PALO ALTO, Calif. — After an inquiry that spanned nearly a decade, federal investigators have cleared Stanford University of allegations of bias against women in the tenure process, university officials said yesterday.

“The investigation has been closed and it didn’t find any discrimination by the university,” Stanford’s communications director, Alan Acosta, said. In a written statement, the university’s provost, John Etchemendy, said he was “very pleased” with the government’s findings. “Stanford remains absolutely committed to maintaining an equitable work environment where diversity, creativity and excellence flourish,” the provost said.

A spokeswoman for the Labor Department, Deanne Amaden, confirmed that the case had been resolved, but she said she could not immediately detail the agency’s findings.

The resolution means Stanford will escape punishment from the federal government, which had the authority to strip the academic institution of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts if unlawful discrimination was found. The probe was a sensitive issue for Secretary of State Rice, who served as Stanford’s provost in 1998 when 15 female faculty and staff members filed a 400-page complaint alleging that women were unfairly treated in promotion and tenure decisions.

The federal inquiry also reportedly explored issues of racial discrimination and encompassed several Stanford faculties, including the schools of medicine, law, and humanities and sciences.

“None of the individual complaints investigated resulted in a finding of discrimination or retaliation, nor was there any evidence of any systemic discrimination in the university’s policies and practices in the areas of initial appointments, promotion, termination, work environment, or compensation,” Mr. Acosta said. He added that a government audit that paralleled the investigation “found two technical violations in the areas of reporting and record-keeping,” but that the problems were corrected.

A former official with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which conducted the probe, said the 9 1/2-year duration was surprising but not shocking. “It is abnormally long,” a former acting chief of operations for the compliance office, Harold Busch, said. “With a university, it’s always a tough review because of tenure and the issues involved and the politics. Even on the agency side, it’s more difficult.”

An attorney who represented many of the women involved in the case, Kathleen Lucas, said yesterday that she had not been advised that the inquiry had ended. She said Stanford’s record of tenuring and promoting women was still mixed.

“They had begun to try to address some of the issues, but what I have found is I again have a flood of women coming in now” to complain about promotion practices, she said.

Part of the delay in the federal investigation came between 2001 and 2005, when the probe was completely stalled, Ms. Lucas said. No public explanation was given for the hiatus, but some academics welcomed the sluggishness because of concerns that President Bush’s appointees would not be receptive to the discrimination claims.

In the late 1990s, Ms. Rice became a focal point for anger from some Stanford faculty because she staunchly defended the practice of not taking affirmative action concerns into account when awarding tenure. “At the time of tenure review, affirmative action considerations should not be brought to bear on individual cases,” she said in 1998.

Ms. Rice cited a written policy Stanford adopted in 1985, which said, “Affirmative action, an important University and School policy, is focused on two aspects of a scholar’s career: the time of search and appointment, and the assistant professorship years. Affirmative action does not include separate standards of evaluation at the time of review for tenure or of appointment to tenure from the outside.”

As the probe began, Labor Department officials said federal regulations required Stanford to have affirmative action plans, including goals and timetables, as a part of all promotion decisions such as tenure grants. However, Ms. Rice vocally opposed such measures. “When you set numerical goals and timetables, you devalue the individual … appointments that you make,” she told the San Jose Mercury News in 1999. “I’ve said that time and again, and I continue to believe it.”

A State Department spokeswoman had no immediate response to a request for comment from Ms. Rice, who is formally on leave from Stanford and expected to return next year.

In the 2006–07 academic year, women accounted for eight of 30 tenured positions filled by promotion and eight of 25 tenured positions filled from outside, according to a vice provost at Stanford, Patricia Jones. Women account for 24% of all faculty positions university-wide.

One of the cases that triggered the investigation was that of a labor historian who is now an attorney in Oakland, Karen Sawislak. In 1997, Stanford’s history faculty voted unanimously, with one abstention, to offer tenure to Ms. Sawislak. However, the dean of humanities and sciences, John Shoven, rejected the recommendation.

Ms. Sawislak appealed to the then provost, Ms. Rice, who concurred in the denial. The labor scholar protested further to a faculty advisory panel, which cited flaws in the process and again urged a tenure grant. Stanford’s president at the time, Gerhard Casper, still refused to bestow tenure on Ms. Sawislak, but offered her an additional two-year appointment to the faculty and another shot at tenure. She declined and enrolled in law school at Berkeley.

In 2000, a female researcher who was laid off by Stanford Medical School after complaining about discrimination, Colleen Crangle, won a $545,000 verdict from a federal jury, which found unlawful retaliation. The university appealed and the parties ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount.

At least one of the women whose complaints of gender discrimination were investigated by the Labor Department died during the lengthy probe. After six years on the tenure track at Stanford Law, Linda Mabry quit abruptly in 1998, citing “a pattern of practicing bias that demeans, devalues, marginalizes and excludes people of color,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer last year.

“This stuff was very devastating for her,” Mabry’s widower, Dieter Folta, said. “She expected this. … She always wanted that it should be closed and there should be an honest and fair investigation within one or two years.”