Who Is Naomi Wolf? Author Takes On Yale Over Harold Bloom Accusations

Author Naomi Wolf tweeted Monday she will hold a vigil outside Yale University Provost's office Tuesday to protest inaction by the university over allegations of sexual misconduct against professors, including renowned literary critic Harold Bloom.

Wolf had accused renowned literary critic and Yale professor of humanities, Harold Bloom, 87, of sexual misconduct while she was a senior at the university in 1983. The accusation made in a New York Magazine article in 2004 was received with derision in many quarters and the university failed to initiate any action against Bloom.

Thirteen years later, in the light of new sexual misconduct allegations against three Yale professors, including Bloom, and amid the #MeToo movement, the acclaimed author has revived the allegation.

She tweeted Monday she was holding a vigil outside the provost's office.

Who is Naomi Wolf?

Born in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, in a family of Jewish scholars in 1962, Wolf excelled in school and went to Yale University to study English literature.

Not one to shy away from a confrontation, Wolf’s liberal upbringing has mostly led her down roads paved with troubles.

From being lambasted on exposing her alleged aggressor in the New York Magazine article in 2004, to penning a detailed account of her arrest during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 in the Guardian, she’s been a prominent figure in the literary world with an affinity for chatty exposé.

She received widespread criticism in 2014 when she questioned the authenticity of the Islamic State militant group's beheading videos, suggesting they "had been staged by the US government."

Vox.com journalist Max Fisher said given her record for respectability, the wide-eyed conspiracy theory about the beheading videos could prove harmful to the impressionable audience, the Independent reported.

Her books are usually liberal, tell-all confessions about her life, dealing with women empowerment in a male dominant society. Her first book "The Beauty Myth," published in 1991, was a prelude to her subsequent books on women empowerment, and which illustrated the muffling traits of men’s notions of physical attraction, which often tend to suppress women.

Her 1997 book "Promiscuities: A secret struggle on womanhood" served as a beacon to women coming to terms with the harsh realities of their sexual desire and the ambivalent nature of the discourse about the uncertainty, joy and agonies of growing up female in the United States.

The book gained notoriety for alluding to an authority figure at Yale who blatantly made a pass at her at a university dinner and the ensuing repercussions.

She wrote about the traumatic event in The New York magazine, and called out Yale University which deemed it unworthy to investigate. Touted as one of the best literary critics of our time, Bloom was accused of running his hands up Wolf’s thigh when she was a senior at Yale.

Wolf wrote she remained silent for twenty years hoping the university would take precautions against the prevailing predatory atmosphere on the campus.

However, when she was stonewalled by the university she decided to pen her story to spur the university to take steps to protect its students.

"I began, nearly a year ago, to try—privately—to start a conversation with my alma mater that would reassure me that steps had been taken in the ensuing years to ensure that unwanted sexual advances of this sort weren’t still occurring. I expected Yale to be responsive," she wrote in the magazine.

Yale was accused last month of violating the terms of Title IX, which delineates the measures to be taken in case of allegations of sexual misconducft on campus.

Students accused the university of not acting against accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against three professors: Bloom, philosophy professor Thomas Pogge and Spanish professor Roberto González Echevarría, Yale Daily reported.