Thursday, 4:30 PM
MIT Laureate behaved inappropriately but will not be disciplined
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff
A Nobel Laureate behaved inappropriately when he discouraged a young woman from accepting an MIT job offer, but other professors provoked the professor's actions to some extent by excluding him from parts of the hiring process, according to an MIT investigation.
Susumu Tonegawa, whose behavior toward the recruit sparked an outcry from several colleagues, will not be disciplined, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Provost Rafael Reif said today. The provost said several individuals acted inappropriately in the failed effort to recruit neuroscientist Alla Karpova, and there is no need to punish anyone because the real blame lies with the competitive relationship between different neoroscience centers at MIT.
The controversy has revealed how the leaders of one the world's top universities are struggling to prevent internal warring from hindering their efforts to hire the best people and do the best research.
"We cannot allow internal competitiveness to undercut the integrity, values and mission of the Institute as a whole," MIT President Susan Hockfield said in a letter to professors which accompanied an MIT committee's report on the incident.
Hockfield noted that leaders of departments, labs and centers have a special duty to work for the overall benefit of the institution.
Tonegawa sent Karpova emails last May in which he praised her, but vehemently opposed her coming to MIT as a junior professor to work for a rival neuroscience institute within MIT. "I do not feel comfortable at all to have you here," he wrote, noting that she would be in direct competition with him.
Karpova, a postdoctoral fellow in her late 20s, subsequently turned down MIT's offer and took a job at a Howard Hughes Medical Institute lab in Virginia.
In previous comments to the Globe provided through a spokesman, Tonegawa has said he did nothing to interfere with the job offer but also said he could not agree to collaborate with or mentor Karpova as she had wanted. He noted that he too many responsibilities at his center, the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
