Former Stanford dean, now local council member, apologizes for affair with student

A Palo Alto City Council member and New York Times best-selling author has admitted to and apologized for a romantic relationship she had with an undergraduate student while a dean at Stanford University more than a decade ago.

In an essay posted online last week titled “I had an affair with my college dean,” an alumna detailed damage she experienced from the relationship with Julie Lythcott-Haims while an undergrad, though she did not identify Lythcott-Haims in the piece. But after the essay was posted, the council member said she was approached by a reporter who asked whether she was the unnamed dean, prompting her to write a public apology for the harm she had caused. Lythcott-Haims said she had already apologized to the former student personally years earlier.

“While I was not in a position of authority over her grades or academic status at the university, being in a relationship with a student was inappropriate when it happened thirteen years ago, and it would be inappropriate now,” Lythcott-Haims wrote in the statement posted on her Substack account, calling the former student’s feelings about the relationship’s power imbalance valid. “I should not have taken it further.”

The link between the council member and the former student’s online essay was first reported by Palo Alto Online.

In the alumna’s piece, she wrote that when she was a 22-year-old senior, she “had an affair with a well-known dean at my university — a married woman twice my age.”

She wrote that the dean “should have known better. And yet, I had agency,” explaining there were no clear-cut issues of consent. The piece was published on Autostraddle, a digital publication focused on LGBTQ+ issues. The Times is not naming the author because she makes allegations of grooming.

“She showed poor judgment. And I made poor choices,” the woman wrote. “She misused her power.”

“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,” the author wrote about looking back on their affair.

Lythcott-Haims served as Stanford’s dean of freshmen for a decade until she stepped down in 2012 — which the former student said came after the student’s parents reported their romantic relationship.

Publicly, however, Lythcott-Haims said she pivoted to pursue a master’s degree in fine arts, and went on to write several books, including the New York Times bestseller “How to Raise an Adult.”

“I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her,” Lythcott-Haims’ statement said. “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.”

The alumna’s piece said Lythcott-Haims’ husband was aware of and OK with their relationship.

“I am grateful for the support of my amazing partner and our adult children, and for the grace that has been shown to me along the way,” Lythcott-Haims wrote.