A Boston court has ruled in favor of former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor David Sabatini, ordering his former colleague to pay him $6 million in damages. The jury found that Kristin Knouse had deliberately defamed the renowned scientist. Following a three-week trial, the jury rejected her counterclaims of sexual harassment in full.
Sabatini headed a laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research for 24 years and was considered a potential Nobel Prize contender by the scientific community. In 2020, Knouse, a postdoctoral researcher, accused him of sexual misconduct. A year later, the institute dismissed the professor. Following a social media campaign and student protests, New York University (NYU) also declined to hire him.
“I lost everything. There was nothing left of my normal life,” Sabatini said in his first televised interview since the verdict.
In court, Sabatini’s lawyers argued that the relationship between the colleagues had been consensual. Private messages presented as evidence suggested that Knouse was jealous of another woman and had deliberately sought to have the scientist fired. In one message, she referred to the effort as a “Covert Operation Dethrone” and joked about buying a Lamborghini if she won the case. During her deposition, she acknowledged that she had selectively provided investigators with only some of the text messages, based on her own judgment.
