A brutal article by journalist Katherine Griffiths is just out in Bloomberg, exposing the utter failure of Oxford University to deal with harassment and bullying.
Seven women have alleged rapes or sexual assaults across the university in the past five years, while more than 30 described direct experiences of sustained harassment or bullying.
The article exposes whatever everyone in academia knows. Powerful male academics in senior positions can carry out abuse and repeated acts of misconduct for many years, protected by senior management or Human Resources. Those who speak out face serious personal or professional repercussions. They are retaliated against.
Professor Soumitra Dutta recently resigned as Head of the Said Business School after the University upheld three allegations that he harassed a female academic, as already discussed here.
Only a few weeks after Dutta’s abrupt exit, another senior figure in the university also left his post. John Tasioulas — a prominent scholar of moral and legal philosophy — submitted his resignation as director of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI in September 2025. He had been under investigation by the university since April following allegations of harassment. Tasioulas denies the allegations. [Note added in August 2026, John Tasioulas is pursuing legal action against Oxford University and asserts his innocence].
Generous funding means leaders at Oxford and academic rival Cambridge University are particularly keen to protect the universities’ reputations, according to Wyn Evans, a Cambridge professor who leads the 21 Group, which campaigns against bullying and harassment in academia. “They don’t want their powerful brands besmirched in the eyes of any donors,” he said. [Katherine Griffiths, Bloomberg]
According to Bloomberg, the Professorial gropers congregate in New College, which has at least four Fellows implicated in serious misconduct.
Three are unnamed, but the fourth is Professor Miles Hewstone. According to Bloomberg, Hewstone arrived uninvited at women’s residences and dropped his trousers, touched women inappropriately, made remarks about pursuing relationships with colleagues and students, offered gifts that created a sense of obligation, and — when confronted about his behaviour — referred to himself jocularly as a “bad boy“. This is behaviour more suited to a “Carry On” film than academia.
It’s always hushed up by Colleges.
Individual colleges also look to donors for their own funding. As a result, “colleges maintain a code of silence over bad behavior,” the 21 Group’s Evans said. “It is like the mafia with its omerta.” [Katherine Griffiths, Bloomberg]
Katherine Griffiths deserves a lot of credit for this article. Journalists exposing misbehaviour at Oxford or Cambridge regularly get sent threatening or aggressive letters by lawyers like Carter-Ruck who specialise in “reputation management”. These are, scandalously, paid for by public funds.
It’s good to see it does not work. Oxford deserves to be pilloried for its repeated failures in dealing with sexual harassment, just as Cambridge does for bullying.
The image of the gargoyle is courtesy of Chris Creagh, licensed under licensed under Creative Commons here
It is funny we are having all these debates about early retirement policy and age discrimination when we could easily just remove all the senior professors and administrators who participate in bullying and harassment. That would entail no age discrimination at all and finally enable us to hire and promote more qualified young women and men who deserve a better chance.
Good to see Bloomberg News finally picking up the story after UK media bowed to pressure. Not a single university in the world with lawyers who can intimidate their legal crack team to back down.
The article is very nice, and it would be great if Katherine Griffiths could write something about misconduct in UCam, but there was a sentence that stuck in my head: “Oxford has been slower to overhaul its whistleblowing processes than Cambridge and some other large universities.” To be clear, the whistleblowing process in Cambridge is a complete joke and the people who receive whistleblowing disclosures and safeguarding referrals can afford ignoring them without any investigation! I repeat, I am not talking about concealing and manipulating information during the investigation—as we know, UCam is very proficient with these practices as well—but affording not even making an investigation when they receive whistleblowing disclosures and safeguarding referrals based on detailed medical evidence. Ask the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for University Community and Engagement at UCam, Professor Kamal Munir, because he knows it very well!
Agreed. The Whistleblowing process at Cambridge — which is superintended by the Registrary and the Academic Secretary — is negligently dangerous.
We need to do this for the misconduct at Cambridge. There are a number of shocking cases due at the Employment Tribunal over the next few months. And multiple journalists are well aware of what is going on. They are circling the stories, like hawks.
True, and there is some hope there, but I worry that those cases will focus on specific individuals of the University, leaving the University-Colleges link largely unaddressed, and as the 21 Group noted in Bloomberg’s article, “Colleges maintain a code of silence over bad behavior.” I now know this from personal experience, and thus it does not surprise me, but it really worries me that students, namely young students, are not aware of this culture as it can really break them if they ever experience a problem in the local community they trust and get gaslighted.
Incidentally, another person name-checked in the article is the wonderful Dr Emily Baker, who wrote our “Employment Tribunal for Beginners” section
She left a scientific career at Oxford after harassment.
Patience. Bloomberg have been investigating for 9 months, but 21 Group has been investigating for 2 years.
Thank you for keeping the fight going and having the honour to believe in and hear us. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
Thank you for providing more information in regards to the MacKenzie case. For my part I was not aware that she had chaired the Board of Scrutiny. At first glance that raises several worrying issues. I welcome input from those able to provide correction or clarification.
1. The function of the Board of Scrutiny is to provide independent oversight over university operations in particular accounts and spending, which feature prominently in recent reports (https://www.scrutiny.cam.ac.uk/). Legitimacy derives from an electoral mandate from the university body that makes it autonomous from control of the senior university management.
2. There have been recent concerns in relation to lack of transparency and authority over central budget accounts. These have been accentuated following a recent decision to abort the appointment of an independent financial officer who had sought a direct capacity of audit in line with standard practice and their role mandate and was denied this request (https://21percent.org/?p=2909).
3. BOS concerns also relate to spending by the administrative bodies that do not deliver upon the university’s public service missions of teaching and research excellence. The scope and purpose of external consultancy contracts, legal fees, administrative overhead, executive compensation and broader expenses are unclear. These costs have risen significantly over time. There are reports of hiring lawyers to threaten former members of staff (e.g. the recent Paul Pharoah tweet) and cases that reached tribunal for funding disruption. It is unclear if there is now public relations spend over upcoming tribunal cases (it is not clear from this blog the university or universities in question as media reports of harassment so far appear to focus more on Oxford).
4. These issues have become salient as a result of failures to balance the operating deficit and management response to cut service delivery (academic hiring and wages) at the expense of administrative budgets (which are being ringfenced). There is also a question around infrastructural spend and its management. One such question relates to spending within HR on IT systems that have been missed deadlines in spite of significant cost. These could easily be addressed via more transparent budgeting.
5. Many of these questions have the potential to be awkward for the university senior management. The head of the registry office, who retains authority over accounts, is on extended leave.
6. There is a well-documented case of unfair dismissal in relation to Catherine MacKenzie followed by failure to comply with court orders for reinstatement. It is unclear why the university would fail to comply with a clear judicial order but the fact that MacKenzie was formerly Chair of the Board of Scrutiny raises concerns in relation to motive. To reassure such concerns this should invite further investigation and clarification.
7. There is another upcoming tribunal case brought by a further member of the Board of Scrutiny, (Professor Wyn Evans). This case is also widely known following his candidacy for Chancellor this year. The campaign brought press attention that led reporters to uncover his status as a whistleblower and some of the circumstances surrounding that case – though, much remains pending on the final hearing. Again the question of underlying motive is salient, given the prominence of Evans in campaigns for greater public accountability, and the protracted duration of his case.
8. Other recent scandals have thrown the matter of university governance and accounts in to the spotlight. For example, hearings earlier this year by the Scottish Parliament that address accounting mismanagement as well as excess executive compensation. There are comparisons in social media and press discussions to the Post Office scandal, in which a public service entity had operated without proper ministerial oversight or judicial accountability. We know in that case that these resulted in large amounts of money spent in the effort to disrupt public accountability and delay judicial review.
I welcome the input of the forum in correcting or appropriately sourcing these points.
“There have been recent concerns in relation to lack of transparency and authority over central budget accounts. These have been accentuated following a recent decision to abort the appointment of an independent financial officer who had sought a direct capacity of audit in line with standard practice and their role mandate and was denied this request”
This is really shocking.
Clearly, the place is being badly run, but this raises the prospect of very serious mismanagement or misconduct
It inevitably attracts rumours that something awkward is being hidden. The easiest means to quell such rumours would be to open the accounts and show clearly that nothing there is amiss. Now it is puzzling that there have been no further announcements or explanations for that decision.
@Review, The facts in your posting are to the best of my knowledge correct.
Both Oxford and Cambridge University have been active in hiring expensive lawyers like Carter-Ruck for reputation management.
I had a meeting with Catherine MacKenzie a month or so ago,. She told me some further disturbing information about the behaviour of the University & its legal department. I feel I should get her permission before making these facts public.
Although some information on what happened to me as a whistleblower is in the public domain, there are further facts — highly discreditable to the University — that are yet to emerge. I expect them to become public during the Tribunal, if not before.
It’s fair to say that there are now a number of massive red flags over what has been happening at Cambridge University, as your post makes clear.
“5. Many of these questions have the potential to be awkward for the university senior management. The head of the registry office, who retains authority over accounts, is on extended leave.”
The Senior Leadership of UCam does not answer awkward and embarrassing questions. And if you keep asking, you will be the subject of a disciplinary action, regardless of the merits of your questions and the supporting evidence you have regarding your case. I am particularly familiar with this practice. Regarding the second part of your point, the question is why Ms Emma Rampton is still working as the Registrary of UCam despite her extensive leave and the degrading state of the institution. But guess what, despite being on leave, she still has the time to complain about me and my awkward questions!
Reviewer, you mentioned a few relevant scandals, but there are very many scandals lurking in the background and I cannot see how the current cases in tribunals/courts alone will fix the problem as what we currently have is cultural, namely concealing and manipulating information as a way to deal with problems, and it is deeply engrained in a very large number of people. One cannot kick them all out. The only hope is that a few key individuals are sacked and this is publicly explained—as opposed to say they moved on to another adventure—and the remained get both embarrassed and concerned they may be next. But until then, they will likely laugh at our posts.
I don’t think there was a motive here for the failure to comply with a clear judicial order in the MacKenzie case that was connected to the position held on the Board of Scrutiny. I think the university just got the original decision in the MacKenzie employment case wrong. I think it failed to take into consideration that someone on the board of scrutiny has an obligation to scrutinise the operation of the university and cannot exclude significant errors in their own employment from scrutiny. Someone in that position should query significant errors in their own employment through the courts and query an organisational remedy should that prove ineffective.
I don’t think it’s more complicated than that, employment law permitted that type of handling of an unfair dismissal and the handling of the case therefore generated no governance problems at the time. When an application was made for judicial review it also didn’t generate governance concerns because the handling of it still matched what was considered reasonable handling of an unfair dismissal within the bounds of employment law at that time point.
It is only now generating governance concerns because it is now clear that how the case was originally handled is having a significant impact on other employment cases and had the original decision been to comply with the re-engagement order this could have generated more robust organisational employment processes and lead to improvements in employment case handling.
I don’t think the potential impact of remedying one case in a specific way on future employment cases of the same kind is something that is given much consideration in an individual employment case and I think even if it was given consideration it would not have been possible to predict the impact it had the potential to have on other cases at the time because work-related stress regulation is something that only came into focus in the pandemic which occurred after the application for a judicial review in that case.
I don’t think what happened is anything more complicated than this, the organisation unintentionally created a problem for itself by handling an employment case in one way instead of another way but both ways were judged to be compatible with employment law when the major decisions were being taken in the case and the handling of the case and it therefore didn’t generate governance concerns at those time points. Now is the right time to review the handling of this case because the original handling of the case is now generating governance concerns.
The reasoning that was being applied in the handling of potential unfair dismissal cases is covered here :
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/commissary-response.pdf
There doesn’t need to be intent here, there are multiple exceptionally difficult organisational changes that need to be made and this is sufficient explanation alone for their being major problems in making them, the place has been subjected to a prolonged series of major external stressors and the recovery process is only happening now.
“Oxford has been slower to overhaul its whistleblowing processes than Cambridge and some other large universities.”
Oxford complied with a reinstatement order after an unfair dismissal from an employment tribunal whereas Cambridge didn’t comply with a similar order, it left an unfairly dismissed person in a state of unfair dismissal after an external judgment which was not an effective remedy in that situation which was generated for them by an organisational error. I would say that Oxford is ahead in overhauling its whistleblowing processes because it already has one of the most critical elements of its whistleblowing processes in place – it is prepared to admit to a significant organisational error after an external judgment and to offer an effective remedy in an unfair dismissal situation that it generated for a person by making an organisational error.
There are no functional whistleblower protections in the UK, it’s not like in e.g. France where the state protects a person from dismissal in a whistleblowing situation, in the UK the state offers no protection from dismissal to a person in a whistleblowing situation so a person is completely reliant on the organisation to not unfairly dismiss them in a whistleblowing situation and/or to rectify any unfair dismissal after an external judgement. Cambridge offers no protection from dismissal in a whistleblowing situation and it is also unwilling to rectify an unfair dismissal after an external judgment. That combination of neither the state nor the organisation offering any protection from dismissal in a whistleblowing situation means that there is a significantly higher personal risk in a whistleblowing situation in Cambridge relative to the same type of whistleblowing situation in Oxford (for staff) and that then places a limit on the speed with which Cambridge can overhaul its whistleblowing processes relative to Oxford.
In Cambridge in the past people who were not trained barristers at the start of a situation trained to be barristers and got an end to a situation but now even the people who are already trained barristers at the start of the situation cannot get an end to a situation.
This is the problem with whistleblowing in the UK, to get any protection at all in whistleblowing situation you have to go to judicial review but that option is inaccessible because the organisation can block it and if it doesn’t manage to block it there is the constant threat of having to pay significant legal costs. This is why an organisation like Cambridge can give a person safeguarding and governance obligations and then leave a person trapped in a whistleblowing situation without ever having to deal with any of their concerns. Cambridge can say that it is doing things as an organisation, not do those things and not be found out because it blocks anyone who tries to hold it to account.
It blocks rectification of an unfair dismissal in an employment tribunal and then it blocks the judicial review on the decision to block the rectification of the unfair dismissal in the employment tribunal – Cambridge can do that to a trained barrister, legal academic, someone who chaired its board of scrutiny and no one in Cambridge thinks there is anything wrong with the organisation. Cambridge has blocked itself from overhauling its whistleblowing processes because you wouldn’t go into a court to try to reason with Cambridge. Oxford wouldn’t block the rectification of an unfair dismissal in an employment tribunal, if all else failed in Oxford you could go into a court and reason with Oxford but Cambridge you wouldn’t even go into a court to try to reason with it because it’s beyond all reason.
An organisation has to be in an extreme state of dysfunction to unfairly dismiss a chair of its own board of scrutiny, let the unfair dismissal go to employment tribunal despite having no organisational defence, concede the unfair dismissal, block the rectification of the unfair dismissal in an employment tribunal and then block the judicial review of the organisational blocking of the rectification of the unfair dismissal in an employment tribunal. Once an organisation has done that to the chair of its own board of scrutiny then it has unintentionally overhauled its organisational whistleblowing processes, whatever processes that were applied to the chair of the board of scrutiny in their own whistleblowing situation are the new organisational whistleblowing processes.
@Eileen, the Cambridge case you refer to is
https://vlex.co.uk/vid/dr-catherine-mackenzie-v-806983177
What is the Oxford case?
Oxtord rectified an early retirement unfair dismissal
https://www.parklaneplowden.co.uk/never-too-late-for-reinstatement-professor-paul-ewart-v-oxford-university/
Cambridge would have left them unfairly dismissed, it wouldn’t see the point of rectifying the unfair dismissal, it would have done the same thing it did in the MacKenzie case.
Oxford you can reason with and there is then some possibility of a problem being fixed whereas in Cambridge they can’t even agree an who you are supposed to go to with a problem so they just leave you in that position for three years.
Ah we see, you are referring to the EJRA cases.
Incidentally, the barrister in this case, Andrew Sugarman, is clearly excellent.
It was the first EJRA case that was won, it opened the floodgates and it forced Oxford & Cambridge to partly backtrack.
https://www.parklaneplowden.co.uk/our-barristers/andrew-sugarman/
If you are needing a barrister for an Employment Tribunal case, he’s worth serious consideration
As the backtrack is only partial, our understanding is that cases on EJRA are continuing. The leadership of Cambridge never misses an opportunity to shoot itself
The solution in Cambridge is to do something constructive in one of these situations for a change, it’s to re-engage with a former chair of the board of scrutiny erasing an unintentional overhaul of the whistleblowing processes and to then overhaul the whistleblowing processes in the right way.
The Employment Tribunal at Bury St Edmunds 1-28 June 2026 concerns the treatment of a whistleblower.
A positive outcome would entail complete overhaul of the whistleblowing process to make it fit for purpose and legally compliant.
If Cambridge doesn’t rectify the MacKenzie unfair dismissal then the problem remains. That is denial of a rectification of an unfair dismissal in an employment tribunal and then a subsequent blocking of a judicial review of the decision to deny a rectification of an unfair dismissal. To whistleblow from a fixed-term contract there has to be the security of an organisational precedent of rectifying an unfair dismissal in a whistleblowing situation, the organisation has to have done it which is why Oxford is ahead of Cambridge. The state offers no protection from unfair dismissal in a whistleblowing situation in the UK so you are relying on the organisation to demonstrate what protection it offers to people in an unfair dismissal situation and Cambridge offers no protection whereas Oxford offers protection – it rectifies an unfair dismissal.
“A positive outcome would entail complete overhaul of the whistleblowing process to make it fit for purpose and legally compliant.”
Catherine MacKenzie had a positive outcome in an employment tribunal and it did entail a complete outhaul of the whistleblowing processes which is why they are not now fit for purpose or legally compliant.
Cambridge has to do something internally to become more reasonable as organisation because it’s not currently possible to reason with it.
Catherine MacKenzie deserves an award for her tenacity and courage. There should be a place in the honours system for people like her who stand up for justice in the face of overwhelming adversity.
I would encourage all journalists to read her case in detail. It is outrageous that a university would outright reject the authority of the court. She stood up for the integrity of our legal system and fundamental British values.
The state offers no protection in these whistleblowing situations in the UK. A person is reliant on organisational protections in that situation. An organisation in the UK has to have a base level of credibility in rectifying an unfair dismissal otherwise there is the possibility of not being able to reason with the organisation in a whistleblowing situation. In an organisation that will not rectify an unfair dismissal instead of focussing on the concerns in the whistleblowing situation the whole organisation could be focussed on a dismissal. If a person is trying to do one thing in a situation and an organisation is trying to do a completely different thing in the same situation then it’s not possible for a person to reason with the organisation in the situation.
Eileen: never lose hope.
For his tireless work in fighting the Post Office, Alan Bates was finally given a knighthood a year ago and is now Sir Alan.
Meanwhile, Prince Andrew is now just “Andrew” after losing his titles.
Quite a reversal.
When you have a just cause, time is always on your side.
“I would encourage all journalists to read her case in detail. It is outrageous that a university would outright reject the authority of the court. She stood up for the integrity of our legal system and fundamental British values.”
Cambridge wouldn’t listen to her judgment on an effective remedy. Given she was a former chair of the university board of scrutiny in a position where she had already won her legal case against the university and an employment tribunal had already agreed on the range of possible effective remedies in the situation – one of which she then selected – it was not reasonable for Cambridge to not listen to her judgement on an effective remedy in the situation.
The British state gives organisations more autonomy in managing their own employment problems than other states but for that to work it has to be possible for a person to reason with an organisation. If a person can reason with an organisation then an organisation having more autonomy in managing its own employment problems can be beneficial because the state is then placing less constraints on what needs to happen to remedy a situation and the gives more flexibility in the negotiation of an effective remedy between a person and an organisation.
That extra autonomy in managing employment problems can save public resources and keep the organisation in a healthier state as compared to being more constrained by the state in managing employment problems because state constraints on an organisation can change over time and become sub-optimal for a particular organisation and having more autonomy helps an organisation to continuously maintain its stability in that situation. For this system where an organisation has more autonomy to work however it has to be possible for a person to reason with an organisation.
“Eileen: never lose hope.”
Cambridge is more capable of internally-driven organisational change, it is more capable of internal reform, of that I am certain or I wouldn’t have spent that length of time raising concerns internally in Cambridge. In Cambridge the problem is not with the leaders the organisation is selecting, the problem is that Cambridge is too afraid of internal reform, it is too afraid of internally-driven organisational change but that is the Cambridge way to reform. Oxford is more likely to listen to external judgments in times of higher uncertainty than Cambridge. Cambridge is more reliant on internally-driven organisational change and on internal reform.
Cambridge argues that it cannot intervene in any of its own employment cases in cases of potential unfair dismissal by referencing section 46 of the Higher Education Act 2004 so it doesn’t intervene in this type of its own employment case and it sends it that type of case out to the the public law system so that an individual “is able to seek redress through a specialist court or tribunal.” and then it blocks the specialist court or tribunal from dispensing the redress being sought.
Section 46 of the Higher Education Act 2004 is there to ensure uniformity of treatment for staff in higher education between different institutions. There is no uniformity of treatment in staff in higher education between different institutions because rectification of an unfair dismissal is institution dependent. Some people get a reinstatement order complied with after an unfair dismissal and others don’t and that difference in treatment is significant for a highly-specialised academic where the number of alternative job roles could be very limited. That makes the treatment in different institutions highly non-uniform for staff in higher education. How Cambridge is handling these situations is then a misuse of the Higher Education Act 2004.
The real problem arises if all you want to do is give up on seeking redress because it’s clear that seeking redress in Cambridge is a waste of time but you still need to offload concerns. There is no choice then but to offload concerns onto a national regulator because you cannot reason with Cambridge in this particular situation.
Some things money cannot buy, a permanent academic position is one of these things.
They’re priceless, even Cambridge doesn’t have enough money to buy one.
The point is that is how some people feel about academia so in some cases it doesn’t matter what an organisation does to a person you won’t find them in an employment tribunal seeking redress after a career-ending unfair dismissal because there isn’t an amount of money they would accept as redress, to them academia is priceless.
If there are no protections from unfair dismissal in academia some people in academia will refrain from doing anything that increases the risk of an unfair dismissal, someone researching cancer after seeing a parent die of cancer is close to a cancer breakthrough when they are sexually assaulted – would they whistleblow in an organisation that has a history of mishandling cases of that kind or just leave and find another academic post.
It is our duty to bring to account each and every individual who has acted as perpetrator or enabler of student or staff abuse. The rest is logistics.
100%. There is an iron needle running through all these cases. I hope they seek mercy before the pattern is woven.
The 21 Group has information on further sex scandals at Oxford
1. There is much more to come out about matters at the Said Business School. The management of the Business School seems to have tolerated extensive behaviour that falls short of good ethical practices
2. There is an extremely serious scandal involving an individual linked to the senior leadership of Oxford University, whose predatory behaviour over a number of years has consequently been excused.
We can expect more Oxford sex scandals to come out
UCam has: Prof ViciousWoman, Prof Drinkalot, Prof Teflon, Prof Crookery (Crookery and Teflon are now in the same College!), Prof Smallman. Tic toc tic toc tic toc… boom!
Field Marshall Paulus played a central role in the planning and execution of Operation Barbarossa.
As everyone knows he was captured at Stalingrad. What is less widely known is how far he went to make amends. He wrote appeals for Germans to surrender, before appearing at the Nuremberg Trials to denounce his former colleagues.
Afterwards he lived another decade in peace. He supported denazification through speeches and writings, and encouraged former Nazis to find another way to express their patriotism (“Establishing good neighborly relations with the countries that surround us from east and west is crucial for our national existence. The time has come for the old enmity that we have inherited and the many disputes to be buried once and for all”).
Today he is remembered not as a criminal but as an example of moral courage.
None of us will ever face a moral dilemma on a scale like Paulus.
But in ways small and large we must all choose which side to take, and how we will be remembered.
UCam is in deep trouble! Wyn Evans ET is serious. Other cases will be also at ET or High Court! And the greatest scandal of all in the School of Clinical Medicine will eventually also explode.
[…] reproduce an interesting contribution from poster Review […]
Bloomberg did what Oxford didn’t do, consequences for Miles Hewstone due to his behavior of sexual harassment and power abuse so far were:
– His professional profiles were removed or are to be removed from the British Academy, UPES, Max Planck and GPIR
– Collaborators on old projects asked him to step down
– New collaborators cancelled projects
– Academics in the community and further victims posted their thoughts on social media
– Official statements published by the International Contact Research Network and the University of Hagen
– MP to question Oxford VC
The continued silence and lack of response from New College is deafening.
If the British Academy removes his Fellowship, then we need to push for more expulsions from both the BA and the Royal Society.
There are known harassers in both.
We hope that the BA does do this, but we expect they will bottle it
They’ll set up a committee that will report in some indefinite time in the future & hope everyone forgets.
New College has now also removed his profile from their Emeritus Fellows list. However, neither the British Academy nor New College have responded to our emails with a statement whether he was asked to step down or whether he was dismissed, nor with their view on the allegations and evidence or any form of empathy for the victims.
If you are on bluesky, you can ask Hetan Shah (chief executive of the British Academy) directly & publicly.
It is certainly embarrassing for Hetan Shah, as he likes to present a progressive image of concern about these matters on bluesky
We did it earlier over Corinne Hofman.
She was ejected from Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, but not the British Academy.
From wiki, “In 2023 University of Leiden placed her on leave to investigate long-running cases of intimidation, discrimination, abuse of power and violation of scientific integrity. The accusations related to Hofman and her husband, and fellow member of archaeology department, Menno Hoogland.[9] The following year, the University of Leiden published an anonymised report that substantiated the accusations.[10] The report “describes a decades-long culture of fear in which Hofman and Hoogland exhibited transgressive behaviour, violated scientific integrity, abused their power and possibly committed criminal offences.”
[…] to the recent scandals involving the Saïd Business School, the trouser-dropping behaviour of Prof Miles Hewstone and the conviction for rape of Prof Tariq Ramadan, Oxford has built a huge reputation for […]