Dive Brief:
- An assistant professor of radiology at Duke says the only reason she didn’t get a job at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is because a binding no-hire agreement between the two medical schools prevented it.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that Danielle Seaman has brought a class action suit expecting other faculty to join in, alleging that the agreement was a conspiracy that worked to suppress compensation of faculty across the two schools.
- While it is considered polite not to poach too many faculty from a competitor institution, the former general counsel for the AAUP said he has never heard of a binding agreement, a fact that indicates Seaman’s case may be hard to prove.
Dive Insight:
There are a variety of reasons why faculty move from one institution to another, causing headaches for administrators who are expected to keep them where they are, offering generous retention packages and commitments of support. Generally these conversations go on behind the scenes but sometimes they shift to courtrooms.
The University of California-San Diego is also currently litigating a case following the exit of its lead Alzheimer’s researcher and much of his team to a new post at the University of Southern California. The California Board of Regents has alleged conspiracy in his move, arguing that Paul Aisen conspired to take research data and funding to USC’s new lab. UCSD found preliminary success in an injunction that restored its control over a key database Aisen planned to take with him in his move.