The New York Times reports that Yale Medical School has removed the director of its Cardiovascular Research Center, Dr. Michael Simons, after a university committee found he had sexually harassed a postdoctoral researcher.
Simons was the former chief of cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine.
He had been suspended from that post for 18 months after Yale’s Committee on Sexual Misconduct found he had sexually harassed a researcher, but he had been allowed to stay on as director of the research center.
From the report:
In addition to the sexual harassment, the university committee found that Dr. Simons had exercised “improper leadership and compromised decision-making” with regard to the researcher’s husband, also a cardiologist. Dr. Simons, who is married, began making advances to the researcher, Annarita Di Lorenzo, in February 2010, in a letter, and continued his pursuit despite repeated rebuffs. She left Yale in 2011. Her husband, Dr. Frank Giordano, who remains at Yale, said Dr. Simons froze his professional advancement. Last year, Yale’s University Wide Committee made confidential recommendations that Dr. Simons be permanently removed as chief of cardiology and barred for five years from any position of authority. But the provost softened the penalty, suspending Dr. Simons for 18 months — with no hint of wrongdoing and leaving him as director of the research center, which has 110 investigators. In late October, Yale announced that Dr. Simons “had decided not to return” as chief of cardiology, after the growing faculty frustration and inquiries by The New York Times.
The Times ran a cover story about the controversy earlier this month.
Simons's removal is effective immediately.
