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Puliafito 7/31 Morning

Traditional Media Coverage

USC admits it received complaints and disciplined former medical school dean linked to drug use
Jul 29, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Matt Hamilton, Paul Pringle, Harriet Ryan and Sarah Parvini

USC President C.L. Max Nikias revealed late Friday that the university had received complaints and imposed disciplinary measures against the then-dean of its medical school, who a Times investigation found took drugs and associated with criminals and drug abusers.
Former Keck dean was subject of complaints about drinking, verbally abusive demeanor while at USC
Jul 29, 2017 | Daily Trojan
By Emma Peplow

Former Keck School of Medicine Dean Carmen Puliafito was the subject of various complaints during his 10 years as dean from co-workers and also received disciplinary action, according to a letter sent by President C. L. Max Nikias to the USC community on Friday and a new report released by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
USC Admits To History Of Complaints And Disciplining Of Former Med School Dean
Jul 29, 2017 | LAist
By Annie Lloyd

In a letter to the USC community, school President C.L. Max Nikias admitted to a history of complaints and leadership negligence from former Keck School of Medicine Dean Anthony Puliafito, who has been the subject of scandalous revelations from the L.A. Times about his ties to drug use and overdoses during his 10-year tenure with the school. He repeatedly sought company with drug users—often bringing them on the Keck School of Medicine campus after-hours— and dated a former prostitute who ended up overdosing next to Puliafito at a Pasadena hotel.
USC Admits It Was Aware Of Med School Dean’s Behavior Before Scandal Went Public
Jul 29, 2017 | CBS Los Angeles

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been publicly linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
USC Admits It Received Call About Ex-Dean's Alleged Drug Use
Jul 29, 2017 | NBC Los Angeles

USC President C.L. Max Nikias acknowledged Friday that two receptionists in his office received an anonymous call from a blocked number in March 2016 about an incident in a Pasadena hotel involving-then medical school dean Carmen Puliafito.
USC had disciplined former medical school dean linked to drug use
Jul 29, 2017 | 89.3 KPCC (Southern California Public Radio)

USC President C.L. Max Nikias revealed Friday that the university had received various complaints and had disciplined Dr. Carmen Puliafito during his tenure as dean of the medical school.
USC Admits To Prior Knowledge Of Former Medical School Dean’s Behavior
Jul 29, 2017 | LA West Media

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
USC scandal: Receptionists ignored warning call over med school dean Pasadena drug incident
Jul 29, 2017 | My News LA
By Chris Jennewein

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
Complaints of drinking, abusive behavior dogged USC medical school dean for years
Jul 30, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Harriet Ryan, Paul Pringle, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Adam Elmahrek

USC faced a choice five years ago: Keep Dr. Carmen Puliafito at the helm of the Keck School of Medicine or replace him.
USC med school dean scandal no surprise to president: Decade of complaints, discipline
Jul 30, 2017 | My News LA
By Toni McAllister

The USC scandal over a disgraced ex-medical school dean may not have been such a surprise to the school’s leaders after all.
Of Moral Turpitude
Jul 31, 2017 | Insider Higher Ed
By Rick Seltzer

Successful people in power sometimes behave badly -- in both their professional capacities and in their personal lives. The last few weeks in higher education provide two prominent examples. The head football coach at the University of Mississippi resigned July 20 after a call from his mobile phone to an escort service was revealed. The University of Southern California took steps to fire its former medical school dean from the faculty after allegations came to light that he repeatedly used hard drugs and socialized with a group of much younger people, some of whom had criminal backgrounds and one of whom overdosed in his presence.

Broadcast Media Coverage

Eyewitness News 4:00PM
Jul 29, 2017 | ABC Los Angeles

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Bob Brill
Jul 29, 2017 | KNXAM (KNX) (Los Angeles)

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Pat Haslam
Jul 29, 2017 | KNXAM (KNX) (Orange County)

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KTLA 5 Morning News at 6
Jul 30, 2017 | CW Los Angeles

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Eyewitness Newsmakers
Jul 30, 2017 | ABC Los Angeles

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NPR's Weekend Edition
Jul 30, 2017 | KCRWFM (NPR) (California)

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Traditional Media Coverage

USC admits it received complaints and disciplined former medical school dean linked to drug use

Jul 29, 2017 | Los Angeles Times

By Matt Hamilton, Paul Pringle, Harriet Ryan and Sarah Parvini

USC President C.L. Max Nikias revealed late Friday that the university had received complaints and imposed disciplinary measures against the then-dean of its medical school, who a Times investigation found took drugs and associated with criminals and drug abusers.
In a letter to the campus community, Nikias wrote that Dr. Carmen Puliafito had been the subject of “various complaints” during nearly a decade as the dean of the Keck School of Medicine. Nikias said Puliafito received “disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”
Nikias also provided new details about Puliafito’s final months in the job before he resigned in the middle of the Spring 2016 term.
In 2015, USC Provost Michael Quick put Puliafito “on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties,” the president said.
“On March 11, 2016, two USC employees notified Provost Quick that Dr. Puliafito seemed further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior,” Nikias wrote.
“The Provost consulted with me promptly and, as a result, confronted Dr. Puliafito. He chose to resign his position on March 24, 2016, and was placed on sabbatical leave.”
The president’s letter was released hours after The Times provided USC with findings about Puliafito’s behavior during his tenure heading the medical school.
It comes amid an outpouring of anger and questions about USC’s handling of Puliafito, a Harvard-trained ophthalmologist.
The Times report last week described how Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and drug addicts and used methamphetamine and other drugs while serving as the dean. Photos and videos reviewed by The Times showed Puliafito, 66, and his friends, who were in their 20s and 30s, partying in 2015 and 2016.
The images include some in which Puliafito’s companions are seen holding drug paraphernalia during an after-hours visit to the dean’s office at USC’s Health Sciences Campus in Boyle Heights.
One member of Puliafito’s circle was a 21-year-old woman who overdosed in his presence at a Pasadena hotel three weeks before he abruptly quit as dean.
Last week, Puliafito’s successor as dean, Dr. Rohit Varma, told a gathering of scores of students that USC had found “no evidence, particularly, of that phone call.”
But Tuesday evening, a crisis management specialist representing USC, Charles Sipkins, said that Nikias’ office did receive an anonymous call about Puliafito’s presence at the hotel overdose. However, the anonymous report did not reach senior administrators, Sipkins said.
About three months after Puliafito stepped down, Nikias and other USC leaders hosted a catered reception for the former dean and praised his leadership of the medical school. Puliafito continued to accept new patients at campus clinics and represented the university at events, including a Keck-sponsored course at a Pasadena hotel earlier this month.
The Times made repeated inquiries over the last 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean and the overdose.
USC’s leaders never responded to the inquiries. Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to The Times by courier, unopened. The courier also delivered a letter of complaint from Brenda Maceo, USC’s vice president for public relations and marketing, who said the reporter had “crossed the line” by visiting the Nikias home to deliver the letter.
On Friday, Nikias wrote that in the fall of 2016 “a communications staff member received an unsubstantiated tip about a Pasadena hotel incident.”
He described a confrontation by administrators: “When we approached Dr. Puliafito about the incident, he stated a friend’s daughter had overdosed at a Pasadena hotel and he had accompanied her to the hospital.”
The president also said that last March, The Times did provide the university with “detailed questions about, and a copy of a 911 recording from the Pasadena hotel incident.” The recording was “immediately referred to” a committee that assesses clinical competency, the Hospital Medical Staff, Nikias said.
“That body determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues,” the president said.
After The Times investigation was published on July 17, Nikias said the Hospital Medical Staff had reopened its investigation. The Medical Board of California also launched an investigation into Puliafito based on the newspaper’s report, a spokeswoman confirmed.
Nikias said in his letter that after The Times published its story, the university learned “that two receptionists in the president’s office received a call in March 2016 from a blocked number.”
“The caller, who insisted on anonymity, raised concerns about an incident in a Pasadena hotel involving Dr. Puliafito. Neither receptionist found the claims or the caller credible, and so the information was not elevated and did not reach a senior administrator,” Nikias wrote.
“Needless to say, we have already put into place a new system that documents and records all incoming calls to the president’s office.”

USC announced last week that it hired a former federal prosecutor who works for a law firm with close ties to the university to investigate the affair. Puliafito has been barred from the campus and from “any association with USC.”

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Former Keck dean was subject of complaints about drinking, verbally abusive demeanor while at USC

Jul 29, 2017 | Daily Trojan

By Emma Peplow

Former Keck School of Medicine Dean Carmen Puliafito was the subject of various complaints during his 10 years as dean from co-workers and also received disciplinary action, according to a letter sent by President C. L. Max Nikias to the USC community on Friday and a new report released by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
Co-workers of Puliafito detail his heavy drinking, verbally abusive tendencies and low faculty morale in the latest Times report about his tenure at USC.
Many of the co-workers contacted by the Times say that they had brought forth complaints to senior administrators during the review process in 2012 at the end of his term to determine if the University would rehire him.
Despite these complaints, Puliafito was re-hired at a $1 million per year salary. Nikias declined to comment to the Times on the faculty complaints.
Detailed in the coworker testimonies include yelling matches between Puliafito and staff-members at meetings, high-ranking Keck administrators leaving due to Puliafito’s demeanor and concerns about the dean driving home drunk from work functions.
The Times reported in their initial investigation that Puliafito was often in his USC office after hours, partying with a string of criminals and drug addicts, however, the co-worker testimonies indicated that Puliafito was often absent during working hours and difficult to contact.
In the most recent of what has been a series of letters from USC administration following the Los Angeles Timesinvestigation into the misconduct of Puliafito — which includes drug use and association with criminals and drug addicts — Nikias provided more details about when and how senior administrators found out about Puliafito’s behavior.
According to the LA Times, this letter was sent out to the USC community shortly after the Times shared evidence published in Sunday’s report with senior USC officials.
In the letter, Nikias stressed that senior administrators were not aware of any “illegal or illicit activities” at the time of Puliafito’s resignation in March 2016 — just 10 days after police were called to a Pasadena hotel room in Puliafito’s name to aid his female companion suffering from a drug overdose.
Nikias also claimed that he and other senior administrators were not presented evidence of Puliafito’s conduct until the LA Times published their report on July 17, which then caused USC to dismiss Puliafito and strip him of his tenure.
“In my view, we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively,” Nikias said.
The letter also stated that Puliafito seemed disengaged from his leadership duties for months prior to his resignation, resulting in Provost Michael Quick putting him on notice in November 2015. It was not until two other USC employees came forward on March 11, 2016 with questions about Puliafito’s recent behavior that Quick spoke with Puliafito for a second time, ultimately leading to his March 24 resignation. Nikias did not detail the nature of Puliafito’s behavior that led to the employees’ concerns.
Nikias also confirmed that in March 2017, senior USC officials received information from the LA Times about the overdose associated with Puliafito in the Pasadena Hotel. He stated that this information was referred to the Hospital Medical Staff, who found evidence of “no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues.” The LA Times has since reported that following the publication of their initial report about Puliafito, the Hospital Medical Staff has reopened their investigation.
In the initial Times report about Puliafito’s conduct, it cited a record of a six-minute phone call to Nikias’ office by an anonymous person with a tip about the Pasadena hotel incident. A spokesperson for USC told The New York Times and LA Times earlier this week that the phone call had never reached a senior administrator. Nikias reinforced this in Saturday’s letter.
“Neither receptionist found the claims or the caller credible, and so the information was not elevated and did not reach a senior administrator,” Nikias wrote. “Needless to say, we have already put into place a new system that documents and records all incoming calls to the president’s office.”
This is one of a few actions the University has announced in response to the report, amid growing frustration by the USC community at the University’s seemingly sluggish response to the investigation.
Last week, USC announced the hiring of Debra Wong Yang, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and a former member of the Los Angeles Police Commission, to oversee the university’s internal investigation into the incident. According to the LA Times, Yang is also a former USC faculty member, and her firm’s managing partner is a USC alumnus and former chair of its board of councilors.

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USC Admits To History Of Complaints And Disciplining Of Former Med School Dean

Jul 29, 2017 | LAist

By Annie Lloyd

In a letter to the USC community, school President C.L. Max Nikias admitted to a history of complaints and leadership negligence from former Keck School of Medicine Dean Anthony Puliafito, who has been the subject of scandalous revelations from the L.A. Times about his ties to drug use and overdoses during his 10-year tenure with the school. He repeatedly sought company with drug users—often bringing them on the Keck School of Medicine campus after-hours— and dated a former prostitute who ended up overdosing next to Puliafito at a Pasadena hotel.
In the letter, President Nikias outlines how USC received several complaints of Puliafito's behavior as dean, which they addressed through University disciplinary action and leadership coaching. He also describes a pattern of leadership disengagement from Puliafito during the last two years of his tenure. Apparently school administrators confronted Puliafito in March of 2016, and he resigned at the end of that month. Nikias claims USC had no specific knowledge of illegal or illicit activities at the time.
He writes in the letter how a communications staff member received a tip about the Pasadena hotel incident in the fall of 2016, but that it was unsubstantiated. The L.A. Ties says it has spent the past 15 months making innumerable unanswered calls and inquiries with the University.
Up until the L.A. Times released its scathing exposé, USC still had Puliafito represent the school at fundraisers and he was still accepting patients for his ophthalmology practice. The former dean was known for his ability to attract money from high-profile donors, bringing in over $1 billion in donations (no wonder he had a $1.1 million yearly salary). After the investigation was released, Puliafito stopped accepting patients and was put on leave. USC has now hired its own investigator and has barred Puliafito from campus and from having any affiliation with the university, according to the L.A. Times.

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USC Admits It Was Aware Of Med School Dean’s Behavior Before Scandal Went Public

Jul 29, 2017 | CBS Los Angeles

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been publicly linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
The acknowledgement came in a late Friday letter to the campus community in response to concerns Dr. Carmen Puliafito, 66, was dean of the Keck School of Medicine for nearly a decade, even as he struggled with personal issues, before resigning midway through the Spring 2016 semester.
“Over the course of his nearly 10 years as dean, we received various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior, which were addressed through university personnel procedures. This included disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”
The actions noted in Nikias’ letter included:
— November 2015: Being put on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties.
— Fall 2016: An unsubstantiated tip about an incident in a Pasadena hotel where a young woman overdosed and was rushed to a hospital and survived.
Puliafito told university officials the woman was the daughter of a friend and he merely accompanied her to the hospital. Later news reports said he told a dispatcher the 21-year-old woman was his girlfriend.
— March 11, 2016: Reports from two USC employees that Puliafito seemed even further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.
Nikias noted that “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities which would have led to a review of his clinical responsibilities.”
Following the March 11, 2016 complaints, Nikias said Puliafito, a noted eye surgeon, consulted USC Provost Michael Quick but decided to step down and was placed on sabbatical leave.
But Puliafito continued to teach, see patients and represent the university at various functions until a July 17 Los Angeles Times report detailed allegations of drug abuse and questionable friendships.
Nikias said USC administrators got a list of questions about Puliafito from the Times and a copy of a 911 recording from the hotel overdose in March, but “determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues.”
However, the campus investigation into Puliafito’s behavior was re-opened shortly after the Times report became public and hired former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang to lead the effort.
“After being presented with firsthand evidence of Dr. Puliafito’s egregious behavior later that week, the university immediately suspended him from all USC activities related to his faculty position (including patient care) and initiated dismissal proceedings to strip him of his tenure.”
The Times report sparked widespread criticism and concern about USC’s response, but Nikias maintains the situation was handled appropriately.
“In my view,” the letter states, “we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively.
But a USC report about the university’s latest response says the Times “made repeated inquiries over the past 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean and the overdose.

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USC Admits It Received Call About Ex-Dean's Alleged Drug Use

Jul 29, 2017 | NBC Los Angeles

USC President C.L. Max Nikias acknowledged Friday that two receptionists in his office received an anonymous call from a blocked number in March 2016 about an incident in a Pasadena hotel involving-then medical school dean Carmen Puliafito.
"Neither receptionist found the claims or the caller credible and so the information was not elevated and did not reach a senior administrator," Nikias wrote in a letter to the USC community.
"Needless to say, we have already put into place a new system that documents and records all incoming calls to the president's office."
USC has begun the process to terminate Puliafito and strip him of his faculty tenure because of alleged substance abuse activities.
Puliafito, 66, a renowned eye surgeon, led the Keck School of Medicine for almost a decade before resigning in 2016. He remained on the Keck faculty and continued to represent the university at public events as recently as this summer.
The Los Angeles Times reported that during his tenure as dean, Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and addicts who said he used drugs with them. The paper also reported that Puliafito was with a prostitute when she overdosed on drugs in a Pasadena hotel room and had to be rushed to a hospital.
The same day as The Times report, USC said Puliafito was no longer seeing patients and was on leave. Puliafito resigned his $1.1 million-a-year dean's post in March 24, 2016, saying he wanted to explore outside opportunities.
Puliafito is under immediate suspension from the university, barred from its campuses and any association with USC, including attending or participating in university events, Michael W. Quick, the university's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs wrote in a memo to faculty members.
Nikias previously announced that former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang has been hired to investigate the allegations.

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USC had disciplined former medical school dean linked to drug use

Jul 29, 2017 | 89.3 KPCC (Southern California Public Radio)

USC President C.L. Max Nikias revealed Friday that the university had received various complaints and had disciplined Dr. Carmen Puliafito during his tenure as dean of the medical school.
In a letter, Nikias detailed steps that the university had taken to address complaints around Piliafito’s personal and professional conduct. Puliafito received “disciplinary action and professional development coaching,” according to the letter.
The university has been slow to respond publicly about a Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed Puliafito secretly partied, used illicit drugs and hung out with criminals. Nikias acknowledges frustrations around the university’s response.
In 2015, Puliafito was put “on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties,” the letter said. “On March 11, 2016, two USC employees notified Provost [Michael] Quick that Dr. Puliafito seemed further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.”
After consulting with Nikias, Quick confronted Puliafito, according to the letter. Puliafito “chose to resign his position on March 24, 2016 and was placed on sabbatical leave.”
Puliafito publicly said he wanted to explore other opportunities in biotech. He kept his faculty position and continued to accept new patients, according to the Times.
Earlier that month, Puliafito’s girlfriend overdosed while they were partying at a Pasadena hotel, according to the Times’ investigation. Puliafito tells 911 operators he thought she only had alcohol. But the Times reported she took other substances.
Following the Times’ investigation published July 17 2017, the university suspended Puliafito “from all USC activities related to his faculty position (including patient care), and initiated dismissal proceedings to strip him of his tenure.”
Nikias said that “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities.”
Nikias confirmed that two receptionists in his office received a call in March 2016 from a blocked phone number with concerns about Puliafito. Neither receptionist found the claims or the caller credible, “so the information was not elevated to a senior administrator.”
The university has hired law firm Gibson Dunn to “get to the bottom of these issues and make recommendations.”

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USC Admits To Prior Knowledge Of Former Medical School Dean’s Behavior

Jul 29, 2017 | LA West Media

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.A Letter To The Campus Community
The acknowledgement came in a late Friday letter to the campus community in response to concerns Dr. Carmen Puliafito, 66, was dean of the Keck School of Medicine for nearly a decade, even as he struggled with personal issues, before resigning midway through the Spring 2016 semester.“We Received Various Complaints”
“Over the course of his nearly 10 years as dean, we received various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior, which were addressed through university personnel procedures. This included disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”The actions noted in Nikias’ letter included:
— November 2015: being put on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties;
— Fall 2016: an unsubstantiated tip about an incident in a Pasadena hotel where a young woman overdosed and was rushed to a hospital and survived. Puliafito told university officials the woman was the daughter of a friend and he merely accompanied her to the hospital. Later news reports said he told a dispatcher the 21-year-old woman was his girlfriend;
— March 11, 2016: reports from two USC employees that Puliafito seemed even further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.University Leaders Were Not “Aware Of… Illegal Or Illicit Activities”
Nikias noted that “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities which would have led to a review of his clinical responsibilities.”Puliafito Stepped Down
Following the March 11, 2016 complaints, Nikias said Puliafito, a noted eye surgeon, consulted USC Provost Michael Quick but decided to step down and was placed on sabbatical leave.Continued To Teach, See Patients, Represent USC
But Puliafito continued to teach, see patients and represent the university at various functions until a July 17 Los Angeles Times report detailed allegations of drug abuse and questionable friendships.USC Administrators Determined There Were No Problems
Nikias said USC administrators got a list of questions about Puliafito from the Times and a copy of a 911 recording from the hotel overdose in March, but “determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues.”Campus Investigation Opened When Times Report Became Public
However, the campus investigation into Puliafito’s behavior was re- opened shortly after the Times report became public and hired former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang to lead the effort.“The University Immediately Suspended Him”
“After being presented with firsthand evidence of Dr. Puliafito’s egregious behavior later that week, the university immediately suspended him from all USC activities related to his faculty position (including patient care) and initiated dismissal proceedings to strip him of his tenure.”Times Report Sparks Widespread Criticism About USC Response
The Times report sparked widespread criticism and concern about USC’s response, but Nikias maintains the situation was handled appropriately.
“In my view,” the letter states, “we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively.The Times Made Repeated Inquiries Over 15 Months
But a USC report about the university’s latest response says the Times “made repeated inquiries over the past 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean and the overdose.“USC… Never Responded”
“USC’s leaders never responded to the inquiries,” the Times reported. “Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to the Times by courier, unopened.”

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USC scandal: Receptionists ignored warning call over med school dean Pasadena drug incident

Jul 29, 2017 | My News LA

By Chris Jennewein

USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
The acknowledgement came in a late Friday letter to the campus community in response to concerns Dr. Carmen Puliafito, 66, was dean of the Keck School of Medicine for nearly a decade, even as he struggled with personal issues, before resigning midway through the Spring 2016 semester.
“Over the course of his nearly 10 years as dean, we received various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior, which were addressed through university personnel procedures. This included disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”
The actions noted in Nikias’ letter included:
— November 2015: being put on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties;
— Fall 2016: an unsubstantiated tip about an incident in a Pasadena hotel where a young woman overdosed and was rushed to a hospital and survived. Puliafito told university officials the woman was the daughter of a friend and he merely accompanied her to the hospital. Later news reports said he told a dispatcher the 21-year-old woman was his girlfriend;
— March 11, 2016: reports from two USC employees that Puliafito seemed even further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.
Nikias noted that “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities which would have led to a review of his clinical responsibilities.”
Following the March 11, 2016 complaints, Nikias said Puliafito, a noted eye surgeon, consulted USC Provost Michael Quick but decided to step down and was placed on sabbatical leave.
But Puliafito continued to teach, see patients and represent the university at various functions until a July 17 Los Angeles Times report detailed allegations of drug abuse and questionable friendships.
Nikias said USC administrators got a list of questions about Puliafito from the Times and a copy of a 911 recording from the hotel overdose in March, but “determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues.”
However, the campus investigation into Puliafito’s behavior was re- opened shortly after the Times report became public and hired former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang to lead the effort.
“After being presented with firsthand evidence of Dr. Puliafito’s egregious behavior later that week, the university immediately suspended him from all USC activities related to his faculty position (including patient care) and initiated dismissal proceedings to strip him of his tenure.”
The Times report sparked widespread criticism and concern about USC’s response, but Nikias maintains the situation was handled appropriately.
“In my view,” the letter states, “we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively.
But a USC report about the university’s latest response says the Times “made repeated inquiries over the past 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean and the overdose.
“USC’s leaders never responded to the inquiries,” the Times reported. “Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to the Times by courier, unopened.”

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Complaints of drinking, abusive behavior dogged USC medical school dean for years

Jul 30, 2017 | Los Angeles Times

By Harriet Ryan, Paul Pringle, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Adam Elmahrek

USC faced a choice five years ago: Keep Dr. Carmen Puliafito at the helm of the Keck School of Medicine or replace him.
As dean, Puliafito had brought in star researchers, raised hundreds of millions of dollars and boosted the school’s national ranking — all critical steps in USC’s plan to become an elite research institution.
But what might have been an easy decision to renew his appointment was complicated by a groundswell of opposition from the medical school’s faculty and staff.
Keck employees had complained repeatedly about what they considered Puliafito’s hair-trigger temper, public humiliation of colleagues and perceived drinking problem, and many were adamant he be removed, according to current and former university employees as well as four letters of complaint reviewed by The Times.
The people who spoke to The Times include a former USC administrator who handled personnel grievances, the medical school’s former human resources director and prominent faculty members.
‘An embarrassment to our school’
“As a representative of USC, the Dean is an embarrassment to our School and the University,” one Keck professor wrote in a March 2012 letter to the university provost.
Still, USC President C.L. Max Nikias opted to reappoint Puliafito, giving him a new five-year term with an annual salary of more than $1 million.
Puliafito’s problems escalated. As The Times has reported, he partied with a circle of addicts, prostitutes and other criminals who said he used drugs with them, including on campus.
Late Friday, hours after the newspaper informed USC it was preparing to publish this story, Nikias sent a letter to the campus community acknowledging that the university received “various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior” during his nearly decade-long tenure as dean.
Nikias didn’t provide details of the complaints but wrote that the university took disciplinary action against Puliafito and provided him “professional development coaching.” He didn’t specify when.
The president also offered his first public account of the circumstances of Puliafito’s abrupt resignation in the middle of the spring 2016 term, writing that he stepped down after Provost Michael Quick confronted him with new complaints about his behavior.
Puliafito, now 66, was allowed to continue representing USC at official functions and remained on the faculty and hospital staff.
Nikias said Friday that at the time of the dean’s resignation, “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities, which would have led to a review of his clinical responsibilities.”
Over the last two weeks, Nikias and other university leaders have said they were stunned by the revelations about the former dean.
‘The difficulty of just being around him’
But interviews with two dozen of Puliafito’s former colleagues suggest that complaints about his behavior were widespread and that at least some reached USC’s upper management. The colleagues said Puliafito’s conduct hurt morale and posed a risk to the school’s reputation.
“There were complaints about his demeanor, behavior and manner,” said Jody Shipper, who headed USC’s equity and diversity office for more than a decade. She left in 2015.
James Lynch, who was the medical school’s human resources director for five years, said employees came to him “fairly regularly” about misbehavior by Puliafito, including rudeness and suspected drunk driving.
“Many of the people who worked for him complained about the difficulty of just being around him,” Lynch said.
Current Keck dean Dr. Rohit Varma told a gathering of medical school students this month that Puliafito had received treatment for alcoholism.
Puliafito did not respond to a request for comment. He previously told The Times he resigned of his own accord to pursue a job in private industry.
Concerns about him were contained in lengthy written evaluations in 2012 that were assembled to help determine Puliafito’s fitness for a second term.
“Everybody I knew trashed him, and he still got [re]hired,” said former USC ophthalmology professor Dr. Kenneth L. Lu, who moved to UCLA in 2014.
Many faculty members and staff agreed to speak about Puliafito on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns over their careers. Since The Times’ report, USC has hired a crisis management firm to handle press inquiries and instructed employees at Keck not to speak to the media. The school also asked that doctors at an affiliate, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, refer all Times inquiries about Puliafito back to the university.
Several interviewed said they were speaking out of a desire to help the institution they loved. Most expressed shock at reports of the former dean’s drug use.
In 2007, then-Provost Nikias, who became president three years later, chaired the committee that selected Puliafito, a renowned ophthalmologist, as medical dean. Many of his new colleagues initially found him brilliant and noted his easy rapport with patients and students. He struck them as extremely hardworking and committed to elevating Keck’s national profile.
“In my mind, anytime I saw him, he wanted to make this school grow,” said Bill Watson, a former vice president for development who worked with the dean from 2010 to 2013.
He was prone to anger, however, many former colleagues said. Minor inconveniences sent him into screaming, red-faced rages at staff meetings, they said.
“The F-word was in every other sentence,” said one former professor. She said she heard a high-ranking Keck administrator vomit in the ladies’ room after one dressing-down by the dean.
‘The dean was a heavy drinker’
Lynch, the former human resources director, confirmed that Puliafito upbraided that administrator on several occasions. “It was certainly challenging, and she ultimately left,” he said. Reached by The Times, the woman declined to comment.
One Keck physician said some on Puliafito’s support staff consulted her professionally to cope with how the dean treated them.
“I literally put people on medical leave for stress … related to working with him,” the physician recalled.
Others were concerned that he was drinking too much at USC events.
“The dean was a heavy drinker,” Lynch recalled. “He was fond of martinis. He would have several.”
He said he never saw Puliafito “do anything particularly outrageous” but fielded multiple complaints from a female staffer disturbed that he was driving home from the events at which he’d been drinking.
“She was concerned he might get in an accident and hurt himself or someone else,” Lynch said. He didn’t want to confront the dean because he thought it would be counterproductive, he said, but he told the woman, “If you are concerned, why don’t you mention it to him?”
Lynch, who was human resources director from 2009 to 2014, said he encouraged faculty and staff to complain directly to Puliafito themselves and did not pass on Keck employees’ complaints to the university administration.
“It never occurred to me to do it,” he said.
While Puliafito’s personal behavior was distasteful, Lynch said, he was “an absolute genius” who was improving the medical school.
“He’s kind of a pain in the ass, but he gets results,” he said, adding that he felt administrators shared that view.
One senior faculty member said he phoned the provost’s office after an encounter in which Puliafito seemed to be intoxicated.
An administrator in the office who took down his complaint, he said, thanked him for making the report and assured him “it would be reviewed at the highest level.”
He said he was not told the outcome and assumed it was being handled confidentially.
Puliafito’s behavior caused some of his colleagues to leave. The medical school’s admissions dean, Erin Quinn, who had been at USC since the early 1980s, stepped down from “a position that I loved” in 2011 “because I couldn't work under Dr. Puliafito’s leadership team.”
“It had changed from previous deans and compromised my values,” she said.
Glowing self-evaluation
When Puliafito’s first term was nearing an end, then-Provost Elizabeth Garrett asked Keck faculty to complete written evaluations of his tenure — a standard university practice and, in the provost’s words, “a crucial part of our evaluation of a dean’s effectiveness in leading the school.”
Puliafito submitted a 19-page self-evaluation in which he listed myriad accomplishments. He noted that he had raised more than $500 million in contributions, recruited prominent researchers from Harvard, Stanford and other prestigious schools and pushed Keck’s ranking in U.S. News & World Report up five spots to No. 34.
Professors were given the option of completing an anonymous online survey or writing letters. Some wrote lengthy responses filled with specific examples of Puliafito’s shortcomings and urged the administration to replace him, according to interviews.
The Times reviewed four of these evaluations.
“His presence has created a very negative atmosphere at KSOM which has alienated a large number of faculty and chairs and created a siege mentality, in which faculty and staff are constantly worried about their welfare and ability to maintain a productive environment in which to work,” one professor wrote.
‘A very low level of faculty morale’
Another longtime faculty member described the dean as “unpredictable” and “given to erratic behavior.”
“A major, overarching problem at the KSOM is that the Dean’s lack of effective and collegial leadership have resulted in a very low level of faculty morale,” the professor wrote.
A USC employee who has seen the faculty evaluations filed in 2012 said a large number were highly negative and detailed in their criticism of Puliafito. Many of the others highlighted his strengths and weaknesses. The overall feedback showed that he was a polarizing figure at the school, the employee said.
When Garrett announced in June 2012 that Nikias had rehired Puliafito, “no one could believe it,” another senior faculty member recalled.
In a letter to the faculty and staff, Garrett said she had discussed employees’ feedback with the dean, “including the matters on which some of you believe he could pay additional attention or that may require a different approach.”
“I am certain he will move forward with your suggestions firmly in mind,” she wrote.
Nikias declined to speak about the complaints made against Puliafito. Garrett left USC to become the president of Cornell University in 2015; she died last year.
Puliafito’s conduct became even more troubling in his second term.
The Times investigation published earlier this month found that the dean spent long hours partying with a group of younger addicts, prostitutes and other criminals in 2015 and 2016, and brought some to his Keck office in the middle of the night.
USC colleagues recalled that, during the same period, Puliafito was often absent during working hours.
“His staff would say, ‘I don’t know where the dean is. I will try to call his cellphone,’ ” said a university administrator who regularly had business with Puliafito.
Puliafito put on notice
In November 2015, Provost Quick put Puliafito “on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties,” Nikias wrote in his letter to the university community Friday.
In March 2016, the dean was with a 21-year-old woman in a Pasadena hotel room when she overdosed. The woman, Sarah Warren, told The Times she and Puliafito resumed using drugs as soon as she was released from the hospital.
A witness to the overdose phoned Nikias’ office March 14 and threatened to go to the press if the school didn’t take action against the dean.
Nikias said in his Friday letter that two receptionists who spoke to the witness did not find the report credible and did not pass it on to supervisors.
Just a few days earlier, Nikias said, two university employees had come forward with separate complaints about the dean. They told Quick that Puliafito “seemed further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.”
“The Provost consulted with me promptly and, as a result, confronted Dr. Puliafito. He chose to resign his position on March 24, 2016, and was placed on sabbatical leave,” the president wrote.
On the Keck campus, the timing of Puliafito’s resignation — on a Thursday in the middle of the school term with no advance notice — seemed suspicious.
“Everybody read it as cover story,” said one senior faculty member. But, he added, “there was a sense of relief.”
Nikias and top USC officials honored Puliafito and praised his leadership a few months later at a campus reception. He continued to practice medicine at USC clinics.
In his Friday night letter, Nikias wrote that school officials didn’t hear about the overdose until they received an “unsubstantiated tip” months after Puliafito stepped down as dean.
“When we approached Dr. Puliafito about the incident, he stated a friend’s daughter had overdosed at a Pasadena hotel and he had accompanied her to the hospital,” he wrote.
The president also said that in March, The Times did provide the university with “detailed questions about, and a copy of a 911 recording from the Pasadena hotel incident.” The recording was “immediately referred to the Hospital Medical Staff,” a committee that assesses clinical competency, Nikias said. In the 911 call, Puliafito describes himself as a doctor and the woman who had the overdose as his “girlfriend.”
The clinical competency committee “determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues,” the president said.
It wasn’t until The Times published its report that the school barred Puliafito from seeing patients and the state medical board launched an investigation of him.

On Friday, USC’s crisis management firm released a letter from the chairs of 23 Keck departments. Addressed to USC’s board of trustees, it affirmed their support for Nikias and Quick.

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USC med school dean scandal no surprise to president: Decade of complaints, discipline

Jul 30, 2017 | My News LA

By Toni McAllister

The USC scandal over a disgraced ex-medical school dean may not have been such a surprise to the school’s leaders after all.
USC President C.L. Max Nikias has acknowledged that university officials received complaints and took disciplinary actions against a former medical school dean who has been linked to substance abuse and associating with known criminals before the situation became publicly known.
The acknowledgement came in a late Friday letter to the campus community in response to concerns about Dr. Carmen Puliafito, 66, who was dean of the Keck School of Medicine for nearly a decade, even as he struggled with personal issues, before resigning midway through the Spring 2016 semester.
“Over the course of his nearly 10 years as dean, we received various complaints about Dr. Puliafito’s behavior, which were addressed through university personnel procedures. This included disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”
The actions noted in Nikias’ letter included:
— November 2015: being put on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties;
— Fall 2016: an unsubstantiated tip about an incident in a Pasadena hotel where a young woman overdosed and was rushed to a hospital and survived. Puliafito told university officials the woman was the daughter of a friend and he merely accompanied her to the hospital. Later news reports said he told a dispatcher the 21-year-old woman was his girlfriend;
— March 11, 2016: reports from two USC employees that Puliafito seemed even further removed from his duties and expressed concerns about his behavior.
Nikias noted that “no university leader was aware of any illegal or illicit activities which would have led to a review of his clinical responsibilities.”
Following the March 11, 2016 complaints, Nikias said Puliafito, a noted eye surgeon, consulted USC Provost Michael Quick but decided to step down and was placed on sabbatical leave.
But Puliafito continued to teach, see patients and represent the university at various functions until a July 17 Los Angeles Times report detailed allegations of drug abuse and questionable friendships.
Nikias said USC administrators got a list of questions about Puliafito from the Times and a copy of a 911 recording from the hotel overdose in March, but “determined that there were no existing patient care complaints and no known clinical issues.”
However, the campus investigation into Puliafito’s behavior was re-opened shortly after the Times report became public and hired former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang to lead the effort.
“After being presented with firsthand evidence of Dr. Puliafito’s egregious behavior later that week, the university immediately suspended him from all USC activities related to his faculty position (including patient care) and initiated dismissal proceedings to strip him of his tenure.”
The Times report sparked widespread criticism and concern about USC’s response, but Nikias maintains the situation was handled appropriately.
“In my view,” the letter states, “we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively.”
But a Times report on the university’s latest response says its reporters “made repeated inquiries about Puliafito” over the past 15 months, in some cases describing information about the dean and the overdose.
“USC’s leaders never responded to the inquiries,” the Times reported. “Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to the Times by courier, unopened.”

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Of Moral Turpitude

Jul 31, 2017 | Insider Higher Ed

By Rick Seltzer

Successful people in power sometimes behave badly -- in both their professional capacities and in their personal lives.
The last few weeks in higher education provide two prominent examples. The head football coach at the University of Mississippi resigned July 20 after a call from his mobile phone to an escort service was revealed. The University of Southern California took steps to fire its former medical school dean from the faculty after allegations came to light that he repeatedly used hard drugs and socialized with a group of much younger people, some of whom had criminal backgrounds and one of whom overdosed in his presence.
In both cases, the universities acted after outside parties brought leaders’ behavior to light. The two situations raised questions about the universities’ priorities and processes. They also put the institutions' ethical and moral standards for their leaders under scrutiny.
Those standards aren’t always clear, especially in a time when social mores are rapidly changing and the line between professional and personal life seems to be ever blurring. Nor are they always consistent between different jobs at different institutions in various parts of the country.
But the fact remains that moral standards do exist for leaders in higher education. And the cases of those who run afoul of accepted behavior are an important reflection of those standards in a world where messy and unclear morality is often obscured further by the temptations of money and success.
Mississippi Coach Called Out
Situations involving leaders who are said to have violated moral or ethical standards often come with a large share of twists and turns. The case of the University of Mississippi and its head football coach, Hugh Freeze, is no exception.
Freeze had coached the Ole Miss football team since the end of 2011, a time period that included a win in the lucrative Sugar Bowl in 2016. But the NCAA has also been investigating the university and its football program under a wide-ranging infractions case. It delivered a notice of allegations Jan. 22, 2016.
The way the university and its football program reacted to the NCAA investigation is at the center of a lawsuit filed by its previous football coach, Houston Nutt. The lawsuit, filed this month, alleges Ole Miss athletics officials carried out a “misinformation campaign” over several years to mislead the media, boosters and recruiting prospects about the nature of the NCAA investigation’s targets. The strategy, the suit alleges, was to have off-the-record conversations with journalists to say that most of the NCAA’s allegations were targeted at Nutt and his staff instead of Freeze. The strategy escalated, with Freeze courting “the entire 2016 recruiting class under false and misleading pretenses,” the lawsuit says. It claims the university violated its severance agreement with Nutt, which prevents the institution from making statements that could damage the coach’s reputation.
Nutt’s lawyer gathered phone records in an attempt to prove Freeze and other university officials contacted journalists. In the process, he, along with the help of a researcher who is a fan of the Ole Miss rival Mississippi State, found a one-minute call from Freeze's university-issued mobile phone to an escort service in January 2016. At one point he emailed the university’s general counsel, suggesting a deeper examination of the phone records because of a call that would be “highly embarrassing for all of you and extremely difficult to explain.”
Nutt's lawyer would spread word of the phone call to the media, explaining the move by saying the lawsuit was in federal court, not “junior high school,” according to Yahoo Sports.
University officials said they determined Freeze’s phone had never called that number at any other time, initially labeling it a dialing mistake. But they looked at the rest of Freeze’s phone records, finding what Ole Miss Athletic Director Ross Bjork called a “pattern of conduct that is not consistent with our expectations.”
Freeze resigned without a buyout or settlement. A university spokesman contacted for additional comment referred to a July 20 press conference at which university officials announced the coach's departure. Officials said at that press conference that Freeze’s privacy is important and that they would protect information regarding his pattern of behavior.
“While Coach Freeze served our university well in many regards during his tenure, we simply cannot accept the conduct in his personal life that we have discovered,” Mississippi Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter said. Officials cited no additional allegations related to Freeze's management of the football program in the case. In fact, they specifically said his departure had nothing to do with the NCAA investigation.
Freeze told USA Today Wednesday that “God is good, even in difficult times.”
Officials also said at the press conference announcing Freeze's departure that if he had not resigned, they would have terminated him under a clause in his contract for “moral turpitude.”
Moral Turpitude
While moral turpitude may sound like a Victorian-era label, it’s a term that frequently appears in contracts and state law. But it carries a definition that is by no means standardized.
Moral turpitude is normally, but not always, defined by court decisions in a particular state, said Raymond D. Cotton, a Washington-based lawyer who represents boards and presidents in contract negotiations. When it is included in a university employment contract, moral turpitude isn’t always defined. It’s often included alongside a laundry list of other undesirable behavior, like fraud, misrepresentation or plagiarism.
Moral turpitude can also come up in cases of faculty dismissal. The American Association of University Professors recommends faculty who are dismissed for cause receive either notice or salary -- unless moral turpitude is involved.
The AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure identifies moral turpitude as an exceptional case in which a professor may be denied a year’s teaching or pay. It applies to behavior that goes beyond warranting a discharge and is “so utterly blameworthy as to make it inappropriate to require the offering of a year’s teaching or pay.”
The standard is not that moral sensibilities in a particular community have been broken, AAUP documents show. It is behavior that would bring condemnation from the faculty.
Moral turpitude is also in the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Faculty handbooks at colleges and universities often incorporate moral turpitude for cases of faculty dismissal.
When Cotton is representing boards of trustees who are hiring presidents, he always tries to write in a moral turpitude clause, he said. It gives trustees more power in a situation where they feel a leader has violated standards of behavior.
“I want to put it in the hands of the board,” he said.
Still, courts have stated that moral turpitude is “an elusive concept incapable of precise definition.” Experts generally agree its definition is likely to change over time.
“Take Colorado,” Cotton said. “Five years ago, smoking marijuana on the street could be defined as an act of moral turpitude. Not today. It’s legal.”
Several experts likened moral turpitude to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” definition of hard-core pornography in 1964. But some resisted labeling the term as a simple catchall in a contract.
“I think it’s impossible in a contract or in a policy to describe every form of potential misconduct,” said Ann Franke, the president of Wise Results, a consulting firm that addresses legal issues and risk management. “Moral turpitude draws a line. It’s a line that sets off extremely bad behavior from sort of normally bad behavior.”
Franke hasn’t seen many struggles play out at universities over what does and does not constitute moral turpitude. Someone charged with a moral turpitude violation has typically done something significant, she said.
“That individual would run additional reputational risk if they were to sue the institution saying it was only pretty bad, it wasn’t horribly bad,” Franke said. “That’s not a lawsuit that a lot of people would be eager to bring against a former employer.”
Franke didn’t comment on specific cases. But she acknowledged there is often a tension between the urge of a college or university to help a leader who may have behavioral health issues and its need to have leaders that its board, faculty and students trust.
“In higher education there is often a laudable impulse to try to assist people and help them grow and overcome problems,” she said. “Knowing when that approach is inappropriate or no longer applicable can be challenging.”
Yet some criticized the term “moral turpitude” as harking back to a bygone era of rigid standards for behavior.
“The whole notion of moral turpitude has a very mixed history,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University who edited The Ethics of Sport (Oxford University Press). “It’s a quaint, antiquated concept, a 19th-century agreement about how gentlemen -- I’ll use that term purposefully -- behave.”
Caplan does not oppose the idea of a policy intended to ensure officials uphold others' trust, Caplan said. But he’s not sure the term “moral turpitude” is specific enough to be effective. The distinction between what is acceptable in personal and professional life could probably be laid out more clearly in most cases, he said.
Definitions of morality become tricky in a world of evolving standards, Caplan said. He also pointed out that in the world of college athletics, different people are held to different standards. He gave the example of a benchwarmer being more likely to lose his scholarship after a bar fight than a star quarterback would be.
The idea can easily be extended to coaches and university officials.
Money talks, but so does success, Caplan said. Right or wrong, what boosters and donors are thinking can matter when it comes to defining what an institution views as unacceptable behavior.
“It matters when you’re trying to placate a board that has a lot of tensions around gender equity on it versus a bunch of boys who love that football program,” Caplan said. “It’s fairly interesting that those who control access to the top positions -- boards and trustees -- they actually at the end of the day end up setting the standard for moral turpitude.”
Doctors and Drugs
Another situation unfolding that lays bare questions of morality, money and power among high-ranking university officials is that of the University of Southern California and its former medical school dean.
That dean, Carmen Puliafito, was an eye surgeon with a good reputation. He was well regarded for raising money and improving the medical school’s rankings and profile since he took over about a decade ago. Press photographs show him at swanky events posing with celebrities.
Then the Los Angeles Times published an explosive story July 17 saying the 66-year-old Puliafito “kept company with a circle of criminals and drug users who said he used methamphetamine and other drugs with them” in 2015 and 2016.
The story described photographs and videos the newspaper said it reviewed. In one, a tuxedo-wearing Puliafito was said to swallow an orange pill he described as ecstasy. In another, he was said to use a butane torch to heat a glass pipe outfitted for methamphetamine use before inhaling and exhaling white smoke, while a woman sitting next to him was said to smoke heroin. Some photos reportedly showed Puliafito's associates in late-night visits to the dean’s office at the USC Health Sciences Campus in Boyle Heights holding drug paraphernalia.
Puliafito was also said to have written prescriptions for asthma inhalers for his associates to help their lungs, which were irritated from smoking methamphetamine and marijuana.
Puliafito resigned as dean -- a post with a $1.1 million annual salary -- in March 2016. He told the Times the next month that he resigned so he could pursue a biotech job.
Three weeks before his resignation, he was present in a Pasadena hotel room when a 21-year-old woman overdosed. A police report said officers found methamphetamine in the hotel room, but they did not make arrests. The incident was not exposed until the Times report.
The woman told the Times she and Puliafito had been partying a the hotel for two days when the overdose occurred. She said after she woke up in the hospital, Puliafito picked her up and they returned to a hotel room to continue “the party,” the Times reported. She also told the newspaper she was working as a prostitute in 2015 when she first met Puliafito.
After he left the role of dean, Puliafito remained on the medical school faculty and was said to be accepting new patients at campus eye clinics when the Times story was published.
The story's publication set off a two-week period of public back-and-forth between the newspaper and USC. The university put out statements reacting to the situation and explaining itself. The Times published articles calling the university's actions and explanations into doubt.
After the story was published, the university announced Puliafito had been placed on leave from the school of medicine and that he was not seeing patients. In a July 18 letter posted by the university, president C. L. Max Nikias said USC condemns the unlawful use or distribution of drugs. It also expressed concern about Puliafito.
“Unfortunately, the issue of substance abuse is not uncommon and impacts individuals at all levels of society,” the letter said. “Reports of high-powered executives, doctors and others with substance abuse issues have become all too common -- individuals who function in their workplace but have serious issues affecting their private lives. We understand the frustrations expressed about this situation, and we want to assure our community that we are taking all of the proper steps to examine and address it. More broadly, we are working to determine how we can best prevent these kinds of circumstances moving forward.”
On July 21, Provost Michael W. Quick wrote another letter saying the university had been given access to information on Puliafito’s behavior. That day was the first time it saw the information firsthand, Quick wrote. In response, the university started the process of terminating Puliafito’s employment and stripping him of tenure.
The same day, Nikias posted another letter saying the university had hired a law firm to investigate Puliafito’s conduct, the university’s response and its policies and procedures.
“We are outraged and disgusted by this individual’s behavior,” Nikias wrote. “It runs counter to our values and everything for which our university stands.”
Two days later, the Los Angeles Times posted another article pushing back against the idea that USC officials had only recently learned about Puliafito's alleged drug use. The newspaper repeatedly inquired about the dean over 15 months, it said, sometimes describing information reporters had gathered. The Times wrote about a series of emails sent and phone calls made to officials including Puliafito, a senior vice president for university relations and the university's president, Nikias. In one case, a reporter delivered a sealed note requesting an interview about the matter to Nikias's home, only to have the note returned, unopened, the next day by courier with a letter from the university's vice president for public relations and marketing saying the reporter had crossed the line. The article went on to quote medical ethicists who said USC had a duty to investigate allegations against Puliafito right away, even if they were incomplete, because of his position as a medical professional and leader.
The negative headlines kept coming. A Times column published July 26 brought up the case of former USC head football coach Steve Sarkisian, who was fired after the newspaper investigated his alcohol use at a previous job. It was titled “Yet Another USC Scandal Requires Blunt Talk About Money Culture and Values on Campus.” It quoted an anonymous USC physician who said he hopes the president does not keep his job over the handling of the situation but ultimately expressed skepticism because “money wins out.”
A Times editorial argued the full story about Puliafito should have come out last year, because an anonymous witness had called Nikias’s office and told two employees about the overdose for which Puliafito was present shortly after it happened. That same source called the newspaper, causing it to investigate over the next 15 months. The editorial said the Times repeatedly made phone calls and sent emails to USC leaders in an attempt to discuss allegations, only to be ignored or rebuffed.
“A reporter even hand delivered a letter to Nikias’s home, asking to discuss the circumstances of Puliafito’s resignation,” the editorial said. “The letter was returned to the Times by courier, along with a letter of complaint from USC’s vice president for public relations, who said the reporter ‘crossed the line’ by taking a letter to Nikias’s house. How, then, can USC leaders be taken seriously when they feign shock and outrage at the Puliafito story?”
Contacted Friday, the university answered questions from Inside Higher Ed by referring to past letters posted by USC’s leaders. One of them was a July 26 letter from Nikias saying he was forming a task force to address questions raised by the organization. “We could have done better,” he wrote.
“As a result of this recent incident, it is clear to us now that the university currently has only loosely defined procedures and guidelines for dealing with employee behavior outside the workplace that may be improper or illegal and has the capacity to affect USC,” it said. “And, presently, the university has very limited capacity to conduct investigations and follow up on leads or anonymous reports of such employee behavior.”
Then Saturday, the Times published another article after Nikias sent an additional letter to the USC campus late Friday. In that letter, the president said the university had in fact received complaints about Puliafito when he was dean. Puliafito had been disciplined and received professional development coaching, Nikias wrote.
The provost, Quick, had placed Puliafito on notice for being disengaged in 2015, the letter said. In March 2016, two USC employees told the provost Puliafito was even more removed from his duties. That prompted officials to confront Puliafito, who then resigned and was placed on sabbatical.
Nikias wrote that at the time, university leaders were unaware of illegal or illicit activities. He went on to say a communications staff member received an "unsubstantiated tip" about the Pasadena hotel incident in the fall of 2016. Officials asked Puliafito about the incident, and he said a friend's daughter had overdosed and he accompanied her to the hospital, the letter said.
The president also acknowledged that the Times this March provided the university with questions and a copy of a 911 recording from the Pasadena hotel incident. The university referred the recording to a committee that assesses clinical competency, which found no existing patient care complaints or known clinical issues.
That investigation was reopened after the Times published its first report on Puliafito this month, Nikias wrote. The Medical Board of California also started an investigation into the allegations the report contained. And the university moved to fire the former dean.
“In my view, we acted when we felt we had the information necessary to act, and then we acted decisively,” Nikias wrote.
Sunday the Times published a piece saying that medical school employees had complained repeatedly about Puliafito, his temper, his publicly humiliating colleagues and what they perceived as him having a drinking problem. The piece said that Nikias's Friday letter was sent after USC had been contacted by the newspaper about the story it planned for Sunday.
The Times interviewed current and former university employees for the piece. It also reviewed letters of complaint from 2012, when the university was evaluating the dean and preparing to give him another contract.
One of the letters said Puliafito had alienated faculty and created a “siege mentality” in which employees were worried about their welfare, according to the Times.
Puliafito submitted a 19-page self-evaluation. He pointed out that he had raised more than $500 million and recruited prominent researchers, the Times reported.
Despite complaints, USC reappointed Puliafito to a new five-year term in 2012, the newspaper wrote.
At least some complaints reached USC upper management, according to the Times. Among numerous examples, it said one unnamed senior faculty member reported calling the provost's offices after Puliafito appeared intoxicated during an encounter.
The Sunday report also quoted an admissions dean who said she left her job because she could not work under Puliafito. An unnamed administrator was quoted saying that Puliafito was often absent during working hours in 2015 and 2016.
It is not clear what mechanism the university is using to fire Puliafito.
USC’s Faculty Handbook does cover moral turpitude. The handbook lists moral turpitude as adequate grounds for faculty dismissal alongside violations like neglect of duty, incompetence, violations of academic freedom, misconduct and unmanaged conflicts of interest.
Consequences of Violated Trust
The boundaries of acceptable behavior aren’t always clear until they’re crossed. But some are clearer than others, even if acceptable behavior is more of a fuzzy spectrum than a series of bright lines -- smoking methamphetamine is not the same thing as smoking marijuana, which is not the same thing as drinking a martini.
Regardless, once the boundaries are crossed, the USC situation serves as a reminder that the fallout can be damaging to leaders up the food chain.
The argument can be made that Puliafito’s behavior broke moral standards. One can also be made that USC leadership broke the community’s trust in the way it reacted.
Negative press has been flooding in from across the country. Nikias’s job could be in jeopardy. And faculty have been roiled.
Paul Rosenbloom is a computer science professor who is the president of the faculty at USC. He declined to specifically address Puliafito’s alleged behavior other than to say faculty members have been upset and concerned. Faculty members offered mixed reactions to the way the university handled the situation, Rosenbloom said. Some are uncertain about what was actually done and why, and there have been responses ranging from support to condemnation to calls to wait for more information.
A crisis-management firm hired by USC released a letter from the chairs of 23 departments at the medical school affirming support for Nikias and Quick, the Times reported.
It shouldn’t be lost, however, that even if USC leaders tried to do everything right, they were faced with a difficult scenario.
“It really is a land mine when you’re dealing with off-campus behavioral mental health, substance-abuse issues with an employee and protecting your community,” said Sean Rossall, a crisis strategist based in Los Angeles who is CEO and managing partner at Dick Jones Communications. Rossall also received his master’s degree from USC, but he is not working for the university in this case.
“What is expected as ethical, moral behavior of employees around the clock as a broad community representative of the university?” Rossall said. “I think it’s really going to force them to think about that and think about the type of culture they impart with their people.”
Nikias raised some of the same questions in his most recent public letter. He wrote that the university would be addressing questions about balancing individual rights and privacy rights against protecting faculty, students and others. He asked how the university should separate allegations of criminal behavior that should be reported to police from problems with addiction that require compassion.
He also asked how the university can make sure incoming reports, “even if anonymous and questionable,” get passed on to higher officials and the compliance office.
Generally, allegations against those dealing with vulnerable populations need to be taken seriously and investigated, experts agreed. That would include deans dealing with students, doctors treating patients and coaches on the football field.
“They need to adopt a policy of investigate first and find the answers so you can make informed decisions,” Rossall said. “It is a tough needle to thread, but not impossible. You can conduct investigations in a manner that’s respectful of the employee without jeopardizing things.”

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Broadcast Media Coverage

Eyewitness News 4:00PM

Jul 29, 2017 | ABC Los Angeles

View clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28547931?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: new details are surfacing about the growing scandal involving the former dean of the usc keck school of medicine. usc releasing new information about an overdose at a posh pasadena hotel involving dr. carmen puliafito. he's accused of using illegal drugs, paying prostitutes, and partying with teenagers. an "l.a. times" investigati found that last year, a woman overdosed in his presence. now school officials are admitting two receptionists in usc's president's office received a call about that incident that night. the president says neither receptionist found the claims credible and didn't report them. usc has begun the process to terminate puliafito. chelsea: that scandal has some calling for the resignation of usc president c.l. max nikias. l.a. mayor eric garcetti addressed that, question along with the overall scandal, on an upcoming edition of "eyewitnes newsmakers." >> i am as concerned as anybody that a year ago this happened and for a long time was kept from the medical school and the public. i think it warrants a full investigation. i am grad they -- i'm glad they brought in outside folks and i think people should take responsibility. if they knew about things beforehand and did nothing about it in my moral universe you're held accountable.

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Bob Brill

Jul 29, 2017 | KNXAM (KNX) (Los Angeles)

Listen to clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28547935?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: usc president has admitted that the school was tipped off as early as march of last year did the dean of its medical school may have been involved in some shady activities . allegations that doctor carmen believed he was using drugs and hanging out with dealers and prostitutes came to light in a recent la trying to expose a now the school says they received two anonymous tips that said the renowned eye surgeon was involved in the overdose of a woman in the pasadena motel in20 16 . the president of the university says the callers weren't considered credible at the time and there is now a new system in place to insure that such information gets proper scrutiny.

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Pat Haslam

Jul 29, 2017 | KNXAM (KNX) (Orange County)

Listen to clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28547968?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: the president of usc confirming a report that his office that a disturbing report more than 16 months ago about a man who was then the dean of the university medical school he says it was an anonymous call accusing carmen puliafito of being with a prostitute in a pasadena hotel which she overdosed on drugs drugs. he says the call didn't seem credible at the time so it didn't trigger any action by the campus. since then poor your feet toe is resigned is dean of the medical school he's now in the process of being fired by u. s. c. because of new allegations that he hung out with criminals and addicts and did drugs with them

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KTLA 5 Morning News at 6

Jul 30, 2017 | CW Los Angeles

View clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28548033?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: usc now admits it received complaints and even disciplined a former medical school dean who's at the center of a drug abuse scandal. doctor carmen pulia- fito resigned as dean of the u-s-c keck medical school more than a year ago. he quit three weeks after a young woman overdosed in his presence at a pasadena hotel. an l.a. times investigation alleges he used drugs and associated with young drug abusers on numerous occasions. the university says it did receive complaints about pulia-fito and put him on notice for neglecting his duties. but u-s-c's president says the school was not aware of any illegal drug activity before the dean quit. however, the times investigation contradicts that statement.

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Eyewitness Newsmakers

Jul 30, 2017 | ABC Los Angeles

View clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28548053?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: all right, another topic, another venerable institution. los angeles university of southern california, the head of the school of medicine now gone, but involved in what appears to be allegations of drug abuse, partying, and that this was known, allegedly, by the university. some calls for president nikias to resign or step down. where do you stand on that? >> well, an appalling story, i think, for all of us, and even knowing that this man was able to treat patients after he stepped down as dean, i'm as concerned as everybody that for a long time -- this was a year ago this happened -- he stepped down and was kept from the medical school and kept from the public, and i think it warrants a full investigation. i'm glad the board's brought in outside folks, and where the responsibility lies, people should take responsibility for that, whether that's in administration or whether that's over at the medical school, as well, but there was lax oversight. this should never have happened, and i was as appalled as everybody. >> getting back to the original question, is it time to clean out at the top? is it time for -- >> i think we have to investigate and see, and i think people should take responsibility. if they knew about things beforehand and did nothing about it, i think, in my moral university, you're held accountable. >>

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NPR's Weekend Edition

Jul 30, 2017 | KCRWFM (NPR) (California)

Listen to clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/28548100?token=4d907892-d290-4c7a-a437-b7ae29c456a7
Rough transcript: the usc medical school dean who was associated with reduced prostitution and criminals . there was discussion about the school's coverup of the teen's behavior each tolerance of his behavior and about why nobody did anything about it discussions quickly turn to our own failings to police ourselves in meetings and on lawns my colleagues and i recalled professionals and we have worked with whose behavior . we have tolerated or made excuses for which signaled a serious underlying problems that need to be addressed to doctor chris o'neil was a medical school professor and a neurologist who feels that doctors are unique . i literally turned right there before in private these days here and want to hold people and not wanting to get them in trouble and one of them the best of them and the optimism . optimism is one thing but faculty recounted problems related to substance abuse in functional personalities and two observing colleagues with increasing dementia in all cases people regretted that they had not reported the problem of course the problem is worse when the person is high up in the higher key or in a position of power such as the u. s. c. dean but as doctors amino reminded me all physicians are in power at least relative to their patients and their students but we all want to believe that things will change here is the hair what we and people like work where that there may be something up and then once you made that could become what were you going to get more rangers it becomes difficult for them revert to desert but are in actions send messages to others you're a medical education we teach to curricula there's the formal medical school curriculum that is articulated and its task to so in classes we teach our trainees that they have a duty to our patients into society to speak up when we see something wrong but then there's also what we call the hidden curriculum that's what junior doctors learn from observing the be eighty years actions and decisions of those around them they hidden curriculum is very powerful it's what causes b. eight years and actions to be pass from generation to generation each time and unprofessional behavior is tolerated or ignored the message being sent to those observing is it this is how the medical profession should act u. s. c. has some soul searching and culture changing to do but we all have lessons to learn from that one bad apple.

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