L*********y
发帖数: 322 | 1 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/caltech-suspends-profess
Caltech suspends professor for harassment
By Jeffrey MervisJan. 12, 2016
For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena has suspended a faculty member
for gender-based harassment. The researcher has been stripped of his
university salary and barred from campus for 1 year, is undergoing
personalized coaching to become a better mentor, and will need to prove that
he has been rehabilitated before he can resume advising students without
supervision. Caltech has not curtailed his research activities.
The university has not disclosed the name of the faculty member, but Science
has learned that it is Christian Ott, a professor of theoretical
astrophysics who studies gravitational waves and other signals from some of
the most violent events in the cosmos. Born and educated in Germany, Ott
joined the Caltech faculty in 2009 and was awarded tenure in early 2014.
According to Ott’s website, as of last week he was advising five graduate
students. He is the principal investigator on two active grants from the
National Science Foundation, including a prestigious, 5-year CAREER award
for promising young investigators. Part of that award helps support a summer
workshop for dozens of graduate students in astrophysics from around the
world.
The case comes to light as harassment has become a major flashpoint within
the astronomy community in the wake of an investigation by the University of
California, Berkeley, that found astronomer Geoffrey Marcy had committed
serial harassment over a decade (Science, 23 October 2015, p. 364). The
university faced a storm of criticism after giving Marcy little more than a
warning; he ultimately resigned. Caltech took a different approach, says
Fiona Harrison, head of Caltech’s physics, mathematics, and astronomy
division. “I think that Caltech was extremely responsive and proactive and
did the right thing,” she asserts.
The Caltech investigation began in June 2015, after two graduate students
filed complaints under Title IX of a 1972 federal law aimed at preventing
gender discrimination in higher education. The university has released
neither the names of the complainants nor the details of the complaints. Two
faculty members led a committee that found the complaints to be valid and
recommended action. This past September the provost meted out the penalty,
Harrison says, and an appeal was denied later that month.
In an email to Science, Ott wrote that “I cannot comment on, confirm, or
deny anything at this time.”
The university issued a brief statement in late September saying only that
there had been a “violation” of university harassment policies and that it
had taken “disciplinary action.” More details became known last week,
after a website posted a two-page letter from Caltech’s president, Thomas
Rosenbaum, to faculty and students.
The 4 January missive, which includes the actions taken against Ott,
described “[t]his painful incident,” as well as the university’s plans
for improving support for all graduate students. Those steps include forming
a council that will conduct a campus-wide review of “student experiences
with their advisors,” the addition of staff to assist graduate students,
and initiating activities, such as discussion groups, aimed specifically at
supporting female graduate students.
The 3-month gap between the two statements, Harrison says, was the result of
university efforts to balance privacy and transparency. The goal of last
week’s letter, she says, “was to make clear that the university has
absolutely no tolerance for harassment and discrimination.”
Meg Urry of Yale University, president of the American Astronomical Society,
says that she’s heartened by Caltech’s response. “The letter says the
institution is committed to doing better and that it plans to do a variety
of things to make women feel welcome and supported on campus. So good on
them.”
Those who have studied gender disparities in science say that the broader
challenge for Caltech and other elite research institutions is creating a
more welcoming environment for women. That may require increasing the number
of women in certain scientific fields. (There are roughly six men for every
woman among faculty in Caltech’s physics, mathematics, and astronomy
division, and in engineering and applied science the ratio is nine to one.)
“The research has shown that there’s such a thing as a critical mass [in
the number of women],” Urry says. “And until that happens, you just can’t
assume that there will be a culture of equity.”
Large egos may also contribute to the problem, Urry believes. “The more
practitioners in a field talk about themselves as the second coming, the
fewer women there are in that field,” she says. “It may be a chicken and
egg phenomenon: Do women avoid those fields, or does the culture work to
exclude them?”
Yesterday, a member of Congress asked federal officials to weigh in on
whether universities have a responsibility to share the results of a Title
IX investigation of a faculty member with a new employer if that person
changes jobs. Representative Jackie Speier (D–CA) says that the current
rules allow universities to “protect sexual predators,” referring to those
found guilty of harassment.
Ott, whom Harrison refers to only as “the faculty member,” has begun the
coaching program, which “is specific to his particular situation,” she
says. It is not part of the regular orientation on harassment given to
faculty members and students, she notes.
Harrison says “a third party” is mediating the faculty member’s
interactions with his graduate students. The university decided that such an
arrangement was the best way to intervene while allowing the students to
remain on course for their degree. Rosenbaum’s letter explains that the
faculty member must exhibit “a demonstrable change in behavior and
mentoring” before he is allowed normal interactions. Harrison says she is
responsible for determining “when and if” those changes have taken place.
The faculty member was banned from campus for a year “for the protection of
students,” Harrison says. His courses have been reassigned, she adds. At
the same time, Harrison says “there are no restrictions on continuing with
his research.”
*Correction, 12 January, 4:45 p.m.: Our story improperly described the
composition of the investigating committee. It was led by two Caltech
faculty members, not Fiona Harrison, who was not a member of the committee.
Posted in: Scientific Community | L*********y
发帖数: 322 | 2 Another recent female harassment case in UC-Berkeley.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/science/geoffrey-marcy-to-res
Geoffrey Marcy to Resign From Berkeley Astronomy Department
Geoffrey Marcy, the renowned astronomer who was found guilty in a campus
investigation of sexually harassing students, is resigning from the faculty
of the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a professor for
16 years.
In an email to members of the astronomy department on Wednesday, the interim
chairman of the department, Gibor Basri, wrote, “This is to inform our
community that Geoff has initiated the process that will lead to his no
longer being a faculty member at U.C. Berkeley.”
In a statement announcing Dr. Marcy’s resignation, the university’s
chancellor, Nicholas B. Dirks, and the executive vice chancellor and provost
, Claude Steele, said they had accepted Dr. Marcy’s resignation and added:
“We want to state unequivocally that Professor Marcy’s conduct, as
determined by the investigation, was contemptible and inexcusable. We also
want to express our sympathy to the women who were victimized, and we deeply
regret the pain they have suffered.”
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Geoffrey Marcy’s Berkeley Astronomy Colleagues Call for His DismissalOCT.
13, 2015
Geoffrey Marcy, Astronomer at Berkeley, Apologizes for BehaviorOCT. 10, 2015
Profiles in Science: Finder of New WorldsMAY 12, 2014
Dr. Marcy did not respond to a request for comment.
The university placed Dr. Marcy on probation over the summer after the
investigation but did not announce the decision. It became widely known only
last week.
The announcement of Dr. Marcy’s resignation came two days after some two
dozen colleagues — an overwhelming majority of the astronomy department —
issued a vote of no confidence in a letter saying they believed that he
could no longer “perform the functions of a faculty member.” In separate
statements, the department’s graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
concurred.
“This should put sexual harassers on notice: No one is too big to fail,”
Joan Schmelz, a former chairwoman of the American Astronomical Society’s
Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, said on Wednesday.
Dr. Marcy and Paul Butler, now of the Carnegie Institution in Washington,
became famous 20 years ago as the leading American hunters and discoverers
of planets around other stars, known as exoplanets. Dr. Marcy was mentioned
only a few weeks ago as a potential Nobel Prize honoree. But he also left a
trail of complaints and rumors about inappropriate behavior over the years.
This summer, in response to a formal complaint by four former students, the
University of California concluded that Dr. Marcy had violated its policies
on sexual harassment. The violations, spanning 2001 to 2010, included
groping students, kissing them and touching or massaging them inside their
clothes.
Dr. Marcy was informed that another harassment violation would leave him
subject to immediate suspension or dismissal — a decision that was not
widely known until BuzzFeed News reported it last week.
On the eve of the report’s release, Dr. Marcy posted an apology on his
website, disagreeing with some aspects of the harassment complaints but
saying he took responsibility. “It is difficult to express how painful it
is for me to realize that I was a source of distress for any of my women
colleagues, however unintentional,” he said.
But his apology and the university’s response were widely seen as not
enough and lacking in sensitivity to the victims of his actions, some of
whom have since left astronomy. The Committee on the Status of Women in
Astronomy declined his request that the apology be published in its
newsletter, according to the Women in Astronomy blog.
More than 2,500 astronomers and others signed an online petition expressing
support for Dr. Marcy’s victims and admiration for their courage in
speaking out.
Dr. Marcy stepped down from the organizing committee of a major astronomy
meeting to be held in December, commemorating 20 years since the discovery
of the first exoplanet by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University
of Geneva, followed by the discovery of two more by Dr. Marcy and Dr. Butler.
This week, Dr. Marcy also resigned his appointment as a principal
investigator of the Breakthrough Listen project, a $100 million endeavor
sponsored by the philanthropist Yuri Milner to detect radio signals from
alien civilizations, according to an announcement on the project’s website.
member
that
【在 L*********y 的大作中提到】
: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/caltech-suspends-profess
: Caltech suspends professor for harassment
: By Jeffrey MervisJan. 12, 2016
: For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the California
: Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena has suspended a faculty member
: for gender-based harassment. The researcher has been stripped of his
: university salary and barred from campus for 1 year, is undergoing
: personalized coaching to become a better mentor, and will need to prove that
: he has been rehabilitated before he can resume advising students without
: supervision. Caltech has not curtailed his research activities.
| D*a
发帖数: 6830 | 3 版上这么多各种强烈控诉又是邮件又是什么的，也没个去正规渠道投诉的。 | W***o
发帖数: 6519 | 4 如果victim是博士后的话，后果很可能会不一样
学校的这些regulation/policy大多是保护学生的
member
that
【在 L*********y 的大作中提到】
: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/caltech-suspends-profess
: Caltech suspends professor for harassment
: By Jeffrey MervisJan. 12, 2016
: For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the California
: Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena has suspended a faculty member
: for gender-based harassment. The researcher has been stripped of his
: university salary and barred from campus for 1 year, is undergoing
: personalized coaching to become a better mentor, and will need to prove that
: he has been rehabilitated before he can resume advising students without
: supervision. Caltech has not curtailed his research activities.
| L*********y
发帖数: 322 | 5 你多虑了，我碰巧在Science网站上看到这个新闻，便转发过来。目的是提醒广大女同
胞们，注意通过正当途径保护自身权益。
【在 D*a 的大作中提到】
: 版上这么多各种强烈控诉又是邮件又是什么的，也没个去正规渠道投诉的。
| D*a
发帖数: 6830 | 6 这版上不也时不时有个博士生逼得换老板的么，也不全是博后
【在 W***o 的大作中提到】
: 如果victim是博士后的话，后果很可能会不一样
: 学校的这些regulation/policy大多是保护学生的
:
: member
: that
| D*a
发帖数: 6830 | 7 我就是借机抒发一下，发散思维
【在 L*********y 的大作中提到】
: 你多虑了，我碰巧在Science网站上看到这个新闻，便转发过来。目的是提醒广大女同
: 胞们，注意通过正当途径保护自身权益。
| W***o
发帖数: 6519 | 8 博士生逼ed is different from gender-based harassment, I believe
【在 D*a 的大作中提到】
: 这版上不也时不时有个博士生逼得换老板的么，也不全是博后
| s******y
发帖数: 17729 | 9 ucsf的那个女博士你还在等啥呢，站出来干吧
member
that
【在 L*********y 的大作中提到】
: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/caltech-suspends-profess
: Caltech suspends professor for harassment
: By Jeffrey MervisJan. 12, 2016
: For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the California
: Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena has suspended a faculty member
: for gender-based harassment. The researcher has been stripped of his
: university salary and barred from campus for 1 year, is undergoing
: personalized coaching to become a better mentor, and will need to prove that
: he has been rehabilitated before he can resume advising students without
: supervision. Caltech has not curtailed his research activities.
| H******9
发帖数: 45 | 10 唯恐天下大乱！
【在 s******y 的大作中提到】
: ucsf的那个女博士你还在等啥呢，站出来干吧
:
: member
: that
| T****i
发帖数: 15191 | 11 他鼓励人为自己维权是正确的。天下乱不了，只会乱了变态叫兽。
【在 H******9 的大作中提到】
: 唯恐天下大乱！
| a*******0
发帖数: 16 | 12 感觉像加州理工事件一样，好像涉及到一教授和两女的。
【在 T****i 的大作中提到】
: 他鼓励人为自己维权是正确的。天下乱不了，只会乱了变态叫兽。
| a*******0
发帖数: 16 | 13 感觉事情很复杂，远远超过了维权的问题。我很难想象有教授会控制不了打人。
【在 a*******0 的大作中提到】
: 感觉像加州理工事件一样，好像涉及到一教授和两女的。
|
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