The National Science Foundation (NSF) has failed to protect scientists and support staff working in Antarctica from sexual harassment and has been lax in supervising the company handling logistics there, concludes a new report by the agency’s oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The House science committee’s finding comes after a 2022 report by an outside consultant documented “pervasive” sexual harassment across the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) managed by NSF, which operates three stations in Antarctica used annually by thousands of scientists and support staff. But this report, the result of a 2-year investigation, is the first to put the onus directly on NSF, which is preparing to rebid a support contract now held by Leidos.
“NSF is ultimately to blame for the confusion, inconsistency, and mistreatment experienced by [those] who reported harassment, assault, and retaliation [in Antarctica],” Representatives Frank Lucas (R–OK), the panel’s chair, and Zoe Lofgren (CA), its top Democrat, write in a letter to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. The $9 billion research agency has been “absent and unengaged,” they write, and “deferred far too much of its responsibility to Leidos and its subcontractors.”
The committee also slammed Leidos, saying, “There is no justification for [its] abject failure to hold subcontractors to adequate standards.” That omission, the report adds, “is ultimately a failure to ensure employees are protected from harassment, assault, and retaliation.”
NSF declined to comment on the committee’s findings. But a spokesperson said the agency “remains committed to ensuring safety in Antarctica and everywhere NSF invests in science and engineering research.”
In July, NSF outlined the expected scope of the new Antarctic support contract, which Leidos assumed in 2016 after merging with a unit of Lockheed Martin that had won the contract in 2014. NSF is expected to launch the competition in the coming weeks, and the committee’s report is an attempt to shape that final solicitation.
“NSF has made changes and taken concrete steps to improve the culture in the USAP as well as the reporting and support structures for victims of harassment and assault,” Lucas and Lofgren write. “However, more must be done.”
One major step forward, according to the committee’s report, would be hiring an outside, independent entity to investigate all allegations of sexual harassment. The current process, which is handled by the company employing the workers, has led to what the committee calls “vast discrepancies in the outcomes of sexual assault and harassment investigations” and has perpetuated “an unsafe environment.”
The committee also recommends NSF make the contractors’ sexual harassment policy a criterion for selecting the winning bid and including how it resolved those complaints when evaluating the contractor’s performance. And it says NSF needs to clarify a new rule banning harassers from working in Antarctica for 3 years to make sure it isn’t used against a victim of harassment who was asked to leave “for safety purposes” after reporting an attack.
Lucas and Lofgren are hoping the letter prompts NSF to rework its draft solicitation, which they say needs to make preventing sexual harassment a higher priority. “We are hopeful to see changes, and we will continue our oversight as appropriate,” a committee spokesperson says.
The ball is now in NSF’s court. “We value the committee’s work and are looking closely at each of the recommendations, many of which already align with actions NSF has taken,” the NSF spokesperson says.
