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UC Berkeley Professor Resigns After Sexual Harassment Allegations

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Geoffrey Marcy, a 61-year-old astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, recently resigned after being in hot water for accusations of sexual harassment of female students over a period of nine years.

"Faculty members had called for Geoffrey Marcy's firing after Buzzfeed reported last week that a campus investigation had upheld complaints that he'd groped, kissed, touched and massaged female undergraduate and graduate students,"the Los Angeles Times reports.

The university took little disciplinary action in the situation. According to the LA Times, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Provost Claude Steele said Marcy's resignation was "entirely appropriate" and that his behavior was "contemptible and inexusable."

Marcy could not be fired without going through a lenghty process that required a lot of evidence from the past three years. Reportedly, the harassment had being going on between 2001 and 2010. Marcy issued an apology online last week:

"While I do not agree with each complaint that was made, it is clear that my behavior was unwelcomed by some women. I take full responsibility and hold myself completely accountable for my actions and the impact they had. 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."

Marcy's work looking for exoplanets and extraterrestrial intelligence will no longer go on. UC Berkeley pledged to reform the unversity's disciplinary process so future situations can be handled more appropriately.


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