Sanjay Gupta, Michigan State University’s controversial former business school dean, has amended his lawsuit alleging that the university's administration conspired against him in a presidential succession plot to include nine new defendants: general counsel Brian Quinn, and all eight of the university’s trustees.
The suit previously named seven MSU administrators – Interim President Teresa Woodruff, former President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., Interim Provost Thomas Jeitschko, Title IX Coordinator Nicole Schmidtke, Title IX Investigator Allison Towe, Interim Associate Provost Ann Austin and university spokesperson Emily Guerrant – who Gupta alleges plotted his August 2022 removal as part of a scheme to best position Woodruff for the presidency.
Gupta was given a chance to amend his suit after MSU’s board released their own $1.6 million outside investigation into his resignation. His new complaint uses information from that probe to tie the additional defendants to the alleged scheme and flesh out his theory.
Woodruff and her alleged co-conspirators called Gupta's initial suit a “desperate” attempt to reverse the decision to recommend he resign over his failure to comply with MSU’s mandatory reporting policy.
They called his presidential succession theories “as threadbare as they are incomprehensible.”
The board’s investigation – conducted by global law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan – found no evidence for or against the theory. But, as Gupta points out in his amended suit, it did find evidence to suggest the administration improperly meddled in the Title IX investigation at the center of the scandal.
MSU’s Office of Institutional Equity, or OIE, is charged with investigating incidents of sexual misconduct at MSU. Agreements between MSU and the federal Department of Education mandate that the OIE be independent from the administration.
But, when the OIE moved to close the investigation into the incident Gupta failed to report in August 2022, MSU’s general counsel and department of Faculty and Academic Staff Affairs directed the OIE to keep the case open, according to the board’s investigation.
Eventually, the OIE would conclude that one of Gupta’s assistant deans, Charles Hadlock, drunkenly harassed and inappropriately touched students at a university event. Hadlock moved to the University of Pittsburgh shortly after the incident, where he teaches today.
Because of the interference over whether the OIE would fully investigate the matter, Gupta is adding General Counsel Brian Quinn to the suit.
The board members were added as defendants because Gupta argues that, given the revelations in the investigation they ordered, they were made aware of violations of his rights but didn’t do anything to correct them.
Gupta’s new complaint seeks a financial award, ruling from the court saying his “constitutional rights” were violated, and an injunction from the court reinstating him as dean of the business college.
Gupta served as dean from 2015 until his removal in 2022. Today, he works as a professor at MSU with a salary of $549,744.36 — making him the highest-paid member of the faculty at almost $50,000 more than the interim-provost.
