What actions? You mean office and security key shuffle? Oh horrors, he was subject to the same bureaucratic minutiae as everybody else! And this even after he was caught multiple times not following SI rules regarding the collections.
is the email traffic effectively portraying the atmosphere at the Smithsonian invoked because Sternberg allowed the Meyer article to be published.
Yeah, when you do stuff like that, you can generally expect others to not be happy with you. Still, it resulted in no adverse actions. I'm not going to say adverse employment actions because contrary to what they'd like you to believe, he wasn't employed there.
The fact is...
From: Appendix to Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian. Noting that the OSC performed the original investigation and determined that it did not have jurisdiction. QUOTE
Specifically, tke OSC found that had Dr. Sternberg been protected by Title V of U.S. Code, the NMNH staff would have violated Section 2303 (b) (1 0) referring to the prohibition on personnel to discriminate against an employee for non-job related activities. Additionally, the OSC found that "there is a strong religious and political component to the actions taken after the publication or the Meyer article." The OSC letter concludes that the retaliation against Dr. Sternberg was supported by the evidence: "Our preliminary investigalion indicates that retaliation came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions and even proposals to change how the SI retains and deals with future RAs. During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI."
END QUOTE
So it is OK for the Smithsonian to perform such actions against an associate who is not an employee per se?