Here’s a bit more detail from Tom Apple’s perspective on the reasons behind his dismissal.

Hawaii News Now provided links to three previously internal documents. They include President Lassner’s letter in which he gives general reasons for his “unsatisfactory” rating of Apple’s performance, which became the basis for the dismissal. In addition, there are two letters from Apple to Lassner, one written before the evaluation was received, and the other written as a rebuttal.

There are several deletions in both of Apple’s letters where names have been deleted, ostensibly for “privacy” reasons.

Key sections of those letters relating to the UH Cancer Center controversy are reprinted below with the deleted names restored.

From Apple’s initial letter, “Re: Confirmation of Notification of Violations of Law and My Contract.”

As you know, my job was made much more challenging last year, when the Legislature unexpectedly cut our funding by $7 million. I then had to identify places where those cuts could be made up. It took a lot of work, but I did so. The “make up” included a modest $1 million reallocation from the JABSOM — which then had a total $10 million surplus which had been increasing, year-to-year in total carry-forward and which has a long history of having been heavily subsidized by tuition funds from other departments at UH-Manoa. Despite the need for this reallocation, and despite there being strong and prudent reasons for it, I have encountered extraordinary resistance in efforts to do this from the dean of JABSOM. You have mentioned relying upon his counsel in your critical comments on my leadership.

I also identified the need to address very serious looming financial shortfalls with the UHCC, which is currently overspending its current income by $10 million per year and which is rapidly eating up its limited reserves of slightly more than $30 million. This pattern threatens its ability to continue, including as a national cancer institute center, a key designation for it. The UHCC’s director is Dr. Michele Carbone. Dr. Carbone has a history of vigorously opposing those who seek to curb his overspending or who otherwise attempt to prudently manage him.

These include Gary Ostrander, Reed Dasenbrock, and Brian Taylor. I also acted to protect faculty that were attacked by Dr. Carbone. These include Larry Kolonel, Loic Le Marchand, Lynne Wilkens, Carl Vogel, Adriane Francke, and Robert Cooney. I thus also attempted to address the lavish overspending by Dr. Carbone, for example the inexplicable attempt to hire an assistant, Shreya Kanodia, for $300,000 per year who had just two years earlier been a post-doc.

I have encountered extraordinary resistance to this from Dr. Carbone, from you and others including the Board Chair. You have mentioned this frequently as a reason for loss of confidence in me from you and the Board. I hasten to add that I admire Dr. Carbone’s vision and he has done some excellent work — however, the financial and personnel issues still must be addressed.

And this from Apple’s rebuttal to the “unsatisfactory” grade given by Lassner:

Your negative comments in my evaluation about interactions with community stakeholders thus do appear to refer to those few powerful people who support the Director of the Cancer Center, whom I tried to remove with your initial consent. Indeed it is that area which caused your criticism of me in the first place.

So, I must very respectfully remind you that I carefully and fully discussed the removal of Dr. Carbone as Director with both you and (then-Board Chair) John Holzman well prior to attempting to do so. I did this in a context where, as you know, Dr. Carbone has driven away two of our top researchers (Goodman and Kolonel), alienated two other top researchers (Le Marchand and Wilkens), and angered, alienated and persecuted several others. In addition to this thoroughly embarrassing and truly awful history, Dr. Carbone now requires one full-time $300,000 ‘assistant’ (Blanchette) and another $300,000 advisor (Hinshaw) to oversee his conduct.

The grievances and prohibited practice claims against Dr. Carbone are so numerous, that it has been suggested that they total more than the combined number of grievances racked up around the entire balance of this University! These grievances require enormous amounts of staff time and resources and precious money to work through. Meanwhile, funding, publications, and our ability to attract and retain quality Principal Investigators (“PIs”) at the Cancer Center continue to decline under Dr. Carbone’s watch, (a trend which predated my arrival). There has been frightful overspending by him with no real oversight. To add insult to injury, a small cadre of community members has since than badgered UH into going even further into reserves to the tune of $15M/yr. with no known source of revenue on the horizon to cover the projected shortfall.

In light of Dr. Carbone’s history, you initially indicated your support for my decision to remove him as Director of the Cancer Center. Then at the meeting with the Consortium Board which followed our discussion, John Holzman watched in silence as Director Carbone’s supporters made repeated personal attacks on me —rather than addressing the serious problems at the Cancer Center. A word from him in support of the actions you and he approved would have diffused the personal nature of that exchange.

Instead, you chose to disregard all of the information which had convinced you that removal of Dr. Carbone was appropriate. You then put in place not one, but two high level, very expensive, overseers to monitor Dr. Carbone. In so doing, you rendered me powerless to continue working effectively with the Cancer Center. Had you not abruptly and unwisely reversed your earlier position on this issue, we would not now still have dysfunctional, erratic, and incredibly expensive leadership at the Cancer Center.