After receiving tenure at
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (at
UC San Diego) in July 2016,
Jane Willenbring filed a
Title IX complaint with Boston University in which she stated that on her 1999 Antarctic expedition with Marchant, he repeatedly pushed her down a steep slope, threw stones at her while she was urinating outside, blew shards of volcanic ash into her eyes, and called her a "slut" and a "whore". A second woman stated that he repeatedly called her a "cunt" and a "bitch" and promised to block any NSF research funding for her should she continue her career in academia; she left academia. A third woman, Hillary Tulley, stated that "His taunts, degrading comments about my body, brain, and general inadequacies never ended." Much of Willenbring and Tulley's accounts were corroborated by
Adam Lewis (geologist), who was on the trips with Willenbring and Tulley, and who stated that [Marchant] "clearly stated that he did not believe women should be field geologists". These events were covered in the PBS
NOVA documentary
Picture a Scientist. Several women graduate students who worked with Marchant in 2008 and later did not report having any bad experiences and praised his character. Lewis stated that "the extreme behavior" he saw from Marchant in those early seasons seemed to have changed such that Marchant's "attitude shifted to simply being distrustful" of women. In October 2017, the
United States House of Representatives science committee launched an investigation into the allegations, noting that Marchant had received over $5.4 million in awards since the late 1990s from
NASA and the
National Science Foundation. In November 2017, Boston University concluded that Marchant had sexually harassed Willenbring, but not others. Marchant was fired by
Boston University in 2019, where he was a faculty member in the Department of Earth & Environment in the College of Arts & Sciences. While a five-member BU faculty panel recommended that Marchant be suspended for three years without pay, the university president,
Robert A. Brown made the determination to fire Marchant.
Wired Magazine detailed
Jane Willenbring's story on April 4, 2024. ==References==