THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT ruled that Tufts University can’t just hand-wave away promises of academic freedom and economic security made to tenured professors, concluding that a group of professors whose salary and full-time status were reduced can sue the university.
The decision, issued last week, isn’t a slam-dunk victory for the tenured professors, but it does send the case back to a lower court where a judge will have to sort out exactly what it means for a tenured faculty member to be promised academic freedom and economic security.
The case’s origin traces to a 2017-2019 change to compensation plans and research space guidelines at Tufts School of Medicine that required tenured science faculty to generate external funding to support at least half of their base salary after three years, or else face salary and lab space cuts. Faculty members who did not meet those external funding requirements had their salaries cut, their full-time status reduced, and their lab space reduced or cut off entirely.
Professors argued that these changes in salary and work conditions flew directly in the face of the protections associated with tenure. Their original agreements made explicit assurances of academic freedom and economic security, without clearly defining how that would apply to employment status, compensation, or lab space. And by requiring external research funding at a cost recovery rate equivalent to a federal grant from the National Institutes of Health, the professors said, Tufts was undermining promises of academic freedom.
Academic freedom and economic security are not just encouraged, “but important norms in the academic community,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote in a 43-page opinion backed unanimously by the court. “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.”
The Superior Court should not have decided in favor of Tufts without a trial on the thorny issues of what is generally owed by promises of academic freedom and economic security, Kafker wrote, but “nothing in the tenure documents, including the protection provided by the terms ‘academic freedom’ and ‘economic security,’ guarantee the lab space commitments claimed here.”
The SJC sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider the compensation plan complaints.
Justices considered the promise and spirit of tenure protections during oral arguments in November.
“To get tenure is a big deal – you win the trifecta,” Kafker said at the time.“The trifecta is you have some continuous employment; you have some economic security, that’s sufficient economic security; and you have academic freedom. That’s the trifecta.”
But, he mulled, “there are limits to that too, right?”
Academic freedom and economic security, though promised to the tenured professors, is not a clear-cut blank check, the court concluded. Universities, even well-endowed ones, do not have endless funding and lab space, Kafker wrote. To be bound indefinitely to hold labs for faculty who are not using them consistently can block out newer professors, the university argued.
“Tenure, and the benefits it confers, is defined by the contract between a university and a tenured professor,” Kafker wrote. To interpret that contract, he wrote, courts must consider the reasonable definition of the terms, but they generally steer clear of too much intrusion into the academic decisions made by these private educational institutions.
The high court examined tenure letters, faculty handbook, basic science policy, and the policy on academic freedom, tenure, and retirement. All were relatively vague on the subject of tenure terms, Kafker wrote.
“The tenure appointment letters say little about the terms of the plaintiffs’ tenure, apart from stating that they have been offered tenure-track positions or granted tenure, and say nothing about salary or FTE status reduction and lab space reassignment or reduction,” he wrote. “The issues are also not specifically or directly addressed in the faculty handbook, or at least the excerpts of the faculty handbook included in the record.”
More relevant, in the court’s view, were the science and academic freedom policies. The science policy stresses that personnel practices derive from a variety of sources, including faculty bylaws, policies adopted by university trustees, and university policy.
“Whether this language incorporates future policies, or at least future policies undermining express contractual rights and expectations, such as economic security, is far from clear,” Kafker wrote.
Though the academic freedom, tenure, and retirement policy lays out standards for terminating a tenured professor, it, too, is silent on reductions in salary, full-time employment status, or lab space.
But it “states that tenure is ‘permanent or continuous’ once granted,” Kafker noted. “Permanent or continuous tenure would seem to be a hollow promise if it came without any salary commitment or strong protections against outright termination. A tenured professor, according to the tenure documents, cannot be terminated without cause or financial exigency. If their salaries could be reduced at will, this contractual protection would be of very limited value.”
A point of conflict during arguments before the court turned on what would be such an impermissible reduction in salary that it would undermine any promise of economic security. Even taking a tenured professor’s compensation down to just a few dollars, a Tufts lawyer argued to the astonishment of the justices, would not violate their tenure protections.
“To read economic security as merely [encouraged] would be to undermine an essential attribute of tenure, and why it is treasured in the academic world,” Kafker wrote in the opinion. “There is a reason champagne corks pop when tenure is awarded, and economic security is one of those obvious reasons.”
Cultural and professional norms of interpreting academic freedom and economic security are key, the court concluded. When some salaries were reduced after a 2009 change in university policy, the professors did not push back, but they did complain after the 2017 reductions. This suggests there is still exploration needed at the lower court level to establish the parameters of economic security promised to tenured faculty.
The professors are free to sue Tufts, the decision said, overturning the Superior Court’s declaration that there was no violation of tenure protections. Claims for lost compensation because of the salary and work reduction, he said, would depend on whether a lower court finds a contract violation.
Professors are out of luck on lab space guarantees, though, also due to the vagueness of their contracts and university policies. Reassignment or reduction in lab space “does not directly threaten the economic security of a tenured professor” nor their academic freedom, Kafker wrote, especially since the professors were provided with other lab space to conduct research.
“There is nothing in the tenure commitment letters guaranteeing the plaintiffs particular lab space,” Kafker wrote. “The same is true for the faculty handbook, the basic science policy, and the [academic freedom, tenure, and retirement] policy. Indeed, it is undisputed that the award of tenure does not imply a guarantee of specific lab space to a specific individual.”
