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Sexual Harassment Claims Made Against Prominent Boston Academy Scientist 08:41

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Editor'southward Note: This story contains details that may be upsetting to some readers.

In 1999, when she was a graduate educatee, Jane Willenbring says she fabricated a promise to herself: One day, she would report what she calls the horrific handling she received during scientific field work in Antarctica.

"It was possibly the worst ... the worst experience of my life," Willenbring says.

Jane Willenbring on a field trek to Antarctica (Courtesy of Adam Lewis)

That long-agone promise to someday tell the story helped get her through the abuse she says she experienced. Last year, feeling secure in a new tenured position, Willenbring sent a letter to Boston University describing what she says happened during her first Antarctic summer with her supervisor, David Marchant.

He was then an assistant professor in earth sciences at BU, widely recognized already for outstanding research on the East Antarctic Ice Canvass. His inquiry changed the manner people understand the stability of that ice sheet. He has a glacier named after him.

Just Willenbring says he revealed another side on that trip.

"Information technology was all sort of remarks near how bad I was, what a slut I was, how stupid I was, how I didn't vest in science," she says. "At that place were constant comments almost my body, and it also got quite concrete. He would button me downwardly and sort of attempt to dominate me, sometimes even sitting on acme of me and spitting on me."

One week, Willenbring says, Marchant threw rocks at her every time she urinated in the field.

And a yr before that trip, Chicago-surface area high schoolhouse science teacher Hillary Tulley reports a similar experience with Marchant in Antarctica. Tulley traveled through a National Scientific discipline Foundation plan that sends teachers to Antarctica.

"As soon as we got off the helicopter in Buoy Valley," Tulley says, "he grabbed me by my arms and shoulders and wheeled me effectually and virtually threw me to the ground, and called me the c-word and an idiot b----, and said, 'Nosotros don't have time for sightseeing. Nosotros have to fix camp.' And I don't think I had taken 2 steps withal."

Later, during meals, Tulley says Marchant made regular comments about her breasts.

Some other graduate student was nowadays during both Willenbring's and Tulley's expeditions to Antarctica with Marchant. The student, Adam Lewis, told WBUR he witnessed Marchant being cruel to Willenbring and using coarse sexual language. And he says Marchant made grotesque sexual comments about Tulley'south body when she was non effectually.

Tulley and Lewis have both written letters that are included in the Title IX sexual harassment complaint Willenbring has brought against Marchant at BU. Another quondam BU graduate student has also filed a separate Title IX complaint.

And on Th, the U.South. House Science Commission announced it has opened an investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment confronting Marchant. The committee wrote to BU seeking documents related to the attack investigation, equally well every bit to the more than $5 million in federal grant inquiry he received.

"He would push button me down and sort of attempt to boss me, sometimes even sitting on pinnacle of me and spitting on me."

Jane Willenbring

Marchant did not agree to an interview, but emailed a brief statement citing the Boston University investigation.

"I do not wish to compromise the integrity of that investigation by making any comments before the investigation has been completed," the email says, in part.

Marchant is on leave from his position every bit chairman of the Earth & Environment Section.

In Tulley's view, the harassment she says she experienced has an impact on the entire scientific customs.

"Dave Marchant stole from science because he pushed people out," she says, "and he derailed careers, which ways that some important science probably never will become done and some perspectives are never going to be listened to considering people left the field."

Kathryn Clancy agrees. "Certainly, women ... are really pushed out considering of the ways that they're consistently discriminated against, that in that location are consistent implicit biases that are making them experience unwelcome."

Clancy is the author of a 2014 study that found 70 percent of women field scientists reported having been sexually harassed, primarily by their superiors. The survey plant that the harassment was overwhelmingly aimed at trainees.

Clancy concludes from her continuing research that sexual harassment, more than any other bulwark, is driving women from science.

"What we found was that people who had abusive or harassing experiences in the field were much more likely to make lateral career moves," she says. "And so, say they were working at 1 field site, they're going to move to a different field site, or take a step down. Similar say they have a job with some esteem. They're going to have a chore at a lesser institution to get away from a harasser ... and a number of people left science altogether."

There is a David Marchant lab at BU. Among other discoveries, it contains what the team believes is the oldest ice in the world. Air bubbling in it tin can reveal what the atmosphere was like millions of years ago.

Here is Marchant himself in a video on his website:

It's in the Marchant lab that post-doctoral researcher Sean Mackay meets me. He's been to Antarctica with Marchant v times in recent years. He says Marchant expects a lot of everyone who goes with him to Antarctica, but he'due south never seen Marchant treat women differently from men.

"Admittedly not," Mackay says. "I've noticed him in the field existence demanding and being exacting and expecting quality work. I have non in the to the lowest degree noticed him treat men and women differently."

Mackay says on these expeditions, people are tired and hungry and common cold and uncomfortable and isolated.

"It tin can feel intense and it tin can feel heavy," he says, "but in that location's zip that I accept ever seen in his behavior which represents the blazon of abusive behavior which I've heard in these allegations, or non fifty-fifty anything that would exist construed as calumniating behavior, simply certainly, he can be demanding and he can expect loftier-quality work."

Mackay says the removal of Marchant from Antarctic research will be a significant blow to the pace of scientific discovery in Antarctica.

Jennifer Berglund, a BU program administrator who has traveled to Antarctica with Marchant, speaks highly of working with him.

"I have worked closely with Dave Marchant for the by 5 years, both in the field and at Boston University, and my experiences have ever been extremely positive," Berglund says in a argument. "During that fourth dimension, he has always been supportive of me and my career, and that of the other women and men I have observed working with him."

Jane Willenbring in Antarctica in 2008 (Courtesy of Adam Lewis)

In La Jolla, California, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the Academy of California San Diego, Willenbring is now an associate professor.

When she got back to Boston Academy from Antarctica, Willenbring says she did non report the abuse she says she suffered. She says she feared retaliation. That, she says, prompted her to wait all these years until she received tenure. But task security was simply 1 gene in her decision to come up forward.

"And then two other things happened," Willenbring says. "I too had graduate students who are women of my own, one of whom went to Antarctica, and I too had a daughter who told me that she wanted to get a scientist."

A twelvemonth subsequently Willenbring filed her complaint, Boston University is still investigating.

It explains the delay in a statement that says, in part: "[T]he accusations involve harassment that is declared to have occurred as long every bit eighteen years ago in Antarctica, and it is taking time to reconstruct circumstances, identify witnesses, and verify facts."

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Source: https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/10/27/marchant-antartica-allegations

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