Monica A. Emeldi hopes the lawsuit she has brought against the University of Oregon helps to empower graduate students when their relationships with professors go bad.
Her lawsuit, Emeldi v. University of Oregon, centers on issues at the heart of those relationships. And the case—which went to trial on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore.—is being watched nationally because it seeks to apply Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a federal antidiscrimination law, to academic relationships between students and professors, a sphere that universities say is protected by academic freedom.
In an interview this fall, Ms. Emeldi said that after she complained about unequal treatment of female students in her Ph.D. program in the College of Education at Oregon, faculty members saw her as a troublesome student and used covert tactics to force her out.
“They let me die on the vine,” she said in a phone conversation with her lawyer present. It was the first interview she had granted since filing her lawsuit against the university, in October 2008. “They punished me, and they refused to supply me with the academic support I needed to finish my Ph.D.”
Ms. Emeldi was working as a national education consultant when she decided to enroll in Oregon’s Ph.D. program, in 2004. She wanted to expand her professional network and enhance her career by studying with experts in her field.
Ms. Emeldi, who is 42 and now lives in California, said that while she was pursuing her degree in the university’s special-education program, her initial adviser and dissertation chair, Edward J. Kame’enui, went on sabbatical. Robert H. Horner, another professor in the department, agreed to replace him as her adviser.
During the time she and Mr. Horner were working together, Ms. Emeldi said, she published scholarly work, presented at conferences, was writing a manuscript with Mr. Horner, and received positive feedback from him on her dissertation.
A few years into her program, in May 2007, Ms. Emeldi joined several other doctoral students in submitting a memorandum to the dean of the College of Education in which they voiced concerns about what they saw as the unequal support and treatment of female students and the shortage of tenured female faculty members.
By that time, she said, her relationship with Mr. Horner had also soured. “He gave his male students more attention, more office space, computers, and better resources to do their work,” she said. “In meetings, Dr. Horner ignored me.”
Ms. Emeldi complained to the associate dean of the graduate school about how Mr. Horner treated her. Soon after the associate dean debriefed Mr. Horner about Ms. Emeldi’s complaint, he resigned as chair of her dissertation committee, citing irreconcilable academic differences. Fifteen other faculty members subsequently declined her requests to serve as her new dissertation chair.
Ms. Emeldi filed a grievance report with the university about Mr. Horner and her inability to secure a new adviser. Because she was unable to find a faculty member willing to work with her, she said, she had to withdraw from the university. Her inability to complete her doctoral program, she said, was caused by Mr. Horner’s quitting as her chair and the other faculty members’ conspiring to block her from finishing as punishment for speaking out.
‘Fanciful Speculation’
The university disagrees with her version of events.
In court documents the university has argued that Mr. Horner’s decision to step down as chair of Ms. Emeldi’s dissertation committee was an exercise of academic judgment and was not the result of any gender bias. Ms. Emeldi’s theory of retaliation, the university has argued, is based on “her own fanciful speculation,” and her evidence of sex discrimination and retaliation, it says, “is not just weak, it is virtually nonexistent.”
The university says that the 15 faculty members’ decisions to not serve as Ms. Emeldi’s adviser were not related to her bias complaints.
Mr. Horner did not respond to messages left by email and voicemail.
Julie Brown, senior director of communications for the university, said in an email that the university does not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. However, Ms. Brown did write that “the university disagrees with Ms. Emeldi’s assertion and looks forward to resolving her claims at trial.”
Ms. Emeldi’s lawsuit was initially dismissed by the district court in 2008, but it was reinstated last year, when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found there was enough evidence to let a jury decide whether the decisions of Mr. Horner and the other faculty members constituted retaliation.
The university asked the full Ninth Circuit court and later the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling, but both courts declined to take it up.
In her lawsuit, Ms. Emeldi is asking the university to let her return and finish her Ph.D., and she is also seeking unspecified monetary damages for pay she estimates she would have earned if she had completed her degree.
Universities are concerned that a win for Ms. Emeldi could set a precedent that would harm professors’ ability to make academic decisions about student performance without fear of being sued.
Ms. Emeldi and her lawyer, by contrast, believe a decision in her favor would empower graduate students to speak out against faculty members who abuse academic freedom and discriminate among students.
Seeking a Remedy
Since Ms. Emeldi’s enrollment at Oregon was officially terminated, in the spring of 2009, she said her life had been turned inside out. She has not been able to hold a job in her field, she said, because of her lawsuit against the university.
“For the past five years I’ve been waking up every day and living with the consequences of this lawsuit,” she said. “I’ve lost my identity, my professional network, and my support system.”
Ms. Emeldi said she was hired by the Sonoma County Office of Education, in Santa Rosa, Calif., in July 2011 as a support director working on college readiness. But she said she was later placed on administrative leave for reasons related to her lawsuit.
However, a human-resources technician with the Sonoma County office, who asked not to be identified, said that Ms. Emeldi had not been placed on administrative leave. Her contract was not renewed when it ended, in June 2012, the official said, because of her performance. The technician also said that Ms. Emeldi’s pending lawsuit had had no bearing on the office’s decision.
Over the next few months, Ms. Emeldi said, she applied to dozens of jobs each week. During interviews, she said, certain questions were asked that led her to think that many of the hiring managers were talking to each other about her case.
Ms. Emeldi said she feels embarrassed, humiliated, and isolated professionally. Her financial situation has also deteriorated. Her unemployment benefits have run out, and so, too, have her savings.
“I put all my eggs in one basket,” she said, “thinking that I would continue professionally after earning my Ph.D.”
Ms. Emeldi said that for the past five years she has followed news articles about her case and has been hurt by the things she’s read. Her lawyer, David C. Force, said that much of the news coverage has focused on an image of his client that Oregon has fostered.
“The university has very carefully cultivated this as a story of a grad student who wasn’t qualified to get a Ph.D. and got bounced from her program and is now trying to extort money out of the university,” Mr. Force said.
He said that Ms. Emeldi had paid a price for telling her story. Professors need to be held accountable for flagrant abuses of graduate students, he said, and he hopes her case will begin to do that.
“What I’d like to see from this case is that students have the right to academic freedom,” Mr. Force said. “They need freedom to criticize the faculty who have abused them, and they should have the same protection.”
For her part, Ms. Emeldi said she wanted to send a message to other female graduate students that they, too, can speak up if they face discrimination.
“I want to complete my dissertation and earn my Ph.D.,” she said. “I want the trauma I’ve endured to be remedied.”
