Court Punts on Tufts’ Fundraising Demand for Tenured Faculty (1)

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court remanded a dispute over whether Tufts University’s requirement that tenured medical school faculty raise part of their own salaries through grant funding violates their contractual rights to academic freedom and economic security.

A group of tenured professors sued the University over its 2017 compensation plan, which required professors to cover more than half of their salary through external funding. Tufts nearly halved the compensation and lab space of some professors who didn’t meet the requirement.

“Academic freedom and economic security are not hortatory concepts but important norms in the academic community,” the opinion said. “There is ...