The Chronicle of Higher Education
Research
From the issue dated March 24, 2006

Physics Editor Wins Settlement in Case Over Discrimination

Time has finally been good to Jeff Schmidt. The former staff editor at Physics Today was fired in 2000, purportedly for claiming in a book to have stolen hours from his employer, the American Institute of Physics. After fighting his termination for six years, however, Mr. Schmidt won back his job, his reputation, and an undisclosed financial award in a legal settlement announced this week.

The time issue had always been a red herring, say friends of Mr. Schmidt. His lawsuit alleges that he was fired for protesting discriminatory hiring practices at the academic magazine, which publishes news articles and research papers.

The institute admits no wrongdoing in the settlement, but it does say that Mr. Schmidt consistently received positive job reviews and much praise from his supervisors. The institute rehired Mr. Schmidt, who immediately resigned, with the institute's promise of positive references.

Mr. Schmidt was fired after his boss read an article in The Chronicle describing his book, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). The book starts: "This book was stolen. Written in part on stolen time, that is." Mr. Schmidt goes on to argue that most professionals are dissatisfied with their lives because they have ceded control of their political and creative selves to their employers.

Altered Evaluations

At the time, Marc H. Brodsky, executive director of the institute, said he fired Mr. Schmidt for making the claim of stealing time in his book, a statement reiterated in the legal settlement. But documents disclosed during the discovery phase of the case hint at other issues. For example, a positive performance review Mr. Schmidt received in February 1997 was altered eight months later to say he was disruptive at meetings. That happened immediately after Mr. Schmidt had raised his concerns in a meeting that Physics Today was not seeking to hire members of minority groups, according to Sanjoy Mahajan, a supporter of Mr. Schmidt and a lecturer in physics at the University of Cambridge, in England.

Mr. Mahajan has posted on his Web site documents from the case and other related material, including past Chronicle articles, which Mr. Schmidt was forced to remove from his own Web site because of the terms of the settlement.

Mr. Schmidt cannot disclose the size of the settlement, but Mr. Mahajan estimates it is well over $500,000.

Mr. Mahajan was one of 750 physicists and other academics, including Noam Chomsky, who signed public letters denouncing the firing of Mr. Schmidt. "It was the public pressure within the physics community and outside of it that forced them to settle," says Mr. Mahajan.

The institute's Mr. Brodsky declined to comment on the settlement.

Mr. Schmidt says he never actually stole time because he wrote during his breaks. The exaggeration was a nod to the political gadfly Abbie Hoffman (author of the 1971 counterculture classic Steal This Book), he says, adding that "writing this radical book during break time in the office felt like stealing time because the ideas that I was expressing seemed so out of place with the corporate-type atmosphere of the office. So I felt like a thought criminal."


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Section: Research & Publishing
Volume 52, Issue 29, Page A21