Fired UC Santa Cruz prof Gopal Balakrishnan settles sexual assault lawsuit by former student

The civil suit between Gopal Balakrishnan, a former professor of history of consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Anneliese Harlander, a UCSC alumna who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Balakrishnan in 2013, concluded in a hearing room in Santa Cruz Superior Court on Wednesday morning with a five-figure settlement. 

Attorneys Erik Babcock and Dan Siegel entered the courtroom on Ocean Street having hammered out a deal in the lobby: Balakrishnan will pay Harlander $45,000, spread out over a period of three years, with payments on Sept. 1 each year starting in 2024. 

Neither party admitted fault as part of the settlement. The two parties also agreed to avoid disparaging each other publicly. Judge Timothy Volkmann reiterated the agreement: “No one’s going to file any postings or social media information demeaning the other or attacking the other — everybody’s going to treat each other with mutual respect,” he said before the sparsely attended courtroom.

The settlement marked the end of a multiyear legal battle that polarized the academic community in Santa Cruz. The civil suit was one chapter in a larger saga that some in the media perceived as academia’s iteration of the #MeToo movement, occurring right as that movement became a prominent hashtag in 2017. 

Balakrishnan became an associate professor at UCSC in 2006 and received tenure in 2015. He was fired from the school in 2019 after an internal investigation determined he had violated university policy multiple times. The investigation found evidence to substantiate allegations by Harlander and others that Balakrishnan had committed sexual assault and harassment, been physically violent toward at least one student, and provided drugs and alcohol to underage students at his residence, according to documents filed with the court in the case. Balakrishnan never faced criminal charges.

Two of the three legal chapters in that saga — the university’s internal investigation that led to Balakrishnan’s firing, and his unsuccessful attempt to appeal that decision through the courts — concluded in 2019 and this February, respectively. Harlander’s civil suit was the final court case still pending related to allegations against Balakrishnan.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the former UCSC professor quietly entered the courtroom with his counsel and sat in the back row as the proceedings commenced. Aside from confirming to the judge that he understood the terms of the settlement, Balakrishnan was silent for the hearing. Harlander entered minutes after Balakrishnan and stood next to Siegel in the front of the courtroom. 

The entire hearing, from start to finish, took six minutes. 

Harlander left the courthouse smiling but declined to comment.

Siegel declined to comment on the settlement. “You were there,” he told a journalist.

Reached via phone, Balakrishnan’s lawyer said neither he nor his client had any comment. 

Lookout reached out to UCSC for comment but did not hear back by publication time. 

Once limited to a campus whispernet, rumors of Balakrishnan’s misbehavior went public in 2017, when student-made flyers sprouted around campus. The flyers and concomitant bathroom graffiti called for a boycott of Balakrishnan’s work and alleged that he was a sexual predator.

Soon after, a group of past and current students published an open letter in the form of a public Google Doc, which detailed specific allegations against Balakrishnan. The document, signed by over a hundred people, included purported firsthand anecdotes describing unwanted sexual contact and other inappropriate behavior involving Balakrishnan.

Meanwhile, some members of the academic community fretted over what they perceived as unsubstantiated allegations. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2018, Katherine Mangan reported on an anonymous letter written by a “Santa Cruz scholar” objecting to the rancor spurred by the anonymous Google Doc. 

“This letter, like the graffiti before, not only presented no evidence, it did not even make a concrete allegation. … It literally suggested that undergraduate students are entitled to see him removed from his job because they have heard unsubstantiated rumors about him, and consequently feel uncomfortable with his presence,” the anonymous academic’s letter said, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

A group of faculty in the humanities also released a letter “condemning the anonymous messages,” Mangan reported at the time. 

UCSC’s interim Title IX officer at the time, Cherie A. Scricca, urged those with direct knowledge of any incidents related to Balakrishnan to come forward. Title IX refers to the 1972 federal law prohibiting sexual harassment and discrimination; the term has become synecdoche for investigations into sex-related discrimination and harassment.  

The wellspring of public support spurred by the Google Doc encouraged Harlander and others to file formal university complaints regarding Balakrishnan, which spurred an official university investigation into his behavior. 

Though Harlander was interviewed by university investigators for the Title IX inquest, she went public with her story in 2018, when the San Jose Mercury News and other outlets interviewed her about the case. 

Harlander’s complaint, which mirrors the findings of the Title IX investigators, alleges that Balakrishnan attended a graduation party in June 2013 where Harlander was present. Harlander, who was 22 at the time, drank too much and became “obviously intoxicated,” the statement of facts reads; Balakrishnan “walked plaintiff back to her home and without her permission let himself into her residence.” 

The statement alleges that Balakrishnan removed both her clothes and his and attempted unwanted oral sex. The complaint states that Harlander “did not consent … and/or was incapable of consent” due to her intoxication. 

Harlander originally filed her civil suit against Balakrishnan in March 2019, shortly after the Title IX investigation leading to Balakrishnan’s dismissal was “complete,” according to Executive Vice Chancellor Marlene Tromp. UCSC fired Balakrishnan that August.

Balakrishnan later challenged the university’s decision to fire him in court, arguing that the events for which he was disciplined took place off campus and/or with non-university-affiliated persons, and therefore the university was not justified in “terminat[ing] his employment and deny[ing] him emeritus status.” 

This separate but related legal case involving Balakrishnan and the University of California Board of Regents reached its conclusion Feb. 1, when the California Court of Appeals ruled against the former UCSC professor.

The court’s opinion summary reveals in great detail the university’s findings. It includes allegations from four complainants, Harlander among them.

The court documents also detail allegations by an anonymized Jane Doe, described as a “poet and academic from the East Coast,” who encountered Balakrishnan at a party while she was visiting Berkeley in 2013 for the East Bay Poetry Summit. Doe kissed Balakrishnan at some point during the evening, before going to bed, according to the court documents. 

Later, the appellate court filing said, Doe awoke to find Balakrishnan “drunkenly trying to get into bed and asking to have sex with her.” The court filing said that Doe told Balakrishnan she was uninterested and asked him to leave. Later, Doe described finding Balakrishnan naked and “loom[ing] over her while she lay in bed.” 

Court documents also include accounts by two UCSC students alleging that Balakrishnan gave underage students and others “cocaine and alcohol” during a 2009 party at his residence. 

One of the students, a Ph.D. candidate in history of consciousness at UC Santa Cruz listed in court documents as “Patrick M.”, also alleged that Balakrishnan, who was his faculty advisor, became physically aggressive with him during a discussion over his dissertation. Patrick M. filed an official complaint in 2017 after allegations about Balakrishnan’s behavior became public. 

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