Jackson Perseveres in Sexism Suit

After eight years, former Business School Professor Barbara Bund Jackson '66 is still fighting for a lifetime post at Harvard, even though a federal judge ruled this summer that the University did not deny her tenure because of her gender.

According to attorney Evan T. Lawson, Jackson will file an appeal this week contesting the decision because of procedural errors made by Harvard during the trial, such as the destruction of tenure records.

"The judge said that the defense counsel misled the court," Jackson said following the decision. "He said that they destroyed evidence. That is a pattern of behavior that is not acceptable."

Although Judge Douglas P. Woodlock did find that Harvard "deserved to be sanctioned" for burning 10 years' worth of B-School records and for failing to produce documents promptly, he also found the destruction to be inadvertent.

The judge concluded that Harvard's transgression was not an attempt to suppress unfavorable evidence. And though he offered Jackson the opportunity to reopen the discovery process, she declined to press the matter further. With Harvard's error dismissed, Woodlock ultimately ruled that gender played no part in the University's decision.

But Lawson says Woodlock also ignored "unconscious discrimination" in his ruling, thus "unduly narrowing" the definition of sexual discrimination.

Jackson first filed suit against the B-School and its dean, John H. McArthur, in 1984 after McArthur twice denied her tenure.

In 1981, a faculty committee recommended Jackson for tenure by a "preliminary" vote of 47-7, but her bid fell below the "substantial majority" needed when support dwindled to a slim 25-24 majority three weeks later.

Jackson's second bid came in 1983, shortly after she submitted a monograph on account evolution paths, which received strong criticism from two B-School professors. A four-member faculty subcommittee then unanimously voted not to forward a recommendation for tenure, using that paper as the basis for its decision.