BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims, who makes her living as a writer and a public speaker, has gone silent since a former student revealed their yearlong affair while Lythcott-Haims was a dean at Stanford.
Lythcott-Haims, 57, had been sending out newsletters almost every day, along with regular posts on social media. But since former student Olivia Swanson Haas detailed their affair in a personal essay on July 10, Lythcott-Haims has sent out only a statement that apologized and acknowledged that their relationship was inappropriate.
Haas, who was 22 at the time, said in the essay that Lythcott-Haims was a “school celebrity” twice her age.
“I was the kind of young person who craved attention from powerful people. When a close friendship between us turned physically intimate, I was convinced I was in love and so I lived a double life,” Haas said in her essay, published on LGBTQ+ website Autostraddle.
In the week before the essay was published, Lythcott-Haims sent out four newsletters – about her hair falling out, her mother’s parenting style, President Joe Biden’s age and white nationalists marching in Nashville.
Council is on summer break and won’t meet again until Aug. 5, and Lyth-cott-Haims has declined interview requests.
Lythcott-Haims graduated from Stanford in 1989 and started working there in 1998.
She left her job there in 2012, after Haas’s parents anonymously complained about the affair to Stanford, Haas said.
At the time, Lythcott-Haims said she was leaving Stanford to pursue a master’s degree in poetry from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Glowing articles
The Stanford Daily wrote glowing articles about “Dean Julie,” as she was known, and her positive impact on undergraduate advising.
“Dean Julie was able to transcend the role of an administrator – she was one of us,” the Stanford Daily editorial board wrote in April 2012.
Lythcott-Haims published her first book in June 2015, a New York Times best seller called “How To Raise An Adult.”
She published her second book, “Real American: A Memoir,” in October 2017.
Wrote about Stanford
In the memoir, Lythcott-Haims grappled with her identity as a biracial woman. She tells stories about her time at Stanford, including subtle and overt acts of racism, like her coworkers touching her hair and another parent wearing blackface.
Lythcott-Haims said in the book that she started as a dean of freshmen in 2002 to help new students “feel a sense of belonging.”
Lythcott-Haims doesn’t talk about why she left Stanford.
“I hold this role until 2012. It is joyful work almost every single day,” she wrote.
Lythcott-Haims published her third book, “Your Turn: How to Be an Adult,” in April 2021.
She was elected to Palo Alto City Council in November 2022, and ran for Anna Eshoo’s seat in Congress in March but finished in eighth place.
Lythcott-Haims said in a May newsletter that she had just finished a proposal for a fourth book.
Struggle as spotlight grew
On the other side, Haas said she struggled as Ly-thcott-Haims grew her public platform while keeping their affair secret. Haas said she tried to be an artist in New York City after graduating from Stanford, but she had to move back home with her parents after ending the affair
Haas only recently moved back to New York City, where she told her story at an open mic night in April.
“I am continually reminded of my status as a skeleton in her closet and that I represent this threat to her power, that I am this source of regret and shame and remorse for her life, which is honestly a very sad and lonely and strange place to be,” Haas said at the open mic night, posted on her YouTube channel last week.
Haas said she felt sick to her stomach when she turned on NPR and heard Lythcott-Haims, or when she saw her on the news. But the feeling went away with time, Haas said.
“I have learned to hold space for the inherent paradox of my story, which is that she has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and she did something that really, really derailed my life for many years,” Haas said.
Debate at state agency
Lythcott-Haims, holding the dual role of public speaker and councilwoman, has been a source of debate for the Fair Political Practices Commission.
The state agency enforces a ban on elected officials making more than half their income from paid speaking gigs, like Lythcott-Haims did before she was elected, giving book talks around the country.
Her lawyer, Gary Winuk, asked the FPPC to change its definition of “speech” or to expand the exceptions so that Lythcott-Haims can still get paid.
“Targeting someone that has a pre-existing business, which is indisputable here, and saying, ‘Well look, if you don’t publish a new book every three years that’s a New York Times best seller then you can’t serve in public office,’ doesn’t serve any public purpose,” Winuk said on June 12. All candidates for council are required to file a statement of economic interests during their campaign.
How much is she worth?
Lythcott-Haims said in her filing that her business, Love Over Time LLC, was worth between $100,001 and $1 million, and paid her more than $100,000 in a year.
“This is my job, it is my work, it is how I support my family,” Lythcott-Haims said in April 2023.