Robert Harlow (1923-?) was one of Canada’s best
writers* but he was also a sexual predator. He had been a WWII fighter pilot for two years, a graduate of the University
of Iowa (1951) and then director with the Canadian Broadcasting Company (1954-65). From 1965-1977 he was the second head of
UBC's Creative Writing Department after poet Earle Birney had established it earlier. Harlow was removed as head and remained
a professor until 1988. Adultery is the centerpiece of many of his novels, including the marvelous Scann (1972).
Years later when I visited the campus, his office had become home for sexual harassment complaints. As
Head of the Creative Writing Department, he sexually harassed grad and undergrad female students.
In September 1974, he continually harassed me. It seemed that he felt it was his natural right since
my writing’s centerpiece was men and women making love. Stranger in a new country, struggling with finances, legal work,
Canadian immigration and Harlow bothering me, as a 24 year old Chicagoan I put my cards on the table and finally succumbed,
‘Ok,’ I said. His shocked expression was baffling, but we launched our taudy six week affair
with him visiting my basement room and its double mattress upon pink carpeting. He was a man like any other man, twice my age (with a daughter just two years younger
than I) and in a position of power, as had been poet Laurence Lieberman at the University of Illinois-Urbana, and psychiatrist-in-training,
but an MD already, Dr. John Durburg in Chicago.
In
bed, Harlow confessed his present wife had cancer, and was unable to make love, which he passionately needed. Later,
he confided his private hell: his first wife had left him for his best friend. This explained his obsessive use of adultery
in many of his novels. Six weeks later, having met a man in my age range, we discontinued our affair. In November
1975, the second year of the writing program, our friendship deteriorated. While discussing my short stories for my thesis
in his UBC office, Harlow punched a fist into his other palm.
‘Do you really want to hit me?’ I asked.
Nervously, he held his hands in his lap and then transported them onto his desk. We both looked out
the ivy framed bay window, then back at each other. ‘You probably can’t get a thesis with your
short stories. They simply aren’t strong enough.’
I abandoned my stories and in December expanded a long two-part sexual short story into the first
draft of a highly erotic sex novella, The Chicagoans. I had heard student complaints of Harlow’s sexual harassment.
I wondered if the sole woman grad student before me had actually shown me ‘before and after pictures’ –
not of her arrival and later wild hair in Vancouver - but her before and after photos once Harlow had sexually
harassed her.
By January 1976,
Harlow’s attempt to run me out of town miraculously abated. At home upstairs in a rented room, while downstairs
lived a father and his two daughters, I was approached by a woman using my full birth name, which I had not used in years.
I was handed court papers – named as one of two correspondents in adultery. The other woman? Not a student,
but someone I knew. She, like Harlow and I, was a member of a co-counseling group (peer psychological support group).
With the divorce papers in hand, Harlow’s
overt attacks retreated. He was still on my thesis committee. He made it abundantly clear my thesis was not up to his standards.
Just as he had asked me why I had continually misspelled ‘jewelry’ and other words. (He knew and I didn’t:
it was simply American and Canadian spelling variations.) Just as he had said my portrayal of five-hour
lovemaking sessions in The Chicagoans was impossible. (I informed him I wrote from experience - not his, but mine.)
Just as he said correct grammar was absent in the novella. (He, with his vast writing knowledge, should have advised the grammar
problems were merely a symptom of taking the torch of language where it had not been before, and could be corrected with rewrites,
something I finally understood years later. I obsessively edited and rewrote the thesis even after I had
been awarded my MFA.) Then, right before leaving Vancouver in 1976, he informed me he did not nominate my novella for a UBC
prize.
I was enraged.
He had denied me the opportunity to have my thesis-novella judged by others. I had tolerated Harlow’s sexual harassment
and overt and covert attempts to run me out of town. Now I was leaving, with my Masters in had. Angered he still could corruptly
wield power over me, I met with the Dean of the College. I was willing to show him Harlow’s divorce papers. He said,
‘It is unnecessary.’ When the Dean asked if more money should be given to the Department, I hissed, ‘Not
until that sexual quagmire is cleaned up! God knows how many students he’s bothered!’
Nor did I defend The Chicagoans before a thesis committee. This puzzled
me but I figured Canadians played by different spelling and college rules and was grateful to have completed the program and
return to the United States with my MFA in 1976.
Did
Harlow stop sleeping with students? No. When he retreated from UBC for a sabbatical to work on a novel, he took along another
Creative Writing student my age.
A man
like Harlow, a sexual predator, allowed to roam freely on a university campus…. Was he also protected at CBC because
of his position as a Director? At 55, with the sexual revolution, and once a saxophone player, was he envious of the 70s Rock
& Roll sexual freedom and a world he didn’t belong to? Did he ever stop being a sexual predator?
Yes, writers like rock and roll stars and many artists,
are people who wrestle with their demons and personal pain which often is embedded within their sexuality. Yet artists as
teachers should not abuse their positions of power to sexually harass students into seduction. With his greasy black hair
often unwashed, outside of his hunting grounds, exactly how successful would Harlow have been bedding young women?* *
Nowadays, many young people, especially young males
teaching English overseas, argue against today’s professional ethics that teachers not engage in sexual relations with
students. Such men insist language students over 18 and 21 are adults. They refuse to accept the idea/fact
that the abuse of a teacher’s position of trust is sexual abuse. Overseas, they are not held accountable. In the United
States, they are - nowadays.
I am grateful
such abuse now has rules, committees, consequences and the law to halt such abuse in higher education. Lawsuits against any
institution which allows people in power, such as the Catholic Church, to commit such crimes, are integral in stopping such
rapacious behavior by which adults sicken young souls.
Harlow
definitely knew his prey – not only students, but vulnerable women in a self-help group. Now if that is not a predator,
who is? PS – And if Harlow is still
alive somewhere, he’s the one who told me, ‘Good writing is simply good gossip.’
--------------------------------------------
*Books by Harlow: Royal Murdoch (1962), A Gift
of Echoes (1965) and his best-known and finest work, ScannLinden trilogy, named after the imaginary northern
BC town that figures in the settings of all three books. Later works are Making Arrangements (1978), Paul Nolan
(1983) and Felice: A Travelogue (1985). His most recent publication is the novel The Saxophone Winter (1988). (1972).
**Catty
remark yes, influenced by reading Ben Elton’s Chart Throb, a satire of American Idol.
*** Websites used for background information on Harlow:
http://robertharlow.com
http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com
http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=1058&L=H
