A high-profile sexual harassment case 7 years ago in California is now reverberating in Europe, with implications for those who speak out against the unsavory academic practice of “passing the harasser.”
In December 2017, days before Ott’s resignation from Caltech took effect, the University of Stockholm’s Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics offered him a short-term appointment. But pushback from faculty led Stockholm officials to reconsider their decision. They contacted Turku, which on 31 January 2018 offered Ott a 2-year contract to start on 1 March.
Ott has long maintained that being labeled a harasser has deprived him from working in his chosen field. Among other professional setbacks, Ott says he was forced to resign from the scientific team for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, whose leadership won a Nobel Prize in 2017.
Räsänen and Sawala declined to comment pending the judge’s decision. But in their testimony, they said they were simply speaking out on an important issue facing their profession. “It is the duty of every member of the scientific community to prevent harassment,” Räsänen told the judge. “When a harasser can simply move to another institution,” Sawala wrote in the 2018 press release, “it is a slap in the face of individuals who suffer harassment.
But that wasn’t the final chapter. On 1 August 2017, a memo from Rosenbaum noted Ott had “made significant progress … [but] remained a divisive element on campus” and that Ott “has decided to resign, effective 31 December.”
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