Former Harvard Professor Alleges HBS Officials Deleted Evidence in Tenure Denial Lawsuit

Former Harvard Business School associate professor Benjamin G. Edelman ’02, who sued Harvard in 2023 after he was denied tenure, alleged on Tuesday that the University had failed to preserve evidence in the case.

When Edelman’s bid for tenure was shot down in 2018, he suspected that the denial was related to a series of emails he sent in 2014 demanding a refund for a $4 overcharge at Sichuan Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Brookline. Edelman’s emails to the restaurant’s owner went viral at the time — and made him the subject of both internet infamy and an HBS investigation into his conduct.

In his 2023 lawsuit, filed in Suffolk County Superior Court, Edelman alleged that HBS had misrepresented his actions and illegitimately used the results of the investigation to disqualify him for tenure. In a document shared with The Crimson on Tuesday, Edelman claimed that Harvard had already anticipated that he was likely to sue if denied tenure.

A lawsuit would require the University to keep any materials that were likely to become relevant during the discovery process. But after viewing internal communications that surfaced in discovery, Edelman wrote that he believes HBS officials deleted emails and scrubbed a device containing information about his case.

A spokesperson for HBS declined to comment, and spokespeople for the University did not respond to a request for comment.

From the start, Edelman’s tenure case was colored by the incident at Sichuan Garden. In 2015, an inquiry by a Faculty Review Board into Edelman’s conduct resulted in a two-year delay to the start of his tenure review.

Then, when Edelman — who had joined HBS on the tenure track in 2007 — went up for tenure in 2017, HBS reconvened the Faculty Review Board. This time, the school expanded the board’s purview to include conduct outside the scope of its initial review, according to Edelman’s lawsuit.

The board, led by HBS professor Amy C. Edmondson ’81, interviewed Edelman’s colleagues and compiled a string of 12 complaints about his conduct — which Edelman claims turned a faculty vote against him, ultimately leading to his tenure denial.

On Tuesday, Edelman alleged that HBS’s then-senior associate dean for faculty development Paul M. Healy “completely wiped” an iPad containing notes and relevant documents regarding Edelman’s promotion process in July 2018. The deletions occurred eight months after they had already discussed a possible legal escalation, Edelman alleged.

Edelman also claimed that Edmondson, the FRB chair, had repeatedly deleted emails related to the review or his tenure denial, which later surfaced during discovery. According to Edelman, Edmondson produced nine messages that had been sent to the “Purges” folder in her Outlook email.

The folder can store messages indefinitely on Microsoft’s servers, even after they have been deleted and then wiped again from the “Recoverable Items” folder, if they are subject to a litigation hold. Messages in “Purges” are not accessible to end users.

Edelman alleged on Tuesday that Healy, Edmondson, and then-HBS Dean Nitin Nohria were well aware of the potential for a lawsuit when they allegedly deleted the documents.

“Litigation was reasonably anticipated by 2015, and documents show HBS leaders repeatedly acknowledged this risk,” Edelman wrote.

Edelman and Healy met in April 2018 to discuss the FRB process, and Healy testified in a deposition that at the time of the meeting he already “assumed” that Edelman “might consider litigation,” according to Edelman’s Tuesday statement.

Edelman added that Healy wrote to Nohria in May 2018 that it “sounds like Ben is preparing to go to the next level.”

“These sources leave no doubt that not only was it reasonable to anticipate litigation, but HBS leaders actually anticipated litigation and discussed it repeatedly, both with me and on their own,” Edelman wrote.

In his Tuesday statement, Edelman also alleged that HBS executive dean for administration Angela Q. Crispi repeatedly misquoted him during his promotion process to paint him in a negative light. He claimed that Crispi resented him over a dispute that took place between 2013 and 2015, in which Edelman fought against a plan to install smaller projector screens in HBS classrooms.

Citing statements made by Crispi during her deposition, Edelman alleged that she presented her recollections of interactions with Edelman as verbatim quotes and urged the Faculty Review Board to insert them into its 2017 report.

Harvard moved to dismiss Edelman’s lawsuit in March 2023, one month after it was filed. But the judge overseeing the case sustained all three counts of Edelman’s complaint in March 2024, noting that Harvard may have breached its contract with Edelman if his allegations were true. Since then, the University has produced more than 23,000 pages worth of documents for Edelman to review.

Edelman and Harvard have requested a judgment in the case before the end of April 2026.

—Staff writer Evan H.C. Epstein can be reached at evan.epstein@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @Evan_HC_Epstein.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.