An American University is investigating a Nobel Prize winner on suspicion of sexual harassment. The defendant’s lawyer called it “professional malice.”
Philip Debwig has been questioned by Washington University in St. Louis in recent weeks, his lawyer Andrew Miltenberg told The Associated Press.
Miltenberg said the accusations were “virtually inaccurate”.
Debwig, a longtime professor of banking and finance at the university, did not immediately respond to an email to the Associated Press asking for comment.
Depwig, fellow economist Douglas W. Diamond, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke received the Nobel Prize in Economics in October for their research on bank failures, work that built on lessons learned from the Great Depression and helped shape America’s response to the 2008 global catastrophe. . financial crisis. .
The Nobel Committee stated that the results obtained in the early 1980s laid the foundation for the regulation of financial markets.
The Nobel Peace Prize Foundation did not immediately respond to emails from the Associated Press, but Tore Ellingsen, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Economic Sciences, told Bloomberg that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which oversees the awards, has contacted the university to confirm they have a fair procedure for dealing with allegations.
“Until the university determines that Debwig did something wrong, I think we should honestly celebrate his great scientific achievements,” Ellingsen said.
University of Washington spokeswoman Julie Flory told Bloomberg that the university does not comment on specific cases, but takes sexual harassment seriously and investigates any allegations.
Source: Associated Press + Bloomberg.