Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
200 profs demand USC president quit
LOS ANGELES — Two hundred University of Southern California professors on Tuesday demanded the resignation of university President C.L. Max Nikias, saying he had “lost the moral authority to lead” in the wake of revelations that a campus gynecologist was kept on staff for decades despite repeated complaints of misconduct.
In a letter to USC’s Board of Trustees, the faculty members expressed “outrage and disappointment over the mounting evidence of President Nikias’ failure to protect our students, our staff, and our colleagues from repeated and pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct.”
“We call upon President Nikias to step aside, and upon the Board of Trustees to restore moral leadership to the university,” they wrote. About an hour after the faculty members sent the letter, board Chairman John Mork released a statement saying that while trustees were “troubled by the distressing reports” about the campus doctor, he and others on its executive committee “strongly support” Nikias.
“The executive committee of the board has full confidence in President Nikias’ leadership, ethics and values and is certain that he will successfully guide our community forward,” wrote Mork, a Colorado energy mogul who graduated from USC.
Nikias also sent the campus community a 20-page “action plan” Tuesday that he said was prepared at the request of trustees. It called for a wide rethinking of university ethics that will include a rewrite of USC’s Code of Ethics and a new presidential commission on improving campus culture.
In letters to the public community, Nikias has apologized to women hurt by Tyndall, the only fulltime gynecologist at the student health clinic from 1989 until 2016. Nikias said he, too, is struggling to understand how the doctor was allowed to continue treating patients.
Tyndall was the subject of numerous complaints from students and staff beginning in the 1990s, according to former patients and clinic staffers interviewed by the Times. He was removed from the clinic only after a frustrated nurse reported him to the rape crisis center in 2016.
An internal university investigation last year concluded that his pelvic exams were outside the scope of current medical practice and amounted to sexual harassment. Campus administrators told the Times that they believe the physician had for years been making sexual comments and touching patients inappropriately during exams.
The university struck a secret deal with Tyndall that allowed him to resign with a financial payout. USC did not report him to the medical board at the time, a decision Nikias and other school leaders have called a mistake.
Tyndall, 71, has denied wrongdoing. In recent interviews with the Times, the physician defended his medical exams as thorough and appropriate.