Judge rejects suit over a dean at Stanford
A Superior Court judge has rejected claims by a former professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business that its dean harassed and discriminated against him.
The case combined racial and gender issues, a workplace romance, online snooping, accusations of violence and lavish housing benefits, all tied to a top business school. The suit, filed in April 2014, drew national scrutiny. That it was being heard in Silicon Valley, where assertions of sexual harassment have steadily grown more pervasive, added to the attention.
The publicity surrounding the case brought to light significant ill feelings at Stanford against the hard-charging dean, Garth Saloner, who announced in September 2015 that he would step down at the end of the school year. At the time, Saloner was a little more than a year into his second five-year term.
In a decision filed Tuesday in Santa Clara Superior Court, Judge Theodore Zayner granted the requests of Stanford and Saloner for summary judgment, saying that plaintiff James Phills had “failed to show that he was subject to discrimination, was wrongfully terminated or was subject to harassment.”
At the root of the suit was a bitterly contentious divorce. Phills and his ex-wife, Deborah Gruenfeld, both taught at
the business school, although her star was brighter. After the couple broke up, Gruenfeld began seeing Saloner, who had pushed Stanford past the highly regarded East Coast and Chicago business schools in the closely watched U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Phills, who was dismissed by Stanford in 2014, argued in court papers that Saloner punished him to benefit his new girlfriend. Phills, who is black, said he also had been “subjected to discriminatory actions with respect to his compensation, work assignments and benefits based on his marital status, race and gender.”
Saloner, who has been on sabbatical for the past year, said through a spokeswoman, “I am gratified that the truth in this matter has been recognized by the court.”
Phills, who now works at Apple, declined to comment on the ruling. But his lawyer, Andrew Pierce, said his client was not giving up.
“The case raises novel issues about the definition of marital status discrimination and in particular whether it applies to marital separations of co-workers,” he said. “It also raises novel issues regarding a university’s responsibility to protect faculty from administrators who have reason to recuse themselves.”
Pierce added that “we will be exploring all avenues of review at the trial and appellate levels.”
Stanford said the judge’s ruling was proof the case never had any merit. “It is unfortunate that the system allows plaintiffs to file and publicize sensational and baseless claims, causing long-term harm that cannot be undone years later, even with a complete victory such as this one,” said Lisa Lapin, a spokeswoman for the university.
Whatever the final disposition of Phills’ case, it did reveal problems at Stanford that the university was forced to acknowledge. In an interview with the New York Times in the fall of 2015, John Etchemendy, then Stanford’s provost, acknowledged “weaknesses in management” and said they were being addressed.
“We have very high standards of behavior and for the most part achieve them better than any other institution I know,” he said. “But we sometimes fall short.”
One post-lawsuit development: For the first time, two of the four senior associate deans at Stanford’s business school are women. Another: The business school is no longer No. 1. In the latest U.S. News rankings, it has slipped to a three-way tie for fourth.
David Streitfeld is a New York Times writer.