Say it ain't so, Mel!
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From The new York Times
November 25, 2008
Accused Pediatrician Is Leaving Institute
By TAMAR LEWIN
Dr. Melvin D. Levine, the famed pediatrician who is facing five lawsuits accusing him of molesting young boys during physical examinations, has resigned from All Kinds of Minds, the North Carolina institute he founded in 1995 to train teachers to help children with learning disabilities.
The co-founder of the institute, Charles Schwab, who provided financing and served as co-chairman with Dr. Levine, resigned in September.
The institute, which has teacher-training contracts with two states and dozens of individual schools, said it would continue its work of spreading Dr. Levine’s views on how children learn.
“All Kinds of Minds was formed to create a venue and legacy for his work so the genius of this man wouldn’t die with the individual,” said Mary-Dean Barringer, chief executive of the institute. “Do I think we’ll make it through without him? I do.”
Both Ms. Barringer and Roch Hillenbrand, the new chairman of the board, emphasized that Dr. Levine had not been involved in the day-to-day operations of the institute and that they had been successful, even in the last month, in finding philanthropic support, including a pledge of $2.25 million over three years from the Oak Foundation.
Dr. Levine could not be reached Monday, but he has denied ever touching a patient sexually. No criminal charges have been filed.
Dr. Levine, a Rhodes Scholar who attended Harvard Medical School, has voluntarily suspended his license to practice and is under investigation by the North Carolina Medical Board.
Carmen Durso, the Boston lawyer representing the five plaintiffs, said that more than 50 other former patients or their parents had contacted him with complaints about Dr. Levine.
Until the accusations, Dr. Levine was the unchallenged guru of learning disabilities — or learning differences, as he prefers to call them. Parents flocked to his lectures and lived by his books.
He was seen as a compassionate advocate for children with troubles, insisting that all students could learn and that the job of an educator was to find the approach that worked best for each child.
He gave dozens of lectures a year, holding audiences rapt for hours as he explained the latest findings of neuroscience and how they applied to teaching. Although the lectures were listed on the All Kinds of Minds Web site, he arranged them and was paid for them through a separate company he owned.
Dr. Levine has occupied an unusual public niche, a combination of Dr. Spock, Dr. Phil and Dr. Doolittle. He became a celebrity after his “Misunderstood Minds” ran on PBS in 2002 and he appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” while living on a farm outside Chapel Hill with hundreds of geese.
Dr. Levine practiced at Children’s Hospital Boston, the pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, until 1985, when he moved to the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he served as director until he retired in 2006.
Through All Kinds of Minds, Dr. Levine’s teacher training program, Schools Attuned, has reached thousands of schools nationwide.
In New York City, the Department of Education awarded the institute a five-year, $12.5 million contract to train 20,000 teachers. It was awarded without competitive bidding, a department spokeswoman said after the arrangement came to light, because no other organization offered comparable services. The New York contract expired in June.
All Kinds of Minds has continuing contracts with the state education departments in North Carolina and Oklahoma, Ms. Barringer said, but is losing one with South Carolina. Since the accusations against Dr. Levine surfaced last spring, she said, the institute has lost 9 of its 80 contracts with individual schools.
In a prepared statement provided by his lawyer, Alan Schneider, Dr. Levine said he was leaving All Kinds of Minds to devote himself to a new program, Bringing Up Minds, that works directly with parents and clinicians to teach them how to help children succeed in school.
Ms. Barringer said Dr. Levine’s consulting contract with All Kinds of Minds, under which he is paid $150,000 a year, expires in June. The institute also pays about $75,000 a year, she said, as a royalty fee for using Dr. Levine’s intellectual property.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
