Under the terms of the settlement, which is pending court approval, a $5 million settlement fund will be set up to compensate approximately 84 full professors for the alleged discrimination, according to Equal Rights Advocates and the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, which represented the plaintiffs.
“This step reflects years of efforts by women faculty members at Vassar, first privately and then in court, to get Vassar to eliminate a gender-based pay gap of which the college has long been aware,” said Catherine Bendor, director of litigation at Equal Rights Advocates and co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
“Our clients worked hard to achieve justice not only for themselves and their colleagues, but for all future women professors,” Bendor continued.
The settlement also calls for Vassar to be more transparent about decisions regarding pay, evaluation and promotion over the next three years, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said. Specifically, the college must hire a third-party consultant to conduct annual “pay audits” of full professor compensation, provide the results to a faculty compensation committee and make pay adjustments based on the results.
Sharon Davidson Chang, chair of the board of trustees at Vassar, said in a statement Friday that if the annual pay audits suggest that further review is warranted, “it will be undertaken promptly.”
Five current and former women full professors – Wendy Graham, Maria Höhn, Mia Mask, Cindy Schwarz, and Debra Zeifman – filed the class action lawsuit against Vassar in August 2023.
