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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 21 SALES / LEASING • Retail • Office • Industrial • Investments PROPERTY MANAGEMENT • Apartments • Condominiums • Office • Shopping Centers • Industrial Parks • Residential Rentals 1768 Litchfield Turnpike, Woodbridge CT | www.LMMRE.com | (203) 389-5377 SALES / LEASING • Retail • Office • Industrial • Investments PROPERTY MANAGEMENT • Apartments • Condominiums • Office • Shopping Centers • Industrial Parks • Residential Rentals 1768 Litchfield Turnpike, Woodbridge CT www.LMMRE.com | (203) 389-5377 88 FARWELL, WEST HAVEN Flex space – 11.000 SF office, Lt. industrial, R & D. For sale @ $850,000 or lease @ $8/SF 2 THORN STREET, NEW HAVEN 40,000 SF industrial on 2.2 ac. Close to I-95 & Yale. For sale @ $1,295.000 425 SOUTH CHERRY ST., WALLINGFORD For lease. 68,500 SF clean warehouse space. 34 docks, 2 drive-in doors. Great distribution center 7 RESEARCH DRIVE, WOODBRIDGE 4625 SF of office space nicely laid out with perimeter offices, conference rooms, bullpen and receiving area with OH door. Ya l e M e d i c a l S c h o o l Institute; he also holds the Wil- liam H. Prusoff endowed chair. Dean on the firing line Activism on the Simons case in recent months has taken the form of letters to Yale President Salovey on intransigent issues at the Medi- cal School, with the aim of ousting the dean, Robert Alpern, M.D. His contract is up for renewal in March and faculty activists hope the university decides to "go in another direction," preferably by hiring a woman or member of a minority group to replace him. Deans serve five-year terms; Alpern was re-appointed to his third term in 2014 — just before the Simons scandal erupted into public view. As dean, Alpern has been responsive to faculty concerns on the climate for women and mi- norities at Yale, faculty members say, but has lost the trust of many due to his attempts to finesse the situation around the endowed chair swap. Alpern's bid for another term as dean of the Yale School of Medi- cine likely won't be abetted by an article in e New York Times that appeared on Dec. 8, 2018: "What ese Medical Journals Don't Re- veal: Top Doctors' Ties to Indus- try." Alpern earned top billing in the article's first paragraph as one of a group of prominent physi- cians who omitted or obscured their ties to drug and medical-de- vice companies when publishing articles in medical journals. While serving on the board of drug-maker Tricida and own- ing shares of its stock, Alpern authored a positive article in a journal on the company's treat- ments without fully disclosing his financial ties. Tricida also funded the study that was the subject of the 2017 article, published in e Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Alpern told the Times that he thought the disclosure of his status as a consultant for Tricida was adequate at the time, but he said he contacted the journal in late 2018 to offer a more complete disclosure. Investigators' financial stakes in for-profit companies have raised concerns that they will skew study results to favor firms that they work for. Medical research funded by industry tends to gain more positive coverage in scientific jour- nals, leading to changes in how patients are treated, the Times reported. Pervasive problem Alpern's role aside, the Yale School of Medicine is far from the only academic workplace with a top-down system that enables harassers, faculty members main- tain. It is also far from the only entity within Yale dealing with harassment and issues around the academic climate for women. Yale's Women's Faculty Forum (WFF) stated the underlying issues bluntly in a report issued in Sep- tember on sexual misconduct at the university: "e organizational hierarchy of the academy creates particular power asymmetries that leave certain populations vulner- able and others less likely to be sanctioned. Hierarchical rigidity, secrecy, and intense competition for resources create ideal condi- tions for harassment, bullying, and discrimination to occur, to be condoned, and to go unpunished." e report found that 138 sexual misconduct complaints had been brought against faculty across Yale. Of the accusers in those cas- es, 57 were graduate students and 13 other faculty members. In only six of the cases did those found responsible for sexual misconduct suffer punishment with "mate- rial negative consequences," the report found. e vast majority of the cases were dealt with in secrecy. "We are concerned at the number of these penalties that are essentially invisible to the wider University community." Call for transparency e secrecy around the Simons situation and university's re- sponse has angered women on the Yale faculty who view the case as emblematic of larger issues. e university needs to keep faculty informed while being mindful of the damage caused by leaks to the media, said Claire Bowern, professor of linguistics and chair of the WFF. "While we of course under- stand why these proceedings are confidential, the WFF remains concerned about the disconnec- tion between the highly confi- dential and sealed processes on campus, and the way in which certain high profile cases play out in the national media. at does not seem to be to anyone's benefit," Bowern said. "My impression is that the Medical School is not particularly different from other parts of cam- pus (and other campuses) in their concerns about harassment," Bow- ern added. "e #MeToo move- ment has shown that harassment is very common in all industries," she said. "It comes down to a concern that women across the university should to be able to do our jobs without being harassed." (On Dec. 19, as this edition went to press, Alpern announced that he would step down as YSM dean.) n 'Women across the university should to be able to do our jobs without being harassed.' - Claire Bowern

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