What Happens When a Harassment Whistleblower Goes on the Science Job Market
When astronomer Sarah Ballard walked onto the University of California, Berkeley, campus for an academic job interview in February, it was a homecoming. She had attended college there, walking to class underneath the Seussian London plane trees as the campanile chimed periodically in the background.
Berkeley had made her the exoplanet-studying scientist she was. It had taught her well, prepared her for graduate school, and propelled her into a successful career, including her current position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It had, in fact, prepared her so well that she was back, being considered for a professorship at one of the country’s top astronomy departments. And what a nice narrative—to have come full circle.
But her home wasn’t only a happy one. She had grown up in this department, but she also had been harassed, and helped topple an astronomical icon. Now, here she was, about to stand before a group that would evaluate her for a position not unlike the one that icon—famed astronomer Geoff Marcy—had assumed in 1999, and then slipped out of in 2015.
