WASHINGTON — A White House review found credible evidence that top scientist Dr. Eric Lander violated its “Safe and Respectful Workplace Policy,” but the administration plans to keep him on the job after giving him counseling.
An internal review last year, prompted by a workplace complaint, found evidence that Lander, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Joe Biden, bullied staffers and treated them disrespectfully. That put him at odds with Biden’s day-one directive that he expected “honesty and decency” from all who worked for his administration and would fire anyone who shows disrespect to others “on the spot.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said senior administration officials had met with Lander about his actions and management of the office.
“Following the conclusion of the thorough investigation into these actions, senior White House officials conveyed directly to Dr. Lander that his behavior was inappropriate, and the corrective actions that were needed, which the White House will monitor for compliance moving forward,” she said.
Psaki added, “The president has been crystal clear with all of us about his high expectations of how he and his staff should be creating a respectful work environment.”
Pressed why Lander still had a job despite Biden’s comments, Psaki said the administration was following a “process” to handle workplace complaints.
The White House said Lander and OSTP are required to take certain corrective actions as part of the review. It also said the review did not find “credible evidence” of gender-based discrimination and that the reassignment of the staffer who filed the original complaint was “deemed appropriate.”
On Friday, Lander issued an apology to staffers in his office, acknowledging “I have spoken to colleagues within OSTP in a disrespectful or demeaning way.”
“I am deeply sorry for my conduct,” he added. “I especially want to apologize to those of you who I treated poorly, or were present at the time.”
The letter and the findings against Lander were first reported by Politico.
Lander, whose position was elevated to Cabinet-rank by Biden, appeared prominently with the president last week when he relaunched his “Cancer Moonshot” program to marshal federal resources behind research and treatment for cancer diseases.
The founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lander is a mathematician and molecular biologist. He was lead author of the first paper announcing the details of the human genome, the so-called “book of life.”
His confirmation to his role in the Biden administration was delayed for months as senators sought more information about meetings he had with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced financier who was charged with sex trafficking before his suicide. Lander also was criticized for downplaying the contributions of two Nobel Prize-winning female scientists.
At his confirmation hearing last year, Lander apologized for a 2016 article he wrote that downplayed the work of the female scientists. At the hearing, he also called Epstein “an abhorrent individual.″
Lander said he “understated the importance of those key advances″ by biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. The two were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
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