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Geoffrey Marcy to Resign From Berkeley Astronomy Department
Geoffrey Marcy, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, which found he sexually harassed students.Credit Niklas Halle'n/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.”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.

Read more http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640350/s/4aad776a/sc/33/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A150C10A0C150Cscience0Cgeoffrey0Emarcy0Eto0Eresign0Efrom0Eberkeley0Eastronomy0Edepartment0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm


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