In the face of fierce backlash from faculty members and students at New York University, a biologist who is accused of past sexual harassment will not be joining the institution after all. David Sabatini, who resigned in April from a tenured faculty job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after three administrators there recommended his tenure be revoked, reached a mutual agreement with NYU that he won’t be headed to New York.
“After careful and thorough consideration that included the perspectives of many stakeholders, both Dr. David Sabatini and NYU Grossman School of Medicine have reached the conclusion that it will not be possible for him to become a member of our faculty,” a statement provided by a medical-school spokesperson read.
The abrupt turnaround of Sabatini’s status at NYU — where a senior administrator said in a leaked recording that the researcher’s hiring there would put the university on “higher moral ground” — is reflective of the growing pressure on universities to refrain from bringing on faculty and staff members who have been accused of sexual misconduct, a phenomenon known as “pass the harasser.”
Sabatini, in his own statement, said he’d opted to withdraw his candidacy for the NYU job, though he continued to maintain his innocence. “False, distorted, and preposterous allegations about me have intensified in the press and on social media in the wake of reports last week that New York University Langone Health was considering hiring me,” Sabatini said in his statement. “I understand the enormous pressure this has placed on NYU Langone Health and do not want to distract from its important mission.”
“I remain steadfast in believing that the truth will ultimately emerge and that I will eventually be vindicated and able to return to my research,” Sabatini added.
Ann Olivarius, a prominent lawyer for victims of sexual assault in academe, said she was glad Sabatini won’t join NYU’s faculty. “This is very good news if you believe in human rights and sexual equality and the fact that a man who has been proven to be a sexual harasser should not be entitled to go other places to do sexual harassment,” she said. “I’m surprised that it got as far as it did, and I think NYU must be very surprised at the backlash that it’s caused.”
The Sabatini case, Olivarius said, “puts all institutions on notice that the world is changing and they’re going to have to revise how they recruit, how they hire people.”
‘Unprofessional Behavior’
Sabatini, whose cancer research and discovery of a cell-growth protein made him a prominent biologist, was placed on administrative leave at MIT in August after an independent investigation found he had violated the university’s sexual-misconduct policy. At that time, he resigned from the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research, where he’d run a research lab, and was fired by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which had been funding his work.
In October, while he was still on administrative leave from MIT, Sabatini sued the institute and the woman who’d accused him of sexual harassment, The Boston Globe reported. He alleged that their relationship was consensual and that the allegations constituted an attempt to “exact revenge against a former lover,” according to court documents. Sabatini’s accuser filed a countersuit in December, saying Sabatini ran “a highly sexualized lab environment” in which she was “groomed” as a graduate student. Ellen J. Zucker, a lawyer for Sabatini’s accuser, declined to comment on Tuesday’s news.
In April, Sabatini resigned from MIT after three administrators — the biology department head, the dean of science, and provost — also found he’d violated the policy and recommended his tenure be revoked. The administrators “found Professor Sabatini engaged in a sexual relationship with a person over whom he held a career-influencing role, he did not disclose the relationship at any time to his supervisors, and he failed to take any steps to relinquish his mentoring and career-influencing roles, as the policy requires,” MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif, wrote in a letter to the MIT community, adding that the administrators “also had significant concerns regarding his unprofessional behavior toward some lab members.”
Sabatini opted to resign without exercising his right to request that a faculty committee review the administrators’ recommendation, Reif wrote.
A Science report last week that NYU was considering hiring Sabatini prompted outcry from many at that institution. Hundreds of people protested outside of NYU Langone Medical Center last week, holding signs urging the institution to “say no to Sabatini” and “protect trainees.” Meanwhile, even as top officials at NYU distanced themselves from the hiring decision, medical-center administrators defended Sabatini; in an audio recording of a meeting obtained by Science, they contested the validity of the outside investigation that found Sabatini guilty of sexual harassment.
“I hope that our faculty, males and female, are going to be proud that we are taking a position that may not be very popular now based on media. But we are taking the higher moral ground,” Dafna Bar-Sagi, NYU’s vice dean for science, said in the recording, Science reported.
In a letter to medical-school administrators, several NYU faculty members said hiring Sabatini could harm the school’s reputation, The New York Times reported. “While we understand there are still legal proceedings in progress and that the public does not yet have all of the facts, we are worried that this hiring would signal a shift in policy that conflicts with our commitment to provide a respectful training environment, a culture of respect for women, and zero tolerance of misconduct,” the letter read, according to the Times.
