When people in power at Columbia are asked why we don’t fight the way Harvard is fighting, they answer that we don’t have the resources. Our meager endowment is a molehill compared to Harvard’s mountain of cash. Yes, we have about $4 billion in unrestricted funds, but you’d be surprised: $4 billion just doesn’t buy what it used to!
And yet, without fanfare or much rending of garments, just last month Columbia announced a settlement, to the tune of $1 billion, of the lawsuit against it for gross negligence in the case of Dr. Robert Hadden, who assaulted hundreds of women over the course of his career. There was no talk of shutting down parts of the university; or firing people; or even holding anyone responsibility. Columbia is paying it and moving on.
The following letter is by two faculty members who asked that their names not be used.
On October 4th, 2023, the first-year medical student class at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (VP&S) organized a “leave in.” A few minutes into the 9:00 am lecture, every student, in unison, abruptly stood up from their seats and left the building to travel to the Morningside campus for a rally and march in front of Butler Library. What was the reason for this “leave-in”? To protest the Columbia administration’s inadequate, avoidant response (later revealed as a cover-up) to Robert Hadden’s crimes of decades-long sexual abuse and torture of his patients. An OB/GYN on staff at Columbia University from 1987 to 2012, Dr. Hadden was finally sentenced in 2023 to 20 years in prison, followed by lifelong supervised release. While numerous victims bravely came forth and testified to Dr. Hadden’s predatory behavior, Columbia University ignored both patient and staff complaints for years, attempted to hide the institution’s role in the matter, and prevented the few women who agreed to settlements from speaking about this ever again. The University failed to notify former patients about a class action lawsuit, publicly claim responsibility, or assure the public that it would apply stricter safeguards such that this could never happen again. Finally, after mounting pressure, including this medical student protest, Columbia notified patients about the lawsuit on November 15th and 16th, just 1 week before the deadline. By then, the campus spotlight had turned toward the events of October 7th and after; news about doxxing, student protests, and free speech on campus took center page and quickly consumed the institutional chatter; the Hadden case and the class action lawsuit disappeared from view.
Until last month, when, on May 5, it was disclosed that Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Hospital agreed to a $750 million settlement for hundreds of women who had sustained sexual abuse and humiliation at the hands of Hadden. Adding in the previous settlements, the sum total of Columbia’s payments to settle these claims have reached close to $1 billion. Nor are they paid for by malpractice insurance. Insurance focuses on negligent (i.e., accidental), not intentional acts; not only are Hadden’s acts obviously intentional, but so was Columbia’s cover-up and avoidance of complaints of abuse from Hadden’s patients.1 Therefore, the nearly $1 billion paid out to patients all came from Columbia and NYP.
Two days later after the settlement disclosure, a small group of pro-Palestinian students staged a protest in Butler Library, and this quickly became the central focus of the administration as the university and media directed their full attention to pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide student demonstrations. The news of the latest Hadden settlement disappeared once again from the radar.
As Columbia continues to focus on these student protests, fixating on the damage to property and the disruption to the campus, little has been said in public about Columbia's negligence and part in the damage to hundreds of women’s lives. Nor has attention been given to the loss of almost $1 billion—more than double the amount of the cuts imposed by the federal government. Instead, we have been told that—because the University cannot survive such cuts—there is no choice but to expect budget cuts and layoffs, and to acquiesce to Trump’s playbook by muzzling student protests and activism. All this while the university managed to quietly cover up the legacy of one of the most notorious sexual abuse scandals involving a physician in modern history.
As faculty at Columbia University, one on the medical center campus and one on the Morningside campus, we are appalled. A university that has been trying to sweep the Hadden mess—the immense danger that scores of patients had to endure for 25 years —under the rug, to the tune of almost $1 billion, in now doing its best to make us forget this once again with its alarmist preoccupation with the “danger” students pose to campus. Clearly, the allegations that Columbia would be unable to survive the hundreds of millions of dollars lost in federal funding are patently false.
How are we—not just faculty, staff, and students, but also patients—going to trust Columbia again? As faculty members, we asked but received no answers: where is the $1 billion coming from? Whose jobs are cut to pay it? What about the accountability of the top administration (from the hospital to the office of the president) for the cover up? We demand answers and more so: an apology. There is no reason why the institution can’t issue a sincere public apology for all of the mishaps—intentional or otherwise—that occurred with the Hadden affair in order to display true accountability, not just hushing patients by paying them off. And maybe we can access from the same coffers to help in the recuperation of funds for Columbia’s research. It would be a small step toward justice and equity at our institution, which is sadly nonexistent right now.
Columbia and NYP did not acknowledge any fault and have not been found to be at fault legally speaking. They settled, which is technically not an admission of guilt.