Not Hortatory Concepts

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed in part the grant of summary judgment to Tufts University in a tenure dispute

At issue in the instant case is whether the salary and full-time status of tenured medical school professors at Tufts University (Tufts) may be substantially reduced, and the laboratory (lab) space they previously occupied shrunk or eliminated, consistent with the promises of economic security and academic freedom provided in their tenure commitments.

In particular, the plaintiffs, tenured faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), challenge compensation and lab space policies issued in 2016, 2017, and 2019 that require them to cover fifty percent of their salary with external research funding. Under the plans, if the plaintiffs did not maintain the fifty percent funding requirement, their salaries would be cut and their employment status would be reduced from full time to part time. To maintain their existing lab space, the plaintiffs were also required to ensure that their external research funding maintained a cost recovery rate equivalent to a Federal grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

When the plaintiffs failed to meet the external funding requirements set out in the policies, they had their salaries cut, their full-time status reduced, in some cases to part time, and their lab space reduced or closed entirely, although they had access to other lab space and any grant applications they submitted would include a commitment by TUSM to provide the appropriate resources to conduct the work.

The plaintiffs then sued Tufts in the Superior Court, arguing that the compensation and lab space policies violated their rights to academic freedom and economic security guaranteed by their tenure contracts. The court granted summary judgment in Tufts’s favor on all counts, ruling that the compensation and lab space policies did not violate the plaintiffs’ tenure rights, and the plaintiffs appealed.

We conclude that academic freedom and economic security are not hortatory concepts but important norms in the academic community. Importantly, they are substantive terms expressly incorporated in Tufts’s tenure documents. The meaning of at least economic security is not, however, self-explanatory and may vary depending upon the particular university and even the particular school within the university. We further conclude that the meaning of economic security for tenured medical school professors at Tufts is ambiguous in the tenure documents, and more evidence is required regarding the customs and practices and reasonable expectations related to salary and full-time status for tenured professors at TUSM, and even other universities and medical schools, to resolve the question whether the significant reductions in salary and full-time status imposed here violated the economic security provided in the tenure documents. Summary judgment was therefore not appropriate on this issue. In contrast, nothing in the tenure documents, including the protection provided by the terms “academic freedom” and “economic security,” guarantee the lab space commitments claimed here. Summary judgment on these claims was therefore proper. We therefore affirm in part and reverse in part.

(Mike Frisch)