The Contra Costa Times has more on the sexual harassment debacle at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. Some choice excerpts:

The victim's attorney, Berkeley lawyer Laura Stevens, said her client has not gone to police because media coverage of the accusation will be more effective in preventing Dwyer from obtaining future jobs than the court system would be.

[...]

Shortly before his appointment as dean, Dwyer faced fierce criticism from students and faculty who criticized his commitment to diversifying the student body in light of Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action in admissions decisions.

[...]

The most difficult thing is, nobody can take a stand," third-year law student Jarrett Green said. "People on this campus take great pride in quickly forming opinions and then zealously standing behind them and battling for them, but the problem in this case is nobody really knows what happened."

Related note: I've gotten some mail from readers who think they smell an even bigger rat than I do here (which is saying something). They point to the controversy that surrounded Dwyer's appointment as Dean, and suggest that there may be an ideological connection to be made between the protests that some students and faculty raised when Dwyer was appointed and the present pillorying of him for not only "molesting" a student (the word is that of the eloquent counsel, Laura Stevens) but for failing to enforce anti-discrimination law at Boalt (in the form of publicizing Berkeley's harassment policy, training staff, and so on).

Resistance to Dwyer's appointment came from those who felt that he did not have a proper commitment to "diversity;" in other words, from those who were worried that Dwyer's belief in standard admissions criteria (grades, scores) would adversely affect minority admissions to Boalt in the wake of Proposition 209, which outlawed the use of race as an admissions criterion in California state schools. Here's a quote from a February 2000 letter thirteen students wrote to request that Dwyer not be considered for the Deanship: ìProfessor Dwyerís previous record on the diversity issue gives us great cause for concern. ... He has consistently supported increased dependence on (test scores and grade point averages) in the evaluation of applications despite well-informed proof from his colleagues that this reliance would have clear and adverse effects on our ability to admit students of color.î As it turns out, minority admissions increased dramatically during Dwyer's tenure as dean. But all hell broke loose in 2001, when Boalt moved to hire Dan Farber, a white male, for a position in environmental law. The cries of gender bias were loud, and led by the Boalt Hall Women's Association. The Boalt student body, it should be noted, is 60% female.

Is there anything here? Certainly it helps to know that Dwyer has been getting accused of discrimination ever since his candidacy for the job of dean became known. It helps, too, to know that these accusations have not always been made in good faith. Some of them were made on spec (as with the students, who turned out to be mistaken about Dwyer's "commitment to diversity"). Some of them were opportunistic (as with those who described Dan Farber as "just one more white male on the faculty when we have so many"). So now we know something about the climate in which the present allegations of harassment (and inadequate policy) have been made. But whether there is more here remains to be seen.

Thanks to John Rosenberg for the link to the Contra Costa Times.

UPDATE: Peter Sean Bradley has a thorough and provocative legal analysis of the Boalt case. His pivotal point: while there may have been sexual battery, there does not seem to have been harassment:

The real question in the Dwyer case, though, is where is the sexual harassment? At its core, sexual harassment involves a misuse of the power relationship inherent in employment. Thus, sexual harassment can involve quid pro quo, where sex is traded for benefits or to avert threats, or "hostile work environment," where the workplace, or schoolsite, is affected by severe or pervasive sexually offensive conduct, displays or communications. With all due respect, while fondling a drunken woman off the work or school site may constitute sexual battery, it does not clearly involve actionable sexual harassment unless the Dean's position was used to advance the sexual battery. For that matter, given recent decisions that sexual batteries by police officers are not within the course and scope of employment, Berkeley may have no liability if the alleged sexual battery is proven.