The Chancellorship candidates are a mediocre bunch, according to The Critic. In the Times Literary Supplement, Mary Beard was uninspired. In Reaction, Adam Boulton was unimpressed (except by his friend, Lord Browne of Madingley).
The consensus is that this is a dismal group of people to choose between!
I agree with them, and I’m one of the candidates!
Previous scientists who became Chancellors include Lord Rayleigh (Nobel Prize for Physics 1904), Lord Adrian (Nobel Prize for Physiology 1932). Whilst I am proud of my scientific contributions, I obviously recognise they’re not in the same class as those distinguished scientists.
I am standing because the University has internal problems that need addressing. No-one else has been prepared to come forward, though many distinguished people in the university agree with me in private.
Online voting ends on Friday 18th July, while in-person voting is still possible on Wednesday 16th July. So, there are many members of the University who are now thinking: which of this dreary group is the least dreary?
Let me give those individuals a reason to vote for Wyn Evans.
I am the only candidate who will serve just 5 years. If I am elected, there will be another Chancellorship election in 2030 with perhaps a more scintillating group of people — Nobel laureates, brilliant administrators, wise elder statesmen. This group may even cause Mary Beard and Adam Boulton to salivate!
5 years is a good length of time to fix things. I will not be a candidate in 2030 because I hope the University will be in a much better place.
I repeat below my open letter to the University on my candidature.
Our University needs a Chancellor who will defend its founding purpose: to serve the public good through education, learning and research of the highest quality, not by bending to the demands of branding, managerialism and market logic.
I am the only candidate who is a currently a University Teaching Officer. As a teacher, researcher and mentor who has worked with generations of scholars, I appreciate both the extraordinary talent we nurture and the structural problems we must confront: the tension between management priorities and academic needs; the decline in secure academic posts; and the erosion of collegiate governance. Alone among the candidates, I know what it means to teach, research, supervise and support students & staff within our University and I know it can work better.
I will advocate for the creation of academic jobs and proper support for postdocs, researchers and college supervisors. I will support a strategic vision for Cambridge that embraces innovation while remaining true to our academic values and global responsibilities. The hallmark of excellence is secured by the well-being of both students and staff. I will stand up for early-career researchers & fixed-term staff and for everyone who works to make our University work. I will press for the establishment of an independent Ombudsman, advocating for transparency and an end to wasteful consultancy spending. As this is a radical re-imagining of the role of the Chancellor, it is only right that I serve only 5 years in the first instance.
This election matters. I believe that the University of Cambridge is ours and that it is shaped by those who teach, learn, work and research within it. If you agree, then I would be honoured to receive your vote and to serve with dedication and integrity as Chancellor.
(Prof) Wyn Evans (Chancellorship candidate)
29 Comments
SPARTACUS · 15 July 2025 at 19:38
I voted for Wyn Evans! I know it is nearly impossible he will win but I very much hope he will get many votes. Since Lord BP is highly likely to win the University will need all the Wyn Evans it has to be saved from the rot of Lord BP, American-Queen VC, bunch of mediocre ProVCs, disastrous Registrar and highly compromised and incompetent Head of HR. Bullying, botched internal investigations, huge legal bills, racketeering in favour of dictatorial Directors, extremely poor leadership, downward spiral in the rankings, subpar Heads of School. The list goes on! Wyn Evans knows about it all!
21percent.org · 15 July 2025 at 20:12
Alumni outnumber Regent House.
Older alumni are more likely to vote than younger alumni.
The older an electorate, the more it leans rightwards.
Therefore, Lord Browne of Madingley is the likely winner.
SPARTACUS · 15 July 2025 at 20:30
Lord BP has lots of money and so he can effectively buy the election. If that was not enough the oligarchy that runs the University is making sure that no effort is saved to tilt things in his favour. The Heads of the two richest Colleges have also pitched in. They must be worried that certain members of their fellowship might be exposed otherwise! The place is in total rot!
GamblingMan · 15 July 2025 at 20:59
I think Lord Browne will win for the reasons stated.
The Oxford Chancellorship election ended up (roughly speaking) as right versus left: Hague versus
Angiolini, with Hague winning the final round by about 1000 votes.
So I think it will end up as Browne versus one of Smith or Evans or possibly even Miller at the end.
El Erian seems to me to be fishing in the same voter pool as Browne, so I don’t see him as ending up in the final two.
Eileen Nugent · 15 July 2025 at 23:02
The writers of these articles seem to be looking to be impressed by, inspired by & find all the excellence concentrated in one single candidate. I think there is something inspiring in each candidate & if you combine all the sources of inspiration that can be drawn from each candidate you get an image of a unifying candidate that Cambridge seeks which may not yet exist but could at some future point come into existence. I don’t find this situation surprising, navigating complex times calls for a complex set of individual traits that might only emerge over time in response to being challenged in those complex times. Instead of absorbing “the consensus is that this is a dismal group of people to choose between!” and then discounting all the chancellorship candidates as being dismal, I would instead look closely at all the chancellorship candidates because the chances are that in order for the chosen candidate to eventually succeed in the Chancellorship role the chosen candidate is going to have to become more like each of the other Chancellorship candidates in some specific way.
Sappho · 16 July 2025 at 08:43
Thank you Elieen for this comment. You could not state it better – each candidate has something unique to offer, even Lord Browne. Even (I think especially) if he wins he will need to decide very quickly if he wants to be associated with the catastrophic scandals currently engulfing CRUK, POLIS and the rest; or draw a line in the sand so that he had retain any shred of credibility among staff, unions, donors and the media.
The same would be true of El Erian or Smith of course. They will need a lot of good will from groups like this one in order to protect the university reputation from the real threat – the insiders who care more about protecting their own power than fixing our rotten processes and restoring our research and recruitment performance.
21percent.org · 16 July 2025 at 09:18
Lord Browne did say that, if elected, he would meet with representatives of the 21 Group to listen to our concerns.
SPARTACUS · 16 July 2025 at 12:02
Every person here appears to be deluded about Lord BP! You seem to believe that despite having nominatiors such as former VC and Chairman of CRUK, Chair of MRC, Head of Clinical School, and Masters of Trinity and St John’s Colleges he will work together with 21percent to clean the University of its rot??? I do not believe so. His election means Post Office 2.0!
God save the universities · 16 July 2025 at 13:26
Ra, ra, ra Lord Browne
Eileen Nugent · 16 July 2025 at 15:12
The reality is that even those managing the Post Office could have cleared the Post Office of its internal rot i.e. enlisted the help of post masters to accurately diagnose and then fix the problems with the horizon system whilst working openly in co-ordination with fujitsu to prevent reoccurrence of the same problems for future post masters. The problem was they were not willing to listen to the post masters who had already accurately worked out that there was an organisational fault that was never going to remedy itself and to stop producing similar problems in future for individuals without an extremely significant amount of intervention from those managing the Post Office. It’s not a case of believing that a particular individual will or will not do something if elected, it’s more a case of seeing that when a particular situation demands something of an organisation eventually the organisation will have to do that something – one way or another. That’s not being deluded with respect to any particular individual or set of individuals, that is just seeing the reality of a situation.
Eileen Nugent · 16 July 2025 at 15:26
Was Alan Bates campaigning on “issues”, someone with an “axe to grind”, someone with a grudge or was Alan Bates an individual who first identified the existence of an existential threat to post masters and to the post office long before anyone in management recognised the existence of that existential threat.
Eileen Nugent · 16 July 2025 at 16:15
Individuals are leaving universities because they can see what is coming, bullying/harassment will be just another “issue” to universities, universities will start playing with this “issue” the same way universities play with every other “issue” i.e. they will be playing with the health states of individuals & the work-related stress regulation of individuals and an individual who gets stuck in the wrong position in a university could then be dead very quickly. There is life outside of universities, people don’t have to stay in universities whilst they “play” with this particular “issue” without recognising that some things are not “issues” they are an existential threats & whilst creativity may be necessary to find the exact right way to deal with an existential threat that is not the equivalent of playing with an “issue”.
Eileen Nugent · 16 July 2025 at 17:12
I think it is possible for universities and for individuals in universities to learn how to manage these types of risks & that such learning could prove beneficial to all but I think there does need to be some recognition that the type of organisational learning required to do that is difficult organisational learning.
Anna Phylaxis · 17 July 2025 at 08:12
“Lord Browne did say that, if elected, he would meet with representatives of the 21 Group to listen to our concerns”
“meet”
“listen”
Those are just words
Not even worth meeting at all without commitment to uphold the rule of law and stop paying lawyers to protect managers who are culpable of gross misconduct
21percent.org · 17 July 2025 at 08:45
We are hopeful that the Labour Gov’ts decision to ban NDAs will prove important here. As is well known, Cambridge’s modus operandi is to deny everything right up to the date of any Employment Tribunal, then settle it with an NDA. This business model will become defunct shortly.
The 21 Group will press the University for a model in which mistakes are acknowledged early, before widespread damage is done and costly lawyers are hired. This should be the proper job of HR, to fix the problems early and to prevent them from escalating. We absolutely agree it is disgraceful — in the present funding situation — for the University to be paying huge sums to lawyers to hush its mistakes up.
As for Lord Browne, there is very considerable scepticism about his candidacy in the University. We give below the link to Prof Jason Scott Warren’s letter for those interested in signing:
https://chancellorletter.wordpress.com/2025/07/01/open-letter-re-the-chancellorship-of-the-university-of-cambridge/
21percent.org · 17 July 2025 at 08:48
The previous Tory Gov’t banned universities from using NDAs in cases of sexual harassment.
The proposed new legislation goes much further.
Eileen Nugent · 17 July 2025 at 14:37
I think this is the correct analysis, the university should fix employment problems early and prevent them from escalating. Otherwise, if it does not fix employment problems this can lead to a situation where the organisational actions with respect to particular set of individuals can become highly irrational. The net impact of an individual interaction with an organisation that has become highly irrational with respect to the individual can be the introduction of an unnecessary negative power gradient on the individual (unfairness). This negative power gradient can then reduce an individual to a state of powerlessness in cases where the individual could otherwise (without the introduction of that negative power gradient) have maintained themselves in a state of high individual power (high capacity for self-regulation, high state of independence, high capacity to care for both themselves and for others).
These organisational actions have implications for societies that have strong social safety nets i.e. robust mechanisms to counteract negative power gradients operating in the lives of individuals as they have realised that operation of negative power gradients on individuals (e.g. poor nutrition in childhood) reduces the absolute power an individual can attain in society and therefore the absolute power society can attain as a whole. In such societies, when organisations are unable to correct organisational errors and as a result place unnecessary negative power gradients on particular individuals the rest of society then has to apply its own power gradients to counteract those negative power gradients introduced as a result of an organisational fault to prevent the individual impacted being reduced to a state of complete powerlessness by the organisational fault.
This analysis is more obvious in the case of Post office actions in relation to individuals impacted by the horizon organisational fault. The negative power gradient left on individual post masters by the irrational actions of the post office was extremely strong – health, finances, employment access, housing, societal network strength and inclusion – all these power factors were left moving rapidly in a negative direction after the irrational actions of the post office with respect to the post masters impacted. The post office becomes irrational (i.e. starts prosecuting individuals based on accounting data that neither it nor post masters can interrogate), it won’t admit to any error or correct any fault early which means erroneous prosecutions are allowed to grow in number, the unfairness is permitted to build i.e. more and more individuals are being left with extreme negative power gradients operating in their lives for lengthy periods of time. These individuals themselves, their social support networks and/or the state then need to continuously apply power gradients to counteract the negative power gradients being left on these individuals by the irrational organisation (societal unfairness generator) otherwise the individuals impacted by the organisational fault will reach a state of complete powerlessness.
Xerxes · 16 July 2025 at 12:48
After this election, it would be excellent if the winning candidate does indeed behave in this inclusive way.
Lord Browne’s public statements are very encouraging, but they do seem at odds with his previous actions. So I agree with Spartacus that his election would be very concerning. I ranked him low (though not quite at the bottom).
The point in the header is also good. In many ways, there is no single satisfactory & unifying candidate.
Given this, electing the Chancellor for a ten year long tenure of office does seem rather unattractive (albeit that it was previously for life)
Jay · 16 July 2025 at 13:39
If it’s Lord Browne, we will at least be getting his speeches for free (I assume). That’s great value.
Some suckers have to pay £50-100 k for them
https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/john-browne/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=competitor_pmax_uk&gad_source=2&gad_campaignid=21861116593&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjpiTu-nAjgMVxIb9BR0-rxzqEAAYASAAEgLoT_D_BwE
Oracle · 16 July 2025 at 14:21
There is tremendous inertia in the Cambridge system. So next Chancellor is person most similar to the last Chancellor.
The only question is how big will Lord Browne’s winning margin be.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 04:49
There is tremendous inertia in the Cambridge system, the Cambridge system will not move a yoctometer unless it knows exactly where it is going and why it is going there. The next Chancellor could be very different to the last Chancellor but the difference between the two Chancellors could make no difference to the Cambridge system. The act of changing the Chancellor is not the act of changing the Cambridge system. If the next Chancellor does not differ from the last Chancellor in a specific way – increased ability to effect systemic change – all other differences could make no difference. Many people differ from the last Chancellor – how many differ from the last Chancellor in that specific way? Next Chancellor may find last Chancellor is a hard act to follow.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 05:13
Cambridge doesn’t resist change because it doesn’t care, there is an exceptional depth of care in Cambridge which is why the Cambridge system is so finely-tuned and why there is tremendous inertia in the Cambridge system. The Cambridge system rarely changes and it won’t change unless there is a serious reason for it to change.
21percent.org · 18 July 2025 at 12:07
“There is an exceptional depth of care in Cambridge” from some individuals
There are some very caring individuals but this is not universal.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 13:24
I think there is an added layer of complexity in Cambridge in that inclusion can depend heavily on shared interests and competence. Individuals who society could view as very different and as a result could be subjected to a high level of societal exclusion in other societal contexts could experience the exact opposite – a high level of inclusion – in Cambridge.
I cannot disagree with the statement that some but not all individuals experience the full depth of care that Cambridge is capable of delivering and that whilst there are some very caring individuals this is not universal. I do feel the depth of care possible in Cambridge is exceptional & I saw first hand that many individuals did experience that exceptional depth of care but that this was not universal.
I left Cambridge because I ended up in one of these situations – organisation started generating concerns that I was sensitive to and therefore had an obligation to raise – where it is possible for a care inversion event to occur and I then experienced the opposite side of that double-edged exceptional depth of care sword – an exceptional depth of no care in Cambridge.
In my case there was no point staying in Cambridge, that situation was unresolvable as there was both a lack of a fundamental understanding of the situation and a lack of suitable organisational process to deal with it. It became very clear that I could have gotten much better treatment in any another university had this experience in Cambridge not put me off the whole higher education sector. Had I not had a legal obligation to raise concerns I would have left this situation and the higher education sector completely behind me with no regrets – sometimes burning all the bridges is the right response. There are interesting things to do outside of the higher education sector and there are still employers who say exactly what they are doing and then do exactly what they say.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 14:13
You see all types of exceptional depth care in Cambridge, students caring for individuals who are experiencing extreme suffering (public health catastrophe, physical environmental catastrophe, political environmental catastrophe) somewhere in the world, students caring for other students, students caring for staff, staff caring for individuals who are experiencing extreme suffering somewhere in the world, staff caring for students, staff caring for other staff, a homeless person from the town caring for someone who is not homeless in a gown. It’s very hard to predict where the exceptional depth care will come from in a place like Cambridge when a particular situation arises that demands an exceptional depth of care.
Every now and again however a situation arises that forces the confrontation with a harsh reality of life – sometimes the exceptional depth of care required to deal with a particular situation is not yet possible i.e. no one knows what to do in a particular situation not matter how demanding that situation is. In order to survive that situation it is then necessary to continuously adapt to the situation and to try to find a way forward. Sometimes it’s up to an individual/group of individuals to discover what it takes to deliver exceptional care in a particular situation & unfortunately in life when an individual/group of individuals embarks on any discovery process there is no guarantee of success.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 15:25
I did not leave Cambridge because I did not feel included in Cambridge or because I experienced the absence of very caring individuals in Cambridge. I left because the organisation had become too irrational with respect to me as an individual and it became impossible to survive the level of organisational irrationality reached with respect to me. Being forced through a promotion process and a dismissal process at the same time, since the promotion process takes longer than the dismissal process so any promotion in a role would have happened after being dismissed from the role. Being fired for raising concerns on the abuse of temporary employment contracts, excessive levels of unnecessary work-related stress and health risk and then having to attend meetings in a governance role and give input on the organisational suicide prevention strategy, input which you know the organisation will neither accept nor engage with but you will nonetheless keep having to give it because of a legal obligation associated with the governance role no matter the heavy emotional toll and excessive health risk that situation will continuously generate. Non-payment of wages for in-person teaching done during a global pandemic from an organisation worth billions followed by denials the teaching was ever done to avoid having to deal with an off-contract teaching situation. Put on a safeguarding training course training individuals to whistleblow to the wrong national regulator (care quality commission) after years of internal whistleblowing has destroyed your own life and then having to do even more whistleblowing to put a stop to HR using an inappropriate safeguarding training course. It is not possible to survive this type of inhuman treatment for long and it is then necessary to leave the organisation to avoid experiencing more of the same inhuman treatment.
Eileen Nugent · 18 July 2025 at 19:13
The problem with ending up in one of these organisational situations where there is no intent to harm and yet ongoing harm is still occurring – i.e. ending up in the equivalent of an ongoing organisational accident – is that when you are in the middle of an ongoing work-related stress accident that others may not recognise as an ongoing work-related stress accident it’s very hard to predict what will happen to you next. If there was intent to harm, if there was a motive that you could discern for being placed in that ongoing situation and left in it for years, it could then be relatively easier to predict what will happen to you next and to be more certain of the next action to take in that situation albeit the risk of death may not be that much different in a situation where an organisation is genuinely attempting to do something worth doing – improve welfare support & increase ability to handle welfare problems – that it is just not yet capable of doing and the ongoing harm is then being caused by welfare problem fixes causing significantly more welfare problems than the initial welfare problems that needed fixing and a situation where there is intent to harm.
I left Cambridge because I could not longer safeguard my own health in that ongoing situation that I was left in and no one in the organisation would talk to me which is what was required to normalise organisational actions with respect to me and to put a stop to that ongoing situation whilst I was still in the organisation. I was in a safeguarding role in Cambridge and I therefore had a legal obligation to raise any serious safeguarding concerns I had. I stayed in Cambridge and raised those safeguarding concerns for as long as I could take it, > 2 years, and when I could no longer take it anymore because the risk to my life was too high I left because I felt that this was the best example an individual in a safeguarding role could set for other individuals when faced with such a situation.
I feel that there is a problem with the current thinking on welfare support. An organisation could pump more and more organisational resources into welfare support – more money, more people working on welfare, more capacity to do welfare work – but if the same organisation is not willing to talk to an individual to build a shared understanding of a welfare problem the organisation could be spending significant amounts of resources attempting to solve a welfare problem that it will never be able to solve because it doesn’t understand the welfare problem that it is trying to solve and neither does the individual with the welfare problem. In not talking – in not working together to build a shared understanding of a welfare problem – it might then not possible for either party to understand the welfare problem that both parties are expected to be able to work together to solve and it might therefore not possible for either party to find a solution to the welfare problem irrespective of the amount of resources available to both the organisation and the individual to solve that welfare problem.
Building a more effective welfare system i.e. building a welfare system with a higher caring capacity takes more than injecting higher and higher amounts of – money, people, capacity to do work – into an existing welfare system. To build a more effective welfare system it is necessary to build a shared understanding of welfare problems that is more advanced that the previous shared understanding of the same welfare problems with the aim of increasing the ability of both the welfare system and individuals in the welfare system to self-regulate on those welfare problems. Building a more effective welfare system is about increasing the capacity of individuals to care for themselves and to care for others by increasing capacity for self-regulation, increasing independence and increasing ability to co-ordinate when necessary.
Eileen Nugent · 20 July 2025 at 21:30
The problems I experienced in Cambridge did not arise from an intent to harm. If anything these problems arose from an intent to improve, to do good. Different parts of Cambridge – departments, colleges – were trying to address the problems with employment and welfare, all were trying to make improvements at the same time but not all the efforts to improve were well-reasoned and well-coordinated. The Cavendish tried to improve opportunities for postdocs by introducing a new type of position – early career lecturer – where an individual in this position was the “exact same” as every permanent lecturer except for being on a fixed-term three-year non-renewable employment contract. The Cavendish was at the time continuously hiring permanent lecturers in every subfield of physics. There was no objective legal justification for creating this new type of fixed-term lectureship employment contract, this lead to false information being stated as the justification for the use of a fixed-term contract for the position. To the Cavendish these positions were an improvement on a standard postdoc contract for those who had already been on a standard postdoc contract but it subsequently turned out improvement was incomplete i.e. the positions on creation were inconsistent with both employment law and health and safety law and therefore a significant risk was being created – by the Introduction of an incomplete improvement in employment – for individuals occupying these positions in the organisation, an increased risk of being subjected to inhuman treatment whilst occupying this position in the organisation.
The Cavendish treated the early-career lecturers the exact same as every other permanent lecturer. The Cavendish advertised permanent lectureship posts while the early-career lecturer was on maternity leave with a closing date for applications before the return date from maternity leave as they would have done in the case any other permanent member of staff. The Cavendish asked the early-career lecturer to evaluate candidates for a permanent lectureship in their subfield of physics as they would ask any other permanent lecturer in the same situation. The Cavendish hired one of the candidates the early career lecturer was asked to evaluate for suitability as a permanent lecturer and then give that new permanent lecturer all the early career-lecturers teaching at which point they then made the early-career lecturer redundant on the basis that “there was no teaching”. It’s at that point an early-career lecturer can discover that – depending on the employment context – it may not be possible to be the “exact same” as every permanent lecturer except for being on a fixed-term non-renewable employment contract (logic/reason may preclude this possibility), if an irrationality such as the one above is encountered then it’s a strong indicator that the employment has entered into a state of illegality when evaluated within a specific employment context.
The employment starts off in an irrational state and it becomes more and more irrational as time goes by, there is the possibility of putting an individual through a promotion and dismissal process simultaneously, offering an individual teaching whilst simultaneously making the individual redundant on the basis “there is no teaching”, retracting the teaching on the basis that the individual was in reality indistinguishable from a permanent lecturer and the Cavendish should therefore have offered them teaching but they are retracting teaching because whilst they permanently want the individual to teach for them they don’t want to make the particular individual a “permanent” staff member. Losing employment-related accommodation when teaching is offered and then retracted, re-offering teaching after the individual has already lost employment-related accommodation and had to move from their family accommodation when the teaching was retracted. Forgetting to give a contract for teaching, forgetting to pay for teaching, putting the individual on the wrong contract for teaching, refusing to pay for teaching, denying teaching was ever done as a way of avoiding having to deal with the off-contract teaching situation. Forgetting the individual has been dismissed after raising concerns, forgetting to stop emailing the individual about teaching meetings, assigning the individual teaching after they have been dismissed leading to further cycles of offering and retracting teaching.
There was also the additional problem of the early-career lectureship position being three years, which is 2 years less than permanent lecturers have to establish themselves as an experimental group leader in a lectureship role [probationary period for permanent lecturers = 5 years], this equates to the 40% overwork situation [i.e. having to do the work to permanently secure a lectureship in a university in 3 years rather than 5 years] that persists for a period of three years. Therefore not only has the employment contract entered into a state of illegality, the working conditions are also simultaneously in a state of illegality on health and safety grounds because there is a failure to adequately regulate work-related stress in an already competitive, high-pressure environment. As the employment becomes more and more irrational the work-related stress that started off as being inadequately regulated then becomes more and more unregulated as the problems being generated by the incomplete improvement are being allowed to accumulate without any resolution to any of the problems being found without which the employment is never rationalised to resit the employment relationship with the individual.
At some point a strong legal obligation to raise concerns on work-related stress is created for the individual i.e. when the work-related stress being generated for the individual is effectively unconstrained a strong legal obligation to raise concerns in relation to it is created. Should the organisation mishandle the work-related stress health and safety concerns at that point – since the concerns are directly coupled to the health state of the individual – mishandling concerns of this particular type could generate extremely high levels of work-related stress, inhuman working conditions, severe mental ill health and a high risk of death for an individual. It is therefore important for both individuals and organisations to avoid such problems altogether with well-reasoned and well-coordinated employment actions that avoid entry into irrational employment situations. It also is important that both individuals and organisations deal with employment problems early to prevent problems spiralling out of control (i.e. becoming more irrational and more difficult to solve over time). Finally is important that individuals and organisations address any concerns as early as possible and as carefully as possible to minimise the length of time it takes to resolve a problem because the longer a problem is left in place the more complex the problem becomes and the more careful the reasoning then needs to be to finally solve the problem so that everyone concerned can move on from that situation. This combination of care and complexity demanded is what drains society of all its resources.
I recognise that both the Cavendish and Cambridge University fundamentally were intending to do something good – that they were genuinely trying to make improvements to employment and welfare support for staff. The problems therefore did not arise because of any organisational intent to do harm. The situation arose because the organisation did not have processes in place that could efficiently handle a situation where incomplete improvements were being made to both employment and welfare support at the same time. Incomplete improvements are ones that are not well-reasoned and well-coordinated and therefore more likely to produce contradictions and generate situations with high irrationality which can result in significant amounts of stress being generated for individuals. It was not understood that something like an incomplete improvement could exist, that serious risks could be created when improvements are incomplete and that a strong legal obligation could be created to raise concerns in relation to the risks being generated by the impact of an incomplete improvement for individuals. Without first having an understanding that such situations could arise and the risks that could be created in such situations, it was not possible to have a process in place to effectively handle a situation where an incomplete improvement was being made to minimise the unintended negative consequences for the individuals impacted by the incomplete improvement whilst a the complete improvement is being determined so that the initial intent to do good can then be translated into doing the good that was intended to be done – make real improvements in employment and welfare which is what was intended.
If there is no intent to harm, if the intention – to make improvements in employment and welfare support – is good and what has happened is that the making of systemic improvements has gone wrong in a way that was not foreseeable (no one recognised the risks of incomplete improvements at the time) then it doesn’t make sense to focus effort on punishing individuals who are genuinely trying to make systemic improvements. Whilst it is sad to discover that intent to do good (make systemic improvements) does not always at first attempt translate into doing good (and could in fact temporarily translate to the opposite of doing good before eventually translating into the doing of the good that was intended) rather than focussing effort on punishing individuals in such a situation the right thing to do is to build processes capable of catching situations where incomplete improvements are being made with the result that unintended negative consequences are being experienced by individuals. Those unintended negative consequences could then be understood by the organisation to both to limit the negative impact on individuals and in order to determine what the complete improvements are and to more safely and efficiently get to the stage where complete improvements are being made and the good that was intended to be done is being done. This is the basis of a system of continuous organisational improvement.
Instead of focussing effort the punishment of people with the right intent – to do good – i.e. creating more and more problems for more and more people, in such situation where there is no problem with intent it makes more sense to focus effort on translating the intent to do good – to make improvements in employment and welfare support – into good being done i.e. building processes that are capable of preventing/fixing more and more problems for more and more people. This is why I took the decision to focus on analysing the situation I was in to build as well-reasoned an understanding of that situation as was possible given the information available to me at the time. I felt this would allow me to both raise concerns with the organisation to give it the information it needed to prevent/fix problems for other individuals in the organisation in future and to also find a way to remedy my own individual situation that was not dependent on the organisation taking any particular action to remedy it. If an individual can understand what has happened to them and why it has happened, it is then possible for an individual to “psychologically speaking” move on from a situation and to get on with the rest of their life whatever the rest of their life may then turn out to be.
Whilst it may be possible to take legal action in this situation to invoke a specific individual human right (article 3 ECHR) in the context of a specific situation (safeguarding whistleblowing) for the specific purpose of complying with a strong legal obligation to an organisation (to raise serious safeguarding concerns) and to apply the outcome of a legal case invoking an individual right as the basis of taking a decision whether to bring a health and safety prosecution (or not) to have the safeguarding concerns addressed, the net result of that whole set of legal processes is nothing more than this – building a shared (balanced/well-reasoned) understanding a welfare problem for the purposes of preventing the same welfare problem arising for other individuals in the organisation in future. The net outcome is therefore something that is achievable without engaging in any set of legal processes because it is nothing more than talking openly about a problem to build a shared understanding of a problem so that the problem can be solved and others don’t have to experience the same problem in future. Whilst talk may be cheap, not talking could be expensive and futile. Given the absolute costs of engaging in such legal processes for both the individual and the organisation and the societal resources that would need to be deployed to run such legal processes the only time it makes rational sense for an individual to engage in such a set of legal processes in relation to an organisation is if an individual is dealing with an organisation where the individual has a reasonably held belief that the organisation is incapable of building the shared understanding required to accurately assess and address its own internal organisational problems to prevent the same internal organisational problems reoccurring in future for other individuals in the organisation. I don’t hold this belief in relation to Cambridge and hence I have not taken legal action against Cambridge as I believe legal action in this situation to be unnecessary and a waste of societal resources.
If an individual from Cambridge has found a way to self-regulate with respect to a specific organisational fault that is generating a specific set of safeguarding concerns i.e. to build an accurate understanding of the safeguarding situation that has been encountered as a result of the organisational fault without talking to the organisation to the extent that the situation that was generated has stopped having any impact on their mental health and the individual could then move on from that specific situation without any of the rest of Cambridge offering any remedy to the individual and would have already moved on from that situation had they not a strong legal obligation to others in Cambridge to raise concerns in relation to an organisational fault encountered which could in future impact other individuals then it is not possible to hold a reasonable belief that Cambridge cannot internally address concerns of this type.
If one individual in Cambridge can self-regulate on these types of concerns without the rest of Cambridge doing anything it is then possible for that one individual to talk to the rest of Cambridge, for the rest of Cambridge to start acquiring the same ability to self-regulate on these types of concerns, for the organisation as a whole to start self-regulating on them and for the organisation to then start addressing its own internal organisational problems and finally making the improvements that it wants to make in employment and welfare. It is clear to me that Cambridge could talk to individuals in these difficult situations, that Cambridge could solve its own internal problems and that the use of such legal processes outlined above is therefore unnecessary. What cannot be achieved with a political process – voluntary engagement to work through an internal problem, find a solution to it and prevent future reoccurrence of the same internal problem with no external force being applied to the organisation – will not be achieved with less overall effort and at less overall cost to the organisation and to society in a judicial process – involuntary engagement to work through an internal problem, find a solution to it and prevent future reoccurrence of the same internal problem as a result of an external force being applied to the organisation.
Cambridge has chosen the individuals it wants to lead it, I respect the decisions that Cambridge has made in choosing its own leaders and it is not my place or that of any other single individual to determine who should lead Cambridge – this is the governance structure Cambridge has chosen for itself. I respect the leaders Cambridge has chosen, this is something that has not changed throughout the whole time I have been raising concerns and it is my reasonably held belief that Cambridge will have chosen capable leaders for itself. It is also my reasonably held belief that Cambridge is therefore capable of solving its own internal problems if the organisation (HR/Legal) would let the capable leaders it has chosen for itself directly engage with the individuals in Cambridge who are experiencing problems so that the leaders can get the information necessary to accurately diagnose and fix any organisational faults after which Cambridge will be in a better position to make the improvements Cambridge wishes to make such that the lives of those in Cambridge can in reality improve. The problem with relying on external forces to solve internal problems is that eventually it’s possible to encounter a situation where there are no external forces to draw on and it anyway becomes necessary to engage in this type of self-regulation.
No one knows what they will encounter in life, whether they will be able to fully understand what they encounter in life or not, whether they will be able to “psychologically speaking” move on from what they encounter in life to live more life or not, whether they will be alive at the end of a particular life experience or not – this is life – and life is the same for all of us. We hope that if as an individual we continuously try to do the right thing with respect to the external world that we will eventually manage to do the right thing with respect to the external world and that the external world will reciprocate by also continuously trying to do the right thing with respect to us and that it will also eventually manage to do the right thing with respect to us. This is life, continuously trying to do the right thing with respect to the external world and continuously trying to resist the external world doing the wrong thing with respect to us as an individual, this is the balance that must continuously be struck to keep going in life. In continuously trying to do the right thing with respect to the external world it is necessary to have faith and in continuously trying to resist the external world doing the wrong thing with respect to us it is necessary to have doubt. The is life, the continuous struggle of every individual to find a peace settlement with the external world, the continuous struggle of every individual to find a way to self-regulate in the external world.
If I can do something for myself then I will do it, if I see something needs to be done for others and I can do it then I will do it, if others ask me to do something that is a reasonable thing to do for them and I can do it then I will do it. If I make a mistake in relation to others I hope that others can forgive that mistake and if others make a mistake in relation to me I hope that I can forgive that mistake.
Eileen Nugent · 21 July 2025 at 12:23
I am the beneficiary of a high standard of education, I was able to study experimental physics in great depth supported by public funding for undergraduate education and merit-based scholarships for postgraduate education. I will not engage in any resource intensive legal processes that would drain the university of resources that could instead be used to enable current students to be beneficiaries of a high standard of education with which they can make their maximum contribution to society. In terms of complying with this strong legal obligation to the university as per the arguments above I now see no rational reason for the use of any resource intensive legal processes. In terms of the use of a legal process to seek an individual remedy, I feel doing so would only increase the risk of others experiencing similar problems in future as the legal process itself drains the organisation of resources that could instead be used to fix the problems that generated the individual case and prevent future reoccurrence of the same type of case. Since I need to consider not just my own interest but also that of the university to which I owe a strong legal obligation and that of the public to which I also owe a strong legal obligation I cannot justify the use of a legal process to seek an individual remedy, it is a waste of societal resources and it also will not fix the problem for others to which I owe a strong legal obligation. I do not care if I have to work harder than I otherwise would have had to work as a result of not seeking any individual remedy through any legal process for this reason.