Harvard University announced last week that it is banning professors from having any “sexual or romantic relationships” with undergraduate students.
The new policy replaces an old one, which looked down on undergrad-professor relationships but didn’t outright ban them. There number of U.S. universities that ban these kind of relationships is unclear, but according to the L.A. Times, USC “strongly discourages” physical relations between professors and students in its 2014 student handbook, and Stanford outright prohibits them.
So what do you think? Is this necessary? Is it a problem for professors to have relationships with undergrads who aren't, and won't be, their students? Should other universities enact such a ban?