Summary: World famous professor and researcher gets forced to resign due to sexual harassment claims.


EDIT: I have a red pill buddy that goes to Berkeley. He forwarded me this:

Our objective was to protect our students by immediately preventing any re-occurrence of the behavior described in the investigative report. We thus chose to establish, in writing, a strict set of behavioral standards that went beyond what is specifically proscribed by the University’s rules and regulations. In addition, the agreement authorized the administration to by-pass the lengthy, uncertain disciplinary process by stripping the professor of a faculty member’s usual due process rights.

stripping the professor of a faculty member’s usual due process rights.

No due process. I love America.

Disclaimer: I haven't been able to find the details of the report yet, so this is working with what various news sources have published.

Have any of you heard of Geoffrey Marcy? Probably not. If you google him, there's a metric fuck-ton of articles on his "sexual harassment" investigation.

But maybe, one night, you were watching the news, and some of these are buried deep in your memory to where they seem familiar.

51 Pegasi b. Marcy and his team confirmed the discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star.

NASA Kepler mission. The Kepler space telescope. Marcy was one of the designers. His team, led by Erik Petigura and Andrew Howard, showed that approximately 20% of Sun-like stars have a planet of 1-2x the size of Earth and receive incident stellar light within a factor of 4 of the light the Earth receives from the Sun, making them warm planets, many of which accommodate liquid water.

He also discovered 70 of the first 100 extra-solar system planets by himself, earning him a moniker as the "Usain Bolt of planet discovery".

After a six-month investigation, Geoff Marcy — a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate — was found to have violated campus sexual harassment policies between 2001 and 2010. Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping.

One of the women, known as Complainant 3, studied astronomy as a graduate student. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want her involvement in the matter to affect her current job.

According to her account to Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, she was at a post-colloquium dinner with her graduate department at the University of Hawaii when Marcy placed his hand on her leg, slid his hand up her thigh, and grabbed her crotch.

She didn’t register an official complaint until eight years later

Jesus what the fuck, why would someone wait 8 years instead of reporting something right away? If your car gets stolen, you don't wait 8 years to notify the cops. Anyone with a shred of common sense would realize that evidence gets harder to find over time.

So either 1) a graduate student in a hard science doesn't have the common sense to realize that her accusation becomes harder to prove over time, making it more likely that her harasses gets away (which I guess isn't an issue anymore, given how the "women are wonderful" effect has taken over the public) or

2) she's lying.

Either way, AWALT.

In the investigation documents, Marcy stated that Complainant 3’s accusation was “totally absurd” and “plainly false,” and that he “would never touch the knee of someone I didn’t know.”

the investigator wrote: “Based on the preponderance of evidence, I find it more likely than not that [Marcy] acted as reported by Complainant 3.”

Preponderance of evidence. 51%. More likely than not. Nothing said about "beyond a reasonable doubt." A simple "he said, she said" is all this was, and people's inherent biases for women will always make the "victim" more believable.

Harvard astronomy professor John Asher Johnson was a graduate student in Marcy’s lab from 2000 to 2007. During his first few years in the lab, Johnson told BuzzFeed News, he directly witnessed Marcy giving an undergraduate a back massage, with his hand underneath her shirt, alone and after hours in the lab.

Nothing about consensual / non-consensual at all. The situational screams consensual, what undergrad decides to go visit a professor alone and after hours? It seems as if this is a beta white knight who must protect all those immature undergraduates from the evil, charming, chad professor.


Lessons learned: If you're in college, watch your backs. If someone as prestigious as a potential Nobel laureate can get forced to resign because someone on a tribunal felt they were more likely than not to be a sexual harasser, then your average male university student is of course, a rapist to all women. #yesallmen