 In June 2019, Searle was stripped of his emeritus status at the University of California, Berkeley, having violated the university’s sexual harassment policies.Searle's father, G. W. Searle, an electrical engineer, was employed by AT&T Corporation; his mother, Hester Beck Searle, was a physician.Searle began his college education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and in his junior year became a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he obtained all his university degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil.