Report: Sexual Harassment Confirmed In 1 Of 3 UC Faculty Cases

BERKELEY (AP) — University of California President Janet Napolitano is moving to beef up campus procedures for investigating and disciplining faculty members accused of sexual harassment.

Napolitano said Monday that campus offices that field sexual misconduct complaints will be required to notify their respective chancellors immediately whenever they open an investigation of professors and other academic appointees.

She is also ordering personnel records to be maintained indefinitely on faculty members who were formally disciplined for sexual harassment or who agreed to informal sanctions during an early resolution process.

The steps were among more than two dozen recommendations from a committee Napolitano convened in October following revelations that a prominent astronomer at UC Berkeley had sexually harassed several graduate students without severe consequences.

The committee found that harassment allegations involving faculty were substantiated in one-third of the investigations.