In a unique profile of 2020 presidential hopeful and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Washington Post reports a new detail on an allegation of sexual harassment, abuse of power, and a funeral. While people often discuss Warren’s time as a public school teacher, she also taught law at the University of Houston. At age 29, married with two small children, Warren had a lot on her plate—and, unsurprisingly, dealt with a lot of sexism from her colleagues. While UH law professor Eugene Smith has been credited—including by Warren herself—as pulling strings and getting her the job, she also alleges that he repeatedly sexually harassed her.
These claims aren’t new—in fact, you can watch her share her story via an NBC interview, embedded below. What is new, however, is that the Post reports that Warren actually shared the story of Smith’s harassment at his own funeral.
As the Post reports, Warren was asked by Smith to speak at his funeral, held in the campus chapel in 1997. And, well, speak she did. With his ex-wife and three adult children there to hear it, too. Warren shared that Smith had “lunged” at her and “chased” her around his office behind a closed door. This came after, as she explains it, numerous inappropriate comments about her appearance, dirty jokes, and invitations out for drinks.
Before anyone wonders why Warren didn’t just “report it,” she answers that herself in the Post profile. "If Gene wanted to sink me, he could," she told the paper. “If he had said, ‘She’s not very good. Let’s push her out the door,’ I would have been gone. And so, when he chased me around his office, I wasn’t afraid of him physically so much as I was afraid of what I knew he could take away from me.”
Here lies an all-too frequent issue: Men in power are credited with “helping” women get ahead or are thanked for being open-minded enough to support or accept a woman in the workplace. But as Warren’s allegation suggests, that “help” can all-too often come with an assumption that sexual harassment (if not beyond) will be permitted or excused. Basically an idea that men are then “owed” a “favor.” Gross.
The transactional quality of this exchange rests, of course, in power imbalances—if a man in power, in this case, Smith, didn’t hold so many cards, woman and nonbinary people, like Warren describes, wouldn’t have to participate in such a delicate, horrifying balancing act. It’s an abuse of power, and while Warren’s story is from decades ago, it’s still an issue today.
You can listen to her tell it in a Meet the Press interview from 2017: