Written by Emily Hamill, this news from The Daily Californian:
UC Berkeley associate professor of chemistry Kwabena Bediako is under investigation by campus following accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination from a graduate student, detailed in a widely circulated letter.
The letter has amassed 786 signatures from science students, researchers and faculty from universities across the country, including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University and Columbia University.
During his time at UC Berkeley, Bediako has won various awards and honors, including the Heising-Simons Faculty Fellowship, Philomathia Prize and the NSF CAREER award. 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’s chemistry department.
Since the allegations were publicized, nearly every graduate and undergraduate student in the Bediako Lab has left the laboratory.
...The student alleges in the letter that Bediako “initiated repeated, inappropriate attempts to pursue a romantic relationship” with her, often during “scientific and professional engagements.” The student described being placed in “increasingly intimate and personal situations” that were “difficult to navigate” due to the “power imbalance involved” in their adviser-mentee relationship.
In the letter, the student said during a meeting in his office about her manuscript, Bediako directly asked her to have a “more personal, presumably romantic, relationship” with him. She said she was “visibly distressed, silent, and once again fearful for (her) professional standing.”
“The 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,” the student said in the letter.
The student added that one week after the meeting where he “solicited a romantic relationship” with her, they both attended the Gordon Research Conference in Barcelona. She also alleged that he “continued to engage in frequent, unsolicited, persistent, and overly familiar communication that (she) experienced as coercive and intimidating.”
This sounds like quite a list of bad facts. If they are true, Professor Be\diako needs to go.
