The consequences of sexual harassment at Berkeley
October 11, 2015 9:36 AM   Subscribe

Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a prominent exoplanet researcher employed as a professor at UC Berkeley, has been found to have repeatedly violated sexual harassment policy. The full report has not been made public, but according to a report by Buzzfeed, the result is that he is to be given "clear expectations concerning his future interactions with students" or risk further punishment. Dr. Marcy has put an apology letter on his web page. Dr. Michael Eisen, a biology professor at UC Berkeley, has posted an article about the contradictions between the Berkley sexual harassment training and institutional consequences. Dr. Janet Stemwedel writes in Forbes about the differences between institutional and community responses in this case.
posted by demiurge (93 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
The consequences of sexual harassment at Berkeley

If he does it again, he risks sanctions.
posted by jeather at 9:40 AM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Jinx! There was also a very interesting post made by Marcy's ex-grad-student John Asher Johnson about Marcy's history of sexual harassment in the exoplanet community. Apparently, Marcy's behavior provided much of the inspiration for this classic post on sexual harassment techniques.

Incidentally, UC Berkeley is drawing even more negative attention to itself as a memo from the Marcy's department head asking for "any understanding or support [anyone] can offer" ....for Marcy in his time of need. Because the person who really needs understanding and hugs here is the guy who harassed women for ten years.
posted by sciatrix at 9:47 AM on October 11, 2015 [59 favorites]


I was at a conference this weekend with some of the women who published the #safe13 survey and subsequent publication about sexual harassment and assault in anthropology, and the general response is just bafflement, frustration, and so much tired. We really need to get the institutional support to do something about this. And senior men need to stop harassing and being defended and protected by their institutions.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:48 AM on October 11, 2015 [14 favorites]


The "sanctions if he does it again" might have been a nice response from Berkeley in oh, say, 2001. I have a lot of friends in the exoplanet community and this is *not* something no one knew about.

The Forbes article is quite good.
posted by kyrademon at 9:58 AM on October 11, 2015 [22 favorites]


UC Berkeley administrators made vague handwaving gestures in a room Marcy had been in at one time, reportedly, and called it a slap on the wrist.
posted by jamjam at 10:02 AM on October 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Maybe John Yoo will have lunch with him?
Marcy is so contrite and abashed that he has personally written a uniquely mealy-mouthed letter of apology and posted it on his own web page, where we can learn that even a Nobel Prize candidate can be clueless enough to need ten years of “deep and lengthy consultations” to figure out what any woman over the age of six could tell him, and indeed what many of his adult victims have been telling him in “complaints…going back more than a decade“.

Now, this is a good opportunity to all calm down and not get emotional, and do a little cost-benefit analysis. And let’s be sure to keep our eye on the ball, which is doing more better science for the benefit of all humanity, plus getting more bigger grants at Cal.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:04 AM on October 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


James Guillochon is calling for a boycott.
posted by zamboni at 10:16 AM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


i know he is to blame for his actions and dragging in the spouse and shaming her as if this is her mess and they are the same person is also sexism, but she's going all in on this victim-blaming, what is even the big deal, opinions may differ bullshit:
Dr. Marcy’s wife, Susan Kegley, a pesticide researcher, said she supported him, pointing out that he had cooperated fully with the investigation and apologized.

She defended her husband, writing in an email, “Others may interpret Geoff’s empathy and interest as a come-on. I can’t change their perspectives, but I think it is worth all of us examining how quickly one is judged and condemned without knowing all of the facts.”

“The punishment Geoff is receiving here in the court of hysterical public opinion is far out of proportion to what he did and has taken responsibility for in his apology,” Dr. Kegley wrote.
posted by twist my arm at 10:21 AM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


I read his apology too, and I thought that it showed a real understanding and a sincere wish to do better.

Especially this:
While I do not agree with each complaint that was made, it is clear that my behavior was unwelcomed by some women.
Which in no way reads like he said some women made it up and the rest of them were exaggerating because most people welcomed his groping.
posted by jeather at 10:26 AM on October 11, 2015 [21 favorites]


The forbes piece is really good, and should be a 101-level template for anyone in (or outside academia) on not only what the problem is, but beginnings of sensible (rather than ass-covering) ways to respond.
posted by lalochezia at 10:46 AM on October 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


The Forbes article is indeed very good. My main takeaway from the article is this:

Institutional responses to complaints are aimed at protecting the institution’s (perceived) interests, not the interests of the complainants.

Organizations seem most interested in protecting their stars, whether they be football players, prominent professors, or favored employees, truth be damned. The similarities between this incident and those reported in Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town are gut-wrenching. Boys will be boys, after all.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 10:55 AM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Many of those of us who are Berkeley alums are writing to the Chancellor, relevant Dean, and UC President. Berkeley needs to do better here. (Please feel free to memail me if you are an alum, wish to write, and can't find contact info.)

(I was a student there, not in astro but in physics, during the middle of the 2000s. This behavior was not a secret. Berkeley's lack of response then and continued lack of response now is appalling. Their lack of response in the 2005 event directly contributed to my own then-and-continuing decision not to pursue action against my own harasser, and I would be completely surprised if I were alone in this.)
posted by nat at 10:57 AM on October 11, 2015 [35 favorites]


Aw man this is disappointing news :( he's always been someone i looked up to :(
posted by sexyrobot at 12:11 PM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


1. Why wasn't something done before?
2. Why isn't his ass fired?
He's a major, major player in the field. He brings money and prestige to the university. He may some day win a Nobel Prize, which would bring even more money and prestige to the university. The university knows that if they sanction him in any real way, he can just take his ball and go home and get a job at some other university, because you'd better believe that some other university will be happy to hire him no matter what he's done. The short answer is that Berkeley cares more about the benefits of having him on their faculty than they do about the well-being of their female employees and students, and that comes as a surprise to pretty much no one.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:20 PM on October 11, 2015 [25 favorites]


This is what could become the norm. We live in the age og ubiqiotous security cameras. Film staff interactions as a part of targeted class curriculum, with regard to professional expectations. Give examples, then hit them with their own behaviors filmed.

One does not expect a star PhD to urinate on the floor because of pbysical urgency, likewise staff should keep an arm length distance in conversation, and conversation is frontal, face to face. Proper conversation begins with a greeting, not stealth.

I can see how astronomy is a perfect setup with eyes at the lens, though I bet it is on a viewscreen anymore, then the dark o'clock hours. Too long has passed for professors to consider creeping their students as a privilege, much less groping.

My mom was working on her PhD when a felow student said of one professor, "He will expect you to sleep with him once, after that he will leave you alone." It makes me wonder if there is a boy's club scoreboard somewhere?

The US should stand as an example for womens' rights, especially in academia.
posted by Oyéah at 12:30 PM on October 11, 2015


Further to A&C's point above: the Acting Chair of the department, Gibor Basri, sent around an email to the department (widely shared, no link, sorry) which includes this amazingly tone deaf passage:
"Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment. For those who are willing and able, he certainly can use any understanding or support they can offer (this wouldn't include endorsement of the mistakes he acknowledges in an open letter on his website). I ask that those who have the room for it (now or later), hear him out and judge whether there is room for redemption in all that will transpire."

Hardest for Geoff, really? I wonder what the Berkeley campus Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion, Gibor Basri, thinks about that. (Yes, the VC for Equity thinks it is hardest at this moment for the self-acknowledged harasser.)

(I don't know any of the parties in this horrible situation, but it makes me unreasonably angry that there are apparently informal lists of "Stay away from ..." circulating at meetings of the American Astronomical Socierty.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:39 PM on October 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


(On re-read, Sciatrix shared a link to the memo above already. Amazing stuff.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:43 PM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


kyrademon: "The "sanctions if he does it again" might have been a nice response from Berkeley in oh, say, 2001. I have a lot of friends in the exoplanet community and this is *not* something no one knew about."

Yeah, if Marcy has this reputation in the community, I find it hard to believe that his institution didn't know about it. If UC Berkeley wants to give their faculty a warning instead of dismissing them outright, then it needs to keep them on a shorter leash.

Unrelatedly, there's one thing about the Eisen article that bothered me: he posts a screenshot of the Suzie Scholar/Dr. Randy Risktaker (ugh) scenario, presumably from UC Berkeley's own sexual harassment training, and then suggests that such a scenario shouldn't be in the training at all. (The scenario in question being that the female student asks out the male professor several times before he finally relents.)

I agree that the situation is a bit closer to a porn movie than it may be to reality, but unless it's the only scenario covered in the training, I'm not sure what the problem is. It's true that a professor (or a TA, or an administrative assistant) can suffer sexual harassment from a student, and that they should report it if it happens. But Eisen seems to be saying that it's impossible (or nearly so) for a student to harass a professor due to the inherent power imbalance, and that the training should be less preoccupied with unlikely scenarios like these.

I don't get it. Yes, nearly all harassment training is designed to cover the company's ass, but the minimum we should expect out of sexual harassment training is that it shift liability from the employer to the employee. If someone gets sued for blatant sexual harassment, I don't want that person to claim that they weren't properly informed by their employer that such behavior was against policy. And I think it's unrealistic of Eisen to expect UC Berkeley to be less concerned with scenarios that could get them sued, even if they're unlikely.

If, in addition to this, Eisen wants the university to include more "hey, professor, don't be gross" slides, that's fine with me, except that I suspect the Marcys of the world won't stop being gross until it costs them their jobs. Like conference codes of conduct, the point is not that we think writing these things down is going to stop people from being harassed; it's that writing them down beforehand means that we can kick out the gross people more expediently. Which is why it's so disappointing that the university dropped the ball in the disciplinary process.
posted by savetheclocktower at 12:50 PM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Competing power interests certainly do bias the way UC Berkeley handles this. But it's also partly that firing this professor would require a lot of formal bureaucratic tape that the institution would prefer not have to engage in. It's a cost-benefit decision in that at the minimum they would have to actually, for real, have to set up some sort of due process hearing and impartial decision-making apparatus. It is costly and embarrassing for the institution. But note that this is quite different from a corporate setting where you could be fired for whatever reason the bosses feel fit. Academia is different.

Another key ideological difference from the "outside world" is that American academic culture dislikes problem solving that uses authoritarian methods such as firing their own people, or relying on punitive methods. This is partly why you have this care-bear type letter that's cares so much about the harasser, but tone-deaf by totally ignoring the victims.

Oh, and different doesn't mean better. Accountability is really weird in academia. The deans constantly accuse the faculty of being too powerful. Which of course the faculty can claim is ridiculous. Grad students (low-wage "apprentice" employees) are continually disenfranchised/marginalized (even if Berkeley has a union, I believe?). It's not a system set up to handle sociopolitical problems occurring within its supposed exemplar of a community of learners, meaning any issue that doesn't directly involve the main sanctioned endeavor/programme of research.
posted by polymodus at 12:50 PM on October 11, 2015


parts of this article in 2014 read much differently now:
Social consciousness is part of his identity. At Santa Cruz he ran around plastering “Men Against Rape” stickers over nude pinups in the engineering and optics shops.

At Berkeley he regularly hits the tennis courts with the women’s team. “They give me lessons,” he said.

... Once an outsider with no future, Dr. Marcy now has his pick of collaborators and students. “My undergraduates are even smarter than my graduate students,” he said recently.
posted by twist my arm at 2:26 PM on October 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


.@UCBerkeley is one of the top astronomy schools in the country. It attracts the best and the brightest students.

People have attested to the fact that the actions of Marcy, and others in the department, have driven women away from astronomy.

By recruiting best students and selectively driving off women, @UCBerkeley is reducing both number *and quality* of women in astronomy.

Same argument holds for any high-ranked department making excuses for the sexist (or, similarly, racist) behavior of its rock stars.
posted by twist my arm at 2:35 PM on October 11, 2015 [15 favorites]


"Dr. Marcy now has his pick of collaborators and students. “My undergraduates are even smarter than my graduate students,” he said recently." [ from the 2014 article ]

This sounds like manipulative flattery to me. Has metafilter made me cynical, or was I always bent that way?
posted by puddledork at 3:00 PM on October 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


The argument about reducing the "quality" of women in astronomy is a little gross. There are lots of awesome women in the field that didn't get into Berkeley, or chose not to go to Berkeley, and I feel like that framing comes at their expense.
posted by kiltedtaco at 3:42 PM on October 11, 2015


This sounds like manipulative flattery to me. Has metafilter made me cynical, or was I always bent that way?

Marcy is the one behaving cynically through that quote, whereas you're merely expressing your critical skepticism.
posted by polymodus at 3:43 PM on October 11, 2015


I did my graduate and most of my postdoctoral work in the Berkeley astro department. One of my most amazing memories of my time as a graduate student was showing up to theory lunch one day, and a guy I had never met passed around a plot made with data he'd taken at Lick Observatory just a day or two before -- the first, and hugely compelling, confirmation of the detection of a planet around 51 Pegasi.

We now know that Geoff Marcy already had a reputation for harassment at San Francisco State at that time. Nonetheless, a couple years later he joined the Berkeley faculty, and he kept up what he had been doing. Learning about all of this over the past few days has cast a dark cloud over so many memories for me. It has been particularly dismaying to find Don Backer (who was chair before his untimely depth some years ago) complicit in doing nothing when warned about Geoff's activities -- Don had always seemed to me to be one of the most decent people I knew.

This story is just awful after awful. It is dismaying to think about how many women he may have driven off from astronomy over the years. It is horrible that women were having to warn each other to stay away from Geoff -- and surely there were many whom those warnings didn't reach. I'm left wondering just how many other serial harassers are in our midst, at departments across the country.

I expect that, much like with Bill Cosby, we'll be hearing many more stories from women who were preyed upon by him now that the wall of silence has broken. Berkeley's response was woefully inadequate, but I think that will be changing now that this is all out in the open. Geoff was an asset to the university they would want to protect so long as the potential upside (from a Nobel prize on down) was so great; with his reputation now in tatters, they will see things differently. It's unfortunate, but not surprising, that that's the way a university would work.

It's not that shocking to me that Gibor Basri (the interim department chair) wrote a message sympathetic to Geoff, by the way -- they've worked closely together for years. Given how tone-deaf his response was and what an embarassment this has been for the university I think the situation will soon be taken out of his hands; I might speculate that he will not remain a vice chancellor for long.

Based on what I'm seeing on social networks, it seems like the community is strongly standing behind the people who have reported what Geoff did. Hopefully this will send the message that the same will happen for those who stand up against other harassers as well, and we can start to clean house in the field. It says a lot that many of Geoff's closest collaborators and past students have signed onto a petition in support of the women he harassed.

There's only one positive I've taken from all of this. I am truly impressed by the courage of the former students and the untenured faculty at Berkeley who not only reported Geoff to the University but also have been willing to bring his actions to public attention. Some at Berkeley have a lot to answer for, but I am proud that the department could attract people of such character.
posted by janewman at 4:03 PM on October 11, 2015 [46 favorites]


So infuriating that this goes on over decades.
posted by geeklizzard at 4:09 PM on October 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


The argument about reducing the "quality" of women in astronomy is a little gross. There are lots of awesome women in the field that didn't get into Berkeley, or chose not to go to Berkeley, and I feel like that framing comes at their expense.

What's gross about it? A lot of really smart women went to Berkeley to study astronomy and got driven out of the field by this jackass. This can't have helped the number of women in astronomy.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:36 PM on October 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


When speaking out about harassment, we can never win.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:42 PM on October 11, 2015 [13 favorites]


The funding agencies have no responsibility here? It seems like they could actually punish the professor and the university.
posted by underflow at 6:47 PM on October 11, 2015


The argument about reducing the "quality" of women in astronomy is a little gross. There are lots of awesome women in the field that didn't get into Berkeley, or chose not to go to Berkeley, and I feel like that framing comes at their expense.

Are you talking about the tweets from Emily Lakdawalla? She's speaking specifically about women who have said they're left astronomy because of this man and the people protecting him. Berkeley is a top school, which means this guy has been driving top recruits away from the field. And I think her larger point is that this isn't only happening at Berkeley. It happens everywhere and it's driving women away from all sorts of fields.

In any case, I wouldn't even wipe my ass with this guy's apology, and if my department head sent out an email like the Berkeley chair did, I think I would finally rage quit.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:52 PM on October 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


I guess I was being a little too subtle, the issue is that equating Prestigious University=Best Students is somewhat gauche, particularly (I feel) in astronomy where we all know great scientists who have come from backgrounds other than Prestigious University. Losing women from the field is a terrible situation regardless of if it's Berkeley or SFSU. This is all a distraction though from the much more important issue here though, so I'm sorry for that.
posted by kiltedtaco at 8:28 PM on October 11, 2015


Years ago, I was an assistant security coordinator at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. One year, a very high-profile comedian, in the women's music scene at least, was one of the Saturday night performers. Saturday night is the headline show, since it was when the population of the festival was the biggest, and it was when the big name draws performed, so she was an important kind of person in the women's music and culture world.

A day or two before her performance, she demanded that a shuttle driver take her to run some personal errands. The insurance that the festival carried on the shuttles was very specific—they weren't allowed to do anything but what was described in the policy, which was ferry performers between the Grand Rapids airport and the land. This was a legal barrier in addition to the logistical barrier, which was that both the shuttle vans and the drivers were tightly scheduled—even if it weren't precluded by the insurance, the van was needed elsewhere if it wasn't doing a run to the airport.

The performer had a history of problematic behavior, both at Michigan and elsewhere. The festival had a strongly stated policy that violence was not allowed on the land.

When the shuttle driver refused to drive the comedian on her errands, she demanded to be given the keys to the van. The driver refused. The comedian tried to take the keys away, in the process biting the driver's hand badly enough to draw blood, before security arrived and separated them.

We were all sure she'd be thrown off the land, as the policy stated. We really believed the festival management cared about women and about the festival being a place where women should be free of the threat of violence. Certainly it should be a place where a woman who'd been assaulted on the land should not have to fear that she would encounter her attacker again.

We were wrong, of course. And couldn't believe how naive we'd been, when she went on stage as planned. Here was a chance for Lisa Vogel to show us that the policy really meant something, that we were as safe there as we could reasonably be. And we were us—shuttle crew and security crew members who'd been volunteering at the festival for years because we loved it, and loved each other, that much. Some of the people I worked with had come to think of Lisa Vogel as a friend. And she betrayed us. She made it plain that she'd rather sweep a physical attack under the rug than have a public scandal and a gap in the Saturday night lineup.

I wonder, when the festival made its "no violence" policy, and when the university made its policy on sexual harassment, if they spent any time thinking about what truly committing to the policy might mean. Did they think about any specific scenarios? About what the limits of their commitment? About what they might do if upholding the policy was going to actually cost the festival, or the university, something?

I imagine that, in the festival's case, nobody thought beyond the possibility of conflict between lovers getting physical (something we dealt with every year). It's easy to imagine asking some unknown camper to leave the festival (harder in practice than in theory—I could write a whole nother thing about dealing with domestic violence complaints when there's a physical altercation between two women and it's not obvious that one is the instigator, or when a certain percentage of complaints turn out to be a neighboring camper not liking the sound of somebody else's consensual sex life). Harder to think about kicking a headliner off the land.

And now here's the university, basically telling Marcy, "Look, don't do it again, and we really mean it! Really! There will be consequences next time!" Which tells the rest of us, and all the women he's harassed and may harass in the future, that their safety and well-being is less important than Marcy's presumed contribution to the university. We'll know things are really starting to turn a corner when something like this happens, and the guy gets fired.
posted by not that girl at 9:31 PM on October 11, 2015 [15 favorites]


“What’s really infuriating about this is that anybody of my generation in the field of exoplanets knows that Geoff does this" ... snip ... Several people told BuzzFeed News that the incident is well-known among astronomers ... “He’s had a long history of behaving inappropriately, especially with undergraduates” ... she spoke with him several times in December 2004, directly confronting him with complaints from undergrads and graduate students ...

Stating the obvious, but this is so so so classic.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 9:37 PM on October 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


James Guillochon is calling for a boycott.

I saw this on Twitter (the Twitter astro community is PISSED) and while I think it is a lovely idea, I don't think it has a chance of working. The letter is addressed to "postdocs and undergraduate/graduate students considering pursuing a career in physics, astronomy, or astrophysics" and for every bright, qualified, informed postdoc and student who might be informed enough to see this and ethical enough to boycott, there are going to by replacement applicants who do not have their morals. I believe the UCB will see a decline in applications from qualified women. I don't have that much faith that their male application pool will dip that much. It's a top school with top resources and it's a fucking competitive market out there.

I wish a boycott would work and I'm not saying it shouldn't be tried, but I think it's going to have to go further than just people considering a career at UCB. I think people should boycott giving talks at UCB. I think they should boycott collaborating with anyone at UCB who doesn't distance themselves from Marcy and the department chair. Stop inviting folks from UCB to speak at conferences. Isolate the department from the rest of the community with every means at your disposal. But established professors, whether or not they are "names" are going to have to take part in this because a potentially one-time boycott on job applications is unfair to the early career postdocs and grad students AND the department will weather it.

I don't know how you do that. This isn't my field. Maybe I'm just being negative and outraged but unaffected here on my couch. I appreciate someone suggesting that the people most affected by this do something about it. But I think it's going to take a more unified front to do anything. And to be honest, I don't know how you keep that up when big names at other schools start popping up. This sucks, this sucks a lot, and I don't know how to fix it - but I think someone other than the people who already lose out to abuse like Marcy's are going to need to put more in.
posted by maryr at 9:43 PM on October 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


BTW, want a depressing moment? Under Related Posts - has anything changed in the Philosophy world in the last 4 years?
posted by maryr at 9:46 PM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ugh. I would never defend Marcy's actions, which are (obviously) unconscionable. But I thought I would stick up a little bit for the acting chair, Gibor Basri: as far as I know he is guilty only of sending a crappy email, yet now we have people (even here) calling for everyone to "distance themselves" from him, etc. (Gibor is a friend and colleague, so I am utterly biased here; take with whatever grain of salt you like. I also know Geoff, though not nearly as well.) That email is awfully tone-deaf, but do keep in mind that it wasn't addressed to the broader public, but to current Berkeley astro faculty/staff/etc: in that very specific context, the "this is hardest for Geoff at the moment" line is (marginally) more understandable; it's presumably true that no other current faculty member is as affected by this as Marcy (which is a good thing). You are welcome to believe whatever you like, but I personally think Gibor would find it OBVIOUSLY CRAZY and laughable to say it's "hardest for Geoff" in the context of the larger community, including people who have suffered from Geoff's harassment. Basri has devoted a big chunk of his life to furthering diversity and inclusion in academia (he's been vice-chancellor for equity and inclusion for the past 7 years or so), and cares very deeply about this stuff -- his personal friendship with Geoff notwithstanding. I am personally hard-pressed to come up with another name on the Berkeley faculty I would rather see as interim chair during something like this, but of course ymmv. (FWIW, those of you who wish he wasn't chair will get your wish; he was only there temporarily anyway, till the end of the month or thereabouts, and I think he's retiring later this year. I very much doubt that he was in charge of the department when this complaint was being made, but I really don't know.)

I also see people complaining that the University's investigation report wasn't immediately made available to other department members (one blog post talked about how the department chair "declined to make it available"), but that also strikes me as a little unfair. I don't think I'd want a given dept chair to be allowed to release the confidential results of university investigations into the wild on his/her own prerogative; in this specific case I wish it had happened, but it is not hard to understand why these are highly protected. The problem here isn't necessarily that the report was private, but that the punishment was so mild/non-existent, so that not releasing it smacks of UC just trying to make the problem disappear. (Which, to be clear, they probably were.)

Anyway, the whole thing is just incredibly depressing and awful.
posted by chalkbored at 1:07 AM on October 12, 2015


Wow wow wow that is a not-good apology and a *terrible* email from the department chair (and, yes, he sounds nice and sincere but oh *fail *).
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 1:28 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


That email is awfully tone-deaf, but do keep in mind that it wasn't addressed to the broader public, but to current Berkeley astro faculty/staff/etc: in that very specific context, the "this is hardest for Geoff at the moment" line is (marginally) more understandable

Well there's a simple philosophical exercise. What if Gibor Basri were a woman and wrote this same email.
posted by polymodus at 1:51 AM on October 12, 2015


Lest anyone thinks this sort of stuff is limited to the US, here a local Viennese example from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, which just hit the news in September.
This links to the findings of the disciplinary commission: "Disziplinarerkenntnis" in German - warning: contains detailed descriptions of his activities in German.
According to Austrian law his name must not be mentioned.

He was put on unpaid leave until 2019, the current discussion is why he cannot be dismissed. The legal opinion seems divided on that. Also, there is a fairly public discussion on how this could have been going on since 2006 (!) without apparent consequences for him.
posted by 15L06 at 3:09 AM on October 12, 2015


There is tacit knowledge of who the harassers/abusers are in just about every field, and as a young woman coming up in whatever field you are in, you just have to hope that you are keyed into the right conversation channels to learn who they are before you become their graduate student or participate in their research project as a junior faculty or agree to be mentored. I was kind of horrified when my undergraduate advisor told me not to apply to two different grad programs because the professors I was interested in working with were known for sleeping with their graduate students or otherwise being creepy/vaguely predatory. But they were still in their departments and still taking students. There were a few kind of high-profile instances of harassment at our big discipline conference last year, and while (as the comic I posted above points out) you're damned if you name the harasser and you're damned if you don't, I did find it worrying that the name of the individual who harassed several women faculty was - again - only circulated to the people who were in the right conversations with the right people who know.

On the brightish side, our association released this letter shortly after the meetings, Bernard Wood (who is a Big Deal in paleoanthropology, one of the old boys clubbier subfields of anthropology) wrote this essay on the same topic and continues to write about sexual harassment as a problem for our field, and to register for our annual meeting, you must agree (twice!) to the Code of Conduct which includes not sexually harassing people. Progress is slow, but I think we (and hopefully astronomy) are starting to get a vocal, critical mass of women and allies science who are really fed up with losing talent and voices and perspectives to powerful men who feel entitled to access to women.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:15 AM on October 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


If Marcy's research is so important and worth investing in, perhaps Berkeley needs to pay for a dedicated staff of bodyguards. Not for him, but to follow him around and keep him from harassing women he interacts with. He cannot be allowed to interact with any female colleague or student without said bodyguards around.

I mean yes, it would be enormously expensive and also he probably wouldn't enjoy it, but he could keep doing his research and women could feel safe around him.
posted by emjaybee at 6:39 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


it's presumably true that no other current faculty member is as affected by this as Marcy (which is a good thing)

No, Berkeley does actually have some women faculty in the astronomy department. What trouble is Marcy enduring that could compare to the effect on them?
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:55 AM on October 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


What if Gibor Basri were a woman and wrote this same email.

Even better, what if any women read this email? Oh wait, they did. They read it and were told that that a long-protected sexual harasser was *sniff* having the hardest time.

I said above that an email like that from my dept head would cause me to quit - that's first because I'm a woman, but also because one of my roles is graduate program coordinator. I help our students apply, get interviewed, get funded and come to our department. If I was told a poor baby sexual harasser prof was so much more affected than the very women students I had helped to recruit, I would be so furious my head would probably explode.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:00 AM on October 12, 2015 [20 favorites]


chalkbored: The chair when the complaint was made was Imke de Pater, one of the few women on the faculty.
posted by janewman at 7:50 AM on October 12, 2015


Hey if Marcy is some kind of academic demigod in the astrology world, are there any all-male colleges where he can continue his doing precious research?

I'm by no means trying to sound like an enabler, but in my father-in-law's words, if you are stressed, the solution is simple: remove the stressor. If I were a student of his and Marcy harassed me, I'd be in jail for assault after punching him as hard as humanly possible in the stomach and unleashing every swear word in history at him.

Put him in a men's college and then he can focus his sexual harassment solely on his wife, as she apparently is OK with it.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:12 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, that's a fabulous idea. We can formalize the exclusion of women from studying with top scholars! Yay!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:14 AM on October 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


The chair doesn't get a pass for the crappy abuser-centering letter because of the intended audience. First, people in his intended audience have almost certainly experience abuse or harassment (sexual or not). Two, as a leader in efforts to be more inclusionary, he should know it may be published wider and thus actually show care for victims of the abuser. Even if the abuser is a close friend, you do no favors to your friend by not holding them accountable, even publicly if that's necessary.
posted by R343L at 8:32 AM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Even better, what if any women read this email? Oh wait, they did. They read it and were told that that a long-protected sexual harasser was *sniff* having the hardest time.

Yeah, seriously. I'm a grad student. I can think of a guy in my department with a history of harassment (among other things), who has an informal network of grad students warning other grad students away from working wit him. The university has had formal complaints made and hasn't done anything. He's not a big name like this guy, but he's still got his job. So my comments here are filtered through the lens of imagining that this was my department, and say that this dude was Marcy, and thinking about what it would be like if I got a similar email.

If he started getting negative publicity, and my head of department sent out an email like that? I would be so angry and disheartened and tired. So angry. I bet he means well, but damn, I can't think of anything that is more hurtful to junior women in the department that he could say without actually going "well I bet they deserved it anyway." I would certainly not come to him with any grievances I was experiencing, even if I had a different harasser. He's saying that his friend matters more to him than the junior women whose careers his friend has been poisoning, and that he cares more about the consequences for his friend than he does for the women his friend harmed (which aren't, you know, necessarily women he knows personally, aren't his friends). There are women who attached their names to this complaint. Where are the calls of support for them personally?

I get he's hurting, but the fact that he made this public call for compassion to his friend--who is suffering no formal consequences--and the fact that he is in a position of power with respect to these abuses, being the goddamn vice-chancellor of equality... well, I cannot but see him as complicit in making sure that Marcy didn't see justice or consequences for this harassment. It's easy to have a blind spot for one's friends; it's very human! But it means that he is not someone that I, as a junior female scholar, would see as an ally against harassment. And that's something that poisons the ability of any "officer of equality" to actually do that job.
posted by sciatrix at 8:35 AM on October 12, 2015 [14 favorites]


remove the stressor

And Marcy is the stressor, so removing him from his job, period, would accomplish this.
posted by naoko at 9:07 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


> But I thought I would stick up a little bit for the acting chair, Gibor Basri: as far as I know he is guilty only of sending a crappy email, yet now we have people (even here) calling for everyone to "distance themselves" from him, etc. [...] That email is awfully tone-deaf, but do keep in mind that it wasn't addressed to the broader public, but to current Berkeley astro faculty/staff/etc: in that very specific context, the "this is hardest for Geoff at the moment" line is (marginally) more understandable;

To me, that actually makes matters worse: he's addressing this to the very people most directly affected by Marcy's actions. In fact, I felt that the most problematic thing about his letter was not just that turn of phrase, but its juxtaposition against a line in first paragraph:
For those for whom these issues are triggering or raise strong passions, please seek support. [source]
He knows he is addressing this to people who were personally affected and who may be triggered by it. He urges those people to "seek support" and suggests (in the second paragraph) that "everyone will need support from others and should offer support to others." But he then goes on to devote his final paragraph to a call-to-action urging that same audience to support Geoff (using his first name, which itself carries with it connotations of intimacy and support) rather than a call-to-action to heal from this fiasco by (eg) finding new ways to make the dept & field more welcoming and inclusive.

> it's presumably true that no other current faculty member is as affected by this as Marcy (which is a good thing).

I'm not sure why you would think that faculty were immune from Marcy's poisonous behavior. At best they suffered its 2nd-order effects (having students leave, having students be distracted/distressed, having to worry about protecting students from Marcy, &c.); some of them may have been targets themselves, or been afraid that they could be.

> I personally think Gibor would find it OBVIOUSLY CRAZY and laughable to say it's "hardest for Geoff" in the context of the larger community, including people who have suffered from Geoff's harassment. Basri has devoted a big chunk of his life to furthering diversity and inclusion in academia (he's been vice-chancellor for equity and inclusion for the past 7 years or so), and cares very deeply about this stuff -- his personal friendship with Geoff notwithstanding.

The problem is, however laughable Basri might find the sentiment, it is in fact precisely what he said. He may indeed care very deeply about this stuff, but the memo reveals that his personal friendship with Marcy is NOT notwithstanding. If he wanted to take the heat off his friend while still furthering diversity and inclusion in academia, he could have said something very generic ("clearly we must all do more as a community to welcome and promote women astronomers, and I will be soliciting ideas from $STAKEHOLDERS blah blah blah"). Instead, he wrote a memo that conveyed concern and intimacy with someone whose actions have grievously undermined everything he's supposed to be working toward as vice-chancellor for equity and inclusion.

In that sense, Basri's memo bothers me far more than the specifics of Marcy's disgusting actions. Marcy is one gross creep, but Basri represents a power structure, and his tone-deaf memo carries a powerful signal about who can expect to find succor in the department. I've written before about my own brushes with creepy profs and how the support of senior colleagues was crucial to my thriving in physics; intentionally or not, Basri's done the opposite for his female junior colleagues.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:18 AM on October 12, 2015 [22 favorites]


But I thought I would stick up a little bit for the acting chair, Gibor Basri: as far as I know he is guilty only of sending a crappy email

Department chairs sending crappy emails is how this awful status-quo gets preserved and solidified. It is actively harmful.
posted by kiltedtaco at 10:00 AM on October 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


Gibor certainly should have realized his email could leak out -- a recent controversy was kicked off when a member of the department forwarded an email to a mailing list containing all members (graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, staff, etc.). The email Gibor sent was more stringent in its distribution (undergraduates were omitted, for instance), but not by much.
posted by janewman at 10:16 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even if it didn't leak beyond the faculty, though, it's still problematic. I'm now a junior faculty member, but it's not like I stopped being a target the instant I got my faculty ID; if anything, it's worse because I'm a lot more visible*. Worse still, there's a presumption that sexism doesn't exist at these levels -- we're all collegial colleagues here, right? -- which makes some well-meaning men blind to the gauntlet their female fellow faculty still have to run. It's very alienating, and I can easily imagine (too easily, sadly) how much more sickeningly isolated I would feel if a memo like that came from my chair.

* My first year in the department I had an senior male faculty member set an appointment under the guise of "discussing a potential collaboration." He proceeded to consume nearly two hours telling me about his travel, bragging about irrelevant professional accomplishments & personal wealth, and asking me probing questions that had nothing to do with science. I wanted to tell him to get the hell out of my office, but I don't have tenure yet, and he has a vote.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:50 AM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]


Westringia, I totally agree that Gibor's email was wrong even if it had only gone out to the faculty. I was only addressing the statement that "it wasn't addressed to the broader public, but to current Berkeley astro faculty/staff/etc".
posted by janewman at 11:00 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the things that leak out of faculty meetings. My department had a job search, and two of the candidates who came for campus visits were a man and a woman, both of whom had about equivalent training/publications/experience.

One of the older male faculty members reportedly said, with complete seriousness, that he would consider the female candidate “as a possible research assistant, maybe, but not a professor”.

Faculty members who made sure grad students found out about this incident wanted female students to be very, very aware of what we were getting into.

(Oh, and a friend of mine who is now faculty has had a neverending stream of male professors commenting on/lecturing her about her choices/plans regarding childbearing. One of them used the term "breeding" while disparaging another female faculty member who decided to have more than one child. Seriously.)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:03 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Does it not occur to them that someone else's family life is NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS?
posted by maryr at 11:11 AM on October 12, 2015


No. I’m not even being facetious. The guy who made the “breeding” remark made it in the context of “I am very important senior faculty, and I am giving you important advice that will make your career more successful. I am telling you what no one else has the guts to tell you.” From his perspective, he was doing her a favor to tell her what the environment in R1 schools is like for young faculty.

And what’s worse, he was partially right, despite his horrifying and disgustingly sexist language. Women in their 30s are treated as automatically suspect when they pursue faculty jobs, because the unspoken assumption is that so many of them have just been waiting to escape grad school purgatory (no money, terrible health benefits) in order to start their families.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:28 AM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I totally agree that Marcy should be removed from academia, but others' comments in this thread make it pretty clear that won't happen because he's a prominent researcher that UC Berkeley benefits from having on staff.

I also agree that women should be able to pursue their academic careers in any field they choose without fear of harassment; my half-hearted suggestion about removing the stressor was specifically about getting Marcy removed from any co-ed higher education campus so that female students could continue their studies without fear of harassment.

Only clarifying as somehow it seems that people may misinterpret my comment as suggesting anything BUT removing Marcy, and arbitraryandcapricious, I was definitively not suggesting that women be formally excluded from studying with top scholars -- only that "top scholars" should be reviled and removed from the academic community altogether if they are using their tenured positions to engage in ongoing harassment of their students, which Marcy has and likely will continue to do.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 12:02 PM on October 12, 2015


Science comicker Maki Naro nails it (sadly)

with opinions like that, he may not last much longer at Popular Science, because 'Politically Popular' is a synonym for 'Politically Incorrect'
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:37 PM on October 12, 2015 [10 favorites]


chalkbored your focus on defending your buddy who is just defending his buddy is a pattern. you spent most of your comment doing that while this serial harasser is going to get away with it. as far as Basri, what everyone else said, plus he sounds so awkward with his repetitive "seek support" stuff, just sj terminology spaghetti PR-speak thrown at the wall.

and he's talking about REDEMPTION in front of a male-dominated audience. which 1) too soon but 2) what men in the astro dept can redeem or forgive Marcy? whose right is it? something brought up by that asheville rape crisis non-profit that turned down those coffee shop PUAs' donation when they scrambled to "make it right" with someone to save their reputations and their business.

here is more tone deaf defense from a friend of Marcy, comment section of berkeley's school paper:
As a long-time colleague and friend of Geoff Marcy, I know that he has diligently promoted the careers of female students. He is also a hug-giving kind of guy. I have great warmth for my students, and I hug them not infrequently. I tell them details about my personal life. It seems to me that part of being a mentor is being real, excited, enthusiastic, supportive, generous with time and attention. Without personal warmth, I would be a less effective mentor, teacher, research group leader, colleague and advocate for science. If my students were to misinterpret my warmth, I hope that there would be constructive informed discourse rather than a rush to judgment.

Professor Kathleen Collins, Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
good to see someone explaining his years of physical assaults as misinterpreted hugs.
posted by twist my arm at 12:59 PM on October 12, 2015 [7 favorites]


I have great warmth for my students, and I hug them not infrequently. I tell them details about my personal life.

That's swell, Professor Collins, but you're not supposed to. Aside from a hug not being a massage, none of the part of being a mentor you just described require touching your students or telling them about your views on sex. You can be real, excited, enthusiastic, supportive, and generous with time and attention without touching them.
posted by maryr at 2:39 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


I'm not a hugging person, but I don't think it's inherently wrong for professors to hug their students, especially as a normal hug doesn't go around the thigh and work its way up to he crotch. The difference between a friendly hug and normal talk about one's personal life and sexual harassment and sexual innuendo is pretty vast.
posted by jeather at 3:59 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]




The survey data comes from UCB's Diversity Statement page. The summary and initial response is also interesting reading.
posted by zamboni at 4:27 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


It speaks volumes about the state of women's affairs in STEM that I am more pleased that they cared enough to do the survey than I am discouraged by the findings.
posted by Westringia F. at 4:31 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


It speaks volumes about the state of women's affairs in STEM that I am more pleased that they cared enough to do the survey than I am discouraged by the findings.

I'm kind of shocked by the 61% response rate from the faculty.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:20 PM on October 12, 2015




John Asher Johnson's essay is linked in the second comment.

More from Twitter: The Department Chair of UCSC Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Director of the UCSC Observatories sent out a rather unequivocal letter today.
posted by zamboni at 6:45 PM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Oops, sorry for the replication.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:01 PM on October 12, 2015


The Berkeley astronomy department graduate students have now issued a response to Geoff Marcy's actions and their handling at UCB.
posted by janewman at 7:25 PM on October 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Unrelatedly, there's one thing about the Eisen article that bothered me: he posts a screenshot of the Suzie Scholar/Dr. Randy Risktaker (ugh) scenario, presumably from UC Berkeley's own sexual harassment training, and then suggests that such a scenario shouldn't be in the training at all. (The scenario in question being that the female student asks out the male professor several times before he finally relents.)

I agree that the situation is a bit closer to a porn movie than it may be to reality, but unless it's the only scenario covered in the training, I'm not sure what the problem is.


and now we have some data. from the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department Sexual Climate Survey Summary Report:
"In the most serious incident above, the person responsible was..."

Source of incident -- Count
-----------------------------
a faculty member -- 9
a peer -- 2
a staff member -- 2
a member of my work group (study, research, technical, or staff) -- 0
an outsider, but in a departmental context -- 0
a non-faculty instructor -- 0
other -- 0
from the "summary and initial response" link:
The top metrics are:
...
6) The primary source of discomfort was faculty members, and the usual site for incidents was in an office.
---
The faculty discussion identified two priority issues that the survey highlighted. One is the general departmental climate on gendered issues, and the second is the behavior of faculty members (primarily behind closed doors). That is not to say that other issues are not apparent or important and need addressing, but these two require strong and immediate attention.
it is absolutely related that that's what you latched onto. there is no reason to have a straight male fantasy as one of the examples because these never-punished pieces of shit already have all the encouragement they need, in society and in the academic world power structure. THEY DON'T NEED IT IN THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS BAD HANDBOOK. if it is so important to show that staff can be harassed too, hey how about having 2 men, or a male undergrad and female professor.
posted by twist my arm at 7:41 PM on October 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


The UC Berkeley astronomy faculty and postdoctoral researchers have now issued statements as well.

The faculty statement reads:
"We, the undersigned UC Berkeley Astronomy faculty, write to make clear that sexual harassment has no place in our Department, and that we fully support the survivors of harassment. We regret the harm caused by our faculty, and reject any suggestion that our sympathies should be with the perpetrators of sexual harassment. We are committed to developing and maintaining a supportive, open climate in which all members of the Department can thrive, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or religious faith. This goal has been compromised by policies that led to a lack of communication in UC Berkeley's handling of Geoff Marcy's sexual harassment case. We urge the UC Berkeley administration to re-evaluate its response to Marcy, who has been found in violation of UC sexual harassment policy. We believe that Geoff Marcy cannot perform the functions of a faculty member."

The signatories include Gibor Basri, along with almost all of the rest of the department's faculty. According to one member, the email Gibor sent on Friday was not meant the way it came out, and he has disavowed it.
posted by janewman at 8:26 PM on October 12, 2015 [13 favorites]


If you can't see the statements on Facebook, they're also on Dropbox.
posted by zamboni at 8:41 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Go BAD grads. Amazing letter.
posted by kiltedtaco at 8:47 PM on October 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Wow, that statement really makes it hard for the University to keep him on as a professor. How can you keep someone on in an academic context when the department and all of his colleagues have signed a letter saying they want him out? Even if you disregard what they have to say, the fact that everyone in the department wants them gone is going to absolutely destroy their ability to do their job.
posted by Mitrovarr at 7:35 AM on October 13, 2015


He has tenure so it's probably a breach of university policy and contract for them to fire him just because his colleagues don't want him there. He should be fired since their investigation decided he likely committed sexual assault and harassment. But if they signed an agreement letting him off for his previous actions then they may not be able to do anything legally now.

I wonder what happens if an additional victim comes forward about previous behavior that wasn't included in the previous investigation and settlement.
posted by grouse at 11:44 AM on October 13, 2015


He has tenure so it's probably a breach of university policy and contract for them to fire him just because his colleagues don't want him there.

The fact that his colleagues don't want him there does put pressure on him to resign or move elsewhere, however.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:57 AM on October 13, 2015


Laura Lopez has coordinated a letter to the NYT regarding their article, signed by over 200 astronomers.
Re "Astronomer Apologizes for Behavior", October 11: By emphasizing Geoff Marcy's apology and his wife's opinions, this article champions the voice of a sexual predator and minimizes the continued trauma of his targets. Overbye's piece repeatedly sympathizes with Marcy, portraying him as a misunderstood, empathetic educator who was "condemned without knowing the facts" and given punishment "in the court of hysterical public opinion". Furthermore, given Overbye's long history of sourcing Marcy, the piece lacks the objectivity it deserves.
We do know the facts of this case. Berkeley undertook a formal investigation and found Marcy guilty of repeated harassment and sexual assault of students spanning almost a decade. Marcy abused his position of power, betrayed his responsibilities as an educator, and caused profound damage with his criminal acts. By overlooking the gravity of Marcy's predatory behavior, this article discourages women from speaking out and undermines the safety of students.
This story deserves national coverage because it demonstrates an extreme yet persistent problem on college campuses. However, sympathy and support should be given to the survivors, not the perpetrator.
posted by zamboni at 12:21 PM on October 13, 2015 [9 favorites]


According to one member, the email Gibor sent on Friday was not meant the way it came out, and he has disavowed it.

Hrrrmmph: you would think "I'm about to send an email about an explosive situation which will almost certainly be leaked outside the department" would give one enough pause to (a) think very carefully about what the email should say and how it should say it, and (b) run it by a couple of people for a "hey, does this look OK" check before hitting send.

That said though, that final line of the faculty statement is an astonishingly direct "we want him gone."
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:46 PM on October 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


The AAS Women In Astronomy blog just published a guest post by the anonymous complainant in the Marcy investigation.
I’m not special. I’m one of many. I could give you my name. People in power have dismissed my experience to my face. They could dismiss my name in print.

Instead, I appeal to people with leadership positions who wish to be allies for diversity, but are unsure where to start. I call upon you to speak out against Berkeley’s non-response to a clear history of sexual harassment. Condemn poor editorial decisions to publish apologist and victim-blaming commentary. Then look hard at your own institution and how it has handled allegations of sexual harassment. Geoff is now astronomy’s most famous sexual harasser, but he is far from the only one. Use the security of your seniority and the voice afforded to you in your leadership position. Berkeley already made the choice to protect themselves, not nameless complainants like me.
posted by zamboni at 1:26 PM on October 13, 2015 [13 favorites]


Pamela Gay, Imagineering a new reality without abuse.
This is the week the wool over our eyes has been removed, and everyone is blinking hard against the Sun. We have a moment to try and make things better – a moment to say, “We’ve had enough” and to ask, “Can we change? Can we be better?” But if we pause, people will simply pull the blanket back over their heads and go back to pretending everything is ok, and hate is just part of being human and the best will always thrive despite…despite, well, everything.

I’m grateful for everyone standing up to demand that Geoff Marcy be evicted from our field, but I’ll remind you, he is just one of many abusers.

Today, there are women all over our field watching this and asking, “Does my story have to make Buzzfeed before someone will stand by me?” Stand by them. Support them. And most importantly, start the discussions with your colleagues that are needed to fight for them.
posted by zamboni at 8:23 PM on October 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


On October 12, 2015 Geoff Marcy resigned as Principal Investigator of the Breakthrough Listen project. His resignation has been accepted.
posted by zamboni at 10:55 PM on October 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


“Breakthrough Listen” is a $100 million project over 10 years, with the money coming from Yuri Milner, a Russian philanthropist, and a lot of it contracted to Berkeley. Hopefully this guy is applying pressure on the university.
posted by Tobu at 7:53 AM on October 14, 2015


Weird to read an article on buzzfeed where I know everyone literally everyone quoted...

As a former conference-buddy and collaborator of Geoff Marcy's (but never worked for him or anywhere near Berkeley) this was disappointing to read. I've known his name since high school thanks to an exoplanet documentary that was influential in my becoming a scientist, and he was always kind and friendly and interested in my research during the couple of years our paths crossed regularly. My interactions with him fit his image of himself, I guess; I never got a creepy vibe. (Maybe other people's postdocs were too senior/off limits? I "wasn't his type", as someone I know put it?) But I also heard the rumors about undergrads, back in 2010 or 2011. The women scientists' underground warning network made sure of that.

I am also conference-buddies and collaborators and friends with several of the named former undergrads and grad students (and possibly the anonymous ones, too). They're all excellent scientists who have made important discoveries themselves, and that's despite having to deal with this kind of crap in the early stages of their careers. I'm glad they didn't get derailed, and sorry for the ones who did. And although it's disappointing to have to re-evaluate my opinion of Marcy, it's not really a hard thing to do. And there should be real consequences to his inappropriate actions.

Which is my way of saying that, it would be complicated to untangle Marcy from his position in the field, for sure, but it's not like nobody else could do what he does. His research is very important, yes, and should keep going. But *someone else* can do it. (Some of those former grad students and undergrads are pretty talented!) And maybe it's time someone else did...

And also, if they want to award a Nobel Prize for exoplanets (which they totally should! in my unbiased opinion), it would be just fine with me if it went to Michel Mayor & Didier Queloz (the Swiss team), and Paul Butler (who was Marcy's grad student).
posted by puffyn at 8:54 AM on October 14, 2015 [9 favorites]






UCB's statement on the resignation. They claim frustration, and mention a three year statute of limitation. The investigation BuzzFeed broke is from this year (a 6 month investigation that ended this summer, according to the Chronicle of Higher Ed), and on the record complaints, at least those mentioned by BuzzFeed, span until 2010. I get the impression that earlier complaints were neglected precisely so that the SoL clock could keep running, by which point the university isn't liable anymore.
posted by Tobu at 1:48 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Chronicle article Tobu linked to states that a student complained to Berkeley's Title IX office in 2006. I'd be curious to know what happened to that complaint. I believe that it should have triggered a mandatory investigation.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:49 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


The statement from UCB astronomy undergraduates.

The close:
Although Geoff Marcy’s resignation was a necessary step, it does not address underlying issues. We will remain dissatisfied until it is clear that protecting the safety and well­being of the campus community is the top priority of this institution.
posted by zamboni at 9:06 PM on October 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


NYT Public Editor responds to criticism of Marcy coverage.
posted by zamboni at 7:59 AM on October 15, 2015


I got 20 bucks down on whether he received a raise (or raises) during this period of multiple complaints and wrist slaps. Because, I'm sure they wanted him to know, monetarily, that the University still believed in him and knew that his compensation needs were foremost.
posted by amanda at 10:18 AM on October 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


Collect your $20:
Year  Campus    First     Last   Title                      Gross Pay   Base Pay    Overtime  Other Pay
2010  Berkeley  GEOFFREY  MARCY  PROFESSOR - ACADEMIC YEAR  204,996.94  171,100.08  0.00      33,896.86
2011  Berkeley  GEOFFREY  MARCY  PROFESSOR - ACADEMIC YEAR  210,397.27  172,375.05  0.00      38,022.22
2012  Berkeley  GEOFFREY  MARCY  PROF-AY                    183,150.00  183,150.00  0.00      0.00
2013  Berkeley  GEOFFREY  MARCY  PROF-AY                    212,805.00  191,683.00  0.00      21,122.00
2014  Berkeley  GEOFFREY  MARCY  PROF-AY                    217,861.00  196,317.00  0.00      21,544.00
posted by grouse at 2:46 PM on October 16, 2015 [5 favorites]




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