Lythcott-Haims explains affair in her own words

Left, Olivia Swanson Haas, who revealed the affair she had in an online essay. Right, Julie Lythcott-Haims, who was dean at Stanford at the time and now is on the Palo Alto City Council.

Julie Lythcott-Haims issued a statement yesterday in response to an essay by her former lover. See related story.

“Recently, Olivia Haas published a piece describing her relationship with her college dean. I was that dean.

“Ms. Haas’ memories and feelings about her experience in a relationship with me are valid. We’d been writing and recording music together and got to a point where we expressed love for each other. That is where it should have ended. I should not have taken it further. While I was not in a position of authority over her grades or academic status at the university, being in a relationship with a student was inappropriate when it happened thirteen years ago, and it would be inappropriate now.

“A year after the relationship started, it ended. I resigned from my position. I focused on learning from my mistakes and doing the work necessary to repair where repair was possible.

“I apologized privately to Ms. Haas years ago. Now I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her. I also apologize to my former colleagues and students who had the right to expect better of me. And to members of my extended family for whom the public airing of this matter may be difficult.

“I am grateful for the support of my amazing partner and our adult children, and for the grace that has been shown to me along the way.”

10 Comments

  1. As I said in the first article here, maybe this finally being made public after a decade of cover up will stop people looking to JLH to tell them how to be adults and parents, how to live. And they will stop giving her their money!

  2. Someone on here has called JLH a gifted educator. She was not. Honestly pretty dim. I feel bad for her kids and husband who was also her student when she was an RA. Many of those who had to deal with her did not find her charismatic at all.

  3. Nice spin, especially leaving out her negotiation with Stanford for them to say she left left to get her MFA in creative writing, to pursue her passion for writing etc. and not say a single word about the real reason she was forced out.

    In fact, the Stanford Daily article announcing her departure was couldn’t be more gushing. ““She’s been an incredible and iconic figure at Stanford, both in terms of her work with students but also her work with faculty and parents,” Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam said. “Everybody knows Dean Julie and I think that’s a tribute to her passion, her commitment to Stanford and her concern about people.”

    (It’s against Daily Post policy to cite external links but I urge you to look for the article and then wonder why Stanford so consistently white washes scandals like this and so many other — Brock Turner, the suicide of the soccer player, etc.)

    • The Stanford Daily is the student newspaper, so they would not have known the real reasons for her departure. The Stanford Report is the official news site.

      • Thanks re the 2 papers. However, the Stanford officials commenting in the Stanford Daily piece were not students but staff / other deans so they probably knew.

        Either way, JHL certainly knew and still tried to spin her departure as a voluntary decision so she could pursue her love of creative writing for which she has notable talent given her ability to make up claims about her opponents.

  4. One day, perhaps, Ms. Haas will take responsibility for her adult life, her adult decisions, and her disillusions. She was not groomed. At the time, she was, and is, an adult.

    • The reason intimate relationships between a student and Dean are prohibited is because the power imbalance makes the interaction inherently coercive. The student was a only 22 years old – Dean Lythcott-Haims was twice her age, married with children. The student was preyed upon.

  5. Lythcott-Haims is an appalling example of “rules for thee, but not for me”. Imagine being the young person’s parents only to find out that this grubby, middle-aged dean of freshman is aggressively pursuing a relationship with your young daughter, and in doing so, derailing her life (as Haas says in her essay). And then, after the dean is removed from the university, she has the audacity to go around the country teaching parents how to raise their kids?! So pathologically dishonest and harmful.

  6. I’d love to know when her key supporters knew about this, especially that group of wealthy palo alto donors who host fundraisers for her and other candidates they handpick. Same people can be pretty nasty toward people they don’t support. They tried hard to push a women who had just moved to Palo Alto onto voters in the 2022 school board election. What other skeletons lurk in their closets or those of their chosen candidates?

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