A Star Professor, Removed From Endowed Chair for Harassment, Accuses Yale of ‘Pandering’ to #MeToo Activists

A professor of medicine at Yale University who was stripped of an endowed chair for sexually harassing a young researcher has sued the university, accusing it of “unseemly pandering to the rage of activists.”

Michael Simons, a cardiologist and leading researcher, contends that he’s been punished enough for an offense that was “adjudicated and put to rest” five years ago.

His case reflects the tensions that flare up when researchers who bring millions of dollars into their medical schools’ coffers are given what some feel are insufficient penalties for sexually harassing junior colleagues. The strains on departments and colleagues can reverberate for years.

Simons was removed from a leadership post in 2014 after a university disciplinary committee concluded that he had sexually harassed a postdoctoral researcher and created a hostile working environment for her. After she rebuffed his advances, the panel found, he publicly derided her boyfriend — now her husband — and treated him unfairly as his supervisor.

Simons was removed from one endowed chair, the Robert W. Berliner professorship of cardiology, after the donor complained. But the cardiologist was quickly awarded another, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz professorship, in June. That prompted a letter signed by more than 1,000 faculty members, medical trainees, students, and alumni voicing their “disgust and disappointment” with the decision.

The open letter, which referred to broader accusations of sexual harassment within the medical school, was sent to the university’s president, Peter Salovey. “Yale should be a leader in preventing harassment and addressing it appropriately when it happens, rather than cultivating an environment in which it flourishes,” it stated.

Neither Simons nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment. A Yale representative said the university doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Simons’s overtures to Annarita Di Lorenzo, an Italian postdoctoral researcher, began with a handwritten letter in Italian. “I want to kiss your lips on the coast of Liguria, “he wrote, “and every part of your body in every continent and city in the world …. I want to see you in evening dress at La Scala … and naked on the beach of Jamaica,” according to documents obtained by the Yale Daily News.

Di Lorenzo told Simons that his interest was unwelcome and insulting to her, her new boyfriend, and Simons’s wife, according to an article in The New York Times.

Simons responded that she was choosing the wrong man since the professor was in a position to “open the world of science” to her, the newspaper reported.

In 2011, Di Lorenzo took a job at Cornell University’s medical school, Weill Cornell Medicine, where she is now an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine. Her husband, Frank Giordano, remained at Yale. There, he contends, Simons spoke disparagingly of him, removed him from a grant, excluded him from important committees and meetings, and blocked opportunities for promotion. Giordano is also a cardiologist and associate professor of medicine.

‘Catastrophic Reputational Harm’

In September, as pressure on him was mounting, the medical school’s dean, Robert J. Alpern, sent an email to the School of Medicine announcing that he had removed Simons from the Von Zedtwitz chair “out of concern for the community’s well-being.” When Simons was transferred to that chair, it wasn’t intended as a new honor, but it’s clear that was how it had been interpreted, he wrote.

The same day the email went out, Simons filed a lawsuit against Yale and Salovey.

He attributed the groundswell of opposition to his appointment to activists aligned with the #MeToo movement who, he suggested, won’t let him get on with his career.

“The punishment was imposed, the penalty has been paid, and the university’s unseemly pandering to the rage of activists is a disproportionate response to those whose sensibilities are perhaps too tender to appreciate Dr. Simons’ need not to pay a lifetime for an offense that has already been adjudicated and put to rest,” the lawsuit states.

Getting stripped of the second endowed professorship, he said, would cause “catastrophic reputational harm,” hurting his ability to attract grant funding and publish papers, and thwarting the progress he has been making in combating cardiovascular disease.

Simons said he was told that if he agreed to voluntarily relinquish the second endowed chair, the university would still pay him the amount that came with the chair — a minimum of $140,000 per year. He said that he had refused to accept the deal.

In an email to the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2014, Simons acknowledged that “several years ago I briefly pursued by email a colleague who was in a junior but not subordinate position. For this error in judgment I have apologized, and I genuinely regret my action.”

He denied, however, punishing or retaliating against anyone.

Pressure to demote Simons had been mounting for years at Yale when his titles were taken away from him. Critics have accused the university of tolerating misbehavior from researchers who, like Simons, bring in millions of dollars a year.

The panel that found Simons responsible for his conduct against Di Lorenzo and Giordano recommended that he be removed as cardiology chief and prevented from any further promotions for five years. Instead, the provost issued an 18-month suspension. Yale later announced, amid a fierce backlash, that Simons would not be resuming his position as cardiology chief.

Lynn E. Fiellin, an associate professor of medicine, welcomed the action Yale took against Simons.

“The university finally listened to the collective voice of its outraged faculty, students, and alumni,” she wrote in an email, adding that Yale had “acted responsibly in removing an honor that had no place being bestowed given the events of the past number of years.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.