One of the rewarding aspects of a blog is the exchange of thoughtful comments. In this posting, we highlight a contribution from Justius in the thread here. While he or she is describing events at Cambridge University, the 21 Group has evidence that these issues are widespread across the UK higher education sector.
“The reason that a culture of institutionalized bullying developed is twofold. First, the university has an insurance policy against legal cases brought against senior managers and administrators. And second, the university has a history of always settling cases – often at phenomenal financial cost – shortly before trial, along with the signing of an NDA.
The effect of these two policies was to allow a culture of impunity to arise within the organisation over many decades, such that heads of house, department, faculties and senior administration (HR, Registry, Legal Services) felt secure in being able to engage in all manner of wrongdoing without any prospect of eventual reputational, career, or financial cost.
This system, however, is now collapsing, for the following reasons:
1. In the hope of saving on cost, the university began allowing the risk of cases to reach court. This has led to accelerating press interest and awareness due to their witnessing evidence of abuse and mismanagement. Plus, it has finally resulted in complicit parties facing reputational damage when their profiles appear in the newspapers (e.g. the Daily Mail feature on the Connolly case).
2. Newspapers can publish stories on the basis of public interest (the “Reynolds defence”, now formalized in the 2013 Defamation Act). The magnitude and nature of recent scandals at a national institution in receipt of taxpayer funding clearly passes that threshold. Similarly, whistleblower protection allows for greater public disclosure. This has allowed victims to come forward and feel secure in reporting their experiences, as well as newspapers to publish them.
3. The culture of impunity has grown to such an extent over time that it is resulting in acts that have crossed beyond mere financial settlement, but may entail more severe consequences for the parties involved, such as revocation of professional licenses (e.g. for in-house lawyers), memberships of professional associations and titles, and in cases of criminal conduct even judicial sentencing, together with the justified loss of professional reputation that will result once acts are revealed to the profession and broader public. As such, mere insurance against legal cost alone, can no longer fully protect abusive individuals within the organisation from facing the consequences of their actions.
4. As noted elsewhere legislation has been passed to restrict use of NDAs in certain domains (e.g. sexual crimes) and is in train to extend more broadly (to bullying across a wide variety of areas). This now renders the strategy of “settlement and silence” redundant, and is already causing potential perpetrators to rethink their collusion in organized staff abuse.” [Justius]
The 21 Group is in agreement. We have reached a turning point.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 bans Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) used to silence complaints of sexual misconduct & harassment. Regulations are still pending, so until they’re finalized, the ban isn’t actually in force. Additionally, the banning of NDAs for a broader range of offences (bullying, racial, sexual & disability discrimination) is likely to become law in Spring 2026, given the proposed changes to the Government’s Employment Rights Bill. This will prohibit the widespread practice of using legally enforceable NDAs to conceal unacceptable behaviour at work.
The Government has also made very strong statements about protection of whistleblowers. Wes Streeting MP said here:
“If you silence whistleblowers, you will never work in the NHS again. I’m determined to create a culture of honesty and openness in the NHS where whistleblowers are protected, and that demands tough enforcement. [Wes Streeting MP]
This announcement accompanied plans to ban NHS senior managers found to silence whistleblowers from taking up other senior health roles. This is clearly needed. For example, it is sobering to look at the scandals involving the deaths of mothers and babies in NHS childbirth & maternity units — Shrewsbury & Telford (2022) Northwick Park Hospital (2002 – 2005), Morecambe Bay Hospitals (2004 – 2013), Cwm Taf (2019), East Kent Hospitals (2016- 2021). Nottingham University Trust (2010 – 2020), Bristol Royal Infirmary (1986-1995). In all of these, whistleblowers tried to intervene & were ignored or punished.
In fact, Streeting has proposed a formal regulation of NHS management. Under Labour’s proposals, there would be a regulatory framework similar to what exists for doctors and nurses, including the power to suspend or disbar managers guilty of serious misconduct.
Given the scandals at Dundee, Cardiff and Greater Manchester Universities, the management of the higher education sector is coming under greater scrutiny. We must press the Government to extend the tough new protection of whistleblowers from the health service to education (both schools and universities).
We need a regulatory framework to suspend or disbar university senior management guilty of serious misconduct.
42 Comments
Justice Star · 18 August 2025 at 12:06
Yes – there needs to be an identical rule in UK Higher Education as there is in the NHS.
To paraphrase Wes Streeting:
“If you silence whistleblowers, you will never work in a UK university again. I’m determined to create a culture of honesty and openness in British higher education where whistleblowers are protected, and that demands tough enforcement.”
Dorothy · 18 August 2025 at 12:18
At my university, two members of the legal team have been reported to the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority for manipulating & doctoring evidence in a court case.
No to NDAs · 18 August 2025 at 14:22
This is in addition to the case mentioned here: https://21percent.org/?p=2532
I have no doubt there will be many more cases of this…
Please add more information if/when possible, so that others can follow these cases, which are in my opinion just as important as the many Employment Tribunal cases against Universities that are currently underway (across the UK).
TheResearcher · 18 August 2025 at 12:30
I agree that a regulatory framework could help, and I hope it does, but I worry that will be a rather slow progress and the increase in the number of victims will not slow down in the near future. We need to act locally and collectively as soon as we can. We need to show that there is a large number of people dissatisfied with the current situation, namely reading things such as “The University does not use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or confidentiality clauses. We are committed to ensuring staff and students are not prevented from discussing their experiences of harassment or sexual misconduct” when this demonstrably untrue. This is not just hypocrisy, it is active deception. People who never went through a grievance or whistleblowing process will feel safe in their working or study environment, and that can be a major disadvantage to them.
We need to submit a petition to the Regent House so that our concerns are debated and formally reported. Otherwise, most senior management will simply pretend that they are not aware of the malpractices. We need to show that they are aware, and do not act.
SPARTACUS · 18 August 2025 at 12:39
Regent House is not the place to sort this! New Chancellor needs to call and chair a Council meeting and demand answers to the numerous scandals and gross deviations from the Statutes and Ordinances committed by Registrary, HR and numerous Responsible Persons that have participated in this state of affairs! American Queen has evidently failed to do this so Lord Smith must step in before it is too late.
SPARTACUS · 18 August 2025 at 13:06
To be clear: the problem is not ‘legislative’ (Statutes and Ordinances and Policies do exist), the problem is ‘executive’. That is why Council is the forum and not Regent House.
TheResearcher · 18 August 2025 at 13:10
It is my understanding that a discussion of a petition in Regent House is generally public and needs to be formally logged. We need such a general awareness very soon. I think that a single individual will be relatively powerless given the current situation and the number people directly involved, but I hope to be wrong!
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 15:59
If an internal public interest dispute is generated in the course of an internal private interest dispute – e.g. decision on the MacKenzie case on non-compliance with an employment tribunal reinstatement order in a case the university has already conceded with no plans to contest – something which impacts both Regent House and non Regent House staff members going forward then – potentially – the need for an internal public inquiry has been generated. This could be viewed as an unforeseen problem the organisation has set it self to test itself as an organisation – a potentially painful but necessary and useful collective organisational learning exercise.
Every individual who has already been or has the potential to be impacted by the organisational decision gets sight of the problem in an internal public inquiry, this generates the maximum amount of information to solve the problem. Whilst the Information relating to the problem may still be incomplete and the ‘solution’ may in future prove to be only partial solution and generate further suffering for future individuals, it is still the best solution possible at the time given the information and at the end of such a process the organisation generates a solution that can remain in place until new evidence emerges to suggest more work is needed to generate a more complete solution to the same problem.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 16:13
Obviously before any internal public inquiry took place there would need to be a specific set of rules in place because the aim of an internal public inquiry is to hold the whole organisation together – to maintain organisational integrity – and the rules in place reflect and support this aim.
This situation is fundamentally different to an external public inquiry which takes place when the organisation has already fallen apart – it has already reached the point where it has lost its organisational integrity – and a different set of rules then applies mainly because the emotional toll of applying internal inquiry rules would be too great for most individuals impacted by the situation at the point an external public inquiry becomes necessary.
Anonymous · 18 August 2025 at 15:01
“3. The culture of impunity has grown to such an extent over time that it is resulting in acts that have crossed beyond mere financial settlement, but may entail more severe consequences for the parties involved…”
This is precisely what has happened. When I realised this, it reminded me of watching looters during a riot, where folks take advantage of the inability of those in authority to immediately curtail the behaviour. As these individuals loot without immediate consequence then others join in, even those that would normally never attempt such acts. A frenzy is then whipped up as the situation escalates out of all control, and then folks do even crazier things. Of course, many are rounded up later. It’s a similar dangerous group dynamic with malicious mobbing attacks, although this can be carefully channeled by senior managers and HR against select individuals, usually for speaking out.
UK academia is right in the middle of such a ‘grand looting period’, and the clouded judgement
that goes with a frenzied group mentality is leading to many cases of gross abuse and corruption against staff and others. Forwarding cases to Employment Tribunals (and not signing NDAs), and bodies like the SRA, may be among the few ways of effectively dealing with this situation, along with coverage in the press and raising issues on this blog and others.
SPARTACUS · 18 August 2025 at 16:23
Someone please call Lord Smith the new Chancellor and show him the 21percent.org blogs! He hopefully will be horrified and spring into action to rescue UCam!
Bloody right · 18 August 2025 at 16:30
Bloody right!
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 16:53
In good times we tend to focus on qualified individual human rights – differentiating ourselves – because there is slack in the system for individuals to do this during the good times and if individuals don’t work in a precisely coordinated way in the good times nothing bad is likely to happen to the collective group though bad things can still happen to individuals in the good times if they take too much risk. In good times we look at others and seek out differences – it there anything different we can do to improve and have more success, is there anything different the system could do with respect to us to help us improve and have more success – sometimes during that process we find unfairness in relation to ourselves – unnecessary discrimination in relation to us as an individual that is of no benefit to society and this then reduces our trust in society and in other individuals because in the process of discovering our true selves we discover that society and other individuals in society have a distorted image of us. Trust relies between two parties relies on true information and is reduced by false information.
In hard times we focus on collective human rights and pair back the focus on individual rights to absolute human rights – integrating society – because there is no slack in the system for anyone to explore their qualified human rights in hard times when an individuals exploration of individual human rights could come at the expense of another individuals absolute human rights. We look at others and seek out similarities – find common ground, make more of an attempt to build a true picture of others, try to rebuild trust – make friends with people we never thought we would ever be friends with and work together to find common causes of collective suffering to make society more efficient which is what is required to get out of hard times. Hard times are hard times but they are not always times without friends or without progress though they can sometimes turn out to be they go on to long and we can find no way out of them. Hard times are times of individual rights curtailment and of self-sacrifice to ensure the collective can survive hard times, emerge in one piece and with its collective integrity in tact.
Creative mode, survival mode – individual freedom increases, individual freedom decreases – hardship decreases, hardship increases – easier times, harder times – this is the rollercoaster of life.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 17:00
Whilst good times test the limits of our new found freedoms, it is hard times test the limits of our love.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 17:11
The depth of our love in hard times is the peak of our new found freedoms in good times but we need to survive the hard times to get to the next good times and whilst it may be hard to confront the reality – that there is a limit to our love – we are nonetheless forced to confront this reality at some point during hard times to survive them.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 17:21
An individual actively working against their leader in hard times is like a person whose life depends on an individual from their group winning a race tripping the person running the race for the group up, unless you can run that race yourself and win it not only are your completely fucked, the whole group is fucked.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 18:16
Hard times are times of maximum individual effort. In the same way it is not rational to show up to a farm that is at the point of failure – a point beyond which no one (including you) will have any food – and to sit on your arse with no rational justification whilst everyone else is working at their maximum effort – including a toddler working at maximum effort watering one plant – it is not rational to sit in a country in hard times and say it’s not my country and I will do nothing for it and increase the probability of it falling with the added bonus that if it falls, this will prove the superiority of the other countries that are my countries but I don’t currently exist in over the one that falls that I currently exist in and will be fucked if it stops existing.
In hard times individuals get emergency powers to make a country their own country for a specific purpose – to maximise their individual effort for a country as this maximise the probability of it and you surviving those hard times – for the duration of hard times. Worry about what will happen after hard times after hard times are over. Any other country that an individual owes an allegiance to – that is a rational country – will understand that collective protection instincts for the country an individual exists in should not be weakened by a failure to effectively manage competing allegiances to different countries because this will eventually come back to bite the other country when the collective protection instincts of those with the highest allegiance to the other country – most likely to return to it – are weakened thus weakening the overall collective survival protections of that country.
Eileen Nugent · 18 August 2025 at 18:43
Any individual who thinks that they can sit in a country that is going through a national identity crisis and not make it your country for the specific purposes of maximising individual effort for the country for the duration of hard times and that the country will still be in a position to guarantee their individual safety is as irrational as an individual showing up in the house of an individual in a mental health crisis just before the police are called and expecting the family to guarantee their safety when the family cannot even guarantee their own safety. They will discover for themselves that if they cannot work with the family to diffuse that high-risk situation and reduce the ongoing risk of the situation they won’t have to be told to leave, they ongoing situation itself will inform them of the need to leave for their own safety.
cynic · 19 August 2025 at 08:50
“We need a regulatory framework to suspend or disbar university senior management guilty of serious misconduct.”
You realise this will wipe out almost all senior admin in almost all universities. Look at Dundee — the misgovernance was out of control throughout the top tiers of the university. First class air travel, signing off your own expenses, violation of university policies. It was rampant
Dundee has only come to prominence because it ran out of money & had to ask the Scottish Govt
Next university to run out of cash will show the same problems when investigated.
Realist · 19 August 2025 at 09:08
That is not a drawback. It is the purpose of the policy.
The senior administration teach nothing, discover nothing, do nothing. They are, quite simply, nothing. Nothing more than a drain on taxpayer, student, and donor resources.
Once they are cleared out, our universities will at last rise again.
Anon · 19 August 2025 at 09:30
The weekly missive has landed in my inbox:
“The [department] and the University has (sic) a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of harassment and bullying. If you experience or witness unacceptable behaviour, please do consider making use of the support and reporting options available. There are informal and formal as well as anonymous routes. Your concerns would be treated in strict confidence, and no action would be taken if you do not wish this (unless safeguarding considerations require this).”
A farrago of links is provided, to policies and guidance that will tell us how to behave in the absence of leadership by example.
And I’m invited to contact key persons, regardless as to whether they may consider it appropriate to make malicious accusations of a very serious nature against another member staff, or ignore basic principles of natural justice, or routinely forward information from and about colleagues to HR – presumably because “no action would be taken (…) unless safeguarding considerations (of perpetrators, HR, senior management, the institution) require this”.
In the fields of my department vipers still abound…
No to NDAs · 19 August 2025 at 12:48
On the ‘anonymous’ reporting of ‘harassment and bullying’ to HR, I find it utterly depraved for HR and senior managers to be putting out such calls for information under the guise that they will act strongly against bullying etc.
This is what they actually mean and how it works.
They encourage staff to send in comments about other staff, very quietly, no evidence needed. This then gets filed away by HR. They don’t dare alert the innocent target that this is happening, at least not until or unless HR choose to weaponise the information against the target.
This may be achieved in multiple ways:
The target may be completely innocent, with an exemplary record. In that case, the information is quietly filed away, just in case the target needs to be dealt with later, for example by disagreeing with HR etc.
This can take the form of a threat. For example, I’m aware of multiple cases where innocent staff that have spoken out for good reason, have been sat down and presented with a ‘pile of paper’ about them. The message being, ‘this is what we have on you’ so do you really want to continue with your complaint’?
Selections for compulsory redundancies may also utilise this information. Of course, you may never know about this.
Should the target end up on HR’s hitlist (for whistleblowing etc, or even just for minor disagreements with HR or senior management), then this “intelligence” gathering (HR’s own term!), becomes even more dangerous, and effective as far as HR is concerned.
This is because this filing-away approach allows HR to identify those members of staff that may be willing to attack any given target. This is critical for the malicious orchestration of a potential future mobbing attack by HR and senior management.
Those identified ‘enemies’ of the innocent target can then be worked on accordingly, and channeled into submitting a malicious group complaint against the target. This is really simple for HR and senior managers to execute.
Once they have several individuals willing to join this malicious complaint, even with just a few individuals behind it, HR are good to go. Again, no actual evidence at all is needed. In fact, it’s usually better that way (as it can make for more effective smokescreens and easier to obfuscate). The corruption-and-abuse machine then takes over to result in the removal of the target from the organisation.
The problem with this though, as far as the perpetrators are concerned, is that the comments made quietly behind the scenes will almost always make their way back to the target, which can then be used later in court.
SPARTACUS · 19 August 2025 at 13:29
This post appears to show that besides this gladiator there are others that know about a case in the School of Clinical Medicine that fits to the letter this description! This cannot be a coincidence! The scandal will eventually come to light!
No to NDAs · 19 August 2025 at 14:59
Indeed, you raise a crucial point here. You’re right, it cannot be a coincidence that such methods (especially the more sophisticated ones), across so many areas of corruption and abuse that have been reported so far, are more or less identical across departments and across institutions.
In my opinion, these methods have probably been exchanged and refined across University-HR groups. Perhaps organisations like the following could comment on this?: https://www.uhr.ac.uk/
Perhaps it has always been this way outside of academia, and Academia is just now being consumed by this culture, now that the banks are taking over much, if not all, control of our University system.
The point is also that if accounts are shared widely then perpetrators cannot easily claim that ‘you are the only one making these claims’ and ‘it’s likely all in your head’. This was attempted during the PO scandal, and look what happened there when victims got together.
Sam · 19 August 2025 at 15:26
Banks or multinationals exist to make money. Their HR departments exist to protect the banks. We expect their HR depts to be toxic & they are.
The mission statement of universities is teaching and research. Academic freedom, dignity & respect are core values. We don’t expect their HR depts to be toxic — yet they are
The University HR departments cover themselves in this wholly dishonest blanket of caring, “The University is committed to creating an environment where everybody is supported to feel and perform at their best as part of the University community” kind of spiel (from Oxford HR) that is completely untrue
HR is PR for leaders to communicate with their employees. HR don’t make decisions but they are responsible for developing and communicating these policies to employees.
So, the real problem is with the leaders who force HR to behave this way.
In my experience, there are two kinds of people who work in University HR. The first always appear shame-faced and sad, they understand & really don’t like what they are forced to do.
And the second are the real serpents, they revel in what they do. They enjoy devouring people.
Eileen Nugent · 20 August 2025 at 22:11
To be in a position of – reciprocal care – to live and let live – is to be in a position of higher absolute power than to be in a position of – non-reciprocal care – live and let die. Things that appear to maximise individual power and can make individuals feel more powerful may in reality only maximise relative individual power and not absolute individual power.
If an individual is part of a neighbourhood community watch and unnecessarily fights with every member of that community watch blinding them all in the process – whilst the individual may have increased their individual power to protect themselves relative to all other members of the community watch – their absolute power to protect themselves is far less than if they had been prepared to see and let see. Any significant threat – internal to the individual or external to the individual/group – is much harder for the individual/group to deal than it would be if they had let the others keep seeing.
SPARTACUS · 19 August 2025 at 12:16
Vipers are particularly abundant in the School of Clinical Medicine! Watch out!
The_ProVC · 19 August 2025 at 12:19
I’d like to take this opportunity to reaffirm the University’s solemn commitment to a respectful, inclusive, and safe environment. Remember, the University has a zero-tolerance policy towards bullying.
By this, we mean that if you report harassment or bullying (especially by someone senior), rest assured we have robust processes in place to investigate you instead, find you guilty of bullying or bringing the University into disrepute. With due diligence, we will wear you down through lengthy, opaque, and confidence-shattering procedures.
We call this zero-tolerance, and we really mean it. Zero-tolerance for complaints”
TheResearcher · 19 August 2025 at 12:47
Is this a joke? What if a student and his research supervisor contacted all Pro-Vice Chancellors and the Vice-Chancellor reporting research and behavioural misconduct from a large number of senior members with supporting evidence from subject access requests and they did not even reply? What if that supervisor had spent over 2 years reporting these misbehaviours contacting all senior members of the university, ranging from the Commissary, the Registrary and the Academic Secretary to Heads of School, senior HR and all the whistleblowing team, and they all ignored? And what if the script was recently changed and the university told the researcher that he was now going to be investigated for allegedly bullying all these people he contacted urging for help—yes, one single individual bullying all the senior management for reporting abuse—and he needs to be in silence, “to enable a full and fair investigation to be carried out”? What if he asks questions about this investigation against him, and no one answers?
I would be very interested to know who this Pro-Vice Chancellor is, but regardless, he or she was one of the Pro-Vice Chancellors mentioned above who did absolutely nothing and is one of the people who now complain against the victim who reported the abuse. Please read “A Sum of Adders” and “The Story of the Snake — A Fable” for context.
TheResearcher · 19 August 2025 at 12:50
Sorry, I just realized I misread the post. I thought that a Pro-Vice Chancellor dared to post something here… Yes, I am getting mad with all this disturbing experience!
SPARTACUS · 19 August 2025 at 13:23
I repeat: UCam is rotten to the core and in deep decline! Meanwhile the American Queen travels 1st class and enjoys luxurious free room and boarding! Why should she care? Lord Smith please do something!
ER · 19 August 2025 at 16:59
I would still like to believe the decline is reversible
After all, things that can’t last forever, don’t —- and there is simply no way things can go on as now
What saddens me is that all mechanisms of internal accountability have failed.
Along the way otherwise decent people were tricked into abusing other decent people and only finding out the truth when it was too late.
SPARTACUS · 19 August 2025 at 20:47
UCam is not salvagable with American Queen and current ProVCs, Registrar and Head of HR at the helm! They all must go! Lord Smith somehow needs to engineer that from his position as Council Chair!
Crassus · 20 August 2025 at 08:04
There are widespread rumours that some of these individuals may soon be leaving
I'll believe it when I see it · 20 August 2025 at 08:25
Same as it ever was.
TheResearcher · 20 August 2025 at 11:07
Even if they will leave eventually, they continue at the moment to raise grievances against staff and students who do not accept being manipulated or silenced.
birdie · 20 August 2025 at 11:28
leaving in the back of a police van from what I hear
PCPlod · 20 August 2025 at 11:58
It’s a scandal like no other.
TigerWhoCametoET · 20 August 2025 at 12:16
What happened?
Insider · 20 August 2025 at 17:25
I feel many emotions on reading this. And yet somehow, “surprise” is not among them
No suprises · 20 August 2025 at 17:41
They’ll get away with it again.
TigerWhoCametoET · 20 August 2025 at 19:20
Should we be popping the champagne? What is the latest news?