NSF CAREER award<\/a>. He also runs the Bediako Lab, which conducts research at the intersection of chemistry and physics. He is a tenured professor and bears the official title of the Cupola Era Assistant Professor, a prestigious position in UC Berkeley\u2019s chemistry department.<\/p>\nSince the allegations were publicized, nearly every graduate and undergraduate student in the Bediako Lab has left the laboratory.<\/p>\n
The student, who requested not to be named and declined to comment, filed the original Title IX complaint at the end of October. Shortly after, UAW 4811 also filed a grievance against UC Berkeley in solidarity with the student, which union member and chemistry Ph.D. candidate Ruby Kharod helped write.<\/p>\n
The letter, which was published at the end of January, includes testimony from the student and demands for \u201ca community where every chemist can do their job with dignity and respect.\u201d Kharod and fellow chemistry Ph.D. candidates and UAW 4811 members Conor Broderick, Gretchen Brown and Vivian Wall wrote the letter.<\/p>\n
According to the authors, the letter repeats allegations made by the student against Bediako that were contained in the original Title IX complaint and only \u201cshortened\u201d and \u201crestructured for concision\u201d in the letter by the student.<\/p>\n
The student alleges in the letter that Bediako \u201cinitiated repeated, inappropriate attempts to pursue a romantic relationship\u201d with her, often during \u201cscientific and professional engagements.\u201d The student described being placed in \u201cincreasingly intimate and personal situations\u201d that were \u201cdifficult to navigate\u201d due to the \u201cpower imbalance involved\u201d in their adviser-mentee relationship.<\/p>\n
These interactions included unsolicited personal messages, a 3 a.m. email about his marriage and a late-night phone call in which he \u201cexpressed intense emotions and accused (her) of not caring for him,\u201d according to the student in the letter. She then allegedly expressed to Bediako that \u201cadvisor\/student relationships are strictly professional and that he was crossing a boundary.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter, the student said during a meeting in his office about her manuscript, Bediako directly asked her to have a \u201cmore personal, presumably romantic, relationship\u201d with him. She said she was \u201cvisibly distressed, silent, and once again fearful for (her) professional standing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe interaction ended with him angrily asking whether all I wanted from him was a PhD; I responded that he should not ask graduate students questions like that,\u201d the student said in the letter.<\/p>\n
The student added that one week after the meeting where he \u201csolicited a romantic relationship\u201d with her, they both attended the Gordon Research Conference in Barcelona. She also alleged that he \u201ccontinued to engage in frequent, unsolicited, persistent, and overly familiar communication that (she) experienced as coercive and intimidating.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter, the student said these behaviors included following her to her hotel room, as well as asking her to spend time alone with him by getting lunch or visiting the Sagrada Familia \u2013 a famous church in Barcelona \u2013 together.<\/p>\n
She added that after rejecting Bediako\u2019s advances and in the months that followed leading up to filing the grievance, he allegedly attempted to \u201cmanipulate, intimidate, or control\u201d her.<\/p>\n
She said in the letter that this subsequently had a \u201cdestructive effect\u201d on her \u201cPhD, sense of safety on campus, and emotional wellbeing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I grew into my strength and potential as a scientist, my advisor abused his position of power by conditioning my access to professional and scientific opportunities on whether I would spend time with him and invest in him emotionally,\u201d the student alleged in the letter.<\/p>\n
Bediako did not reply to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Campus administrators confirmed they are aware of the letter but declined to comment on the allegations, citing their inability to comment on cases of sexual misconduct due to \u201ccampus policies and confidentiality requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
The student confided in a former UC Berkeley postdoc who previously worked closely with Bediako\u2019s lab and became her friend during the alleged harassment. The former student, who will hereafter be referred to as \u201cA,\u201d was granted anonymity out of fear of retaliation from Bediako.<\/p>\n
A shared that they had always noticed that in group meetings, the student \u201cseemed very serious and nervous but on edge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you respond when you\u2019re a fourth-year grad student and your adviser, who has so much infinite power over you, requests this kind of stuff?\u201d A said. \u201cYou fear retaliation and for your Ph.D.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campus sophomore Lyra Alers, a chemistry major who signed the letter and worked in Bediako\u2019s lab under the student, said she felt shocked and disappointed by the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got involved with the Bediako Lab in the first place because he was my professor and he felt incredibly nice and welcoming,\u201d Alers said. \u201cWhen I first read the letter, a part of me lost faith in humanity. \u2026 It felt terrible because it was someone that I had trusted in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alers said she noticed that the quality of the student\u2019s research suffered as a result of the alleged \u201cunwelcoming research environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that the student admitted to and apologized for her \u201cinability to focus on her research\u201d to her and another undergraduate student in the lab.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still felt a connection with the \u2026 graduate student, because she is incredibly sweet, and super open to helping me,\u201d Alers said. \u201cI think she\u2019s an amazing teacher \u2026 a great graduate student and a great all-around person. To hear that she was suffering like this was also very hurtful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alers said following the Title IX complaint, she and her undergraduate peer in the lab were subsequently \u201clegally obligated to have a second person in the room with them\u201d if they were ever going to have any research or one-on-one meetings with Bediako.<\/p>\n
This semester, Bediako was one of the professors slated to teach Chemistry 4B, \u201cGeneral Chemistry and Quantitative Analysis,\u201d a foundational course in the College of Chemistry. However, freshman chemical engineering major Oscar Wahl \u2014 who is enrolled in the course \u2014 said Bediako is no longer teaching it.<\/p>\n
According to campus, Bediako is still employed and working at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was just sort of this awkward silence \u2026 waiting to see whether \u2026 our lecture would start with a, \u2018Hello \u2026 here\u2019s why your teacher isn\u2019t here,\u2019\u201d Wahl said. \u201cI felt really disappointed when we jumped into learning about kinematics instead of bringing up that \u2026 it was a university failure as a whole: to not teach, to not take better care of his students.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to The Daily Californian, campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said the safety of students, faculty and staff is \u201cparamount\u201d to campus, and that administrators are \u201ccommitted to fostering a climate where all members of our community are protected from sexual harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter also includes allegations against Daniel G. Nocera, a professor of energy at Harvard University, from a former researcher in his laboratory. The researcher makes allegations against both Bediako and Nocera from Bediako\u2019s time working under Nocera during his graduate studies at Harvard.<\/p>\n
According to the letter, the allegations began in late 2013 while the researcher was Bediako\u2019s mentee and research assistant during the course of her studies there.<\/p>\n
The Daily Californian has been unable to confirm whether the student ever made a formal complaint concerning her allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take seriously my professional and ethical responsibilities and have never \u2014 and would never \u2014 callously dismiss allegations of sexual assault or harassment,\u201d Nocera said in a statement to The Daily Californian.<\/p>\n
In response to these allegations, the letter called for campus to cancel Nocera\u2019s presentation of UC Berkeley\u2019s annual Glenn T. Seaborg Memorial Lectures in Inorganic Chemistry on Feb. 13 and 20 and demanded that he no longer be invited for any future seminars.<\/p>\n
The chemistry department administration did not cancel the event, which prompted students to plan a walkout during the lectures. The College of Chemistry\u2019s chemistry department chair sent an email the day of the first planned lecture notifying students that the lectures had been postponed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look forward to hosting Prof. Nocera at a future time to present his groundbreaking science to bring energy and food sustainably to under-resourced populations,\u201d the email read.<\/p>\n
Campus spokespeople have also confirmed that they plan to reschedule the lectures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely a little disappointing to see them scramble to cover their asses and yet not make a very clear statement against having this guy come speak,\u201d said Abigail Derrico, a physics graduate student researcher and UAW 4811 member.<\/p>\n
The letter also demands that Bediako\u2019s future employees be notified of the complaints against him and that a \u201cpeer-led, anti-harassment training\u201d be jointly developed and implemented for the department\u2019s faculty in order to \u201cfoster a sense of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to an email written by the letter\u2019s co-authors, campus declined to respond to the letter\u2019s demands for a new SVSH training.<\/p>\n
The training would be based on the existing Respect is Part of Research training for graduate students, a specialized sexual violence and sexual harassment, or SVSH, workshop that was originally developed in 2013 for UC Berkeley\u2019s physics department and has since been used in other STEM departments.<\/p>\n
The training was originally created by a group of graduate students who wanted to reduce the frequency of sexual harassment in the physical sciences, according to its website.<\/p>\n
According to Derrico, who has helped facilitate these workshops, the prevention training signals that SVSH in academia, particularly graduate studies, is an \u201cendemic problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a systemic issue in academia as a whole, but especially in chemistry,\u201d Kharod said. \u201cYou are encouraged to keep your head down, work long hours and \u2026 get results at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley associate professor of chemistry Kwabena Bediako is under investigation by campus following accusations of sexual harassment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[117230,62888,117218,117225,117232,28734,117221,117219,117226,117224,117227,117228,117222,32729,117215,16155,13792,117214,117223,117217,143,145,144,492,117231,117216,117229,117220,493,15255,15940,3006,15178,149],"class_list":{"0":"post-269082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-abigail-derrico","9":"tag-barcelona","10":"tag-bediako-lab","11":"tag-chemistry-4b","12":"tag-college-of-chemistry","13":"tag-columbia-university","14":"tag-conor-broderick","15":"tag-cupola-era-assistant-professor","16":"tag-daniel-g-nocera","17":"tag-general-chemistry-and-quantitative-analysis","18":"tag-glenn-t-seaborg-memorial-lectures-in-inorganic-chemistry","19":"tag-gordon-research-conference","20":"tag-gretchen-brown","21":"tag-harvard-university","22":"tag-heising-simons-faculty-fellowship","23":"tag-janet-gilmore","24":"tag-january","25":"tag-kwabena-bediako","26":"tag-lyra-alers","27":"tag-nsf-career-award","28":"tag-oakland","29":"tag-oakland-headlines","30":"tag-oakland-news","31":"tag-october","32":"tag-oscar-wahl","33":"tag-philomathia-prize","34":"tag-respect-is-part-of-research","35":"tag-ruby-kharod","36":"tag-stanford-university","37":"tag-stem","38":"tag-svsh","39":"tag-title-ix","40":"tag-uaw-4811","41":"tag-uc-berkeley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}