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The Bachelor’s Becca Faces Arie for the First Time Since He Ended Their Engagement

March 7, 2018 by  
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Warning: This post contains Bachelor spoilers.

Becca Kufrin finally got to sit down with Arie Luyendyk Jr. for the first time since he left her for Lauren Burnham on this week’s shocking Bachelor finale.

On Tuesday’s live After the Final Rose, Kufrin, 27, was composed and calm as she confronted her ex-fiancé.

“Since that day I’ve had so many questions running through my brain,” she told Luyendyk Jr., 36. “I think my biggest one is when did you know that you wanted to end things with me and go back to her?”

“I think it was through that conversation I had with Lauren,” he responded. “I know that we had talked about the struggles that I had and how I was thinking about that breakup. There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. We were close and I wanted to express everything to you, but I wanted to be sure before I put that out there. I didn’t want to take this huge risk and to face this scrutiny if I wasn’t certain.”

Luyendyk Jr. also defended his controversial decision to break off the engagement in front of a camera crew, saying, “I wanted everyone here and at home to know that this was on me, and it wasn’t on you.”

But Kufrin had some pointed questions for the race car driver: Namely, why he waited over a week to tell her that he had reached out to Burnham on Jan. 1.

“I didn’t want to be rash,” he explained. “There were all these feelings and I wanted to be certain in my decision before I came to you to tell you that I wanted to pursue that. You were working and we were apart. That time was the time I needed to square up my feelings.”

“All I asked for was honesty from you and I feel like I didn’t fully get that,” she said. “I feel like there was a lack of respect on the end for me, for your fiancée.”

Looking back on how it all unfolded, Luyendyk Jr. admitted he does have one major regret: getting down on one knee in the first place.

“I do regret proposing that day, because I wasn’t fully ready,” he said. “I think the pressure of this, the pressure of being the Bachelor, knowing that there’s a timeline and having to make that decision on that day. That is totally on me. I have no excuse for that. I apologize for that.”

“As the Bachelor, you have a timeline,” he continued. “And that’s no excuse. I should not have proposed. I was conflicted and I needed more time but I didn’t have any more time. I apologize for that. I can’t take that back. When we did get engaged, I gave it as much effort as I could, but my heart was still conflicted. And it’s hard to express that to you at that time.”

But at the end of the day, Kufrin doesn’t hold any ill will towards her ex.

“I’m always going to have love in my heart for you,” she said. “You were my fiancé, and I did fall in love with you. But I moved on and I’m ready for the next chapter of my life. I don’t want to keep looking back in the past. I want to move forward.”

“I forgive you, I do,” she continued. “The entire situation, it’s hard, but you learn from everything. I do want you to be happy. I hope that Lauren is your one and that you have found that happiness in her. I just want you to be honest with her, and just hold her heart high, have the most respect for her, be committed to her, because this was a lot to go through.”

The live two-hour After the Final Rose special is airing now on ABC.

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Harvard Professor Resigns Amid Allegations of Sexual Harassment

March 7, 2018 by  
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Late Sunday evening, Michael D. Smith, the dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, sent an email to the university community announcing that Dr. Domínguez had been placed on leave while Harvard investigated the allegations. In a brief email to colleagues on Tuesday, Dr. Domínguez announced his resignation, which he described as his retirement, effective at the end of the semester.

Jennifer Hochschild, the chairwoman of the government department, then announced the resignation to students and alumni in her own email.

“His forthcoming retirement does not change the active review of the facts and circumstance that have recently come to light,” she wrote.

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Dr. Domínguez did not respond to email and telephone messages seeking comment on Tuesday, but he told The Chronicle that he had tried to “behave honorably” in all his relationships. “I do not go around making sexual advances,” he said. “Any behavior like that, I would regret it under any circumstances.”

The Chronicle article told the story of Terry L. Karl, an assistant government professor at Harvard during the early 1980s, who said Dr. Domínguez, regarded as the university’s leading authority on Latin American politics, had made repeated attempts to kiss her, attempted to run his hand up her dress and, at another point, made a reference to raping her. As she rebuffed his advances, Dr. Karl said, Dr. Domínguez reminded her of how powerful he was.

In one letter to Dr. Domínguez at the time, she warned that she found his overtures uncomfortable. “I must reiterate what I have said before: for me, any type of sexual involvement with you can only be destructive.”

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Following her repeated complaints, the university punished Dr. Domínguez in 1983, finding he had committed serious misconduct, and temporarily stripped him of administrative duties.

Dr. Karl left Harvard and built a successful career as a professor of political science and Latin American studies at Stanford.

But she told The Chronicle that she was contacted last year by other women, emboldened by the #MeToo movement, who knew of her case and revealed to her how Dr. Domínguez’s behavior continued, even as he rose to higher and higher levels of responsibility.

The allegations from the other women ranged in severity, from inappropriate full-body hugs to claims by one woman that he grabbed her buttocks and tried to put his hand down her pants. The Chronicle reported that one graduate student in the early 1980s complained to the university about comments from Dr. Domínguez that made her feel uneasy, and that Harvard found that he had “behaved inappropriately.” Other women said they had discussed Dr. Domínguez’s behavior with Harvard employees, but had not filed formal complaints.

The Cuban-born Dr. Domínguez, who had been on the Harvard faculty since 1972, ultimately served a long stint as vice provost for international studies and as director of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Reacting to Dr. Domínguez’s announcement, Dr. Karl said his retirement would not resolve the underlying problem.

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“They kept promoting him and giving him additional administrative powers, which gave him more power over others to abuse those people, to decide their careers, to sexually harass them, all kind of things,” Dr. Karl said. “And what I don’t understand and will never understand is — if they knew, if they were warned, how could they have promoted him?”

After the original Chronicle article, Harvard’s provost, Alan M. Garber, sent a Harvard-wide email calling the allegations “heartbreaking,” adding that the university “immediately began contacting students and post-docs in the government department to ask about their experiences.”

At a faculty meeting on Tuesday, Drew Faust, who is stepping down as Harvard’s president this year, said that despite the university’s efforts to address sexual harassment, “it remains the case that very clearly there is more to be done,” according to a transcript released by the university.


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