RESPONSE TO BEATRICE GARCIA’s LETTER OF 27 NOVEMBER 2015
Dear Beatriz and the S326 Science Organizing Committee SOC:

07 December 2015

I do not agree to suspend my work as co-chair of IAU Symposium 326. Further, I do not agree to stop
collaborating in the business of the IAU Working Group on Astronomy Education. As a member of IAU, I
believe that this process has been improper, is based upon rumor rather than an attempt to reason
using observation-based evidence, sets a dangerous precedent of exceeding the bounds of IAU protocol,
and represents a significant lack of professional courtesy and collegiality that is out of line with the
philosophical positions of the majority of IAU’s membership, and most certainly the implied goals of this
Committee. In what follows, I set out the reasons as to why I reject this motion, and ask that you read it
carefully.
A first point of order is that your letter was hastily constructed, some might even say in a rush to
judgement. It was not signed by all who were asked, and others that initially signed have asked their
names to be removed now that they have seen the final version you distributed without their
permission. This alone gives reason to pause, although it is certainly not the most concerning issue.
In much of the world, someone is assumed to be INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY and that DUE
PROCESS is guaranteed; I believe that the majority of members of the IAU would presume that
philosophy is also appropriate within the confines of our organization. In the situation in question, no
appropriate evidence has been presented to be evaluated by a competent authority that would
demonstrate a history or current case of ongoing sexual harassment. Yet, your letter presupposes a
violation exists and I should step down from my involvements, even though you are not an authority and
are not qualified to evaluate or weigh evidence, and without providing any opportunity to redress any
“evidence” prior to taking action. I do not believe that this is in the spirit of how IAU members wish IAU
sanctioned bodies to operate.
This has occurred despite the longstanding IAU protocol of leaving such matters to bodies with actual
authority and expertise. As it happens I have a competent authority supervising me and their consistent
findings are in direct contradiction to the judgement of Dr. Garcia. In the United States where I am a
citizen, an individual’s employer is the mandated, competent authority. Over the course of the past
decade, my two employers, the University of Arizona, where I was a tenured faculty member, and the
University of Wyoming, where I am a tenured full professor, with an Endowed Chair for Excellence in
Science Education, have received no complaints of sexual harassment, either through direct complaint,
or through comment in any investigation that they have conducted on any faculty or department at
their respective institutions. There are no ongoing investigations into my conduct at any institution in
the United States.
In the event that one might think that these institutions are merely being lax in their duties, in the last
decade, my performance, including my interactions with faculty, students and staff, have been
exhaustively reviewed no fewer than three times:
In 2006, the University of Arizona conducted a 360-degree management review of me that surveyed
supervised employees, peer colleagues, and my supervisors. This review was voluntary. No piece of data
related to sexual harassment was reported. If evidence had been found, another formal investigation
would have ensued as required by US law, and this did not occur.
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 In 2008, when I was being recruited to my Distinguished Professorship at the University of Wyoming, a
full inquiry by the University of Wyoming was conducted to be sure that I was not found guilty of any
violations since a 2004 investigation of activity, conducted by the University of Arizona. No evidence was
found, and I was awarded tenure and the rank of Full Professor.
In 2014, colleagues in my College were investigated for a potential civil rights violation. In such an
investigation, there were many opportunities for any evidence of sexual harassment or sexual
discrimination to be revealed. No evidence was revealed, and no violations were found by competent
professionals trained in evaluating evidence of this nature.
It would not be a large exaggeration to say that I have been subject to more instances of scrutiny than
any other astronomy professor in the United States for more than a decade. During that time, there has
been no evidence of sexual harassment, and no finding of sexual harassment, within institutions that
have a vested interest in finding and exterminating occurrences of this nature.
It is difficult to know how a committee within the IAU, which has no structure, no trained personnel, no
protocols, and no authority to accomplish an investigation of its members, should overrule the hundreds
of hours that appropriate bodies have spent verifying the lack of sexual harassment behaviors on my
part. Indeed, we might assume that it is this lack of structure, training and protocol that dictates that no
group or person within the IAU should take up the task of investigating individuals within the
membership. Dr. Garcia’s actions in this matter have superseded IAU structure and are unacceptable for
any professional, let alone an officer of the IAU.
I take these matters seriously, and have been extraordinarily cautious in my dealings in the community
as many years ago a group of my colleagues and I violated my University’s sexual harassment policy.
These colleagues included Dr. Edward Prather and a number of post-docs, graduate students, and
supervising administrators. I am reluctant to reveal confidential information that would embarrass or
perhaps irreversibly damage the professional careers of those involved, as many who have put this
incident far behind them would be put in a situation to deal with it again; and, it is unclear to me that
these matters, from more than a decade ago, are the business of this committee or any other within the
IAU. However, I can safely say that the investigation found that we allowed inappropriate sexual banter,
joking, and innuendo to occur within our research group, which violates University policy. As a result, all
of us involved were required to participate in formal sexual harassment training. Further, Ed Prather and
I took additional management training, in the end, leading the training for other faculty. As evidence of
our personal commitment to appropriate conduct in the community, no further evidence of sexual
harassment has ever been presented to an authority since that time. On the contrary, through multiple
reviews, both institutions determined that our conduct is sufficiently safe to grant both Dr. Prather and
me tenured positions that require us to interact intensively with both undergraduate and graduate
students.
It does not seem reasonable to believe that either Dr. Prather or I could be “known” as serial harassers
when over more than a decade, not one sexual harassment complaint has been made about us to any
ruling authority, despite working with hundreds of students, staff and faculty. Have astronomers
engaged in gossip? Yes. But gossip should not be mistaken for reality. It is my assumption that Dr.
Garcia has not only engaged in listening to and sharing this kind of destructive gossip, but that she has
made the mistake of confusing the malicious gossip of jealous colleagues for reality, and that in doing
so, she has fallen into severely questionable actions of ethics.
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 As with every other allegation made in this case, observation-based evidence contradict the smear
campaign being attempted. It appears to me that the “process” undertaken by Dr. Garcia gave no effort
to the work of checking the most easily verifiable allegations. I do not believe that the majority of IAU
members would support the notion that an IAU committee should engage in the process of collecting
evidence about, or sit in judgement on a colleague; but if it were correct procedure to attempt such a
thing, I believe that we would all expect such endeavors to be conducted competently. That did not
occur in this case, which would most certainly be objectionable to any thoughtful person within the IAU.
For instance, it was alleged that I was given one year to leave Montana [State University] due to
students coming forward about being abused. There is no evidence for this. In contra-fact, I was
recruited to move to the University of Arizona and take an Associate Professor level position at a much
higher salary. My students and researchers elected to come with me to Arizona; it seems reasonable to
assume that if they had been being harassed, they would have gladly stayed behind in a seemingly safer
environment. Moreover, when tenure-line faculty are hired at a large institution, the College Dean’s
office is formally obligated to conduct an extensive due diligence review to ensure they are not hiring a
“problem” faculty member unnecessarily. This review was conducted by the University of Arizona, with
no finding of any evidence of unacceptable behavior, of any kind, on my part.
We have received evidence in emails that IAU Officer Dr. Pamela Gay told some of you, as well as posted
online, that I was “given a year” to leave the University of Arizona. However, the only investigation
conducted at the University of Arizona that found any evidence of poor judgement on my part, occurred
in 2004. The 360-degree review of my performance was conducted in 2006 with no evidence of sexual
harassment, and I didn’t leave Arizona until 2008, with no intervening claims or investigation. That is
four years transpiring, not one year. Any suggestion that I left Arizona within a year due to sexual
harassment and abuse of students lacks any substance or even logic. Given the ease of checking these
facts, I believe that Dr. Garcia demonstrated a very basic failure in exercising due diligence.
Some of you have been told that my position at the University of Wyoming doesn’t allow face-to-face
interactions with my graduate students. However, over the years many of you have met my graduate
students at IAU and AAS, with me, face-to-face, and some of you are even coauthoring papers with
them. It’s an absurd allegation to make. Indeed, Dr. Garcia has attended a meeting, and an IAU session,
in which she has clearly seen my graduate students working with me face-to-face. Giving credence to
such an allegation is therefore quite bizarre, and shows a significant amount of intellectual dishonesty
on her part.
Dr. Pamela Gay also informed some members of the SOC that my university is doing everything it can to
prevent students from falling victim, that I am only allowed to teach online classes and do not even have
to attend faculty meetings in person. I can assure that my students sitting in my classroom listening to
me lecture, and my fellow faculty members who sit next to me at faculty meetings would strongly
disagree with these allegations. It would have been very easy for Dr. Garcia to quickly email my College
Dean or my authorized Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action at the University
of Wyoming before participating in the dissemination of such unfounded gossip, but she did not do so.
Additionally, Dr. Gay stated that I am only allowed to have non-traditionally aged students, implying that
young women need to be protected from me. Those of you who met my students at IAU and at AAS
would obviously find this to be a false-statement. Again, given that Dr. Garcia has met my students in
person, failing to notice the lack of truth in these allegations is inexcusable.
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 Further, Dr. Gay has stated that she has listened to women tearfully describe things happening to them
that no person should have to experience, that she has listened to testimony from numerous former
colleagues and students who are reportedly no longer in contact with one another, and that this is the
worst case of sexual harassment this person’s ever heard described. She has also conveyed to some of
you that she is elevating these allegations to the highest levels in the US: This is an empty statement
designed to alarm and frighten the reader. In the US, the highest level of authority is my employer. The
authorities at the highest levels are here in my campus office building, just a few floors beneath me. She
has not filed anything with them.
More to the point, are we to believe that over the last decade, with multiple formal reviews conducted
in which investigators actively sought out statements from my students and colleagues, that those
students refused to tell an authority who obviously wanted to hear their story, and they instead sought
out Dr. Gay, who is almost entirely unknown to most of the people that I work with, who has no
authority to help them, who evidently did not instruct them to report such incidences to the actual
authoritative bodies, and that she alone is in a position to take any of this to an authoritative body? This
seems implausible.
As further evidence that should have been considered before writing this letter, I offer that my last five
Ph.D. students were all female. Because of inappropriate and unprofessional ongoing gossip, they are
often asked if they have ever been harassed, and none of them report that they have. Although she is
not qualified professionally to do so, nor authorized by the IAU, Dr. Garcia could have easily contacted
any of these students to acquire first-hand information. Such an action would have been ridiculously
easy if she were interested in truth, as one of my graduate students has emailed her regularly in the past
six months. An honest search for truth would have taken no more effort than hitting the “Reply” button.
Even further, I have been elected twice to the Council of the American Astronomical Society, twice to
the Board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and to the Boards of the National Science Teachers
Association and the Society of College Science Teachers. If a widespread number of people were
concerned about my history of sexual harassment, then I believe that I would not have been publically
elected to these positions or, at the very least, I would have been criticized during these elections. In a
time of widespread social media, there is no such thing as an unknown “open secret.” Yet, I was
scrutinized and elected multiple times, without criticism, and continue to serve the astronomy (and
physics) education communities through these organizations. It would seem that if it were within the
purview of this SOC to investigate a fellow member of IAU, these organizations might have been
contacted in an effort to obtain some record of my service or censure. This is a fairly easy task. Yet it
was not done prior to spreading gossip among colleagues, which I find to be both unprofessional and
outside the standards of due process expected by the majority of IAU members.
Most importantly, many of you know me and my wife, Dr. Stephanie Slater, and have watched us
interact with colleagues and students for years. Some of you have even stayed at our home for
extended periods of time. Although sexual harassment can indeed occur without widespread
knowledge, it seems plausible that at least one of you would have observed sexual harassment at least
once. I do not believe that any of you have. In light of those long-term and often personal interactions
over the years, it saddens me that a group that has formed itself around the ideal of increasing
collaboration among astronomy education practitioners and researchers, would tolerate a discussion

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 related to a colleague’s integrity and professionalism, without first asking itself if the topic passes a test
of common sense, or first-hand observation.
To shed important light to this matter and the motivations involved, it should be mentioned that the
letter’s unnamed “colleague in the astronomical community” -- Dr. Pamela Gay, IAU Division C Secretary
and ASP Secretary -- who brought these issues to your attention, has not been transparent with you, in
describing her past interactions with me. First, we are preparing legal action against her for breaking
laws related to libel (writing false statements to injure one’s personal reputation) and defamation per se
(making slanderous statements with the intent to damage one’s professional career). This legal action
occurring through our attorneys aimed at the US court system, for libel and defamatory behavior,
extend back prior even to the formation of this group. While we are not happy to have to take legal
action, these defamatory acts have been ongoing and increasing for years, and we find ourselves with
little other recourse.
My wife, Stephanie, and I are admittedly very, very successful in our field, which causes more than a
small amount of jealousy. Dr. Gay and her comrades are our direct competitors, and have unfortunately
engaged in this kind of gossip against us for years. While that is not the problem of the IAU, it is certainly
not the place of the IAU to give such behavior a platform.
Dr. Gay, like many of her accomplices, is a grant-funded researcher rather than a traditional faculty
member, and as a result, she is in constant and direct competition for grant funding with me, and more
often, my wife. This person and my wife Stephanie have conducted research in the same domains, and
where their results differed, Stephanie’s results received more credibility and public exposure,
increasing jealousy. When the two were simultaneously pursing tenure-track faculty positions,
Stephanie was offered one, even prior to finishing her doctoral work, while Dr. Gay has failed to obtain a
regular faculty position over more than a decade. Both Stephanie and Dr. Gay have been active in similar
astronomy education endeavors including the AAVSO, Zooniverse, and the Slacker Astronomy
community, where Stephanie is still active and welcome, while this individual is no longer involved. In
past years, she has attended research talks at professional conferences given by Stephanie and our
graduated students and has grandstanded from the audience: On one very public occasion, she was
directed by the moderator to return to her seat. This person has numerous reasons to slander both my
wife and I, and given the easily refutable claims she has made here, it would seem reasonable that this
situation is yet another example of attempts to do so. While we would like to think that we are special in
this regard, we are not her only targets. She has made other sexual harassment allegations about other
individuals before, and her own affiliated institution found no truth in her complaints. (Please feel free
to contact the faculty in the Physics department at SIUE if you would like to gather first hand
confirmation.)
More importantly to the function of the IAU, Divison C Secretary Dr. Gay has stated that she is willing to
share selected portions of a decade-old confidential document with members of the SOC, and Dr. Garcia
has facilitated this activity. This should give us reason to consider the ethics that secretary Dr. Gay, and
IAU Commission President Dr. Garcia employ in their professional interactions. The communications
assert that they possess two pages, of a 38-page confidential document, that supposedly refutes what I
have written here about my innocence of sexual harassment, but their claim is undermined by their own
lack of professional and ethical behavior. Neither of these individuals have legal or ethical access to any
relevant files nor permission to make the testimony public nor take the chance of revealing the
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 identities of those testifying under conditions of anonymity. We are all in access to confidential
information regarding manuscript submissions or submitted grant proposals that our professional ethics
require none of us should receive, read, or forward documents marked confidential. These files were
sealed and marked confidential by the decision of an authoritative body for the protection of those who
testified. Drs. Garcia and Gay’s actions in possessing, reading and disseminating this document are
extremely unethical, and in taking two pages out of the context of a much larger file, they have
demonstrated an alarming degree of intellectual dishonesty, in clear contradiction with the values of the
IAU.
To be clear, files such as these are sealed not particularly to protect Dr. Prather and myself, but to
protect students and staff, as the behavior and testimony of such individuals may also have been found
to be questionable, and in many cases involved personal life choices, which should not be open to
scrutiny by unknown persons. While I am not surprised that Dr. Gay would operate without regard to
ethical standards or the rights of others, I am surprised that any member of the SOC would promote or
tolerate such behavior. We are all senior enough to know that transmitting confidential files is improper
in any setting, and that doing so falls outside the scope of the due process and ethical standards
expected by IAU leadership and membership. Indeed, I would move that any IAU leader who engages in
such behavior should be aggressively urged to resign from their leadership positions.
What is devastatingly worse is that Dr. Gay is further attempting to defame my wife’s reputation among
some of you. Among other claims, she told some of you that my wife exposes her breasts at AAS
meetings, and actively solicits partners for three-way sexual encounters. Any of you that know my wife
know that this is absurdly false. Furthermore, vague statements about my wife (for example, “…his wife
is also party to many of their activities. [Where ever your imagination may just horrifyingly gone, it is
likely the correct place]”) are not only inflammatory, but disgusting, and disrespectful to a widely
respected female scholar in our community who aggressively defends the rights of others and builds
opportunities for minority students and scholars. Dr. Gay has tried for years to attack my wife on the
grounds of scholarship, and has failed, and is now leveraging our community’s recent perverse
fascination with all things sexual to find another means of attacking her. Such efforts to smear the
reputation of a respected female scientist recklessly, serves no good purpose in our community, making
it appear less safe and less attractive for other female scientists, including the female graduate students
that my wife advises, who are not inclined to join the field when they observe such failures of ethics and
collegiality. In that sense, the current activities of this group hinder, rather than enhance diversity and
collaboration in the astronomy education community.
If I appear to be overly emphatic about these matters, our personal life experiences provide context and
reason. It is a terrible thing for one who has been harassed, to come forward and not be believed, so we
do not take these kinds of matters lightly. Less than ten years ago during her graduate school
education, my wife was sexually assaulted, by a senior astronomy statesman, who told her he would
ruin her career if she ever told anyone. Even with an eyewitness and available police reports available,
even if her claims were vindicated, reporting him would have likely permanently damaged her career.
These realities make it very necessary to deal with these matters seriously. As such, it is a despicable
state of affairs when someone can raise false allegations of sexual harassment, without evidence, with
impunity. Taking the protection of sexual harassment victims seriously requires that we ensure that
those who “cry wolf” are not tolerated, preserving the integrity of the process. In the United States, it

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 turns out that sexual harassment is not criminal act; however, falsely alleging sexual harassment is a
crime, and those found guilty of criminal charges can face jail time.
While it might be uncomfortable and inconvenient to consider this situation, it is a moral responsibility
for us as scientists to not fall prey to purposefully inflammatory allegations. These things tug at all of
our heart strings, but that does not allow us to simply wish that it all will somehow quietly go away. We
are not the only group that will have to deal with this sort of thing, and I believe that we need to have,
at least, an agreement to not immediately accept one side of a story without at the very least giving the
other side a voice. To do otherwise doesn’t seem to be consistent with the laudable collaborative goals
of the IAU.
To summarize, I will not resign. It is unreasonable of you to ask me to resign without considering the
lack of any modern findings of sexual harassment violations levied by a competent authority. To be
frank, Paulo and I designed and were awarded this symposium based on our proposed plan, and we
enthusiastically invited respected SOC members to participate, and help guide it to be successful. If
there are those unwilling to plan or collaborate with Paulo and I, then they are welcome to resign from
the two groups themselves, and the planning for the symposium and collaborations of the working
group will continue with those individuals who remain, and with new members who we have already
contacted regarding these events, and who are willing to step in to complete this work.
- - > ACTION REQUESTED: The actions of IAU leaders have made this situation uncomfortable and
inconvenient, and will certainly require some careful thought on your part. However, we are about to
publicize the symposium and its SOC member list, and we need to know from each SOC member if they
would like to to remain on the SOC and complete this work with us, or if they would prefer to resign and
let others fill your position. Please respond directly to Paulo Bretones by Sunday evening if at all
possible. <- - : ACTION REQUESTED
Respectfully, Tim

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