Enrichetta Ravina, denied tenure at Columbia Business School, was awarded $1.25 million in damages after a jury found senior professor Geert Bekaert guilty of retaliation
A federal jury awarded former Columbia Business School Assistant Professor Enricheeta Ravina $1.25 million in damages in a highly publicized sexual harassment and retaliation trial that lasted more than two weeks in U.S. District Court in New York.
The award falls far short of the more than $30 million Ravina was seeking and follows a highly contentious dispute by lawyers in the case about what the untenured professor would be able to say in front of jurors hearing the damages portion of the case. Among other things, Ravina suggested that Columbia’s decision not to give her tenure would likely mean she will end up at a business school ranked 30th to 40th, a fate she contended would greatly diminish future opportunities in pay, retirement income, consulting, directorships on boards, and even a possible stake in an early stage company in exchange for advisory work.
The back-and-forth among the lawyers and judge that preceded the award provides a fascinating glimpse of life in academia at a top business school, including conversations about housing allowances for Columbia and NYU Stern professors, mortgage support for professors at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and estimates that consulting work for Ravina would have been worth as much as $800 an hour, or $500,000 a year, and directorships would have earned her $8.6 million over her lifetime, if only she had been granted tenure at a top ten business school.
$750K IN COMPENSATORY DAMAGES & $500K IN PUNITIVE DAMAGES AWARDED
A jury found Finance Professor Geert Baekert retaliated against his former mentee
The jury awarded Ravina, now a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, $750,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages. Columbia University and finance Professor Geert Bekaert, who she had accused of sexually harassing her and then retaliating when she rebuffed his overtures, are liable for compensatory damages. Bekaert is also liable for $500,000 in punitive damages. Under the New York City Human Rights Law, the university is responsible for acts of retaliation committed by its employees.
The award is a mere fraction of the more than $30 million Ravina sought, but the jury only found in her favor only on a retaliation charge. They did not agree that she was a victim of sexual harassment or gender discrimination, a finding that would have likely resulted in a substantially larger damage award (see Columbia Business School Prof Found Guilty Of Retaliation In Explosive #MeToo Case).
Regardless, the monetary damages likely pale the reputational damage to the university and its business school from a series of highly embarrassing disclosures during the trial. Among other things, the university’s former director of Equal Opportunity & Affirmative Action (EOAA) revealed that he had personally conducted four separate harassment investigations at the business school in a single year, all involving male professors accused of harassment by female faculty or students. In one case, a professor at the business school was alleged to have had consensual sex in his office on campus with a female MBA student. It also was disclosed that two months before Ravina brought her concerns to the university, the EOAA office had completed a review of another harassment complaint against Bekaert by a female MBA student who decided not to pursue the case after she had been threatened with retaliation by Bekaert. The dean’s office said it had been unaware of this previous complaint.
‘THE DAMAGES SHOULD SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE TO COLUMBIA’
The trial revealed a serious split in the faculty ranks at the business school, with many senior tenured faculty in the finance and economics division siding with Ravina against Bekaert, the school and the university. Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard called the faculty dispute “a soap opera,” despite the serious nature of the complaints by Ravina, and failed to follow up on his own recommendation that Bekaert be given one-on-one Title IX training (see CBS Dean Calls Faculty Dispute ‘A Soap Opera). Instead, Bekaert was sent to a one-to-two hour session on professional communications.
The damages award by the four-woman, four-man jury came after the jurors found yesterday that Bekaert, Ravina’s senior colleague and mentor at Columbia Business School, retaliated against her after she alleged to Columbia that he was stalling their work on research projects and that he had been sexually harassing her for more than two years. By delaying his work on the research, Ravina charged, he effectively ruined her chances of gaining the publications she needed to obtain tenure.
“The $1.25 million in damages in this case should send a clear message to Columbia University and the world of higher education that workplace retaliation and abuse of power in academia will not be tolerated,” said Ravina attorney David Sanford of Sanford Heisler Sharp in a statement. “We are gratified that the jury recognized the damage done to Professor Ravina’s career by Columbia University and Professor Geert Bekaert. Throughout Professor Ravina’s long ordeal, Columbia chose to ignore her concerns and turned a blind eye to Bekaert’s retaliatory behavior.”
WHAT’S A BUSINESS SCHOOL ACADEMIC WORTH? DOES IT REALLY DEPEND ON A RANKING?
While the award had to be disappointing to Ravina and her attorneys, the discussion that preceded the jury’s return to hear the damages portion of the trial had to be equally frustrating. In a deposition given by Ravina immediately after the jury’s verdict yesterday, the professor suggested that her earnings potential would be severely impacted by Columbia’s decision to deny her tenure in 2016. She said that it was common knowledge in the field that if you don’t get tenure at a top ten school, you have to look at a lower school, probably one ranked in the 30 to 40 range by U.S. News.
That would mean, she testified, that her salary and retirement benefits would be reduced along with the opportunities she would have to do litigation consulting, corporate consulting, and directorships. Ravina believed that as a tenured professor at Columbia Business School she would have been making $800 an hour and up to $500,000 a year in additional income. She also believed that she would lose an opportunity to earn a stake in a startup or early stage company in exchange of her advisory work. Such a stake, Ravina said, could be worth a .1 percent ownership interest in a company worth $2 billion or more. Raving estimated that lost directorships, citing Italian-born professors who have had board seats at Italian Telecom and Unibank, could be worth $8.6 million over her lifetime.
Edward Hernstadt, the attorney representing Bekaert, took strong issue with her statements on lost opportunities as a result of the retaliation finding by the jury. He argued that her estimates were merely based on conversations with a few colleagues, a look at the CVs of professors, and an online search of salaries for professors at business schools ranked 30th to 40th.
Columbia Business School
HER DAMAGE ESTIMATES ARE ‘GUESSWORK’
“She did no rigorous study to determine how many people got outside consulting, how many tenured professors had outside consulting jobs,” Hernstadt told the judge. “She guessed 50%, 60%. She named a couple of individuals that she had heard from that had consulting (work). She doesn’t know what they charged. She doesn’t know how they get the jobs. She doesn’t know why they get the jobs. It’s all guesswork..We know that the activity reports of Columbia professors show that four tenured finance professors consult. This is a department of 35 people who have tenure. Not 50%, not 60%.”
Countered Alexandra Harwin, who also represented Ravina, “She has been in the academic world for a long time. She’s also been involved in recruiting. As part of being an academic, that is something that is part of the fabric of every day life. People are talking all the time about going to… they have the directorship meeting today. They’re going over to this company for consulting. They’re teaching next week at this company. I am away next week because I’m teaching in this place. This is something that it’s not one conversation. This is the life of academics.”
Hernstadt, attempting to rein in testimony that could lead a jury to award more money in damages, wasn’t buying it. “She’s clearly not an expert,” he claimed. “She has no experience of any kind with litigation consulting, corporate consulting, outside directorships. Even calculating her front pay, the mathematics of that, she’s more than qualified to do. But the selection of her decision to select schools from the ranked 30 to 40 in U.S. News and World Report…she’s not an expert in making those sort of decisions. And then the way she did it is incredibly flawed.
A .1% STAKE IN A STARTUP THAT COULD BE WORTH $2 BILLION OR MORE
“She would earn all of this stuff starting in 2020? So starting in 2020, she’s going to have two directorships with 16 board meetings in Italy. She’s going to be working 60 hours a year on litigation consulting. She is going to be working for a startup. Who knows what the time involvement is to get a .1 percent equity stake in that company. She is going to be doing external teaching. There is no basis for anything. To say this is a possible opportunity is one thing. To put a dollar figure or any kind of actual number on any of this is….
“Witness the $8.6 million she is seeking for directorship. She has no experience at all in that world. She knows nothing about what these extrernal companies in the real world look for, what they base decisions on, and what qualifications they think are necessary. I think we all know when it comes to litigation consulting, if you are going to hire someone as a litigation consultant and possible expert witness, you’re looking for the biggest, best, strongest resume that you can get. You want someone who wrote the book on the subject matter or wrote a dozen top articles on the subject matter. You are not going to take someone who just made full professor and has a handful of articles. Professor Ravina has no experience in that world.”
“She is in the business of being an academic,” argued Harwin. “It is extremely common for academics to do these kind of opportunities, and it is the common understanding of finance professors who are on the enture track that these opportunities are available when they become full professors. And so that’s been part of her essentially sort of understanding of her field and career trajectory for an extended period. Professor Ravina’s calculations account for levels of risk and uncertainty associated with these possibilities.”
‘THERE ARE LOWER RANKED SCHOOLS THAT PAY MORE THAN TOP RANKED SCHOOLS’
Harwin noted that she looked at the CVs of 135 professors at schools ranked 30th to 40th and also averaged the salaries of both an associate professor and a full tenured professor at Temple University, Penn State University, Michigan State, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana to come up with some of her estimates.
Shot back Bekaert’s attorney: “I don’t think she can testify that she thinks she would be paid less. That’s pure speculation. There are lower ranked schools that pay more than top ranked schools because of where they are or how much money they have. That’s common. In other words, she can’t testify she’ll make less because that’s a guess.”
“It’s not a guess,” retorted Harwin. “It’s not a guess at all. It’s clear that she as an academic has a broad understanding about what it looks like to be at a top school versus lower tiered schools. And it’s clear she can testify about her job prospects with respect to academic positions and then what follows is the translation essentially.”
Ultimately, the jury decided that the damages would be far less than what Ravina and her attorneys had wanted. $1.25 million in all.
DON’T MISS: CBS DEAN CALLS FACULTY DISPUTE ‘A SOAP OPERA’ or COLUMBIA INVESTIGATED FOUR SEPARATE CASES OF HARASSMENT AT ITS BUSINESS SCHOOL IN A SINGLE YEAR
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