To Yee, the “precedent-setting” ruling is a win for tenure and an affirmation of what universities owe their highest-ranking faculty. But it also reveals the fragility of an academic ideal that has become onerous for more and more schools struggling with financial pressures. While the battle plays out nationwide, the Tufts case stands out for its size and scope.
Colleges concerned with political scrutiny and their own bottom lines today are unwinding protections for experienced faculty. And though it’s still uncommon for universities to strip tenure from professors entirely, fewer tenured faculty can rely on the financial stability the status once ensured in uncertain times.
In April, after seven years in court, a Middlesex Superior Court judge ultimately ruled in the professors’ favor,finding that Tufts had breached their tenure contracts and wrongly cut their salaries and full-time faculty status based on the amount of external grant funding they were awarded.
But as the suit dragged on, roughly a dozen tenured Tufts faculty left the university or elected to take untenured contract positions to avoid salary cuts, plaintiffs told the Globe. One professor in the lawsuit, unable to afford his mortgage here, took another job in Florida. And Yee saw her salary cut by more than half, from $140,000 in 2017 to $66,000 in 2026, court documents show.