Michael Simons, head of the cardiology department of the
School of Medicine, made unwelcome sexual advances in writing to Annarita Di
Lorenzo, a researcher 18 years younger
at the school in 2010. Simons wrote that he wanted to kiss the woman’s lips,
and every part of her “body in every continent and city of the world.”[1]
Referring to Frank Giordano, the woman’s boyfriend at the time and subsequently
husband, Simon wrote that the woman was choosing the wrong man. Simons would keep Giordano from important
meetings and assignments. The relationship between the two men became so
difficult that Jack Elias, the chairman of medicine, took over the direct
supervision of Giordano to protect the untenured instructor from Simon.
Nevertheless, Yale’s provost, dismissed a university
committee’s recommendation that Simons be permanently removed from his position
in favor of an 18-month suspension. Faculty members claimed that Simons’
success in snagging $5 million annually from the U.S. Government in grants in
2012 and 2013 had been a factor, as well as the fact that the provost had been
chair of the economics department, where Simons’ wife was a faculty member. The
monetary element would not be lost on virtually any academic administrator at
any university, but the “old boys club” sticky web of connections at the
elitist Yale could mean that “outsiders” suffer considerable abuse there; the
Provost’s dismissiveness of the university committee’s recommendation is but
one indication of how distorted the moral compasses can be among the most
powerful in the “club.”
The complete essay is at "Exclusivism at Yale"
1. Tamar Lewin, “Handling
of Sexual Harassment Case Poses Larger Questions at Yale,” The New York Times, November 1, 2014.
