Organizations breaking ties with Leiden professor accused of harassing female colleagues

At least two organizations have severed ties with the professor of theoretical astronomy, Tim de Zeeuw, who Leiden University found guilty of harassing female colleagues for years. The Max Planck Institute and the European Southern Observatory both announced that they would no longer work with the man, NRC reports.

Leiden University recently suspended De Zeeuw and denied him access to the university buildings and facilities. He keeps his salary. Without mentioning his name, the university said he was guilty of “intimidating and undesirable behavior towards colleagues in the workplace for a longer period of time.”

According to people NRC spoke to in De Zeeuw’s former department, he belittled and insulted women in public, abused his position of power by threatening to damage their scientific careers, and sexually harassed them. This happened for several years.

De Zeeuw himself responded through his lawyer for the first time on Wednesday. Speaking to science magazine Science, the lawyer said De Zeeuw disagrees with the university’s decision to suspend him. But he acknowledged that he might have been “unpleasant and impatient in the old-fashioned way” towards female colleagues. According to him, he never meant to “hurt” people and finds it a “pity” that his behavior was experienced as negative.