Six former University of Michigan students have filed legal papers accusing a former lecturer of sexually harassing them and the school of not doing enough to protect them.
By Julia Jacobs and Zachary Small
April 23, 2021
During 16 years teaching at the University of Michigan, Bruce Conforth stocked his lectures with tales from a life filled with boldfaced names: He had rubbed elbows with Bob Dylan, played music alongside B.B. King, apprenticed for the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning and befriended the poet Allen Ginsberg.
Students clamored to enroll in his courses on blues music and the American counterculture, later raving about how he had changed their lives.
A musician, scholar and founding curator of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Mr. Conforth was a riveting lecturer who, in his trademark black vest and jeans, could discuss everything from Buddhism to psychedelics, and who, in 2012, was chosen teacher of the year by students. …
But there was a dark side to Mr. Conforth, according to Ms. Brown and other women who said the teacher used his charisma and, sometimes, Svengali-like manipulation to sexually harass his students. …
Whoever heard of guys wanting to get into the Rock and Roll business for the girls and the drugs? I’ve read hundreds of interviews with rock stars and I can’t recall any of them ever saying their career motivation had been to have a job that facilitated having a lot of girls while taking a lot of drugs.
Now six former Michigan undergraduates — the three women who previously complained and three others — have filed court papers announcing their intention to sue him and the university, asserting he engaged in a litany of sexual misconduct and the school failed to protect them. …
Seriously, the rule of thumb I’ve always suggested for universities is that professors and undergrads should stay away from each other, but grad students should be allowed to date either undergrads or professors. Many faculty members in modern America were hired as a married couple (e.g., one spouse is a star so the college finds a job for the spouse as well). I’m sure a large fraction of these much in demand faculty couples first became involved while of different ranks.
Ms. Brourman says, according to the court papers, that Mr. Conforth pressured her into a series of sexual encounters, some of them in his campus office, and later, after she had graduated, raped her in his Ann Arbor apartment.
A second former student, Ms. Brown, said she was pressured into a sexual encounter with Mr. Conforth after he told her he had feelings for her and pursued her for several weeks.
And that’s practically rape, too. How is a strong young modern woman supposed to resist having sex with an elderly hippie “after he told her he had feelings for her and pursued her for several weeks.”
Also, the Professor of Rock ‘n’ Roll was a campus celebrity. As Philip Roth’s philandering 62-year-old narrator points out in The Dying Animal, modern coeds can’t resist even minimal levels of aging celebrityhood:
I don’t teach full-time anymore, strictly speaking don’t teach literature at all — for years now just the one class, a big senior seminar in critical writing called Practical Criticism. I attract a lot of female students. For two reasons. Because it’s a subject with an alluring combination of intellectual glamour and journalistic glamour and because they’ve heard me on NPR reviewing books or seen me on Thirteen talking about culture. Over the past fifteen years, being cultural critic on the television program has made me fairly well known locally, and they’re attracted to my class because of that. In the beginning, I didn’t realize that talking on TV once a week for ten minutes could be so impressive as it turns out to be to these students. But they are helplessly drawn to celebrity, however inconsiderable mine may be.
Back to the NYT:
A third woman said he aggressively kissed her. The other plaintiffs say Mr. Conforth propositioned them to have sexual relationships, at times sending them sexually-charged messages or emails and persisting even after they said no. One woman said he gave her a raccoon penis, suggesting it was a talisman.
Mr. Conforth declined to discuss the accusations. “I’ve tried to move on with my life,” he said in a brief phone conversation. “This is a past issue.” …
But four years earlier, Katherine McMahan, a recent university graduate, had told the school about a disturbing incident the previous fall. Ms. McMahan, then 22, said she had attended a blues concert connected to Mr. Conforth’s course and, at a bar after the concert, she said he cornered her outside the bathroom, put his hand around her waist, pulled her closer to him and asked her to come home with him to sleep over. She said she declined but that he persisted until she pushed him away. (Ms. McMahan is a New York Times employee who works outside the newsroom.) …
Other former students recount similar experiences, though they did not report them to the university. Cassie McQuater said that in 2007, when she was 20, Mr. Conforth, who was not her teacher and whom she had met only briefly, began sending her emails, declaring his love. In one, she said, he included an erotic drawing of a man and a woman with her name at the bottom. When she eventually agreed to get dinner with him, he asked her to return home with him; she declined.
Lauren Lambert, who said she plans to join the intended lawsuit, said that starting in 2011, while she was his student and afterward, Mr. Conforth sent her sexually charged messages, saying he had fantasies about her.
OK, so far the story is carried by 2021’s shock and revulsion at tales of how heterosexual attraction tends to play out.
But the account finally gets more interesting:
Two women said that as part of the effort to engage with them sexually, Mr. Conforth had employed the ruse of suggesting he was a member of the so-called “Order of the Illuminati,” a secret society whose mysteries were popularized in Dan Brown’s novel “Angels & Demons.” The women, Ms. Brourman and her friend, Maya Crosman, said they believed he was responsible for emails they received, purportedly from Illuminati leadership, that recommended they engage in relationships with Mr. Conforth, whom the emails called the “Chosen One.”
Ms. Crosman kept a copy of one of the emails — sent from an email address designed to be anonymous — in which a person who identified themselves as Grandmaster Setis recommends she return the “intensely profound love” that Mr. Conforth had for her.
The women said they thought Mr. Conforth had the potential to be a kind of spiritual and artistic mentor, but then things grew strange. In legal papers filed in a Michigan court, Ms. Brourman said Mr. Conforth invited them to an arboretum on campus where he engaged in a mysterious ritual that involved cutting off pieces of their hair and giving Ms. Brourman a series of objects, including the raccoon penis, seeds and some kind of medallion. She was warned to keep them with her, or there would be “repercussions,” the court papers said.
Both women said they received what appeared to be homemade horoscopes in which it was predicted they were romantically compatible with Mr. Conforth.
Okay, so it sounds as if Professor Rock ‘n’ Roll was kind of thinking of setting up his own sex cult with himself as the Big Man so he could get girls wholesale, but he didn’t really have the Manson-level mojo to be a cult leader, and so needed to get girls retail by wooing each one personally.
Ms. Crosman said Mr. Conforth inundated her with messages online, declaring his love. One included a Pablo Neruda poem that said, “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.”
Neruda should be banned for being a male heterosexual love poet!
Oh, but he should be promoted for being a Communist …
What to do, what to do?
Oh, yeah, he’s a Latinx. So he survives on Intersectional Pokemon Points.
For now …
At the end of the semester, she said he forcibly kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth during a visit to his office.
… The court papers say Brourman felt intimidated by the strange emails she received, including ones that directed her to “service” Mr. Conforth. In 2014, she said they had a sexual encounter in his office on campus. After that encounter, Ms. Brourman and Mr. Conforth met regularly for “spiritual lessons” that required sex beforehand, the papers said. Ms. Brourman said in an interview that at the time, she was confused and thought she might have feelings for Mr. Conforth, but in retrospect, she said she recognizes that she was being manipulated.
Back in Victorian times, men were prosecuted for the crime of Seduction. I suspect, 21st Century women increasingly want that back. From Intellectual Takeout:
We tend to think of Victorian-era America as an oppressive environment for women — and in many ways it was.
But it’s worth pointing out that during this period it was not unusual for governments to take great measures to protect the social position and respectability of women.
In his book Crime and Punishment in American History, historian Lawrence Friedman shows that seduction laws were fairly commonplace. The laws were often extraordinary by today’s standards and offer some interesting insights into early American culture. …
Georgia’s law forbade any man from using a “false or fraudulent” promise of marriage to “seduce a virtuous unmarried female, and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces.”
What’s a fraudulent promise of marriage, you might ask? Well, any man who might be having second thoughts on marriage. …
Friedman makes it clear that the laws essentially served women by providing them “a crude crowbar to force a man to marry her.”
The author shares several accounts of men actually standing trial who, on the verge of conviction, agree at the eleventh hour to marry their accusers. The trials were even distributed as morality tales to young men.
Take the trial of one James B. Hoyt, whose story was published in the Police Gazette:
The trial, in a crowded courtroom, went badly for Hoyt. In desperation, he proposed, “an offer of marriage.” The young lady thought it over — her sisters advised against it — and then said yes. Love “won the victory over reason.” The courtroom cheered when the Rev. Dr. Baldwin arrived to “perform the marriage ceremony.” The reverend did his stuff, the “prison gates” flew open, Hoyt was free, and the lovebirds “left the courtroom arm in arm.”
Back to National News in the NYT:
… Shaina Mahler had been 22 in 2014 when she said Mr. Conforth, her favorite teacher, began sending her messages on Facebook. She was flattered at first, but then the messages escalated into expressions of how attracted he was to her.
When Ms. Mahler told him that she was starting to feel “confused and anxious” about his messages, Mr. Conforth apologized and said they could be friends, writing, “Please please don’t ruin my life here.” But a few days later, Mr. Conforth sent her more sexually charged messages, saying he wanted to “kiss” and “touch” her, according to court papers.
Ms. Mahler let it slide until two years later, when she spoke with Ms. Brown, who recounted a nearly identical experience of being pursued by Mr. Conforth.
Isn’t this a plot device in about 97 comic operas?
Ms. Brown, then 21, told him several times his advances were “inappropriate,” according to notes taken by a Title IX coordinator who interviewed her. But one day in his office, when he insisted they hug, they ended up kissing too, she said.
That semester, their interactions escalated into a sexual encounter in his office, and Ms. Brown told the coordinator that, at first, she believed it was consensual. She acknowledged having feelings for Mr. Conforth but told the coordinator that she quickly became anxious and conflicted after their sexual encounter. She soon recognized, she said, that she had been manipulated, especially after learning from a friend — another student in his class at the time — that Mr. Conforth had left a note for her saying that he found her attractive.
If Mozart were reading this NYT article, he’d be forwarding the article to his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, and would already be humming some new arias for … well, should it be Don Giovanni Returns or Così Fan Tutte 2?
