A high school English teacher at an upscale Dalton school has resigned amid allegations of sexually abusing a former student, The Washington Post has learned.
School administrators received the disturbing allegations about Mara Naaman in a May 2 letter written on behalf of students who attend the $61,000-a-year school on the Upper East Side.
The alleged misconduct occurred between 2020 and 2022, according to a May 9 email sent to school officials by Principal Jose De Jesus and Board of Trustees Chairman Ali Jedi about a “serious issue.”
The school held an assembly the next day to inform high school students about the investigation and share information about school resources, according to the email.
“Our priority is to determine the veracity of these allegations and to determine whether there are any allegations of abuse from other members of our community,” the email said.
De Jesus’ email added that Naaman, 50, was placed on administrative leave after receiving the student’s letter and resigned the following week, on Monday, May 6.
According to a letter from the school, it has filed a police report and hired a firm that specializes in harassment and sexual abuse to investigate the incident.
“We are only releasing the teacher’s name so that anyone with relevant information can come forward,” it read.
The NYPD did not respond to repeated questions about the case but said it takes cases of sexual assault and rape “extremely seriously” and encourages anyone who has been a victim to come forward.
“It was a huge surprise,” one former Dalton parent said, “everyone was talking about it, but no one really knew what had happened.”
Naaman taught English literature to 9th through 12th graders at a K-12 school and also served as a “house advisor” providing academic guidance and social-emotional support to students.
According to Dalton’s website, advisors also serve as “advocates” and “soundbuddies” for students and develop relationships with them throughout their four years of high school.
Former Dalton parents said Naaman’s sudden resignation surprised many students who relied on her for college recommendation letters.
Naaman was one of dozens of Dalton faculty members who signed a controversial, eight-page anti-racism declaration in 2020. Among its demands were paying students of color to appear in Dalton’s promotional materials and dropping classes if Black students are not performing at the same rate as non-Black students.
Prior to Dalton, Naaman taught comparative literature and Arabic at Columbia University, Hofstra University on Long Island and Williams College in Massachusetts, where he was awarded tenure in 2013, according to LinkedIn.
A Fulbright scholar, she attended Wesleyan University and received her doctorate from Columbia University. During graduate school, she conducted research at the Department of Arabic at Cairo University in Egypt.
Her work has been published in various journals, including the Journal of Arabic Literature.
Naaman is a mother and is based in Manhattan but originally from Michigan, according to her Facebook profile.
She did not respond to inquiries from The Washington Post, and the Dalton School declined a request for comment.
The prestigious university’s former faculty included the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who taught physics and mathematics there in 1973.
In 2018, former principal Gardner Dannan was accused in a federal lawsuit of sexually abusing a 14-year-old student in 1986 while he was living with his wife.
According to court documents, the girl was working as a “household help” for Dannan and his wife, who had recently given birth, in exchange for a free education.
