Prominent turtle conservationist Richard Vogt of the National Institute of Amazonian Research was stripped of his Distinguished Herpetologist Award the day after he received it at the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, recently held in New York. The Herpetologists’ League revoked the honor on Friday night (July 13) in light of the images of female students conducting field research in bathing suits that Vogt displayed while accepting his award.
According to Motherboard, Jessica Ford, a graduate student at McGill University who attended Vogt’s lecture on Thursday (July 12), says, “a few people walked out, but most people either were flabbergasted or nervously laughed.”
Some of the photographs of the bikini-clad students had blue boxes placed over the women’s torsos by the conference’s audiovisual team. Vogt was unaware of the changes.
The controversy garnered attention when several attendees tweeted about the unacceptable content of Vogt’s award speech. Other herpetologists brought ...
