Documents further evidencing egregious violations of University policies and US laws by Physics Department faculty and Ritter will soon be accessible, for e.g. Department Chair Parpia asking Vengalattore to write research proposals on his behalf in return for considering AMO graduate applicants to Cornell Physics, Ritter and Erich Mueller (the then LASSP director) attempting to illegally appropriate the Vengalattore labs’ federal research infrastructure if Vengalattore and his students did not cease their complaints about Cornell’s misconduct, etc. Even without these documents, there are numerous aspects of the Vengalattore case that expose Cornell to huge liabilities. Many of them that can be fathomed from the currently available documents are given below.
Following her departure from Vengalattore’s group, the student "LA" conducted a campaign of false allegations and attempts to dissuade students from joining the Vengalattore group. As a result of her activities (which the Department leadership was aware of), Vengalattore and his group could not recruit a single graduate student between her departure in 2012, up to 2014, having severe impact on Vengalattore’s research progress, over and above the constraints imposed by the Physics Department’s (Parpia’s) discriminatory policies against AMO applicants.
Despite knowledge of this student’s activities and her vendetta against Vengalattore, she was asked for a tenure evaluation letter (in violation of conflict of interest policies), in which she leveled more than ten false allegations against Vengalattore, including allegations that he abuses students, that he has "shouting matches" at group meetings, that he humiliates students for asking “stupid questions”, that he physically assaulted her by throwing equipment at her, etc. The student thought that this would lead to the denial of Vengalattore's tenure. It should be noted that Vengalattore was not made aware of these allegations.
Nonetheless, Vengalattore had independently come to know of some of the allegations circulating within the Department, and thus complained to the Department about the student's misconduct. Vengalattore presented the department with evidence that these allegations were demonstrably false. Vengalattore also raised serious concerns about other Departmental professors' misconduct, in particular, of the Department Chair Parpia and of the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), Gibbons. Vengalattore was, for example, prompted by the false caricature of his group, and the fabrications about Vengalattore’s conduct, as reported in the Gibbons report, as also by the discrimination against his AMO research program. These complaints, supported by ample documented evidence, were later upheld by the University Appeals Committee. The Appeals Committee also noted that the Physics department administration (Parpia, Gibbons etc) falsely promised Vengalattore that there would be a full investigation into LA's misconduct and that the findings would be shared with the entire Physics department before the tenure vote. In fact, there was no investigation and the Physics department was falsely led to believe that LA's allegations were "established as fact". It was also clear based on later acknowledgements by the department administrators that the Physics department had no intention of acting on its promises to Vengalattore, e.g. Erich Mueller the LASSP director admitting to Vengalattore's students that the department would "lose political capital" by acknowledging the flaws in Vengalattore's tenure review process.
Following Vengalattore's complaints and his stated intention to bypass the Department to take these concerns directly to the University, the Department told Vengalattore that it was considering options like terminating the accusing student's PhD, or placing a letter of censure in the student's file, among other considered punitive measures for her misconduct. Senior faculty also promised Vengalattore that the Department would immediately reverse its discriminatory policies against AMO applicants, treat these applicants on the same footing as others, allow Vengalattore to recruit promising Cornell undergraduates, and even support his current students with fellowships if he confined his complaints to within the Department.
Following Vengalattore's complaints, and despite the poisonous letter by this student, the Department voted positively for Vengalattore’s tenure. With Vengalattore awarded tenure, his complaints and concerns against this student and professors in the Department would have had to be acted upon, with investigations needing to be conducted. The Department leadership (Parpia, Gibbons, Patterson (Gibbons' wife), etc.) knew the likely outcome of any such investigation. Instead of an investigation, what happened was that immediately following the positive Departmental tenure vote, the Department Chair Parpia called up this student and told her about the positive tenure vote. Current court documents do not fully reveal what else was discussed during this conversation. But what is known is that within a couple of days of this conversation, this student called up Patterson (DGS Gibbons' wife) and accused Vengalattore of sexual assault, alleging that the assault had occurred four years earlier. Given that all the other accusations had not prevented Vengalattore's tenure, perhaps this career-ending allegation would get Vengalattore fired? Further, who would investigate Vengalattore's complaints against the student and against other professors further if he was now being accused of sexual assault? As such, what effectively happened was that the very people who Vengalattore had complained against ended up creating, soliciting and propping up sexual assault accusations against him.
At least at this point, one would rationally think that Ritter and Cornell would investigate both, the complaints lodged by Vengalattore, as also the allegations made against him. But even now, Ritter and Cornell did not investigate - neither Vengalattore's complaints, nor the sexual assault allegation, nor the other allegations against Vengalattore. Even now, neither Ritter nor Cornell informed Vengalattore about these allegations. Instead, Ritter and Cornell tried to get rid of Vengalattore by unfairly and secretively denying him tenure, expecting him to "go away". A natural question arises - why would Ritter and Cornell do that? Several facts need to be noted before trying to answer that question -
The gravity of the above violations of University policies and US laws is such that if Vengalattore was granted tenure, the University, the Department and concerned individuals like Ritter, Parpia, Gibbons and Patterson would be exposed to significant liabilities. Of course, without tenure, Vengalattore would be devoid of any rights afforded by University policies to a faculty, and thus would not be able to pursue any of the above complaints and concerns within the University. As such, while the current court documents do not definitively reveal the answer to the question as to why Ritter, the Department and Cornell acted the way they did, one can make an informed speculation that it may have seemed to Ritter and Cornell that denying tenure would keep these serious violations and discrimination secret, and thus hidden from any scrutiny; and that it may have seemed to Ritter and Cornell that the fallout of granting Vengalattore tenure would be far worse than violating even more University policies and US laws than they already had.
In their failed attempt to get rid of Vengalattore between September 2014 - February 2015, Cornell further violated University policies and US laws.
Ritter's and the Department's expectation that Vengalattore would leave Cornell quietly blew up in their faces when Vengalattore appealed the denial of tenure at the University level. What followed were even more arbitrary and capricious actions by Ritter, by the Physics Department and by Cornell, as established by the NYS Supreme Court.
It is also telling, that immediately following Ritter's very first denial of Vengalattore's tenure in October 2014, when senior LASSP professors were shocked and trying to fathom what had just happened (the dean is expected to follow a Department's tenure recommendation), and while these senior LASSP professors were encouraging Vengalattore to appeal Ritter's decision, Department Chair Parpia tried very hard to convince Vengalattore that is "time [for Vengalattore] to move on" and that his appeal “had no chance”.
Ritter's own words regarding why she denied Vengalattore tenure despite the faculty and committee recommendations can be gathered through her final tenure denial letter and through the affidavits she submitted to the court. However, there are numerous reasons why Ritter's purported reasons are pretexts. Among others,
If the reasons Ritter cites were genuine, there would have been no need to keep secret from Vengalattore allegations made against him. There would have been no need to bypass and circumvent an umpteen number of University policies. There would have been no need to blatantly lie to Vengalattore, or to his students, or even to the various committees. The "secretive and non-inclusive nature", as the court referred to it, of Ritter's and Cornell's actions, raise grave concerns about the credibility of the proffered explanations for Vengalattore's tenure denial. It should be noted that right to the end, the Appeals Committee continued to find serious deficiencies following Ritter's actions. That the Appeals Committee thought that an independent, and external, academic evaluation was called for, despite Ritter's purported rationalizations, says a lot about their opinion of Ritter, about Ritter’s repeated attempts to prejudice the process and manipulate policies behind the scenes, and about Ritter’s transparent efforts to bully the faculty into going along with her desired outcomes.
It should be noted that once Vengalattore appealed at the University level in March 2015, Ritter was forced to authorize an investigation into the student’s sexual assault allegation. In further violation of University policies and US laws, Cornell investigated the sexual assault allegation and denied Vengalattore his due process. When in the course of their investigations they found evidence that would exonerate Vengalattore, the WPLR investigators Alan Mittman and Sarah Affel declared the investigation into the sexual assault to be ‘time barred’, and morphed the investigation as one into a "romantic relationship" allegation. Regarding the investigations and recommendations made by Mittman and Affel regarding the “romantic relationship” allegation, Prof. Kevin Clermont, the Ziff Professor of Law at Cornell, an expert in procedural law who has helped draft several of Cornell’s policies and who has followed the Vengalattore case closely, said “...there was a telling absence of direct proof such as e-mails, texts, or witnesses… a reasonable person would not find guilt, even by a preponderance [of evidence standard], unless that person made the amateurish mistake of ignoring the probative value of the absence of direct evidence after an incredibly exhaustive investigation.” Clermont has previously told the Cornell Sun that the investigation about the alleged relationship reached the “stratosphere of injustice”, and contained a “litany of procedural abuses by the investigators.” Given the absence of any evidence of a romance, the investigators have later claimed that because the alleged romance was alleged to be a “secret” by the accuser, the absence of evidence should not be a concern. This is consistent with a Cornell Dean’s previously reported statements announcing that Cornell holds allegations tantamount to actionable evidence. While Ritter has used the alleged relationship as if it were an established fact to justify her denial of his tenure, notwithstanding Vengalattore’s repeated protests and requests for a hearing, Vengalattore is continually being denied that right to a hearing. And for very good reason - all of the student's and Ritter's lies would then be exposed.
While these are plenty of things that Cornell has to hide, it should be noted that these are still just the tip of an iceberg. Further court ordered discovery, the hearing Cornell has been preventing, and other investigations will reveal more.
Edit: Prof. Kevin Clermont's letter to University Counsel Wessel is now available here.