Opinion: Mike Davis Says a $6 Million Jury Verdict Shows Why the Justice Department Should Investigate MIT and the Whitehead Institute
The Article III Project's founder argues a jury that cleared a star biologist of misconduct claims exposed a rotten process at two elite institutions that take over a billion dollars a year in public money.
Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, argues in a Fox News column that the federal government should look into how MIT and the Whitehead Institute treated scientist David Sabatini.
The verdict. A Massachusetts jury recently awarded Sabatini $6 million and rejected the sexual-misconduct claims that ended his career at MIT and closed his lab at Whitehead. Davis says the jury of seven women and six men showed "objectivity and decency" that the institutions' leaders did not. He says the fight took years of Sabatini's life and nearly ruined him financially.
His account of the trial. Davis says Sabatini was one of the best-known molecular cell biologists alive, with a major lab, an MIT professorship and tens of millions in federal funding. He says trial evidence showed his accuser, Kristin Knouse, ran a campaign she called "covert operation dethrone" after their relationship ended, and that Knouse reported Whitehead director Ruth Lehmann acted "as if she wants a formal reason to fire" him. He says an outside law firm's report reached no conclusion on whether the relationship was consensual and faulted Sabatini's focus on "science above all else." The Howard Hughes Medical Institute fired him, and he resigned from Whitehead.
The MIT committee. Davis says MIT's dean of science, Nergis Mavalvala, sat on a three-member committee weighing Sabatini's tenure, and testified it did not talk to former lab members, including 34 who had written in his support. He quotes her email to Lehmann about "complete alignment between our viewpoints on this whole sordid affair." Mavalvala said on the stand that the alignment concerned process and that her review was independent.
His ask. Davis ties the case to DEI, noting Lehmann ranked "diversity and disparities" among key areas for science and built DEI programs at Whitehead. He says Knouse still runs an MIT lab and recently received a large NIH grant, that Lehmann and Mavalvala remain in their posts, and that neither institution has said it will look at its conduct. Because MIT and Whitehead receive over a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funds, he says the public deserves an accounting and the Trump administration should investigate.
Note for readers: this is one advocate's argument. The claims about Knouse, Lehmann and Mavalvala are Davis's reading of trial evidence, and Mavalvala disputes the bias charge. We did not review the trial record, and the defendants' side is not fully represented here.