Vengalattore Wins In Second Circuit

In a Title IX lawsuit filed by former Cornell Physics Professor Mukund Vengalattore (MV), the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that Title IX protects faculty and employees against discrimination based upon sex.

The court reinstated MV’s lawsuit against Cornell that had previously been dismissed by a federal district court. The case will now proceed to discovery and trial. The court’s decision sets forth the facts in a way that portrays Cornell quite poorly. MV’s lawsuit alleges that Cornell denied him tenure on the basis of unproven allegations of rape and an improper student-faculty relationship, which Cornell failed to properly investigate or adjudicate. Cornell’s usual procedures were ignored, and the administration sought to punish some of those who spoke up against Cornell’s treatment of MV.

What happened?

Cornell has one of the world’s top physics programs, and the selection of both graduate students and faculty is highly competitive. Candidates are matched with certain subspecialties, such as cosmology, high energy, or solid state physics. Because of this process, candidates know beforehand what they are expected to study, whether it be experimenting in the labs, manipulating theoretical equations, or crunching data with computers. Generally, candidates have demonstrated a deep passion for their work by the time they are invited to Cornell.

MV earned a PhD in Physics from MIT in 2005, and held a postdoc at UC Berkeley from 2005-08. He then received a tenure-track Assistant Professorship at Cornell in 2008, which would schedule him for tenure in 2015. MV started staffing his lab with graduate students and undergraduates who were expected to perform highly technical experiments. One of his first graduate students was LA (whose identity was protected in the court case as “Jane Roe”) who joined his team in January 2009. She struggled with experiments and left the group in October 2012. In January 2013, she transferred to a group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland.

After three years, assistant professors are “evaluated for reappointment to a three-year term.” MV was reappointed in December 2011 based in part on a favorable review from LA and MV’s other students. The experiment that LA completed in MV’s lab had to be modified, and when the resulting paper was received for publication on April 22, 2014, MV refused to list LA as its first author. The group listed all authors with just a first initial and last name. LA alleged that for her name, the naming process was “sexually suggestive” and insisted that her middle initial be included, which was promptly added.   LA then filed complaints against MV on May 10, 2014, at first claiming that he threw a heavy piece of lab equipment at LA in anger and denied her first authorship of the article. Later, in September 2014, LA claimed MV had raped her in December 2010, after which they engaged in a secret, year-long, consensual sexual relationship. MV claims that LA “manufactured” these allegations in an effort to derail MV’s tenure review.

Sara B. Affel of Cornell’s Title IX Office and Alan Mittman ‘71, Director of Workforce Policy & Labor Relations, investigated the rape and sexual relationship claims, and found no direct evidence of a rape or a sexual relationship. They also did not interview the ten witnesses proposed by MV. According to the Second Circuit’s ruling, one witness even “had first-hand evidence as to [LA]’s own gender bias and who in fact, some two months prior to the investigators’ delivery of their Report, gave such evidence to the tenure appeals committee.” These results were reported to Arts College Dean Gretchen Ritter ‘83.

Cornell also hired an outside HR consultant to interview everyone in MV’s lab to determine whether it was a good working environment. The consultant reported that after LA’s departure, the lab had a productive climate and was “highly engaged, dynamic.”

In September 2014, the Physics Department voted to recommend tenure for MV. However, Dean Ritter overruled the Department. The dean concluded by “a preponderance of the evidence” that, because student-faculty sexual relationships can be kept secret, MV was guilty of having such a relationship simply because LA had no reason to lie about it.

MV appealed the denial of tenure, and a faculty committee ruled that a panel of outside experts should have been appointed to consider the case with LA’s letter excluded, but Ritter and the Provost overrode the expectation that two separate entities needed to vote to deny tenure.

Meanwhile, MV’s supporters built a website that presented MV’s side of the controversy. At LA’s request, the Title IX Office decided to investigate one of MV’s graduate students, Yogesh Patil—the alleged creator of the website—for “retaliation” against LA for making a Title IX complaint. (Patil was listed as the first author of the paper instead of LA). Cornell withheld Patil’s PhD degree for seven months beyond his scheduled graduation date while its investigation was pending, prompting letters of protest. Patil has denied being the author of the site.

MV then filed a lawsuit in the New York courts and won a rare victory in November 2016, where the state court ordered Cornell to conduct a “de novo” (completely new) evaluation of MV for tenure. When Cornell did not start a new process, MV filed to hold Cornell in contempt on May 31, 2017. Cornell appealed and on May 10, 2018, the New  York Appellate Division overturned the order requiring a de novo tenure review.

MV also filed a lawsuit against Cornell and the Department of Education in federal court alleging a violation of Title IX and attacking the Obama era guidance, which critics claim stacked campus Title IX proceedings against the accused. MV also claimed that Cornell discriminated against him based upon his Indian heritage.

On May 1, 2020, the federal district court dismissed MV’s lawsuit. The court found that MV did not have standing to challenge the Department of Education’s guidance regarding the handling of sexual assault cases. Although courts have repeatedly found that Title IX granted students an implied right to allege violations in court, the court held that such a right did not extend to employees of an educational institution.

The Second Circuit Allows the Case to Go Forward

On June 2, 2022, the Second Circuit reversed the district court’s decision. The Second Circuit joined other circuits in holding that faculty can bring private lawsuits against educational institutions that discriminate on the basis of sex. In essence, when faced with an absence of evidence that a rape or improper sexual relationship occured, there should be a presumption of innocence – as opposed to a presumption that the complanant should be believed over the respondent.  MV is alleging that Cornell believed the complainant by virtue of her being a woman, hence, discriminating on the basis of sex.

In MV’s case, there were many people who would know whether LA was credible and was in a long-term relationship with MV, but Cornell refused to interview them or to call them as witnesses. Cornell reviewed the emails, texts and phone call records of LA and MV without any results. In fact, Cornell waited months to inform MV that he had been accused of rape. Many of these due process flaws were addressed by the May 6, 2020 Final Rule issued by the Trump Administration. 

The court held that “the procedures followed by Cornell in dealing with [LA]’s allegations were fundamentally skewed.” In fact, Cornell’s Policy 6.4 that covers rape and sexual relationships imposes time deadlines for filing a complaint. In this case, LA came forward years after the deadline for reporting the alleged rape and secret relationship.  Additionally, the improper sexual relationship should not have been investigated by the Title IX Office, but rather by a faculty committee.

However, the court rejected MV’s claim that Cornell violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by discriminating against MV based upon his Indian national origin. Although the Second Circuit twice quoted LA’s views on Indians, there was no evidence showing that Dean Ritter made her tenure-denial decisions based upon anti-Indian bias.

Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes wrote in a concurring opinion: “Vengalattore’s allegations, if supported by evidence, provide one such example of the brutish overreach of university administrators at the expense of due process and simple fairness. His allegations, if corroborated, would reveal a grotesque miscarriage of justice at Cornell University.”

The district court must now allow extensive discovery and a trial on many of MV’s claims. Cornell can either offer to make a settlement or decide to go to trial. Ultimately, Cornell University Counsel Donica Thomas Varner will make that recommendation. Varner, when she served as University Counsel of Oberlin, decided to press ahead on extensive appeals of the Gibson’s Bakery case, another example of what some say is excessive overreach by a college administration.

Now that the Second Circuit has allowed MV’s lawsuit to move forward, the former physics professor can begin developing his case against the university. MV’s lawyers could potentially take the deposition of Dean Ritter and the other officials involved in denying him tenure, as well as review their emails and other records. Additionally, in the years following this saga, the Department of Education’s Title IX policies have been changed by the Trump administration. For now, it looks like MV will finally have his day in court against Cornell.

Where are they now?

Dr. Vengalattore continues to rally support for his vindication through a change.org petition and the aforementioned website.  

Yogesh Patil had his PhD degree delayed by seven months after a complaint filed by LA. He left Cornell to become a postdoc and then a Research Scientist in the Yale Physics Department.   

Gretchen Ritter ’83 has held a number of academic roles since leaving Cornell in 2018. Starting October 1, 2021, Ritter began serving as the Provost of Syracuse University.  

Allan Mittman ‘71, who wrote a report to Dean Ritter as Director of Workforce Policy & Labor Relations,was elected as Employee Trustee and served from 2012-2016. He is now retired.

Sara B. Affel left Cornell as Title IX Coordinator in June 2018.  She practices law in Boston.

This article was written by a member of the Cornell community who requested to stay anonymous.