Just four months ago, Julie Lythcott-Haims had her eyes set on the U.S. Congress.
The former Stanford University dean of freshman and best-selling author was running against 10 other candidates in a bid to succeed Anna Eshoo and represent Silicon Valley in Washington, D.C. When she fell short, finishing eighth in the primary, Lythcott-Haims vowed in a statement to her supporters that she will continue to work on priorities like building housing, transitioning to clean energy and addressing the poor mental health of local youth.
Her political future was upended last week, when a Stanford alumna published an essay on news site Autostraddle detailing her affair with her university’s dean, a school celebrity who, after the affair, went on to a successful writing career.
The day after the July 10 story ran, Julie Lythcott-Haims confirmed in response to an inquiry from this publication that she is the dean in question and acknowledged that her relationship with a student was “inappropriate when it happened 13 years ago, and it would be inappropriate now.”
The revelations have cast a spotlight on both Lythcott-Haims’ conduct and on Stanford University’s evolving attitude toward relationships between administrators and students. They also threaten to upend her political career. Several of her council colleagues told this publication this week that they were surprised and disappointed to learn about Lythcott-Haims’ actions while dozens of former Stanford students and local residents expressed their dismay and anger about her behavior on social media and in online forums.
After the Weekly asked her about the story, Lythcott-Haims posted the statement that she had provided to the Weekly on her Substack blog. She also wrote that while she typically answers readers’ questions, she “will not be commenting further” on the story.
Lythcott-Haims said in a statement that the relationship ended a year after it started and that she then resigned from her position.
“I focused on learning from my mistakes and doing the work necessary to repair where repair was possible,” Lythcott-Haims wrote.
“I apologized privately to Ms. Haas years ago. Now I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her. I also apologize to my former colleagues and students who had the right to expect better of me. And to members of my extended family for whom the public airing of this matter may be difficult.”
Not everyone has accepted her apology. While most of the respondents to her Substack post thanked her for her courage in acknowledging her mistake, some said they felt betrayed by her actions at Stanford. One former Stanford student accused Lythcott-Haims of “selfishness” while another said she felt “deeply betrayed” by her actions. In comments on the initial story and in posts on the university’s Reddit thread, dozens of other readers expressed their disappointment and, in many cases, urged her to resign.
Lythcott-Haims’ council colleagues aren’t going that far. The Weekly reached out this week to all six council members who serve with Lythcott-Haims to ask whether they believe she should face any consequences for her relationship with a student.
Council member Vicki Veenker, who joined the council in 2022 along with Lythcott-Haims and Lauing, said she was “shocked and deeply saddened by the revelations about Julie.” Veenker indicated in a statement that her priority will be making sure that the council can continue to effectively operate. She and Mayor Greer Stone both said that they had been talking to Lythcott-Haims since last week’s revelations to consider next steps.
Stone, a public school teacher who made student mental health his top priority, confirmed to his publication that he and Veenker have been discussing with Lythcott-Haims the best way to “move forward as a council as a city.”
One consequence of those conversations is that Lythcott-Haims will no longer serve on three advisory committees that relate to Stanford and local youth. She told this publication Thursday that after talking to Stone and Veenker, she decided to step off the City-Stanford Committee and the City/School Liaison Committee. She is also stepping down from the Youth Mental Health Task Force, which Stone created earlier this year with the goal of adding more programs to support local youth.
“My priority is to serve the City’s best interests and I’m concerned that recent disclosures about my past may hinder my ability to effectively represent the City on those committees,” Lythcott-Haims said in a statement.
Veenker said in a statement that she supports this decision.
“As a council member, my priority is optimizing our ability to continue to do the City’s work in this challenging circumstances,” Veenker said. “Mayor Stone and I spoke to Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims about how to move forward.
“I believe that Julie’s subsequent decision to step off committees where her ability to represent the city may be affected is the right one.”
Council member Greg Tanaka did not respond to a request for comment, while Vice Mayor Ed Lauing and Council member Pat Burt both said they do not wish to comment on whether Lythcott-Haims should face a censure or requests to resign.
Council member Lydia Kou said the question of whether or not Lythcott-Haims should remain on the council should be answered not by council members but the people who elected her: the voters. If people want her off the council, they can recall her, demand resignation or not vote for her again, Kou said.
“Truth to be told, it is not for me to demand her resignation, she was elected,” Kou said.
She noted that when Lythcott-Haims was running for council, she received endorsements and support from people like the U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, former Palo Alto mayors Liz Kniss and Larry Klein, and many other community leaders. The Palo Alto Weekly, Kou noted, had also endorsed Lythcott-Haims.
When asked about a possible censure, Kou said that she believes it should be up to the voters to present the council with a petition demanding such an action.
Kou said in a statement that when she read Haas’ story she got “emotional and felt her mental and emotional anguish which was a secret she carried for so many years.”
“She was in such conflict with this secret,” Kou said.
“Watching her tell her story in a video, I was somewhat relieved to see her and see that she is well, although people can hide their pain,” she added, alluding to the Haas’ recollection of her relationship with a college dean in April on The Moth, a storytelling series in New York City.
Kou noted that the council talks a lot about youth and their mental health.
“As a parent, I feel/know that even at 22 years old, they are impressionable and easily influenced,” Kou said.
The relationship between Lythcott-Haims and Haas reportedly developed in 2011 while they were composing and recording music together, according to Lythcott-Haims. It got to a point, she wrote, “where we expressed love for each other.”
Today, these songs sound almost autobiographical. A song called “Along Came You,” which was written by Lythcott-Haims and composed by Haas, is about “love outside the lines,” as Lythcott-Haims explained just before their joint performance during The Red Couch Project, a concert series for Stanford’s student artists (Lying in the grass/ Just watching you sleep/ Tried to pull my bravery up from the deep/ Wondering what at forty I’ve got to lose/ Telling you). Another song, called “The Muse,” has the protagonist falling under the spell of the eponymous muse (I told you what you meant to me/ Knowing it wasn’t meant to be).
Lythcott-Haims said in a statement that the relationship should have ended there.
“I should not have taken it further,” Lythcott-Haims said.
Haas does not mention the music sessions in her essay but she recalled feeling the dean’s attention “like a special spotlight” at a time when she wanted to be an actress. Haas recalled in her essay her and the dean’s getaways to a cottage upstate, to a luxury hotel near Stanford and to a motel two miles from campus.
“We told ourselves she was teaching me how to love myself, how to act on my desires. This is what love looks like, we said, and I became adept at anticipating her desires—which I fulfilled, eagerly. She was my audience; I was her secret star,” Haas said.
Her feelings about the relationship shifted after she broke up with Lythcott-Haims and told her parents about it.
“Suddenly words like manipulated and abuse of power were being used and shame started to calcify in the parts of me that had desired her—tremendous embarrassment—as I began to see my great love story through a very different lens,” Haas wrote. “I had felt like such an adult, living this beautiful, sexy adventure of intimacy and growth, swirling in a soft glow. But I told my parents and in an instant it was now closing time at a grimy bar—blinding fluorescent lights revealing makeup caked on cheeks sweaty from too many cheap shots.”
THE CHANGING CONVERSATION
Lythcott-Haims left Stanford University in 2012, shortly after Haas’ mother reportedly filed an anonymous complaint to the university about the affair, according to Haas. Today, such relationships would be prohibited. At that time, they were allowed but strongly discouraged. Lythcott-Haims told this publication that she left the university voluntarily.
The policy that was in effect in 2011 made it clear that romantic relationships between individuals in inherently unequal positions present “special risks” and create potential for conflict of interest, exploitation, favoritism and bias. As such, they may “undermine the real or perceived integrity of the supervision and evaluation provided, and the trust inherent particularly in the teacher-student context.”
“They may, moreover, be less consensual than the individual whose position confers power or authority believes,” the 2011 policy states. “The relationship is likely to be perceived in different ways by each of the parties to it, especially in retrospect.”
The university’s policy at the time did not specifically address relationships between deans and undergraduates, though it urged teachers to avoid relationships with students and noted that “the teacher’s influence and authority extend far beyond the classroom.”
“Consequently and as a general proposition, the University believes that a sexual or romantic relationship between a teacher and a student, even where consensual and whether or not the student would otherwise be subject to supervision or evaluation by the teacher, is inconsistent with the proper role of the teacher, and should be avoided.
“The university therefore strongly discourages such relationships,” the 2011 policy stated.
But as Lythcott-Haims was departing Stanford in 2012, the university was in the process of updating and strengthening the policy to outright prohibit such relationships. Michele Dauber, a Stanford University law professor who participated in the 2012 revision process, told this publication that the main goal at that time was to “improve the way Stanford handled sexual misconduct by students, faculty, and staff.”
“One part of that was to make the sexual assault procedures less intimidating to survivors in order to increase reporting. In addition, the revisions were intended to bring Stanford’s policies regarding sexual harassment and assault into compliance with Title IX,” Dauber said.
Another objective was to create a section pertaining to “so-called ‘consensual relationships’ between employees and undergraduate students,” a topic that had previously been handled under the university’s sexual harassment policy, she said.
Dauber said that she did not know about Lythcott-Haims’ relationship until she read about it in the Weekly and declined to speculate on how her situation related to policy changes. Stanford, she said, had never given her any specifics about why section 1.7.2, which pertains to campus relationships, was revised to include “a total ban on any sexual contact between teachers or administrators with undergraduates.”
“I suspect the University concluded that it could not rely on the good judgment of even senior employees to protect students,” said Dauber, a long-time advocate for victims of sexual misconduct.
The university did not respond to questions about why the policy was revised and whether Lythcott-Haims’ conduct contributed to the policy change.
“The specifics of university policy have changed over time, but university policy has long discouraged relationships with undergraduates, including prior to the 2013 policy,” Luisa Rapport, the university’s director of media relations, said in an email to this publication.
That said, the policy that the university adopted in 2013 went beyond discouragement and outright prohibited relationships between professors and students. Unlike the prior policy, it explicitly applies to deans, coaches and other administrators who have “broad influence on or authority over students and their experience at Stanford.”
“For this reason, sexual or romantic relationships between such staff members and undergraduate students are prohibited,” the 2013 policy states.
Rapport also did not respond when asked whether Stanford University plans to revoke the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award that the university gave to Lythcott-Haims in 2010, which “recognizes distinctive and exceptional contributions to undergraduate education or the quality of student life at Stanford.” She told this publication last week that the university has no comment on the Lythcott-Haims revelations.
Dauber, a long-time advocate for victims of sexual violence, said the university has “a history of handling matters like this in a way that privileges Stanford’s interests over everyone else’s, including the student.”
“Usually that entails sweeping it under the rug,” Dauber said. “What has Stanford done to assist Haas with the long-lasting impacts she described in her essay? Has Stanford ever reached out to her to offer assistance with counseling or other resources either before or after her story was published?”