Were Red Flags Missed in U. of Southern California Dean’s Hire?

The entire episode lasted maybe 20 seconds, but it is etched in the memories of those who saw it.

Carmen A. Puliafito, who was then chairman of the ophthalmology department at the University of Miami’s medical school, grabbed an optometrist by the lapels of his lab coat, driving his knuckles under the man’s neck and unleashing a profanity-laced tirade, according to a lawsuit filed by the optometrist.

The incident, which took place in 2002, appears in hindsight as a harbinger of things to come, suggesting a level of volatility in Dr. Puliafito that has since spilled into public view. Five years after his scuffle with Marc E. Brockman, the optometrist, Dr. Puliafito was named dean of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, where he descended into a life of drug-fueled partying that imploded with the overdose of a young woman in his company, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation published last month.

Dr. Puliafito resigned quietly as Keck’s dean, in 2016, following what the university has since acknowledged were years of complaints about his behavior. University officials say they knew nothing of the former dean’s alleged use of illicit drugs, but Dr. Puliafito was placed on leave after the newspaper’s report, and USC intends to strip him of tenure and fire him.

The former dean’s downfall has plunged the university into a crisis, raising questions about what administrators knew about Dr. Puliafito’s activities in California, before his double life unraveled. But what happened in the years prior to his appointment as dean is troubling in its own right. A review of those years, from 2001 to 2007, invites questions about how the University of Miami handled complaints about Dr. Puliafito, while casting doubt on the efficacy of the search process that landed him a plum job at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Puliafito’s case stands out as an extreme example of a derailed administrative career, but it highlights a more common truism that downfalls in higher education are often preceded by warning signs that are either missed or ignored.

A deeper dive into Mr. Brockman’s lawsuit, which was settled just months before Southern California tapped Dr. Puliafito as dean, places the men’s brief physical confrontation within the larger context of a number of complaints about the ophthalmologist’s treatment of his colleagues. Their concerns about his temper and style mirror those that would later surface in California. None of this, however, stood in the way of Dr. Puliafito’s appointment.

Sexual Harassment

Mr. Brockman had worked for five years in the Palm Beach Gardens clinic of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, which serves as the ophthalmology department for Miami’s medical school, when Dr. Puliafito was named chair of the department, in 2001. The two men got off to a rough start. During an early meeting at the clinic, Mr. Brockman asked about the qualifications of one of Dr. Puliafito’s first hires in Miami, a question that the new chairman did not appreciate.

“There is no doubt he took that as me questioning his judgment,” Mr. Brockman said in an interview on Tuesday. “Absolutely: Who is this peon questioning my judgment?”

In retrospect, Mr. Brockman says, the meeting set the tone for Dr. Puliafito’s tenure in Miami.

“He makes himself out as the head alpha dog: I will crush you like a grape immediately if you don’t like what I say,” Mr. Brockman says.

Efforts to reach Dr. Puliafito through phone numbers registered to him and on Facebook were unsuccessful. His lawyer in Miami did not respond to an email inquiry on Tuesday.

The Chronicle sent a series of questions by email to Lisa Worley, a spokeswoman for Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, who responded only by saying, “The University does not discuss personnel.”

Complaints about Dr. Puliafito at Miami were swift. Within the first six or seven months of his employment at the university, two human-resources officers visited the Palm Beach clinic, where they interviewed Mr. Brockman and one of his colleagues as part of an investigation into a sexual-harassment complaint that had been made against Dr. Puliafito in Miami, Mr. Brockman said in a deposition.

It was a few months later, in April 2002, that, according to Mr. Brockman’s deposition, Dr. Puliafito unleashed a tirade over a malfunctioning eye laser, grabbing Mr. Brockman by his lab coat, getting within six inches of his face, and swearing at him about the unacceptable equipment problem.

The episode set off a chain of events in Miami that created a widening circle of people at the university who would have known about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior. Mr. Brockman and Nicola J. DuHamel, an administrative director at the clinic who witnessed the incident, both reported it to their supervisors, they said in interviews. When nothing came of that, they met with John G. Clarkson, who was then the dean of the medical school.

“He was the one who told us to take it and file a grievance with the medical school,” Mr. Brockman says. “He also said in that meeting that they knew he had a pattern of behavior like this before they hired him.”

Dr. Puliafito came to Miami from Tufts University, where he was founding director of the New England Eye Center.

The meeting with Dr. Clarkson, an ophthalmologist, was at the heart of Mr. Brockman’s legal claim that the University of Miami had been negligent in hiring Dr. Puliafito, whose reputation should have preceded him, according to Mr. Brockman’s lawsuit.

Ms. DuHamel recalls the meeting in similar terms.

Before the case was settled, Dr. Clarkson signed a sworn affidavit stating that he had never told Mr. Brockman that he had any knowledge of Dr. Puliafito’s having had a physical altercation with anyone at Tufts. Nor, the affidavit continues, did Dr. Clarkson have any “personal knowledge” of prior incidents that would have led him to believe that Dr. Puliafito was “unfit for this job or that he would ever physically assault an employee.”

Dr. Clarkson declined an interview request.

Rhonda Mann, a spokeswoman for Tufts, said in an email on Monday that, “There is no indication of any issues regarding Dr. Puliafito during his time at Tufts Medical Center.”

But complaints mounted at Miami. Ms. DuHamel filed her own grievance against Dr. Puliafito, whom she accused of sexual harassment, which suggests that at least two people brought such claims against him during his tenure there. Dr. Puliafito, who had a reputation as a masterful fund raiser, would tell Ms. DuHamel “you look hot today,” she said, and he suggested on several occasions that Ms. DuHamel should help him to woo donors over dinners and on private planes.

When she rebuffed these suggestions, Dr. Puliafito would respond by saying, “Your job is whatever I tell you your job is,” she said.

Ms. DuHamel said she was never told the results of any investigation into her claims. Mr. Brockman says he was told that his complaint was found to be without merit, but he was given no details about how the university had made that determination.

“They didn’t believe us,” Ms. DuHamel said. “They determined he was more important. Obviously he could bring a lot of money to the university, and that’s what they cared about.”

Ms. DuHamel quit the clinic in early 2003. A few months later, after having reported his run-in with Dr. Puliafito to the local police, Mr. Brockman was laid off for what the university described as budgetary reasons. (No criminal charges were filed in the case).

It is unclear what, if anything, USC knew of these complaints prior to Dr. Puliafito’s hiring, but those questions are within the scope of the work of an internal task force and independent investigator looking into the matter.

Search Firm Under Scrutiny

The crisis at Southern California again casts a harsh light on Korn/Ferry, a popular executive search firm upon whom the university has relied for numerous high-profile hires.

Glenn C. Davis, who was the firm’s point man for the medical-school search, said he was “kind of shocked” to learn about Dr. Puliafito’s fall from grace.

“I can say with confidence that we did go through reference checks,” said Dr. Davis, a psychiatrist and former dean of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine. “We take a great deal of pride in our reference process.”

Search firms, which are increasingly used in higher education, have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, as professors and other university stakeholders question headhunters’ penchant for secrecy and their uneven record in sniffing out problems with candidates. Dr. Davis, who has since retired from Korn/Ferry and said he was only speaking for himself, acknowledged that the credibility of search firms is dependent upon the success of the people they help to get hired.

“Putting people in a position that have serious problems can be a real blow to a search firm,” Dr. Davis says.

Dr. Davis says he has no memory of any lawsuits or complaints emerging when Dr. Puliafito was vetted.

“I am surprised I didn’t know about that,” he said of the lawsuit. “He certainly didn’t raise it.”

The revelations in the report by the Los Angeles Times, which includes vivid descriptions of a former prostitute who recovered after overdosing in a hotel room where Dr. Puliafito appears to have been present, go far beyond the sorts of complaints that are known to have been lodged in Miami. But search firms are in the business, at least in part, of removing risky candidates from a pool before their appointments end in scandal.

This is the second time in recent years that Korn/Ferry has helped to place a high-profile person at Southern California who later faced questions about alcohol or drug use. In 2015, the university fired

Steve Sarkisian as the Trojans’ head football coach. Mr. Sarkisian had acknowledged mixing alcohol and medication at a public event where he slurred his words, and his erratic behavior thereafter raised further concerns that led to his dismissal.

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that there were concerns about Mr. Sarkisian’s alcohol use in his previous position, at the University of Washington.

Dan Gugler, a spokesman for Korn/Ferry, declined to comment on the firm’s track record and would not answer questions about how it conducts background checks.

It is standard for search firms to conduct reference checks that span beyond those suggested by the candidates themselves. But Dr. Puliafito’s case and others like it raise questions about how forthcoming individuals are in passing on negative information. There may be legal concerns or there may even be a desire to see a problematic employee move along, Dr. Davis said.

“Does it happen? Damn right it happens,” says Dr. Davis, who underscored that he was speaking generally of searches and not about a specific case. “People pass on trash. This is one of the reasons you really have to do good referencing.”

Charles Sipkins, a spokesman for Southern California, said the university had conducted reference checks in Dr. Puliafito’s case.

Physicians like Dr. Puliafito go through an additional process of credentialing, where more probing questions are likely to be asked. At Southern California, the current credentialing process requires responses to questions about addiction to narcotics, barbiturates or other drugs, along with questions about mental-health issues. University officials, however, could not confirm whether those same questions were asked at the time of Dr. Puliafito’s hiring.

Complaints at USC

In the days after Dr. Puliafito’s problems became public, Southern California officials gradually acknowledged that he was the subject of numerous complaints during his tenure as dean.

While conducting its own investigations of Dr. Puliafito’s tenure, the university has contended with public revelations that show a pattern of concerns about the former dean that well predated his resignation. The dean’s colleagues, some of whom sent letters of complaint to university officials, outlined concerns about Dr. Puliafito’s temper, drinking and treatment of coworkers, the Times reported.

A former university employee, who handled private employee grievances and asked for anonymity to discuss them, described to The Chronicle two complaints that she received about the dean during her tenure at Southern California. One case involved Dr. Puliafito’s apparent intoxication at a posh private club, and another concerned a troubling exchange with a colleague.

“He fell flat on his ass at the Jonathan Club one night,” the former employee says, describing the complaint. “He yelled at someone and said, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and made a machine-gun gesture. If it were not a dean, that person would have been dealt with.”

The former employee says she informed Todd R. Dickey, senior vice president for administration, about the event at the club. She says she told another administrator, who is now deceased, about the dean’s troubling comment.

Mr. Dickey did not respond to an interview request, but the university has previously stated that Dr. Puliafito was subject to “disciplinary action and professional developmental coaching” as a result of complaints about his behavior. A source familiar with those actions, who asked for anonymity to describe an internal matter, told The Chronicle that the coaching was specifically “anger management.”

The former university employee also recalled a private exchange with the dean in which she warned him against using the word “retarded.” The dean, in a huff, told her that it was “retarded” that he could not say “retarded,” she says.

As the university sorts through what might have been known about Dr. Puliafito, if a few more tough questions had been asked, those who say they suffered under him describe a conflicted sense of validation. Their grievances, which stacked up over years at Miami and Southern California, track now as a dark prologue. They just wish someone had read it years ago.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.