November/December 2007
The Scandals List
A Harvard alumnus in flagrante delicto? Veritas?
A Harvard alumnus in flagrante delicto? Veritas? Looking back, sex scandals are actually a long-running Harvard tradition. Grads (and undergrads) have been caught with their pants down since at least the 18th century.
Some found it shocking when the phone number of Louisiana senator David Vitter showed up in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam. But looking back, sex scandals are actually a long-running Harvard tradition. Grads (and undergrads) have been caught with their pants down since at least the 18th century. It’s only natural that an institution that prides itself on selecting future leaders would end up also breeding captains in this sort of industry.
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Pervy Professor
Alfred Kinsey
The Indiana University professor’s frank writing about sex legendarily revolutionized post–World War II America. His 1948 best seller Sexual Behavior in the Human Male asserted that large numbers of men engaged in homosexual sex and extramarital affairs; his 1953 follow-up, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, made the even more scandalous suggestion that women could enjoy sex as much as men. Turns out some of his proof was in his own pudding: Kinsey’s biographers would later reveal that the married sex researcher himself had had homosexual affairs and encouraged his research assistants to take lovers.
Sc.D, 1920 -
Freudian Slip
Margaret Bean-Bayog
When Harvard Medical School student Paul Lozano committed suicide in 1991, Bean-Bayog, his psychiatrist, was blamed and accused of having seduced her patient. The Harvard assistant professor’s course of treatment certainly had been unconventional: She had encouraged Lozano to think of himself as her infant son. But had their relationship included sex? Bean-Bayog denied that it had, but then pages she wrote detailing her sexual fantasies were discovered in the Lozanos’ apartment. Bean-Bayog paid Lozano’s family $1 million to settle their lawsuit and agreed to surrender her medical license.
A.B., 1965; M.D., 1969; MPH, 1973 -
POL Dance
Wilbur Mills
This long-serving Arkansas congressman—often described during his tenure as the most powerful man in Washington—ended up a punch line. His political career came crashing down in October, 1974, after a woman unfortunately named Fanne Foxe, dashed from the intoxicated Democrat’s car trying to evade police. Foxe née Annabelle Battistella, a stripper nicknamed the Argentine Firecracker, was apprehended trying to hide in a nearby tidal basin. The scandal was a serious blow to the married chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The lesson Mills learned from the experience: “Don’t go out with foreigners who drink Champagne.” Yet he sealed his political fate later that year when he received an on-stage kiss from Foxe in a Boston strip club.
HLS Class of 1933, No Degree -
The Fall of Adams
Brock Adams
In 1987, a former congressional aide told the police that Senator Adams had drugged and molested her. The married Washington Democrat denied the allegations, and when charges were not filed, his career appeared likely to survive—until 1992, when the Seattle Times published an article detailing accusations by eight other women that spanned nearly two decades and ranged from sexual harassment to rape. Adams chose not to seek reelection that year, effectively ending his political career.
J.D., 1952 -
Smut Stasher
Newton Arvin
Arvin, an English professor at Smith College, was arguably the most famous literary critic in America—until a 1960 police raid of his apartment yielded a cache of gay porn. The professor’s subsequent arrest made headlines across the country. Arvin was forced to retire from teaching, suffered from depression, and died just three years later.
A.B ., 1921 -
Love Triangle
Harry Thaw
Thaw, heir to a Pittsburgh railroad fortune, got into Harvard on his family connections, but he was expelled, reportedly for threatening a cabdriver with a shotgun. He went on to commit one of the most scandalous love-triangle murders of the era: In 1906, Thaw shot and killed famed architect Stanford White in a crowded theater above Madison Square Garden—a building White himself had designed. In Thaw’s mind, it was an honor killing. White had taken advantage of a then-16-year-old girl named Evelyn Nesbit several years earlier; in the intervening years, she had become a showgirl—and Mrs. Harry Thaw. In the aftermath of the murder, tawdry tales came to light of Thaw’s fondness for whipping his wife. At this “trial of the century,” a jury failed to reach a verdict, but a second jury found Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity.
College Class of 1894, No Degree -
Just A Gigolo
Barney Frank
A U.S. congressman admits to paying a male prostitute for homosexual sex: Ordinarily, that alone would create a scandal. In Frank’s case, it was only the tip of the iceberg. In 1989, the same male prostitute further claimed to have run an escort service out of the Massachusetts Democrat’s Washington, D.C., apartment. The House Ethics Committee couldn’t validate the claim, so instead of censure or expulsion, Frank got away with a reprimand. He remains in office.
A.B.1962; J.D., 1977 -
Dial-A-Creep
Richard Berendzen
During his 10-year presidency of American University, the Harvard-trained astronomer was widely praised for increasing the school’s endowment and academic standards. But in 1990, after a series of obscene phone calls to Washington-area childcare providers was traced to his office, Berendzen resigned. He attributed his behavior to childhood sexual abuse and checked himself into a sexual disorders clinic.
Ph.D, 1967 -
Happy Birthday Mr. President
John F. Kennedy
Admittedly, this one doesn’t really count, as Kennedy was never outed. But his conduct is worth noting on this list: A married U.S. president whose lengthy list of alleged lovers includes Hollywood starlets and a pair of fresh-faced, typing-challenged White House secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. Luckily for him, in JFK’s day, the press still winked at presidential infidelity, so Kennedy’s affairs remained under wraps until after his death. That is, if you were blind to the subtext of Marilyn Monroe’s steamy 1962 rendition of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
S.B., 1940 -
Hearst So Bad
William Randolph Hearst
Most people know of newspaper titan Hearst’s tryst with Marion Davies from its famous lampooning in Citizen Kane, but according to Hollywood gossip, it was no laughing matter. The scuttlebutt is that in 1924, during a party aboard Hearst’s luxurious yacht, Hearst caught Davies with Charlie Chaplin, and while gunning for him, accidentally shot and killed silent-film director Thomas Ince. When Ince’s body was quickly cremated, rumors of a cover-up began. Then Hearst’s newspapers appeared to intentionally distort the story. No one has ever proven that Ince was murdered at all, but the theory lives on and was the basis for Peter Bogdanovich’s 2002 movie The Cat’s Meow. Others argue Ince likely died of natural causes and that Hearst’s papers merely wished to whitewash the presence of liquor, illegal during the Prohibition era.
College Class of 1885, no degree -
Maid in Cambridge
Reverend Samuel Locke
“A friend to liberty.” That’s how Locke was described by a member of the Harvard Corporation upon his nomination to become president of his alma mater in 1770. Just three years later, Harvard would discover just how good a friend—and how much liberty—when Locke resigned amid rumors that he had impregnated his maid.
A.B., 1755 -
Bedding the Boss
William Agee and Mary Cunningham
The boardroom buzz at Bendix Corp. in the early 1980s was about the bedroom. In 1980, recently divorced CEO Agee rapidly promoted recent HBS grad Cunningham to corporate vice president. Speculation at Bendix held that Cunningham’s advancement had more to do with the young blonde’s striking good looks than her business savvy. Though both insisted that their relationship was purely professional, within two years, Cunningham had divorced her husband and married Agee. Both execs’ careers suffered—though in Agee’s case, his failed takeover of Martin Marietta might have been more damaging than the affair. Nearly two decades later, business books still cite Cunningham’s story as a prime example of the importance of maintaining a professional distance from bosses of the opposite sex.
MBA, 1963; MBA, 1979 -
Unhappy Ending
Jeffery Epstein
He’s not a Harvard alum, but secretive billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein has donated generously to the university, including a pledged $30 million for the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and counts lawrence summers and numerous other professors as friends. One of his closest Harvard associates of late has been Alan Dershowitz, who has been one of Epstein’s lawyers since the summer of 2006, when Epstein was charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex with minors and molestation; he reportedly paid scores of underage girls—one as young as 14—for massages and more at his manse in Palm Beach. Epstein may be headed to jail to serve an 18-month sentence. -
Bordello Boy
David Vitter
After the Republican Louisiana senator’s number was discovered in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam,” earlier this year, Vitter said he had “asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife” for his infidelity. A New Orleans prostitute later claimed that she, too, had had sexual relations with Vitter—a charge the senator has denied. Good fodder for his upcoming 25th reunion, anyway.
A.B., 1983 -
Closet Case
James E. McGreevey
In 2004, the married governor of New Jersey suddenly declared himself “a gay American” and resigned from office. McGreevey’s political career might have survived the announcement, had it not been coupled with the admission that the Democrat had engaged in an affair with a male aide and was facing the prospect of a sexual harassment lawsuit. The aide would later claim that he had not been McGreevey’s willing partner but rather a victim of sexual assault.
Ed.M, 1982
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