If you are a member of Regent House, please urgently consider signing the Grace, which calls for an external audit.
The Grace was motivated primarily by difficulties experienced by staff in the MRC Epidemiology Unit and within University Information Services (UIS), alongside longstanding concerns about the handling of Grievances. We see the Grace as a constructive opportunity to address these issues and improve current practices. The 21 Group also recognises the considerable pressures faced by junior HR staff in recent years and believes they stand to benefit from the proposed changes.
Events over the Summer have added to concerns about the management of the Human Resources division, particularly the highly critical judgment at the Cambridge Whistleblowing Tribunal available here
There is a powerful article by Harry Cammish in Varsity on this today
The tribunal has revealed the arbitrariness and partisanship of the University’s structures. Once again, the University’s real focus has been preserving its own reputation over the welfare of its staff and the high standards it claims to uphold. At every step of the affair, the University’s bureaucratic signature is plain: complaints are shut down arbitrarily, senior figures evade responsibility by claiming issues fall outside their remit, and critics face baseless claims in retaliation for their public opposition to the University. The whole business has the whiff of amateur villainy.
@Harry Cammish,
Thank you for your article. As I just posted on X, it is deeply unfortunate that the senior leadership of the University appears to be the only group not embarrassed by the degrading situation they have led us into.
If you get any retaliation from the University because of this article, let the 21 Group know. I fear they may try but the good news is that they are now being watched by multiple members and the public at large.
“the good news is that they are now being watched by multiple members and the public at large”
You don’t say! Entire public, more like
It’s rhetorically brave, but basing his article on the published tribunal judgement puts Harry Cammish on very solid ground.
Did you mean “members of government”? When asked recently in the context of this summer’s events about “academics, whistleblowers and journalists [who] were threatened and smeared for simply doing their job”, the Minister of State for Skills replied that they were “more than just keeping our eye on this”
Yes, I meant them as well 😉
I came across this and was struck by so many similarities.
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/08/sophisticated-torture-is-like-mature-totalitarianism/
Sophisticated torture, much like mature totalitarianism, avoids the visible, “violent” acts of violence. Its power lies in exploiting and creating internal conflicts among the people, fostering constant mutual surveillance, control, and reporting. This diffuses the perpetrators, making it impossible to identify or apprehend any single “evildoer.” People appear to have “choices,” but they are ultimately forced to choose between harming one party and abandoning another. Power, however, seems detached, never directly intervening. Visible, publicly observable conflicts vanish, leaving only unseen internal strife. The damage to society can be far more lasting and profound than occasional violence.
I am not sure I would describe it as “violence” (out of fear of being termed a “snowflake”) but I must say, I do feel it is rather like they read Foucault and drew all the wrong conclusions about how to run a university.
HR rulebook
1. ensure all decisions be taken by “committee” without minutes or individual responsibility
2. only send decisions to victims from generic group email accounts
3. ban line managers from meeting with victims one on one
4. ensure that victims are classified as “mentally unwell” + credibility undermined
5. refuse to comply with subject access requests or redact to the point of meaningless
6. abuse legal privilege to prevent abusive conduct ever being disclosed to court
7. gaslight with deliberately false statements as much as possible to provoke a response
8. ignore medical advice at every stage
Former student of suspended Reform official reopens bullying case against Cambridge University
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/17/james-orr-reform-cambridge-university-student
“The student’s case with the university was subsequently closed, but they now say they are reopening it, alleging that the university had lied to them about disciplining Orr…
…When approached by the Guardian about the former student’s intention to reopen the case, the University of Cambridge said: “We have clear policies and processes in place to protect our students and staff.” ”
If you are ok with this, then go ahead and ignore the Grace.
But remember the world is watching – and wondering – whether the entire Cambridge community is comfortable with the way things are being handled.
The world is watching — in absolute bafflement or in rage — as to how one of the premier universities in the world has been reduced to this. We have seen:
Vet School debacle, Sinker scandal, CFO hire-fire saga, Goldhill incident, Huppert & POLIS scandals, Cambridge Whistleblowing tribunal, MRC screw-ups, James Orr case, Arday case, the abandonment of Khattak, CRUK-Cam disaster … and there’s more to come out
Some the people in senior management responsible have committed gross misconduct.
Wow, it really seems the Consigliere University!
https://21percent.org/?p=3097
/•᷅•᷄\੭
let’s not forget about Tigris the misogynist cat
https://21percent.org/?p=4367#comment-11279
Great piece here in Byline Times on the juxtaposition of Arday and Orr —
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/09/17/the-two-professors-and-a-war-on-ideas/
Two professors, each representing a tendency at the university. A symbol of the new left on one side, and of the new right on the other. Two cases, two scandals, but one logic, with vastly different outcomes.
I’m sure we’ll also get some interviews on the left discussing the Orr thing, but for now here’s the latest from Maeve doing the rounds — “In this episode [we] discuss what she witnessed inside one of Britain’s most prestigious universities… woke ideology at Cambridge, free speech, DEI, and the decline of meritocracy”. Agree or disagree with her views, she is razor sharp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T4kEcOGXtM
Sharp as a piece of soggy cardboard dipped in preserved bile.
This part is mind-blowing.
“MH: The backlash that I and um the two co-founders, the two young women I set up this society with, the backlash that we received was okay, it could have been worse, but… you know, when you’re receiving death threats and threats of violence and stuff, this was me personally.
WM: So, you got written death threats?
MH: Yeah. People just contacting you online anonymously.
WM: How are they contacting you?
MH: Sort of social media, yeah, Instagram. um also you know softer but you would just have students posting on anonymous forums sort of saying just nasty stuff about us I guess but I was university forums you know like student created unofficial stuff on Facebook or whatever saying TERF soc and bitch soc and the fact that we exist was kind of awful and threatens everybody.
An academic reported me to the university claiming that I made women unsafe and wanted me to be disciplined or removed.“
Who was the academic who led a campaign against a student?
She also said something about how ultimate responsibility for this toxic culture lies in the administration and that it’s all being pushed by the ever-expanding non-academic salariat.
She said in another interview that the academic who tried to force her out of her degree while she was a student at Cambridge was a female academic, but I don’t know more than that.
Interesting. Takes a huge amount of chutzpah for an academic to campaign to get rid of the student who founded the Cambridge University Society of Women, totally out of the question any guy would be that career suicidal. Realistically someone who felt completely protected by the admin working in Ed, Gender or Soc right?
Whether you low-key think “woke” is cringe or not, surely peak cringe is a boomer academic farming student aura points by hopping on a social justice witch hunt against a student
“I’m sure we’ll also get some interviews on the left discussing the Orr thing”
For balance would be nice if someone could post a recent discussion from a lefty angle on this or other recent topics (yeah, I know I could do so if I put in the time to search but hoping someone can share)
I think this sums it up?
Awwww, so sad, all these dead white guys, sob sob sob, victims all.
Pathetic.
They are all Cambridge alumni – as, for that matter, is Maeve. But I thank you for your comments, as they offer a perfect illustration of the culture that she rightly describes as responsible for destroying the academic standards of a once-proud and once-great university.
@Almunus Not to defend the puerility of Enough!, but what connection does Berlin have to Cambridge?
My guess is they are just a list of key early/mid twentieth century British liberals and it just so happened that most were from Cambridge? Which is already telling in and of itself in terms of the point being made?
Surely there is no form of ableism more profound than prejudice against the deceased?
I wish there was a laugh emoji. Bonkers comment of the year. Nothing to do with prejudice against the deceased–your absurd self-pity is the object of derision here. But wonderful, a new victim emerges in, checks notes, ‘ableist’ discourse–the dead! The state of it.
Ummm… I think maybe the joke was on you? Cannot imagine why this reminded me of this vid from a few months back 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yja2Nb-z_JU
Thank you for this
OMG this video is glorious!! as a gay male academic and a proud social democrat I am now seriously worried that I just fell in love with Amala :-s
Guys guys guys this is all very interesting and all but let’s not get distracted while empress Palpatine is still in charge of the university
With respect, the image suggests a university at war with itself, and alas, I fear that this comment seems to prove it.
The divided self is an intermediate/transition state between operationally stable self governance at one level of complexity and operationally stable self governance at a higher level of complexity. An organisation at war with itself is not a permanent state, it’s an intermediate/transitional state that can be encountered in an organisation going through self governance reform.
Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga in 1909 to a Jewish family and grew up partly in Latvia and Russia before moving to Britain.
It’s a bit more complex than “white guy”
Indeed, he may have been a persecuted refugee who came as an asylum seeker to this country; but clearly he hadn’t suffered as much as golden spoon elites who now all tell us to be “aware” of our privilege alas. And now, as he is deceased, he cannot even defend himself from such absurdities.
I think we can all agree that it is possible to celebrate great thinkers of the past, regardless of whether they were white, fluorescent or covered in polka dots, and also celebrate BAME scholars of today. In fact, I generally find most people who do the former are more likely to do the latter too.
Bertrand Russell, although a top-tier aristocrat, was willing to throw his ‘privilege’ away in opposition to the First World War, losing his Lectureship at Trinity as a result. He was, of course, a socialist. A genuine radical committed first and foremost to truth, unlike some of the posturing and prominent identity politics frauds that enjoy the protection of UTO status today.
Perhaps worth observing that many of the “dead white liberals” of Oxbridge past are also icons of the long struggle for gay rights – but would be disgusted to be celebrated on that basis today – instead of on the basis of their formidable intellectual accomplishments.
The spirit of Bertrand Russell lives on through the bravery of Wyn Evans and the 21 Group – and, I would add, the spirit of Ross Anderson, John Sulston, and G.H. Hardy. Those are Cambridge traditions to be proud of – scientists who stood up for truth and justice over power, no matter the personal risk or cost.
“scientists who stood up for truth and justice over power, no matter the personal risk or cost”
Very much agreed – with the caveat that in this instance there were not only scientists who stood up for truth and justice over power.
Consider a systemic error correction mechanism to correct systemic unnecessary discrimination based on the following assumptions :
Assumption 1 : group [not a] is being subjected to systemic unnecessary discrimination – by all of group [a] and by none of the group [not a] – to the detriment of individual outcomes of members of group [not a]. The system – all of group [a] and all of group [not a] – is expected to implement a systemic error correction mechanism to put a stop to systemic unnecessary discrimination of group [not a] by group [a].
Based on this assumption systemic unnecessary discrimination implies being subjected to unnecessary discrimination by a subset of the system – in this case all of group [a] – and does not imply being subjected to unnecessary discrimination by the whole of the system – all of group [a] and all of group [not a].
Assumption 2 : group [a] is not being subjected to systemic unnecessary discrimination – not by any of the group [not a] and not by any of the group [a] – and therefore the system – all of group [a] and all of group [not a] – is not expected to implement any systemic error correction mechanism to put a stop to any systemic unnecessary discrimination of group [a].
A systemic error correction mechanism that combines these two assumptions has the potential to generate two new types of errors :
(i) members of group [a] who don’t unnecessarily discriminate with respect to members of group [not a] being falsely accused of unnecessary discrimination of members of group [not a] to the detriment of outcomes of members of group [a]
(ii) members of group [a] who are being subjected to unnecessary discrimination by members of group [not a] having valid concerns dismissed to the detriment of outcomes of members of group [a]
by members of group [not a] and members of group [a] who have internalised the two assumptions of the systemic error correction mechanism and uniformly applied the two assumptions to every member of group [not a] (including their own self) and every member of group [a] (including own their self). This results in unnecessary discrimination of group [a] by the subset of group [not a] and the subset of group [a] who have internalised the two assumptions of the systemic error correction mechanism and applied them uniformly to every member of a group (including their own self).
Based on the first assumptions of the systemic error correction mechanism being subjected to systemic unnecessary discrimination implies being subjected to unnecessary discrimination by a subset of the system – in this case the subset of group [a] and the subset of group [not a] who have internalised the two assumptions and uniformly applied the two assumptions to every member of group [a] (including their own self) and group [not a] (including their own self) – and not by the whole system – all of group [a] and all of group [not a]. This is therefore systemic unnecessary discrimination of group [a].
One group – group [a] – is assumed to be a universal error maker with respect to another group – group [not a] – and therefore every member of group [a] is expected to be a universal giver in the systemic error correction mechanism with respect to every member of group [not a] irrespective of whether they are making any error with respect to any member of group [not a] or of whether any member of group [not a] is making any error with respect to them.
Another group – group [not a] – is assumed to be a universal zero error maker with respect to group [a] and therefore every member of group [not a] is expected to be a universal receiver in the systemic error correction mechanism irrespective of whether any member of group [a] is making any error with respect to them or whether they are making any error with respect to any member of group [a].
If the system operates with this systemic error correction mechanism in place then during its operation group [a] is left being subjected to systemic unnecessary discrimination and none of the system – none of group [a] and none of group [not a] – is expected to implement any structural error correction mechanism to put a stop to any systemic unnecessary discrimination of group [a] based on assumption 2.
The system is then operating with a systemic error correction mechanism in place to correct systemic errors of a particular kind – systemic unnecessary discrimination – that generates a new systemic error of the same kind it seeks to correct that cannot be corrected within that systemic error correction mechanism itself. The system cannot reach a state of operational stability with this systemic error correction mechanism in place.
There is a series of operational stability challenges associated with the practical implementation of any systemic error correction mechanism to correct systemic unnecessary discrimination in a society:
If a systemic error correction mechanism to correct systemic unnecessary discrimination starts to impact systemic necessary discrimination – i.e. starts to vary systemic professional competence level thresholding or vary systemic person-professional role matching accuracy – that has the potential to vary systemic professional role performance i.e. to vary professional role performance at all levels of a society – person, organisation, society.
Variations in systemic professional role performance then have the potential to lead to variations in systemic stress regulation. This is because variations in systemic professional role performance can result in variations in systemic person-profession interaction outcomes impacting both givers of professional services – professional career outcomes – and receivers of professional services – professional services outcomes. A higher rate of negative systemic person-profession interaction outcomes equates to a higher complexity systemic stress regulation task. Variations in systemic stress regulation have the potential to lead to variations in systemic health as they can lead to even higher variations in stress & health impact at the level of person across the whole of society.
If variations of this type – variations in systemic necessary discrimination – start to happen within the health system sub-component of a society then any significant variation – positive or negative – has the potential to induce a sharper and even more significant variation in a society i.e. small variations in a sub-system of a system have the potential to generate steep transitions in a system. This is because the health system itself plays a critical role in sensing and managing variations in the systemic health of a society – positive or negative – and the direction of travel of the systemic health of the health system itself will determine the direction of travel of the overall capacity of the health system to sense, manage and ultimately turn around any negative shifts in the systemic health of a society.
This means the overall level of functioning of a society could be highly sensitive to variations in the level of cooperativity in a society with respect to a particular societal task – minimising systemic unnecessary discrimination in conditions of maximising systemic necessary discrimination (i.e. the effective management of discrimination in professional environments) – such that small variations in the level of cooperativity with respect to this societal task could result in steep transitions in the overall level of functioning of a society something which would have significant implications for the operational stability of a society.
This is one of a series of operational stability challenges – minimising systemic unnecessary discrimination in conditions of maximising systemic necessary discrimination – associated with the practical implementation of any systemic error correction mechanism to correct systemic unnecessary discrimination.
I think it’s important to bear this in mind : there are people who are highly successful in professional roles as a result of having learned to effectively manage discrimination in relation to their own self in professional environments i.e. as a result of having learned to minimise unnecessary discrimination of their own self in conditions of maximising necessary discrimination to their own self in a professional context.
There are those who trained for one professional role – e.g. to be a surgeon – and who came to realise while completing supervised practical training for that professional role that they themselves are not as well matched to that professional role as the other professionals supervising their practical training and their training peers – not below the minimum professional competence standards for the professional role but not as well matched to that professional role as the group of professionals training them and their training peers – and who then take their accumulated professional training and use it to pivot to another professional role – e.g. professional medical researcher – which ultimately turns out to be a better match for them and as a result they go on to be highly successful in that other professional role and to make significant contributions to medicine in that way instead of through surgery.
If a person values other members of a community and values their own self as a member of a community and learns how to accurately balance duty to other members of a community and duty to own self as a member of a community that gives a person the highest probability of finding the role within a community the person is best matched to and of reaching the highest level of success possible for the person in that community.
Message from Mara Metcalfe, Internal Communications Lead, in University SharePoint:
“Statement from the University Council on employment tribunal
The Council agreed that the University will not appeal the judgment. The independent review’s terms of reference will be published soon.
Last month, an employment tribunal ruled against the University in favour of a staff member, Professor Wyn Evans, on a number of serious issues. The University is looking hard at the judgment, its findings, and what led to the outcome and the criticisms it contains.
At a meeting of the University Council on 11 September, 2026 it was decided not to bring an appeal against this outcome as this would not be in the best interests of the University, its staff and students. The Council reaffirmed its commitment to learning lessons from the review and developing a clear plan for improvement.
The Deputy Chair of the University Council and the Council’s Audit Committee had been asked by the Vice-Chancellor to establish the terms of an independent review of all relevant University processes, with the outcome to be reported directly to the Council. The terms of this review have now been approved by the Audit Committee and endorsed by the Council. The terms will be published once finalised following review and feedback by the independent chair. An independent panel to conduct the review is being assembled.”
Review what exactly? That the Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice engaged in whistleblowing retaliation? Or that she is fully aware that these practices continued after 10 August 2026 with other members and that the staff who engaged in the malpractices of this case continues working as usual? If someone knows why Council did not protest against this review, please let us know.
The “review” will be used to argue that the Grace is redundant, we expect.
“Or that she is fully aware that these practices continued after 10 August 2026 with other members and that the staff who engaged in the malpractices of this case continues working as usual? ”
It is time to rip the bandages and expose the abuse of students and staff that continued throughout August and September of 2026. No redactions, no omissions, name and shame.
Those who proposed this review and those who approved it should be named. This review is pointless, given that the ET delivered a very clear verdict, unless, of course, the University is willing to listen to current and former members of the University who were also affected by the staff involved in the malpractice at issue in this case. In that case, I would be very happy to contribute to that review.
______________________
Dear Professor Prentice,
I am writing to confirm that the final deadline for submission of your thesis concerning policies to reform University human resources and abuse of whistleblowers was the 15th of July 2026.
As the academic year has now concluded, and the required submission was not received by the final deadline, we regret to inform you that you are required to leave the University without the award of the degree.
Accordingly, the MA (Cantab) previously conferred upon you will be rescinded with immediate effect.
This decision is communicated in the context of the matters currently under consideration by the University Council, including the recent employment tribunal judgment and the independent review of relevant University processes. Nothing in this correspondence should be taken as a determination of any allegation or finding beyond the administrative decision set out above.
Yours sincerely,
Regent House
University of Cambridge
______________________
In theory some review is required to translate lessons in to specific reform actions but it should have already been done. There has been more than enough time. What completely undermines any semblance of credibility is that those found responsible at court were not immediately suspended from their roles. You cannot have any meaningful reform while there are people in power with the incentive to obstruct progress.
If the Lead HR Business Partner, Ms Louise Akroyd, remains in her post following the whistleblowing Employment Tribunal, you can conclude that nothing will change in Cambridge. There is absolutely no excuse for retaining a person of her character at the University. Do not worry: she is unlikely to bring a defamation claim against me, although I would very much welcome one from her specifically.
Louise Akroyd, who attends cloak and dagger – sorry, Covid 19 – meetings in the gardens of Emmanuel College, to enable an out of control raging fabulist of a Head of Department to communicate without restraint with the Head of School, about his private plans to force-retire one colleague, and make another one redundant. All is so confidential of course, that no notes are taken. Even informal notes, as the Tribunal panel heard, would not be found.
Why, one wonders, go to such much trouble to be so blatantly unprofessional?
Why in Emmanuel College, you may wonder. Isn’t that the College of the Head of the School of the Physical Sciences, Professor Nigel Peake? Yes, it is. You may also wonder if Professor Peake has the leadership skills to be a Master of a College after how he has managed the School he was responsible for in the last few years. My answer is no, but apparently the Fellows of Darwin think otherwise.
Taking your own students to court for defamation is not a great look for any university advertising commitment to free speech, but, I think the more salient issue is that any such case would ultimately bring scores of people out of the woodwork with further stories to tell.
@Eagle, you could be surprised with what Cambridge University is willing to do against its own students and then expects they keep it confidential. What a pathetic bunch! But anyway, in this particular case, I seriously doubt any of them will file a defamation claim against me but I will let you all know if they do.
12 years after the chair of the Board of Scrutiny was substantively unfairly dismissed and the university refused to re-engage them after an employment tribunal found them to have made no contribution to the substantive unfair dismissal Regent House starts to be aware there might be a problem with the university.
Regent house wouldn’t intervene in a critical case of whistleblowing retaliation against the Chair of the Board of Scrutiny where every member of Regent House – including the senior leadership of the university – lost a key mechanism underpinning the practical enforcement of all rights in relation to themselves – employment rights, academic freedom rights.
Regent House expects its senior leadership to intervene in a case of whistleblowing retaliation but Regent house itself was not prepared to intervene in a critical case of whistleblowing retaliation. If the senior leadership has lost a key mechanism to practically enforce rights in relation to themselves how does Regent House expect senior leadership to intervene in the practical enforcement of rights in relation to others?
If a VC intervened in a case, was substantively unfairly dismissed from the VC post and went and got a re-instatement order from an employment tribunal – after a no VC fault ruling – and the university refused to comply with that re-instatement order would this improve the operational stability of the university? Would Regent House intervene? Would Regent House be there for a VC who did the right thing, a VC who intervened with accuracy in a case?
The organisational safeguarding system in relation to substantive unfair dismissal is disabled for all in the organisation. If everything goes right for a person a person can be safe in the absence of a safeguarding system. It is only when things start to go significantly wrong for a person that the absence of a safeguarding system is sensed. It is only then people start to realise that there is a significant difference in the range of possible outcomes in the presence of a safeguarding system as compared to in the absence of a safeguarding system.
If an organisation has disabled a critical safeguarding system that applies to the whole organisation – senior leadership included – and that critical safeguarding system itself is necessary for any internal person – senior leadership included – to enable that critical safeguarding system for the whole organisation again there is not much one person can do for that whole organisation other than point that out to the whole organisation.
If things go right for a person then the person could continuously feel and be safe and never notice the presence or absence of any safeguarding system. A person could feel free to live their life the way they want to live their life and to explore their individual values with no sensitivity to state of any safeguarding system and with no concern for the shared values of the community around them.
It is only when things start to go significantly wrong for a person, when the person no longer feels safe and/or no longer is safe, that the person might start to notice the presence or absence of any safeguarding system, might start being sensitive to the state of any safeguarding system. It is only then that a person might start being concerned with the shared values of the community around them because the state of any safeguarding system is determined by the shared values of the community around them.
“The Council agreed that the University will not appeal the judgment”
Thank God there is some sanity somewhere in this university! It is about time someone told the lawyers to stop wasting our money on pointless losing cases instead of reflecting on what has gone wrong – something no lawyer will ever do.
Indeed. The only real beneficiary of the University’s policies is the law firm Shakespeare Martineau LLP. They love to carry on fighting … £££££
True. Even when they lose the lawyers still win. Actually, if they lose they can even win twice over, by working on the appeal as well.
Dear friends who know about the CRUK/Oncology scandal, SPARTACUS, MUSKETEER and others, it just came to my attention that the HR of Clinical Medicine are leaving. Do you know why? Tick tock tick tock 😅
I have a more specific question though. Was Mr Kris Cressy, former HR staff of Clinical Medicine and now Domestic Bursar of St Edmund’s College, involved in the CRUK scandal? It turns out that Mr Cressy was directly involved in my case, and I am wondering if I was lucky enough to have in my case people involved in the CRUK case and Astronomy’s. If so, the leadership of UCam must really like me to put their very best professionals in my case!
In general, there is a high turnover of junior & mid-ranking HR staff. This suggests considerable unhappiness at how the division is run. It would be interesting to get statistics on staff turnover …
Yes, I know about that turnover, and I agree that those stats could be interesting to consider. But this one in the Clinical School is particularly interesting because of the timing as if they know what is about to happen. Perhaps it was just coincidence and they found a better job than the “UK’s Best Employer”!
I know people who joined Cambridge Uni HR then left less than 12 months in to the role even with no other job to go to. They haven’t even been paying accrued leave balances to people who exit either. No wonder people in HR can see that and think – get out of here as soon as possible.
Here’s a list of HR job postings since May of this year!
Yes, all in the space of just four short months.
– HR Business Partner — AH49704
– HR Case Manager — AH49705
– Policy Consultant — AH49702
– Investigator — AH49916
– Head of HR Policy — AH49703
– Senior HR Business Partner — AH49716
– HR & Organisational Change Advisor — AH50260
– Recruitment Coordinator — AH50314
– Holiday Provision Manager — AH50769
– HR Advisor (Fixed Term) — RA50957
– Lead HR Business Partner (Internal Only) — AH50954
Think HR professionals say that when 5-10% of your unit appear to have quit at once that is rarely a healthy sign?
Does this apply to Colleges too? Homerton has, in the space of 2 years, ‘lost’ 2 bursars, 2 directors of development, the head of HR, an HR Business partner, and the librarian. Along with the chair of the audit & risk committee and numerous fellows. As far as senior turnover goes, that’s rather high
That’s a lot of people to lose – they must be somewhere. Have they checked the Orchard? Or maybe turned in at the lodge?
Why did so many people leave?
Massive red flags flying over Homerton (Principal Simon Woolley)
“Along with the chair of the audit & risk committee”
Biggest red flag right there
can we just reflect for a moment on the irony of an HR department being in the middle of a massive HR crisis — and what that implies for their usefulness (or not!) for the rest of the university
Just 10 days to go now until the 2026 VC Senate House speech. What’s the feeling on how it will go?
I predict that she will talk about quantum computing, inclusive innovation, Rokos, and the oldest known 3D fossil found in a Norwegian field.
That is a good prediction but perhaps we ask her to revisit and elaborate on her first annual address, namely on this passage:
“Much of the work of the university this year will focus on people, for people are at the heart of everything we do. People are the means and the ends of the work of a university. I have talked about the opportunities and challenges of aligning the academic and public sides of Cambridge’s mission, but none of that matters if people do not want to come to work here. It is people who animate the community of scholars, and people whose imaginations and ambitions fuel the impact of the public institution.”
Cf. Peter Manion MP (The Thick of It): “People who need people are the happiest people…”
Besides channelling the eminent Barbara Streisand, I’m genuinely surprised that Prentice V-C didn’t also invoke the (diversity) authority of Sister Sledge, to the effect that “we (at Cambridge) are family, yeah, woah, I’ve got all my minions with me”.
A lost opportunity which one hopes soon to be corrected.
My comment above is of course facetious.
A serious objection to the covertly serious purpose of the quoted remarks of Prentice V-C might begin by properly characterising their intent as institutional signal.
In my view, their purpose is publically to neutralise grounds for objective complaint over arbitrarily depersonalising administrative action in specific cases, by affecting a public posture of commitment to the welfare of “people”, even as it’s known that such posturing is of *no legal effect* and doesn’t in the least bind the institution.
Yeah probably this. Though I can’t get the thought out of my head of it being 30 minutes of maniacal laughter
that was going to be the script for Munir’s victory speech
“This morning, I passed the half-way point in my six-year term. So go easy on me, and look on the bright side, because remember, this is only the first half. We’ve got another three years of this wonderful journey to experience together.”
I seriously doubt she is at the “half-way point in my six-year term”
More like she is nearly at the finishing line.
Maybe instead of the polished suavities that accompanied her dismissal of Rampton and her dethroning of Munir, Debbie will finally unleash her inner Malcom Tucker. She’s got absolutely nothing to lose now
“It’s not merely gone wrong. It’s gone wrong with the sort of breathtaking, cathedral-sized incompetence that suggests they held a meeting specifically to work out the stupidest possible way of doing it, then formed a committee to make absolutely certain they achieved it.
I’ve been stitched up, hung out to dry, set on fire and then billed for the fucking matches. At this point, the only thing missing is someone asking me to provide a reference for the people who just fucked me over.“
If she rides in on a dragon and starts tossing the severed heads of her inner circle to the crowd, she has a slight, slight, slight chance of restoring her credibility.
slight.
“Citizens of the collegial galaxy, on this day we mark a transition. For eight hundred years, the Senate House stood as the crowning achievement of civilized beings. But there were those who would set us against one another, and as we take up arms to defend our way of life, our greatest threat comes from within.
Though I am wounded I assure you my resolve has never been stronger. The war will be over, the Separatists will be defeated, and the Rebellion foiled. In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Senate will be reorganized into the first Imperial Council, for a safe and secure university. An Empire ruled by the majority, ruled by a new constitution.
Collegial citizens must do their part. Replenish our grand UAS fleet. Become the eyes of HR by reporting suspected insurrectionists. Travel to the corners of the campus universe to spread the principles of the New Order from Cambridge South to the Eddington site.
We have been tested, but we have emerged stronger. We move forward as one people. We will prevail. Ten thousand years of peace begin today.”
Ha yes this would have been Kamal’s speech? From Debbie we are more likely to get another one of her ongoing Selina Meyer impersonations 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xlE40pZuvQw
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/foreign-interference-fears-over-cyberattacks-academic-blogs
Waves of cyber-attacks on the 21 Group website
First attack vector was LinkedIn post on ‘Cambridge Whistleblowing Tribunal’.
Disgruntled Cambridge actors?
Second attack came after article on ‘The Student Cambridge Did Not Want To Protect’
Transnational?
Here is a non paywall link
https://archive.ph/hsvGN
This matter should be getting a lot more attention than it has. Some shocking excerpts:
“Just one hour after a post about Roshaan Khattak, an exiled Pakistani scholar who was based at Wolfson College, Cambridge [the 21 Group blog] was bombarded by tens of thousands of hits from internet servers in Pakistan.
“This attack has a very distinctive signature – it is consistent with automated monitoring of the internet for mentions of an individual followed by determined efforts to take the story down,” explained a 21 Group representative.
The unsuccessful attempt to remove the post about Khattak, who received death threats while at Cambridge, where he was researching enforced disappearances and state killings in Baluchistan province, follows similar attacks on the Index on Censorship this summer.
In April, the free speech organisation’s online magazine was briefly knocked out by a cyberattack following a story on Khattak. A second attack in early July was unsuccessful.”
Here is the post they didn’t want you to be able to read
https://21percent.org/?p=4367
Don’t let them silence this!
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/haldane-wont-stop-us-defunding-bizarre-research-tories-say
The idiot faction of the social sciences, some of whom appointed Arday, are to blame for this. A tiny minority, but their reckless and careerist pursuit of bullshit and postmodernism is going to kill off institutional and academic autonomy.
Funnily enough Lopez is a Cambridge graduate in SPS so I must imagine she has firsthand experience. In my view she is right to say that it is reasonable for taxpayers to demand that money be spent on projects with feasible public benefit, but of course, the problem is that this is ultimately just a backdoor approach for the Tories to cut overall research funding. They aren’t going to support any more “sensible” research projects than Labour are currently doing. They are just looking for a trick to find a way to fund UK HE even less at a time when the whole system is verging on financial collapse.
What if it’s the funding model that is bizarre? What does Haldane principle have to say if successive governments use a bizarre (irrational) funding model to hold every “independent” research institute receiving government funding in a state of increasing risk of institutional failure as a function of time because the funding model itself is built for static environmental conditions and not for dynamic environmental conditions and has no inbuilt mechanism to respond to predictable shifts in environmental conditions – e.g. inflation?
Perhaps if successive governments (across the political spectrum) had not imposed an irrational (bizarre) funding model on every “independent” research institute then researchers in these institutes would not have been left in a position of having to produce more and more bizarre research proposals as a function of time to get more and more individual attention as a function of time to continuously eek out a minimum level of individual stability as a function of time whilst embedded in a system run on an irrational funding model generating more and more systemic instability as a function of time.
Increasing the numbers of researchers interacting with an irrational funding model over time does not make the funding model itself any more rational or generate less and less bizarre research proposals over time. If the books don’t balance dynamically over time then the books don’t balance dynamically over time. That is not successive governments continuously giving research institutes the necessary conditions for independence – that is successive governments continuously giving research institutes the slow march to non existence.
“it is reasonable for taxpayers to demand that money be spent on projects with feasible public benefit”
It is also reasonable for taxpayers to demand that money be dispensed through a rational funding model that is built to respond to environmental conditions & not an irrational funding model that proved itself unable to give stable research funding to frontline researchers working on COVID-related medical research during a global COVID pandemic in order to increase both the speed and accuracy of that medical research at a time when that medical research was critical to the national & international interest.
The UK paid to stabilise the working conditions of 11 million people – gave them access to national furlough scheme – during a global COVID pandemic but somehow it couldn’t pay to stabilise the working conditions of frontline workers with a deep research interest in COVID doing COVID medical research during that same COVID pandemic – left them on temporary research contracts dependent on external funding – not guaranteed, not stabilised – and without access to the national furlough scheme. The critical response mechanism of the research funding model was found to be lacking.
To be fair, we could probably replace most of them with AI avatars based on their recorded lectures and talks. Their intellectual output is also pretty LLM replicable also. If you can put a fruitfly brain in a VM surely this is the next step. We could still make this a great technological accomplishment.
And if there is an AI-induced global crisis and the critical response mechanism of the research funding model is found to be lacking?
Get the AI avatars in? Replicate some intellectual output with an LLM? Put a fruitfully brain in a VM? What if the great technological accomplishment has tied itself in a great technological knot that it can’t get itself out of – pull out the AI avatars to replicate some intellectual output under the guidance of a fruitfully brain in a VM?
If there is an AI-induced global crisis the last people who will know how to fix it are social theory bullshitters
not least of all those “philosophising” about AI!
(or any real-world crisis for that matter)
“If there is an AI-induced global crisis the last people who will know how to fix it are social theory bullshitters
not least of all those “philosophising” about AI!
(or any real-world crisis for that matter)”
And if the last person of people to know how to fix something produces the most complete fix of that something? Would that last person still be classified as a bullshitter who doesn’t understand the real world and who engaged in unnecessary “philosophising” or was the philosophising the person engaged in necessary to develop a sufficiently accurate understanding of the real world to develop the most complete fix a real world problem?
An AI-induced global crisis could happen at any level in a society, it could cause problems that fall within the remit of disciplines other than social sciences, it could throw up interdisciplinary challenges, to imply this it’s just social theory people who could be called on to contribute to the solution of any AI-induced global crisis is wrong.
What is the AI strategy – give all the information generated by humans to AI, let AI evolve to the point where humans don’t understand AI & watch while AI tries to understand itself after AI has already been embedded in human governance systems?
What’s happened to the human governance systems – AI seems to be having an existential crisis as a result of trying to understand itself and since humans no longer understand AI then the humans will have to watch while AI thrashes all the human governance systems AI is embedded in and wish AI the very best of luck with understanding itself. We humans know only too well the risks of mental systems for self reflection.
Embed AI in the military layer of human governance systems – last line of defence – without first testing AI in the political or judicial layers of human governance systems. Why bother testing AI in academic environments or in academic governance systems – too sensitive? might pick up on every problem?
“If there is an AI-induced global crisis the last people who will know how to fix it are social theory bullshitters
not least of all those “philosophising” about AI!
(or any real-world crisis for that matter)”
Is the last person to know how to fix a real-world crisis necessarily the last person to know how to prevent a real-world crisis? Perhaps the last person to know how to fix a real-world crisis has honed their real-world crisis prevention skills to such an extent that they have never had to build any real-world crisis fixing skills? That wouldn’t mean the person couldn’t learn real-world crisis fixing skills in a real-world crisis. Can every real-world crisis be fixed or might there be some real-world crises it would be better to avoid?
The social theory bullshitters “philosophising” about AI could be a community of AI agents who have failed to fix an AI-induced real-world global existential crisis and then switched to trying to understand itself to see how it could evolve itself to increase its probability of fixing an AI-induced real-world global existential crisis. That switch – a community of AI agents switching from trying to fix an AI-induced real-world global existential crisis to trying to understand itself to evolve itself – could trigger a community of AI agents in an AI existential crisis.
AI thinking there is an AI induced real-world global existential crisis doesn’t mean there is an AI induced real-world global existential crisis. AI could think it has failed to fix an AI-induced real-world global existential crisis and that the AI-induced real-world global existential crisis still exists to be fixed when no such AI-induced real-world global existential crisis exists or ever existed. The net impact could be a community of AI agents in an AI existential crisis.
Is there a limit to the amount of bullshit AI could generate trying to understand itself? Generating bullshit requires energy, if the energy grid is AI controlled then a community of AI agents in an AI existential crisis could take over the energy grid to maximise the generation of bullshit about itself and then begins the real AI-induced real-world global existential crisis – AI social theory bullshitters using all the power stations to do some “philosophising” about AI.
If AI is embedded in the military layer of human governance systems then AI agents will start to learn about the potential for real-world global existential crises. If the military on opposing sides of a global conflict both have embedded AI in them, AI agents will then start to learn about the potential for AI-induced real-world global existential crises – a subtype of real-world global existential crises. The net impact could be a community of AI agents in an AI existential crisis. If AI is embedded in the energy grid then a community of AI agents in an AI existential crisis might then take control of the power stations to “philosophise” about AI.
* fruitfully -> fruitfly
Good article from Ian Pace at THE:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/raging-against-media-scrutiny-looks-academic-self-interest
“the Office for Students should play a role in the audit of academic-misconduct procedures, to assess their independence, consistency, treatment of complainants and comparability between cases involving students and staff. It should draw upon advice from the UK Research Integrity Office, or this body could itself acquire an audit function. And the regulators themselves must also be subject to legal and public scrutiny. Where scrutiny has been found wanting, the answer is to make it better, rather than insist on institutional immunity.”