witch-hunt tactics. See letter here: Statement from Ruth…

  • Harvard Files Response to Amended Complaint

    Cambridge – On July 19, 2022, Harvard University filed an amended motion to dismiss Counts 1 through 9 of the complaint in Czerwienski v. Harvard University, with supporting documents, including an amended Memorandum of Law stating its legal arguments in support of the motion. It also submitted an amended motion for partial summary judgment on…

  • Harvard objects to motion to unseal Title IX documents

    Cambridge – Harvard lawyers asked a federal court judge on Tuesday not to unseal, with redactions, certain documents related to a Title IX complaint, arguing that to do so would reveal sensitive information about third parties, identify individuals and subject them to possible retaliation, discourage parties and witnesses from cooperating with Harvard’s Office of Dispute…

  • World Socialist Web Site coverage

    Reporter David Walsh continues his coverage of developments in Czerwienski v. Harvard University.  To read the story, click on the link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/27/kafp-j27.html

  • Harvard Files Motions to Dismiss and for Summary Judgment

    Cambridge, MA – Lawyers for Harvard University asked a U.S. District Court judge on May 31, 2022 to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by three graduate students last year. Harvard filed a motion for summary judgment on count 10 of the lawsuit, which claimed that the University had improperly obtained and released one plaintiff’s therapy…

  • WSWS calls out identity politics at Harvard

    Writer David Walsh compares Harvard’s current campaign against Anthropologist John Comaroff to the communist witch hunts waged by former U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s during the 1950s in his article for the World Socialist web publication. “There are more than a few parallels between the McCarthyite witch-hunts of the late 1940s and early 1950s and the…

  • Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff

    Between 1976 and 2010,  Alan Macfarlane, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge University,  conducted a series of interviews with anthropologists from around the world. Two of those anthropologists included John and Jean Comaroff. They discussed their early lives, their work in the field, life under the Apartheid regime and anthropology, among other…

  • Lawyers respond to civil suit

    Professor Comaroff categorically denies ever harassing or retaliating against any student.

  • Comaroff’s lawyers denounce Harvard discipline

      Following Dean Claudine Gay’s announcement today of sanctions against Harvard Professor John Comaroff, his attorneys seek to inform the public of the full context of this matter. Following an exhaustive investigation lasting more than a year, involving allegations by three complainants, Title IX investigators found John Comaroff responsible solely for verbal sexual harassment arising…

  • Ethnicity, Inc., translated into Chinese

    “The study of ethnicity and indeed of neoliberalism will never be the same after the publication of this book, ” anthropologist Keith Hart commented in the American Anthropologist.

  • Lecture: On Vigilantism Resurrected

    Anthropological Explorations of Violent Transfigurations of State, Crime and Politics across Contexts

  • At Home with Literati: Claudio Lomnitz and Jean Comaroff

    Claudio Lomnitz discusses Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation with Jean Comaroff