Press releases

Press Release: August 2019 by Plaintiffs

As plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit recently filed against Mount Sinai for sex, age and race discrimination, we feel compelled to respond to Mount Sinai’s announcement regarding its status as a signatory to Time’s Up Healthcare (TUHC).

We first thank TUHC for its excellent work. We applaud Mount Sinai’s decision to finally become a Time’s Up Healthcare signatory, despite its leadership having declined to sign in October 2018, prior to the filing of our lawsuit. It is gratifying that following the publicity arising from our case and internal pressure from Sinai’s employees, students, and trainees (and the hiring of their second P.R. firm) Mount Sinai has now agreed to join TUHC and has launched a slew of new initiatives to counter gender discrimination and advance gender equity at Mount Sinai.

However, these stand in sharp contrast to Sinai’s continuing blatant dismissal of the charges of sex, age and race discrimination from the eight of us, who are former and current employees. In light of Mount Sinai President and CEO Ken Davis’ recent comments that “this case is simply without merit,” we cannot let the signing of the TUHC declaration be used as a smokescreen to hide their protection of a structurally discriminatory environment and the discriminators who perpetuate it.

It is distressing that, rather than use this case as an opportunity to acknowledge a significant problem and make serious attempts to address it, Mount Sinai leadership is choosing to dig in its heels in denial and self-protection. This is wasteful. As this case goes on, we plaintiffs, the many individuals who support us, and indeed the whole Mount Sinai community is being subjected to unnecessary expense and harm. This is a waste of our energy, our time, our talent and our lives.

For us as plaintiffs, this has been a lesson in how institutional structural violence works, and how it responds to those who would call out injustices. The mistreatment outlined in our complaint, which Mount Sinai leadership allowed to flourish, is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the last few months, employees from across the Mount Sinai Health System have contacted us to share their own stories of discrimination and injustice. Two common elements in all these stories have been fear and silence — the fear that speaking out will result in retaliation from the highest levels, and the resulting silence that allows this power dynamic to continue unchecked. For a healthcare system and academic medical center that prides itself on humanistic values and a Dean who touts a “zero tolerance” policy towards bullying, this is a travesty — and completely unacceptable.

We will not be silenced. We understand that speaking out puts us at risk and we are facing our own fears every step of the way. We understand that speaking out puts those who support us at risk, and we are deeply grateful to you for standing with us, despite your fear. Thank you for your courage.

Now, with the signing of the TUHC declaration, Mount Sinai has an obligation and a responsibility to do the real work to dismantle systems that perpetuate injustice in the medical school and throughout the health system.

— The time is now to acknowledge and correct past harms.

— The time is now to protect all who have risked their reputations and careers to speak the truth about systemic injustices or shared their personal experiences of discrimination.

— The time is now to replace superficial overtures with substantive action to ensure a safe, equitable, and dignified environment for all who work and learn at Mount Sinai.

Press Release: April 2019 by Plaintiffs’ attorneys McAllister Olivarius

Eight current and former employees of Mount Sinai hospital’s world-renowned Arnhold Institute for Global Health (AIGH), a leader in improving health care in underserved populations in the US and around the world, have filed a federal complaint alleging sex and age discrimination against Mount Sinai and its employees Dr. Prabhjot Singh, Director of AIGH, and Dr. Dennis Charney, Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine, as well as two others.

The complaint alleges that Dr. Singh, on becoming Director at age 32, deliberately marginalized and undermined female employees, especially women in senior leadership roles who had been crucial in making the AIGH an eminent institution, trying to force them to resign.

Dr. Singh spoke of running AIGH as a start-up and seemed determined to replicate Silicon Valley’s tech- bro culture. Normal recruitment was disregarded in favor of Dr. Singh directly hiring largely younger, male friends and contacts, despite their lack of experience in global health. He disbanded the Institute’s Advisory Board, an important source of fundraising, because he considered its members “ladies who lunch.” Senior female faculty were demoted, their well-developed and effective programs were denigrated and de-funded, and they were forbidden from speaking to their former colleagues. This was not just a normal office disagreement about goals or methods; Dr. Singh publicly disparaged the competence of women in senior leadership and made their working lives miserable until they were finally forced out.

Other female plaintiffs were directly recruited by Singh, but were still regularly skipped over in meetings where all the men got to speak, and paid less than their male colleagues despite excellent qualifications and equal or greater job responsibilities. Singh undermined female subordinates by gaslighting them, including trying to convince them they must have misunderstood the multiple abrupt shifts in his directives. Some started taking notes during conversations to reassure themselves they were not misremembering when he tried to blame them for alleged missteps later. One of Dr. Singh’s hires, also named as a defendant, was known for violent screaming at female subordinates, audible to everyone in the office including Singh, but was never reprimanded. Singh also did nothing to curb a male employee who repeatedly denigrated a colleague of Pakistani origin by saying in the man’s office “it smells like shit in here” or “it smells like curry,” and who also regularly called female colleagues “bitches” and “cunts.”

Singh misled funders of AIGH, including the US Agency for International Development, about one of his signature initiatives known as ATLAS, intended to be a high-tech map marrying satellite imagery and health data using artificial intelligence to identify better ways of delivering health care to the rural poor. He told the funders repeatedly it was working and had actual users in the field when it was just “vaporware” for which scant code had been written and no users existed. Data scientists working at AIGH left rather than participate in his elaborate ruse. The lawsuit also details incidents of Singh ignoring protocols governing research with humans and violating regulations concerning the privacy of patient data.

Internal complaints about Singh in 2018 resulted only in a committee being established to advise him, which has met one or two times. Mount Sinai maintains that while Singh may grate on people, he has done nothing wrong. The suit alleges that Mount Sinai’s concern to preserve funding from the Arnhold Foundation, which has backed Singh, and Singh’s skills in “managing up” have strongly influenced its lenient attitude to his misconduct.

Dr. Singh is the protégé of the medical school’s Dean, Dr. Dennis Charney, known for his “tough guy” management style. The female candidate originally recommended for the directorship by AIGH’s search committee, a top scholar in the field, withdrew her application after Dr. Charney angrily dismissed the budget she had worked out with others at the Institute and wrote an email calling her an “idiot” in red capital letters.

Meanwhile, many of the plaintiffs have found their lives upended, full of sleepless nights, anxiety, ill health, and their careers moved off track.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, can be found here. The plaintiffs’ goals are to improve conditions for women at Mount Sinai so it lives up to its promise of being a world-class hospital and medical school; to stand up for other women who are discriminated against in science, academia and medicine; and to restore honest leadership to the Arnhold Institute for Global Health.

The plaintiffs are available for interviews, as is their lawyer, leading workplace discrimination attorney Dr. Ann Olivarius.

For further information, contact:

Ellin Stein,
Consultant, Press and Media estein@mcolaw.com

U.S. (518) 633-4775
UK phone +44 20 7267 9479