Re: CLARIFICATION: response to your email

Dear Larry,

I hope you're doing very well. It was nice to have you at PI for the Q2C Festival and I do hope you'll be able to visit again soon.

I'm writing in regard to Holden XXX, who I have been working with recently.

With my best wishes,

Neil

Dr. Krauss:

Since our earlier correspondence, further incidents have come to our attention. I've outlined the details below and would very much like to include your response to each in our story.

—At the Perimeter Institute's "Quantum to Cosmos" Festival in October 2009, a woman made a formal complaint of sexual harassment against you. The institute immediately removed you from the premises and banned you from ever coming back.

I am not made aware of any formal complaint of sexual harassment against me at Perimeter, which would have resulted in either formal proceedings or letters or emails to me. I did attend the "Quantum to Cosmos” Festival for several days and was never 'removed from the premises'. After I left I received thanks and further assistance from the staff. Nor was I banned from returning to Perimeter. I have maintained a collegial relationship with various colleagues there who have invited me to return on several occasions.

—Former employees of the Origins Project told us that the working environment sometimes made them feel uncomfortable, partly because of your behavior, which they described as sometimes unprofessional and juvenile. They called you a "sexist" and a "womanizer."

In particular, they described the following incidents:

• In early 2016, after a transgender panelist for an upcoming event negotiated a higher appearance fee, you joked at a group meeting that "she's got balls," two witnesses said.

During another meeting around that time, you showed off a vaguely suggestive doodle you had made of a woman bent over, two witnesses said.

"It was like being in a room with a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old boy at the same time," one former employee said. "He had no filter."

At a dinner event at the school's University Club in October 2015, a 19-year-old undergraduate said she was left feeling acutely uncomfortable when you looked at her from head to toe, smirked, and told her that you liked the short jumper she was wearing. Two witnesses confirmed her account.

In April 2016, another staffer angrily posted on Facebook about how you "suggested that I should dress up like a hula girl while advertising for an event."

• Another employee was so upset by your behavior that she started keeping a written record of offensive incidents. "Said he understood why people didn't like to hire women of child bearing age because it isn't fair to have to pay maternity benefit," she wrote in one entry. "Said he's going to buy me birth control so I don't get pregnant and inconvenience him. Asked if I was planning to get pregnant."

I am proud that the Origins Project has been an open and supportive program since it was created. Our team works in a transparent environment of candor and trust, where people can thrive and discuss all issues openly and frankly with mutual respect as part of a safe supportive team. Staff are encouraged to provide feedback and I and my managers have regular meetings with staff to discuss potential problems and concerns. No one has ever has brought up complaints along any of these lines to any of us, nor has anyone complained to the University in this regard about any such issues. Quite the contrary.

Peter:

Got your phone call yesterday shortly before I finished a lecture and then headed to the airport to return home late last night, as I had indicated in my last email. I am responding below to your issues, which are yet again false and/or misleading. I cannot keep doing this. I have told you repeatedly that there is no basis for a story here. I and others have responded to false allegations, but you and your colleagues have continued to barrage me, my family, and my colleagues with a series of false allegations and innuendo for the past 6 months. So it seems you have decided to produce some kind of defamatory story, independent of evidence to the contrary, and you are asking me to help you do your work to write it. I don't know what else to say. I ask you again to stop this harassment, and not write a story based on false and misleading defamatory allegations to justify some foregone conclusion that might defame me and/or other individuals or groups, and in the process can hurt genuine efforts by many of us to address important issues, from encouraging diversity in STEM education around the world, to fighting ideological efforts that endorse sexism, racism, homophobia or attempt to suppress free speech and free thought.

LMK

Dr. Krauss:

To clarify, we plan to publish each of the following statements, which have all been confirmed on the record by the Perimeter Institute:

In October of 2009, you went to Waterloo, Ontario, to be a guest speaker at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival at the Perimeter Institute.

• During the event, a sexual harassment complaint was filed against you.

• You were immediately removed from the premises and banned from ever coming back.

The institute would not provide more details to respect the complainant's privacy.

Do you dispute any of these statements?

If you'd like to further clarify your position on these statements, please contact me before 12 noon Pacific on Saturday, Feb 10.

Peter Aldhous

Oh yes, definitely and demonstrably.. I dispute everything except the first bullet point, with substantial evidentiary email communication... so you had better alert whoever went on the record at the perimeter institute about the consequences of making false allegations.

LMK

Although I wasn't going to bother and shouldn't need to, just one example among many: in this case 7 months after Q2C, email from the Director of the Perimeter Institute. I don't know how it could be much clearer.. (I have redacted out the rest of the body of the letter because it refers to a hiring issue that is irrelevant to you)..

Now some questions you need to answer:

1. Is it appropriate for journalists to repeatedly require explicit evidence from someone in order to defend themselves from false allegations, but at the same time be willing to accept false claims against others on face value if it confirms what they want to hear when writing a story?

2. Does such a low standard of journalistic integrity hurt efforts to address real problems?

3. Isn't repeatedly attempting to promote and disseminate false or damaging claims or rumors about someone harassment?

4. Would you argue that offending someone is equivalent to harassment?

5. After so many false and/or inappropriate allegations, do you see a pattern emerging? Perhaps there is an interesting, and real, story there.

Dr. Krauss:

It is my professional obligation, when reporting on allegations like these, to seek comment and clarification.

Thank you for sending the email from Neil Turok. We have raised this with the Perimeter Institute, which has clarified its position, as follows:

During the event, a sexual harassment complaint was filed with the administration against you.

In 2012, as part of a formal review of its internal policies, the institute made a decision that you would not be invited to return.

If you wish to further comment on or clarify any of these points, please get in touch with us by tomorrow (Weds).

Thanks,
Peter Aldhous

The email from Neil that I sent you is the only one generated =rom the Director in this regard. There is no document I have =eceived from Perimeter confirming either the false hearsay claim you =ave already made, or this new claim of yours. As I have been =nvited back numerous times by colleagues there in the interim, =mpirical evidence suggests otherwise. If there had been any such =ormal complaint and investigation and decision, I would have heard =bout it, or been asked to participate in it. Your source has =lready demonstrated they have lied once about my "immediate =moval and banning". So unless you have some positive documentary =vidence, this s a false allegation.

It was also your professional =bligation to investigate allegations, other than just make them, but in =very case I have done your investigating for you, when you could have =iscovered the numerous claims were false if you had tried. You =emonstrated no interest in accurate reporting or in standard =ournalistic standards, nor have you demonstrated any interest in the =efinition of sexual harassment in making many unrelated defamatory =laims against me. Enough.

LMK

Lawrence M. Krauss
Director, The =rigins Project at ASU
Co-Director, Cosmology =nitiative
Foundation Professor
School of Earth & Space =xploration and Physics Department
Arizona State =niversity, P.O. Box 871404, Tempe, A
Research Office Assistant =Jessica):
Origins Office (Cynthia):

call me

did =e talk after this?

Lawrence M. Krauss
Director, The Origins Project at ASU
Co-Director,=Cosmology Initiative
Foundation =rofessor
School of =arth & Space Exploration and Physics Department Arizona=State University, P.O. Box 871404, Tempe, AZ
85287-1404 Research Office: | Assistant (Jessica): = Origins Office (Cynthia): =
=nbsp;
origins.asu.edu |

Year =elebration-Be a part of something 10 years in the making! -Origins Project 10 April 5-9th 2018 — Visit for more info

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