Calls mount for USC president to quit over scandal

LOS ANGELES: Two hundred professors at one of California’s top universities on Tuesday demanded the resignation of the school’s president over a widening sexual abuse scandal involving a campus gynecologist. The faculty members of the University of Southern California (USC) said they wanted to “express their outrage and disappointment over the mounting evidence of president (C L Max) Nikias’s failure to protect our students, our staff and our colleagues from repeated and pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct.”

In their letter to the board of trustees, the professors said Nikias had lost the “moral authority” to lead the private institution or to oversee an investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse by George Tyndall, a gynecologist formerly employed at the school. “USC kept a physician in

a position of power and trust who abused that power and trust to sexually assault and degrade women students, targeting for abuse the most vulnerable international and minority students,” the letter says. “The university’s conduct is as much at issue in this case as the physician’s.”

Contain fallout

USC has come under seething criticism as it tries to contain fallout from the growing scandal that erupted after the Los Angeles Times detailed how Tyndall was allowed to continue practicing for years despite complaints of misconduct going back as far as the year 2000. The university’s board of trustees - which includes billionaires, real estate developers and Hollywood power players such as Steven Spielberg - rejected calls for Nikias to step down, saying that while it was “troubled” by the scandal, it fully supported him.

“The executive committee of the board has full confidence in president Nikias’s leadership, ethics and values, and is certain that he will successfully guide our community forward,” a statement said. So far, six women have filed lawsuits against the university and Tyndall, with more expected to follow. —AFP