In 2011, the chair of the Astronomy Department, Imke de Pater, and the UCB Title IX Officer, Denise Oldham, and Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Gibor Basri, met with Geoff to help him understand how his friendly actions could be misinterpreted.
In 2015, Dr. Janet Broughton, the Vice Chancellor for Faculty noted that there were no complaints in the last five years. After her 1-year investigation, she determined that Geoff should continue as a full professor at UC Berkeley. This decision was UC Berkeley’s official response to the investigation.
Geoff retired from his position as Professor at UC Berkeley, effective December 31, 2015. His decision to step down from his position at the university was not triggered by the allegations, which were already known by the relevant parties at UC Berkeley. Rather, Geoff’s principal motivation was to relieve the pressure on his astronomy colleagues at UC Berkeley and allow the department to move past the challenging situation created by the social media firestorm.
What Actually Happened
In 2001: Geoff ran into an undergraduate woman he knew well on campus. They talked briefly and she told him she was sick, whereupon he gave her a hug and kissed her on the forehead. In a separate instance in the astronomy building, after the woman told Geoff her parents were separating, he kissed her on the cheek. When the student told Geoff she was uncomfortable with the physical closeness and asked him to stop, he did so.
In 2005: A woman, then an undergrad at Berkeley, asked Geoff for career advice. She asked him to go out for coffee with her several times. The conversations turned to private issues, with Geoff trying to help her with her concerns and share his experiences. On one occasion after coffee, he drove her home, and while saying goodbye, he put his hand on her shoulder. In the woman’s report of the incident to OPHD, she noted that this gesture was “apropos of our discussion about my new relationship, which was bumpy at the time.” On Geoff’s recommendation, this woman received a departmental award while at Berkeley, then went on to graduate school at Harvard. She is now a professor of astronomy.
In 2006: A woman Geoff did not know (a student at the Univ. of Hawaii) alleged (8 years after the alleged incident) that at a dinner, Geoff slid his hand up her leg and grabbed her crotch. This allegation is false. Interestingly, the documentation of this event was brokered by one of Geoff’s former graduate students, who had just left the California exoplanet team when he moved from Cal Tech to Harvard, and as a result was excluded from using the California team’s data.
In 2010: This complaint came from a random person who saw Geoff leaving an astronomy party with an inebriated student. Geoff and another female student were simply assisting the intoxicated student back to her hotel, where they delivered her to her roommate. The student he helped did not file a complaint, nor did the roommate. The complaint was filed by the random person. After Geoff announced his intention to step down, this random person changed her story, via submission of an email to the UCB Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD). Her email provided what she referred to as “corrections” to the incident report she had originally filed. On October 15, 2015, the student who was helped back to her room submitted a statement “to clear up the misconceptions and unintentional lies that were included in that report” and pointed out that “The statements . . . which the complainant admits to having heard third-hand, are false.” The roommate also made a statement verifying what actually happened. The woman whom Geoff assisted received a NASA Einstein and ITC postdoctoral position at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and currently holds an NSF and UC Chancellor’s Fellowship postdoctoral position in astrophysics.
Geoff ‘s wife Susan Kegley notes:
“Geoff’s primary mistake was to treat students like good friends. Clearly, you cannot do that in these days and times. But these students were comfortable with their relationship with Geoff until a woman from outside the UC Berkeley Astronomy department, dishonestly identifying herself as “working with [the Title IX officer] on an ongoing investigation,” started interviewing every woman who had ever been in the department since Geoff started there and spreading rumors that led people to scrutinize every move Geoff made as if he were a convicted criminal. I believe that Geoff is being punished in the court of public opinion in ways that are far out of proportion to his actions. Geoff is a kind and generous human being and would never intentionally cause harm to another person. He has been a big supporter of women in science his entire career. I know this because I have been married to him for 29 years. Those who make judgments based on rumors and BuzzFeed articles without ever having spent time with Geoff are wildly off-base.”
