Tyson will keep job after investigation
Neil degrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist who leads the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, will keep his job, the institution said.
The museum has closed an investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against him.
“The museum’s investigation into allegations concerning Neil degrasse Tyson is complete,” a museum spokeswoman said. “Based on the results of the investigation, Dr. Tyson remains an employee and director of the Hayden Planetarium. Because this is a confidential personnel matter, there will be no further statements by the museum.”
Tyson was accused of behaving inappropriately with two women in an article published in November on the website Patheos.
In one instance, Katelyn N. Allers, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said she met Tyson in 2009 at a party after a gathering of the American Astronomical Society. He was examining her tattoo of the solar system, which stretches along her arm to her collarbone, and she said he followed the tattoo with his hand, putting it into her dress. He said he was looking for Pluto, she said.
Ashley Watson, who had been his assistant on the television series “Cosmos,” made another accusation.
She said that during a visit to his apartment, which she thought was for work purposes, he held her hand and stared into her eyes, in what he called a Native American handshake, for about 10 seconds until she pulled away. Watson said as she was leaving, he told her, “I want you to know that I want to hug you so bad right now, but I know that if I do, I’ll just want more.” She subsequently quit her job.
The article also included already public allegations by Tchiya Amet el Maat, who said Tyson raped her in 1984 when they were in graduate school at the University of Texas, Austin.
Tyson responded to the allegations in a long Facebook post, in which he denied the rape and described the first two incidents as benign.
“While I don’t explicitly remember searching for Pluto at the top of her shoulder, it is surely something I would have done in that situation,” Tyson wrote of Allers’ account.
“As we all know, I have professional history with the demotion of Pluto, which had occurred officially just three years earlier. So whether people include it or not in their tattoos is of great interest to me.”