Did Duke retaliate after a researcher’s sexual assault claim? A jury will decide
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Jury will weigh if the research probe — timed days around her report — was retaliation.
- Duke cites 2019 concerns and says the probe began the day before her Feb. 28, 2020 report.
- Investigation led Duke to seek grant terminations, paper retractions and end employment.
This summer, Duke University is set to face a jury in a lawsuit that alleges the school retaliated against a researcher after she reported that her supervisor sexually harassed and assaulted her.
The central issue is this: At around the same time the researcher reported the misconduct, Duke launched an investigation into the integrity of her research — an inquiry which ultimately led to the cancellation of her grant, the retraction of three of her published papers, and her eventual dismissal from Duke.
Dr. Brahmajothi Mulugu, 58, worked at Duke researching brain and blood health for 25 years. In 2023, she sued Duke and several individuals there for all kinds of violations, including racial, sexual and age discrimination. But there’s just one allegation the judge, Catherine Eagles, has taken seriously: retaliation.
Mulugu and her supervisor, Dr. Mohamed Abou-donia, were working on federally funded research related to brain damage in soldiers. She says that beginning in 2019, Abou-donia regularly sexually harassed her, saying things like “no woman has said no to my offering.” And she says that culminated in an assault, in which he blocked the door to the lab and forced her to touch him. She describes the incident in her complaint. Abou-donia left Duke in 2020 and died in 2023.
The Duke Office of Internal Equity’s investigation into her claim found evidence that the harassment Mulugu describes occurred, she said in her complaint. But it’s another investigation regarding Mulugu that has landed the university in hot legal water.
Around the same time that Mulugu reported the assault on Feb. 28, 2020, Duke launched an investigation into Mulugu’s data management, storage and sharing practices.
On March 9, 2020, nine days after Mulugu reported the assault, Duke informed her of the investigation and confiscated her laptop, she said.
“This started the chain of investigation against me that was unjustified, unwarranted and continues on today, affecting my ability to have a career in science and remain employed,” Mulugu wrote in her complaint.
Duke said in its January objection that it set the data investigation into motion before Mulugu reported the assault — one day before, to be exact. But concerns about Mulugu’s data practices date back to 2019, Duke’s objection says. The court documents don’t make clear exactly what data problems sparked their scrutiny and ultimately led to retractions of Mulugu and Abou-donia’s research.
Mulugu, on the other hand, said in her lawsuit that the investigation was a retaliatory action designed to punish her. She said that Duke didn’t provide the requisite infrastructure for proper data management and then weaponized the misconduct investigation against her when she spoke up about the harassment and assault.
“The evidence is undisputed that concerns developed in the fall of 2019 about whether Dr. Mulugu and her supervisor, Dr. Abou-Donai, were following Duke’s policies governing how research data was maintained and reviewed and that those concerns intensified in late February 2020, a couple of days before Dr. Mulugu reported sexual harassment by Dr. Abou-Donai,” Eagle’s March 2026 opinion reads. “But as the Magistrate Judge explained, temporal proximity combined with Dr. Mulugu’s testimony allows other inferences, and a reasonable jury could conclude that the timing of the research misconduct investigation and the way it was handled could give rise to an inference of causation.”
In addition to the timing issue, Duke argues that Mulugu undermines her own argument by saying that animus toward her from department leadership was already brewing from when she requested a promotion in 2018.
Ultimately, as a result of the data integrity investigation, Duke requested termination of her grants from the Department of Defense, ended her employment and asked her to retract three papers coauthored by her and Abou-donai. She says she’s had trouble getting hired anywhere else due to these retractions.
Duke said it doesn’t comment on pending legal cases. The N&O’s efforts to reach Mulugu by email, phone, and text were unsuccessful.
Throughout the lawsuit, Mulugu has represented herself, bringing the case without an attorney. The three-day jury trial is scheduled for June 2026.
