Thread by @TillSawala

#astrosh
For three years, my colleague @SyksyRasanen and I have defended ourselves against allegations of aggravated defamation, after we spoke out against the appointment of Christian Ott, whom Caltech had found to have harassed two students. Today, we were acquitted. 1/8

Ott had demanded over €60,000 and the prosecutor asked for "hefty fines" or suspended prison sentences. According to the prosecutor, Ott's conduct at Caltech concerned his private life, because Caltech is a private institution. According to Ott, we damaged his reputation. 2/8

Before Ott came to Turku, he had been offered a job in Stockholm, but that offer was withdrawn after staff protests. The director of the Turku observatory, whose spouse had made the Stockholm offer, saw a chance to bring Ott to Turku, with Stockholm paying most of his salary. 3/8

With 17 others, we wrote to the university's rector and published a statement against harassment signed by most Finnish astronomers. In court, the observatory director said only one staff member had opposed the hire to him directly. Ott had reported that person to the police. 4/8

Asked in court about Caltech's finding that Ott had committed "unambiguous gender-based harassment", the director of the observatory stated that in his view, "it really makes no difference what happened at Caltech". 5/8

In their verdict, the judges recognised that Ott's conduct had been very widely reported, and that speaking out about harassment is an important societal function, not a crime. They also deemed that we had reason to trust the credible reporting in Nature and Science. 6/8

While it's a great relief that the case is over, it was frustrating to see what attitudes some people in power still have towards harassment.

We must change a system that appears to worry more about people calling out harassment than about harassment itself.

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For further reading:

@SyksyRasanen's excellent blog (soon to be updated):
ursa.fi/blogi/kosmokse…

@ScienceMagazine's story on the court case: science.org/content/articl…

Our press release: docs.google.com/document/d/e/2…

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