Harvard Settles With Applied Physics Professor Who Sued Over Tenure Denial
Harvard reached a last-minute agreement to settle a lawsuit with a former School of Engineering and Applied Sciences associate professor who sued the University in 2020 over his tenure denial.
Harvard settled a lawsuit with a former School of Engineering and Applied Sciences associate professor who sued the University in 2020 over his tenure denial, reaching a last-minute agreement just moments before the case was scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday.
The professor, physicist Shmuel M. Rubinstein, alleged that Harvard had violated its own tenure review procedures and interfered with his application for tenure at an Israeli research institute. He also named then-SEAS Dean Francis J. Doyle III and Computer Science professor Krzysztof Z. Gajos as defendants in the suit.
Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain wrote in a statement Tuesday that Rubinstein withdrew his claim of breach of contract in the tenure process and the parties amicably resolved the remaining claims, including those against Doyle and Gajos.
The defendants “admit to no wrongdoing in this matter,” Swain wrote.
Tuesday’s settlement spares Harvard a trial that could have brought further attention to its tenure review practices, which are already a source of scrutiny for the University. Harvard has faced criticism for its use of opaque ad hoc committees in the tenure review process, and many professors have said they believe at least one colleague in their department was unfairly denied tenure.
Monica R. Shah, an attorney representing Rubinstein, wrote in a statement that she and her client “are gratified that today’s outcome allows all parties to move forward in a positive direction.”
“We are proud that our client Shmuel Rubinstein has obtained justice after five long years and can now focus his attention back to his research and teaching,” she wrote. “This resolution could not have been achieved without the support of Professor Rubinstein’s many faculty colleagues at SEAS and his students who stood by him and were committed to righting the wrongs that occurred.”
Both she and Swain declined to share further details on the terms of the settlement.
Three Negative Reviews
When Rubinstein — an experimental physicist who studies phenomena such as the splash of a raindrop or the buckling of a can of Coca-Cola — first applied for tenure in 2018, he felt like he had nothing to worry about.
His own complaint billed him as a “rising star” among Harvard’s applied physicists with an “excellent reputation” for his scholarship and teaching skill. Rubinstein said in the suit that he was “readily” promoted to associate professor and encouraged by Doyle, the SEAS dean at the time, to apply for tenure a year early. He claimed to also have “overwhelmingly positive support” from faculty in his department, a crucial constituency in the tenure review process.
But what seemed to Rubinstein like a done deal quickly unraveled after three of his former advisees, two of whom left his lab following disputes with the professor, shared their feedback with SEAS administrators. Their complaints sparked concerns that Rubinstein was “not an effective advisor and mentor” and led Harvard to deny his tenure, according to court documents.
While his file was being considered at Harvard, Rubinstein was also up for tenure at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where he had previously conducted research. He was likewise denied tenure there after one of the three students and Gajos, the Computer Science professor, shared their concerns about Rubinstein with Weizmann faculty. Rubinstein sued Gajos for defamation.
Rubinstein’s complaint also named Doyle as a defendant, alleging that Rubinstein’s tenure denial broke an implicit agreement Doyle had made by encouraging him to apply. He argued that Harvard and Doyle had a responsibility to discipline Gajos for his statements to Weizmann.
The three complaints against Rubinstein stood out amid a field of positive feedback from former students. But they highlighted a cluster of concerns about Rubinstein’s advising — and tensions between Rubinstein and several Computer Science faculty.
One graduate student, who began working in Rubinstein’s lab in 2013, complained to Doyle after Rubinstein discouraged the student from transferring to a Computer Science professor’s lab before he graduated. Doyle did not open an investigation into the first complaint.
The student subsequently had a disagreement with Rubinstein over a paper that remained unfinished when the student transferred to the different lab in spring 2017. Rubinstein’s lab missed a journal’s resubmission deadline for the paper, and Rubinstein sent a cover letter to the journal attributing the delay to the student’s departure.
The student submitted formal complaints to Doyle’s office and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Committee on Professional Conduct alleging that Rubinstein had misrepresented the student’s contributions to the project.
The Committee on Professional Conduct did not investigate, saying the matter was outside its jurisdiction. After conducting his own investigation, Doyle did not find that Rubinstein had acted inappropriately.
A second graduate student, who also left Rubinstein’s lab in spring 2017, felt that Rubinstein had dismissed her work, made inappropriate remarks, and discouraged her from speaking to other professors. One of the student’s advisors, another Computer Science professor, later brought some of the student’s complaints to Title IX coordinator Seth Avakian.
In a third incident, Rubinstein castigated a postdoc who listed a separate professor’s name as an author on a draft of the postdoc’s paper, despite Rubinstein having urged him not to.
The three disputes dogged Rubinstein throughout his tenure review.
Procedural Concerns
Even as Harvard defended its decision, some professors stood by Rubinstein. In a 2019 letter to Harvard administrators, 31 senior faculty members opposed the University’s decision to deny him tenure.
Two dozen Harvard faculty, including several of Rubinstein’s colleagues in Applied Physics, sent a letter to the University earlier this month urging it to “present its case in a fair and ethical manner” and reiterating concerns that the FAS had violated tenure procedures in its review of Rubinstein’s case. A copy of the letter was first shared with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tenure cases in SEAS are first heard by a review committee of SEAS faculty. Once the review committee makes a recommendation, a candidate’s application may be sent to the FAS Committee on Appointments and Promotions, which includes top FAS administrators and acts as a sounding board for the FAS dean. The dean — at the time, Claudine Gay — ultimately decides whether to recommend a candidate for tenure to the president.
Rubinstein alleged Harvard acted improperly when the Committee on Appointments and Procedures reviewed complete copies, rather than summaries, of the three negative statements. He argued that Harvard focused on the negative evaluations rather than praise from colleagues and other students.
The complaints initially entered Rubinstein’s file after Applied Physics administrative director Jill Larson solicited student feedback, according to court documents. Rubinstein also argued that Harvard’s policies required Applied Physics chair Eric Mazur to collect student feedback directly instead.
Rubinstein also alleged that Harvard penalized him unfairly for not discussing mentorship in his application statements, even though no such “mentorship statement” was required. The FAS’ tenure review process did require candidates to submit a “teaching and advising statement,” which Rubinstein did.
After he was denied tenure, Rubinstein appealed the decision through the FAS’ grievance process. His appeal was dismissed by the Faculty Council’s docket committee, which acts as a screening body for the full Council. In his legal complaint, Rubinstein argued that the docket committee did not have the authority to investigate the case on its merits without sending it on to a three-member ad hoc panel.
Before the settlement, Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Christopher K. Barry-Smith ’88 had signaled he was likely to side with Harvard over Rubinstein’s claims concerning the grievance process. He allowed the other count to proceed to trial.
Swain, the Harvard spokesperson, wrote in a statement that the University “stands by the integrity of its policies, practices, and criteria for tenure.”
Politics in Court
Rubinstein filed his complaint before Gay was named Harvard’s 30th president — and long before she resigned amid a political firestorm. But the lawsuit briefly threatened to drag the debate over Harvard’s scandal-plagued winter into the courtroom.
In January, Rubinstein motioned to reopen discovery to obtain evidence on Harvard’s handling of plagiarism allegations against Gay. His lawyers argued that such evidence could demonstrate that Harvard held Rubinstein to a double standard and could call into question Gay’s “credibility as an academic and an adjudicator of misconduct.”
Barry-Smith denied the motion without a hearing, panning it as a “clumsy effort to seize upon the recent, high-profile scrutiny of past alleged misconduct by Professor Gay in hopes it might discredit her as a decision-maker in plaintiff's tenure process.”
Bloomberg Law reported that in an August hearing, Shah told Barry-Smith it would be “fair game” to ask a witness about antisemitism at Harvard, since Rubinstein was born in Israel and spent part of his academic career there.
Barry-Smith questioned why previous pleadings had not discussed bias against Israelis if Rubinstein and his attorneys thought it was a factor in the case.
Ultimately, Barry-Smith sided with Harvard’s motion to exclude evidence related to Gay’s response to Oct. 7 and the plagiarism allegations against her.
“It will be unnecessary, time-wasting, confusing and distracting, among other reasons, to allow evidence concerning events in 2023-2024 related to Gaza protests or Harvard’s response, institutional antisemitism, or allegations of plagiarism,” Barry-Smith wrote.
—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tillyrobin.