Sylvia Nasar, a Columbia University journalism professor and author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner “A Beautiful Mind,” is taking legal action against the school for nearly $1 million, according to Capital New York.
In a summons filed by attorney Mark Lawless in the New York Supreme Court on Jan. 7 and obtained by Capital, Nasar claims Columbia breached a contract and underpaid her the funds assigned to her compensation package from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. She’s seeking $923,000.
Nasar was Columbia’s first James S. and John L. Knight Professor of Business Journalism and co-directs the university’s master’s program in business journalism, according to her profile page.
The former New York Times economics correspondent and Fortune staff writer gained acclaim for “A Beautiful Mind,” a book about genius Nobel Prize-winning economist and Princeton professor John Nash, who lived with paranoid schizophrenia. The unauthorized biography was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 1998. It inspired the Academy Award Winning movie by the same name, which Ron Howard directed.
The summons adds that Nasar’s endowment grant was awarded in 1998 -- the year she won for “A Beautiful Mind” and the year the Knight Chair in Business Journalism was established.
The Huffington Post reached out to Columbia and Nasar for comment. Nasar's lawyer told Capital on Thursday that he was not in a position to comment.
Coulmbia has had its share of lawsuits lately.
Last semester, two former students filed lawsuits against the university alleging sexual harassment. In September, Alberto Leguina Ruzzi, then a 25-year-old Chilean doctoral student, claimed his supervisor, Dr. Qais Al-Awqati, a professor at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, sent him a picture of himself from Grindr, a mobile phone application used by gay men and allegedly sexually harassed him.
In December, the Columbia Spectator reported Professor Joseph Paul Martin allegedly demanded sex from a female student seeking his help in his class.