BERKELEY — Four days before his team begins play in the NCAA tournament, Cal coach Cuonzo Martin announced the immediate firing of assistant coach Yann Hufnagel after a campus investigation found he violated the university’s sexual harassment policy.
Hufnagel, who coaches Cal’s guards but is regarded primarily as a top recruiter, was not immediately available for comment, but in a tweet Monday, he wrote: “Right now, the only focus should be on our basketball team! My time to exonerate myself of a fruitless claim by a reporter will come.”
It was unclear from the tweet whether he was referring to claims made by — or simply reported by — a reporter. ESPN is reporting the allegations may have come from a reporter, citing an anonymous source.
Hufnagel told ESPN he was “crushed” and “blindsided” and that he planned to hire lawyers to clear his name.
The firing is part of a widening sexual harassment scandal on the UC Berkeley campus. It comes on the heels of a sexual harassment lawsuit last week that revealed UC Berkeley allowed the dean of its law school, Sujit Choudhry, to keep his job after finding he had harassed his executive assistant. And last fall, an investigation by BuzzFeed News showed that renowned astronomer Geoff Marcy had been let off with a warning after a campus investigation found he had sexually harassed students over nearly a decade.
Marcy has since resigned, and Choudhry stepped down last week — in both cases, soon after their cases became public. UC President Janet Napolitano on Friday ordered that Choudhry, who is still on the faculty, be banned from the campus for the rest of the term.
Napolitano also on Friday unveiled a systemwide committee to review all proposed sanctions against senior officials accused of sexual assault or harassment violations.
“Moreover, and I cannot emphasize this enough, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that substantiated claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault are dealt with firmly, fairly and expeditiously and that appropriate sanctions are imposed that recognize the serious nature of these claims,” she wrote in a letter to the campus chancellors.
On Monday, Cal Athletics announced Hufnagel’s firing.
“California’s head men’s basketball coach, Cuonzo Martin, has initiated termination proceedings under University of California policy against assistant coach, Yann Hufnagel, Cal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Department announced today,” read a statement from the campus. “Effective immediately, Hufnagel has been relieved of his duties pending the outcome of the termination process and will not be traveling with the team during its NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament run.
“The actions follow a finding, issued today by UC Berkeley’s Office of the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) that Hufnagel violated the University’s sexual harassment policy.”
Speaking with reporters at an 11 a.m. teleconference Monday, Martin did not answer questions about the firing.
But he did say this: “You’re talking about a guy who’s part of your staff and a family member. We take a tremendous amount of pride in that. We push forward. There’s always bumps in the road. We talk about these things, life things. It’s not an easy thing, but we’ll find our way.”
Hufnagel came to Cal with Martin two years ago following one season as an assistant at Vanderbilt and four years at Harvard, where he was credited with helping to develop Palo Alto’s Jeremy Lin into an NBA guard.
The Bears face Hawaii on Friday at Spokane, Washington, in their NCAA tournament opener.
For more on Cal sports, see the Bear Talk blog at ibabuzz.com/beartalk. Follow Jeff Faraudo on Twitter at twitter.com/Jeff Faraudo. Follow Katy Murphy at twitter.com/KatyMurphy.
