[image-1] In 2014, Case Western Reserve University Law School Dean Lawrence Mitchell resigned amidst a lawsuit alleging rampant sexual impropriety and retaliation against a professor who tried to blow the whistle.
The salacious details of that suit — including Mitchell's repeated attempts to enlist students and underlings in threesomes — and the complicity of CWRU administrators, including President Barbara Snyder, were chronicled in
this 2014 Scene feature story. The suit
was settled two months after publication.
In 2016, Mitchell announced on
his now-defunct personal blog that he'd officially
changed his name to Ezra Wasserman Mitchell.
He is
now a professor of Law at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SHUFE) in China, and students have lately learned of his past (un)professional conduct.
In a brochure created by SHUFE students and distributed to their classmates, Mitchell's name change and his controversial tenure at Case Western is presented in detail. The full text of Scene's 2014 report is included as well. (You can read a PDF of the brochure below.)
One student suggested in an email that China should not be excluded from the #MeToo movement and cited two recent cases in Chinese higher education where professors had been removed due to accusations of sexual harassment. Some SHUFE students are now trying to raise awareness about Mitchell.
"We believe that there should be no room for Lawrence Mitchell to secure any faculty position," the student wrote in an email, "as he is extremely dangerous to female students."
A message seeking comment was sent to Mitchell's university email address. We will update if and when we receive a response.