Ex-MIT Employee Files a Lawsuit Against the School Claiming Race, Gender Discrimination

A former MIT employee is suing the school and one of its aerospace professors, claiming race and gender discrimination after she says she was denied a promotion with pay equal to her male colleagues, despite her qualifications.

Raji Patel, an Indian woman who was hired as the associate director of the NASA Space Grant Massachusetts Consortium at MIT in 2002, claims the director Jeffrey Hoffman ran the program in a “misogynistic and racially insensitive manner,” according to a federal lawsuit filed on July 5. His behavior, which included hurling insults, stereotyping and purposely preventing her from earning an equitable pay raise and a promotion, led her to resign in November of 2022, she said.

“Throughout those last 20 years she’s acted as a good soldier, as someone who took to heart her role for the university, but also students that she’s helping,” said Timothy J. Perry, an attorney representing Patel. “So when she raised these issues, and they came to a head over the last couple of years and she was met with the type of response that she got from both Professor Hoffman and then the university, it just became personally devastating to her.”

Read the source article at Mass Live