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The American feminist Naomi Wolf has accused a noted Yale University professor of sexually harassing her while she was an undergraduate, and alleged a long history of such events at Yale.
According to advance "tasters" of her magazine expose, Wolf describes herself as a victim of harassment and names Harold Bloom, a prominent literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, as her tormentor.
Her denunciation of alleged sexual misconduct at the Ivy League university has drawn a furious response from one of her feminist sisters and another former student of the professor.
Camille Paglia accused Wolf of staging a witch-hunt similar to those that swept New England in the 17th century and, in distinctly unfeminist fashion, of exploiting her looks to advance her career.
"It really smacks of the Salem witch-hunts and all the accompanying hysteria," Paglia said.
"It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention by flirting and offering her sexual allure."
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The professor, who has been described as "destructively seductive", has maintained a silence during the furore.
Bloom has written more than 20 books about the Bible, Milton and poetry.
Wolf, a former Rhodes scholar and the author of bestselling books such as The Beauty Myth, makes her allegations in an article to appear in Monday's issue of New York Magazine.
Yale has confirmed that she contacted the university with her claims but was told that the two-year statute of limitations for such offences had passed. She studied there in the early 1980s.
When she asked for an apology, she was told that none would be forthcoming "when there is no finding of wrongdoing".
Her piece is understood to catalogue the experiences of 10 women at Yale.
Paglia said it was "indecent" of Wolf to wait for 20 years "to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game".
"How many books, how many articles, Naomi, are you going to impose on us so we have to be dragged back to your teenage heartbreak years?
"This is regressive. It's childish. Move on! Get on to menopause next!"
In a statement issued through New York Magazine, Wolf said she had been asked by Yale to help raise money and said "I felt I had to tell them why I was reluctant to do so".
" . . . Several distinguished women have come forward in my piece to attest to the fact that there is a systemic problem at Yale University."
The Telegraph, London; Associated Press