A state court ruled in favor of eight Tufts School of Medicine basic science faculty members earlier this month in a lawsuit over compensation plans that were determined to have violated tenure’s promises of “economic security,” ordering the university to pay nearly $4 million in damages.
After a twelve-day trial that ended in late January, Justice Hélène Kazanjian found, in a pointed April 2 ruling, that Tufts had imposed compensation plans for the tenured basic science faculty that cut their salaries and full-time status based on external grant funding requirements that did not exist when they received tenure, including retroactively for tenured faculty who had been granted tenure before the plan was enacted.
Tufts passed the compensation plans in 2017, revising them in 2019, which required the faculty to generate 50% of their salary from external grants, with salary cuts of up to 10% per year if the benchmarks were not met. Kazanjian wrote that the plans imposed conditions “not contemplated at the time Plaintiffs were awarded tenure” in ruling that Tufts had breached its contract on grounds of economic security.
The university said it was “considering the decision” and declined to comment further.
The Middlesex Superior Court had ruled in Tufts’s favor in February 2023 in a summary judgment before the Supreme Judicial Court –- the state’s highest court – reversed the decision and sent the case back to the Middlesex Superior Court for trial.
The plaintiffs argued that, despite the salary cuts, several faculty members were required to work full-time under the 2017 plan, leading to violations of the Wage Act.
Brent Cochran, a School of Medicine professor in the Department of Developmental, Molecular and Chemical Biology and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Tufts tenured professors have faced challenges securing grants, leading to pay cuts since the compensation plan was enacted.
“I’m making less than the starting salary of a first-year postdoc despite 40 years of experience,” Cochran said in an interview with the Daily.
Any other basic science faculty member at the School of Medicine who received tenure before 2017 and had their salary or cut under the compensation plans could potentially bring the same claims using the ruling as precedent.
The court’s ruling was significant in defining “economic security” and holding that tenure includes a financial component, not just job security.
Tufts argued that its promise of economic security had nothing to do with compensation and referred only to job security, meaning the University was only obligated to let faculty continue working, not to pay them any particular amount. The court found the claim that economic security does not include a financial component “preposterous.”
When pressed on cross-examination about the logical endpoint of this position, a Tufts expert witness was asked if Tufts could pay a faculty member $1 annually without breaching its promise of economic security. The court noted that he “struggled for a response” to that question.
“Tufts took a very maximalist position in this case. Basically, that they could do anything, that they could change the tenure contract at will any time they wanted to and that, in fact, a $1 payment would meet economic security,” Cochran said.
“Tufts’ position is contrary to the plain meaning of the words,” Kazanjian wrote. “‘Economic security’ is synonymous with financial security.”
“Based on all the evidence, the court is persuaded that Tufts’ promise to provide ‘economic security’ to Plaintiffs when they became tenured meant a full-time job for life, subject to being removed for cause, and with a salary that provided sufficient financial support so that the Basic Science Faculty members could pursue their research,” Kazanjian wrote.
Kazanjian argued that the university had been motivated, in part, to unilaterally change tenure requirements by a desire to push older faculty toward retirement, in violation of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. She highlighted emails from Provost Caroline Genco saying that several older faculty in her department — which includes several of the plaintiffs — were “lingering on” and “dead weight.”
Kazanjian provided a damning representation of testimony from several Tufts administrators, including Genco, Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Thomas Malone and Professor Emeritus Philip Haydon.
In her ruling, she wrote that the witnesses’ claims that there had always been an expectation that faculty fund 60% of their salary externally — as an argument that the 2017 plan requiring 50% was more lenient than in the past — were unsupported by any documents and were contradicted by the sequences of compensation plans Tufts itself adopted.
“Mr. Malone and Dr. Genco, like Dr. Haydon, incorrectly testified that there was a requirement at Tufts that faculty fund 60% of their salary from grants prior to the imposition of the new compensation plan,” Kazanjian wrote. “There is no documentary evidence supporting that contention, and it is not consistent with Tufts developing and adopting new compensation plans.”
The court, however, rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the compensation plans also violated academic freedom, even though the plaintiffs argued that salary requirements effectively forced them to pursue National Institutes of Health or other federally funded grants, or risk salary reduction.
“The evidence was that all the individual plaintiffs continued their research to the extent they had alternative sources of funding, even after their FTE and/or salaries were cut, despite the fact that they were unlikely to obtain the required grant funding,” Kazanjian wrote.
“I think this ruling would really have a very significant impact … because the terminology of academic freedom and economic security, which was established in 1940, really hasn’t been made more concrete,” Cochran said. “I think this makes it more concrete.”
The parties are required to file a “joint proposed judgment” within 60 days of the decision. It is unclear whether or not Tufts will appeal the decision.
Josué Pérez contributed reporting.
