My article on whistleblowing, published in Nature, is here.
At the University of Cambridge, whistleblowing investigations are overseen by one of three senior officers: the Registrary, the Academic Secretary or the Vice-Chancellor. Yet the whistleblowing policy has still not been updated following the University’s defeat in the Employment Tribunal.
At Cambridge, whistleblowing can carry a heavy price — for the whistleblower. Those who retaliate against whistleblowers, by contrast, appear to face little risk of consequences. In some cases, their careers may even prosper. Professor Nigel Peake, for example, has been promoted to the Mastership of Darwin College.
Allegations of misleading evidence in court or lack of candour have also not, so far, resulted in any apparent consequences.
The whistleblower, meanwhile, faces substantial financial costs and personal and professional damage. Yet none of the individuals criticised in the Tribunal’s judgment has, to date, faced any apparent consequences at all or even offered an apology.
Those individuals are Professors Deborah Prentice, Richard McMahon, Nigel Peake, Tim Harper, Beverley Glover, Andrew Flewitt, Kamal Munir, Cathie Clarke and Eilis Ferran, as well as Ms Emma Rampton and Louise Akroyd.
What message does this send to anyone considering speaking up about wrongdoing at Cambridge?
The whistleblower pays the price. Those criticised walk away unscathed.
If this is what accountability looks like at one of the world’s leading universities, what incentive is there for anyone to speak up?
And what lesson does the institution appear to be teaching?
Breaking the rules pays. Candour is optional. Accountability can be avoided. Perjury is fine.
Is this really the standard Cambridge wishes to uphold?
Wyn Evans
“Perjury is fine”
That’s the big one. A serious crime the last time I checked.
Indeed, it should have been the end of the line for individuals concerned.
But, hey, it’s Cambridge
Say what you like about America, but in the States for that people would be looking at prison sentences right about now
Agreed. The US is better at putting rich & powerful people in prison than the UK.
Epstein went to jail. Enron executives went to jail. Elizabeth Holmes went to jail. Bernie Madoff went to jail. Sunny Balwani went to jail. Sam Bankman-Fried went to jail
In UK, none of those people would end up in jail. They’d be in the House of Lords, or in the Cabinet … or running an elite University
US is very far from perfect, but it does send rich & powerful to jail more often than the UK.
Do not underestimate the bite of the UK legal system. Just because someone has not been investigated and charged, that does not mean they will not eventually be.
Under section 1 of the Perjury Act 1911, any person who was lawfully sworn as a witness and deliberately made a materially false statement in judicial proceedings can be found guilty. If so, the penalty for perjury is up to seven years in jail.
Another fact of relevance to this group is that heavy penalties also apply even for those witnesses who submitted statements that were knowingly false to a tribunal, even if they were ultimately not sworn in (either to avoid perjuring themselves, or because proceedings were adjourned). In that case, the act would be considered contempt of court rather than perjury. The penalty for contempt of court is up to two years in jail.
Deliberately reckless statements attract the heaviest penalties. If it can be shown that a person made or caused a false statement without an honest belief in its truth, then they face consequences under English law.
What a striking list of people. Six out of eleven of them—Professors Deborah Prentice, Nigel Peake, Beverley Glover, Kamal Munir, Ms Emma Rampton and Ms Louise Akroyd—are involved in my own case, and the full list of mine includes tens of people, namely from DAMTP, senior leadership, Research Integrity Office, HR, and OSCCA.
There are no limits in this institution when it comes to cover up misconduct and very many people, including Council, know about this but do nothing to address it.
Given that there are 30 or more cases against Cambridge awaiting court, I sense one could conduct a very fascinating network analysis to see who are the real spiders in the web.
Munir and Rampton seem to crop up in a lot of cases, but surprised you don’t have more HR and Legal in your list…
Nothing changes until they are named and shamed. And very soon, they will be.
Cambridge has been retaliating against whistleblowers in Cambridge for decades without even realising (a) what people were doing was whistleblowing and (b) what it was doing was retaliation.
“If this is what accountability looks like at one of the world’s leading universities, what incentive is there for anyone to speak up?”
An organisation that stands by while its systemic problems are left to fester will not stay in a high functioning state. If people are prepared to tell themselves how great an organisation is long after it has started struggle with its basic functioning to avoid the pain of having to face the systemic problems that have been allowed to accumulate then the organisation will struggle to turn itself around.
Sometimes it falls to a particular group of people to take the pressure of having to solve decades worth of systemic problems that have been allowed to build up without having decades of time to solve those decades worth of systemic problems in. Pain is not evenly distributed and that best that can be done in any given situation is to couple any pain to the learning that needs to be done to avoid a similarly painful situation from emerging in future.
People in Cambridge have the capacity to forgive Cambridge for things people in other organisations couldn’t forgive other organisations for. Cambridge has the capacity to forgive people in Cambridge for things other organisations couldn’t forgive a person for. A high tolerance for pain coupled to a high capacity to learn means Cambridge is a law unto itself.
I’m not sure I fully agree.
Yes, Cambridge has had disputes in the past, and sometimes, they went to court. But they were rarely as systemic as today.
Whistleblower retaliation — attacking a person for raising good faith concerns — has happened before within the Colleges and Departments, but never did it escalate to the seniority we have seen in the Evans and other cases — with the Registrary, HR, Pro-VC and the Vice Chancellor all named in the cover-up.
That is a sign of what has gone wrong: centralisation of power in the hands of a small unelected clique of apparatchiks, with no accountability to Cambridge scholars, or indeed, anyone at all.
That is not how things worked in Cambridge past. In the past, the senior leadership was rooted in the scholarly community. It worked to resolve disputes as they arose, find accommodations, and maintain civility and decency. Yes, scholars had furious disagreements with one another – famously so – but no-one had a disagreement with the university.
Today “the university” is the enemy of itself. We have a entire system of HR, legal, PR, and property management run by the VC and executive officers, with no roots in the academic community, and prepared to subject its members to the most humiliating and degrading treatment should anyone question their power.
“Whistleblower retaliation — attacking a person for raising good faith concerns — has happened before within the Colleges and Departments, but never did it escalate to the seniority we have seen in the Evans and other cases — with the Registrary, HR, Pro-VC and the Vice Chancellor all named in the cover-up.”
I think it did escalate to that level, it just wasn’t being recognised as whistleblowing or whistleblowing retaliation – e.g. Dr Catherine MacKenzie case. The university substantively unfairly dismissed the chair of its own internal board of scrutiny, put that person through an employment tribunal for a no individual fault substantive unfair dismissal that it conceded and then refused to comply with a re-engagement order from an employment tribunal. The chair of the internal board of scrutiny made an application for a judicial review of the university.
If that’s not whistleblowing, whistleblowing retaliation, a systemic problem & a disagreement with the university then I don’t know what is.
That is UK employment culture. Dispute resolution mechanisms that don’t resolve a dispute. Remedy processes that don’t remedy a problem. Concerns processes that block a valid concern from being investigated. The chair of the internal board of scrutiny of an organisation makes an application for a judicial review of the organisation and the court says no. That’s a systemic problem beyond the organisation.
Sorry for the unintentional repetition in the message above. Hope the point is still clear.
(We fixed the repetition — 21 Group)
The events of this summer and the University’s response to them, has made me wonder: was Cambridge always this arrogant and complacent?
It has always had a serene, unhurried confidence. A sense that it answers to its own standards on a timescale measured in centuries, and a remarkable tolerance for bad behaviour. In recent history that self-assurance was tied to genuine self-governance: a sovereign Regent House and a healthy suspicion of central authority and executive haste. The institution was confident because power was dispersed and the people wielding it were accountable to their peers.
What we have now is a defensive, centralised, corporate arrogance. The executive has captured authority faster than it has attributed accountability.
The last time Cambridge operated like this, in the mid 1850s, a handful of individual officers called the Caput had an absolute veto over how the University was run. Cambridge was unable to reform itself from within. It took external Commissioners and an Act of Parliament to change things. History may not repeat itself, but it always rhymes.
When the Nazis planned to invade Britain during the Second World War, they drew up a list of 2820 “troublesome” British subjects for immediate arrest They had assessed that these persons would not submit easily to fascist authority, and instead organise resistance.
The list included many leading Cambridge faculty — Ernest Barker, Bertrand Russell, and Stefan Bach. Scholars who were staunch free thinkers, ready to risk their lives for liberty.
How many senior Cambridge professors would be on that list today?
This fraction of the population wants to live – not go to war – & is shot for desertion. This rest of the population wants to die – go to war – and needs to be kept alive by being sent off to a war zone where there is a high probability or being shot. A collective state of insanity that starts off in one self governing region & spreads to the next self governing region.
“They had assessed that these persons would not submit easily to fascist authority, and instead organise resistance.”
Persons who would not submit easily to the collective insanity of another self governing region & instead would put up some mental resistance to protect their own sanity and the collective sanity of the self governing region they were in.
We’re here to save you by turning your country into a war zone, we’re saving you the same way we are saving our own country by chucking our own young into that war zone we’ve created in your country along with your own young & watching all the dead bodies of our collective youth pile up. Wellbeing, wellbeing – mentally force feed everyone wellbeing even in a fucking war zone – all in the name of wellbeing, all in the name of a better life for all.
Closer integration of two countries by propagating waves of disintegration through both the countries. Eventually there is nothing of either country left to integrate.
Ah, oh.
Committee for Academic Freedom launches its Arday inquiry led by Nick Wallis (one of the figures prominent in exposing Post Office scandal)
https://thecritic.co.uk/why-were-launching-a-private-arday-inquiry/
If you wish, you can contact with information here
https://ardayinvestigation.net
How do we report what we know to them? I think a few of us have things to share.
It seems you click on Provide Evidence at the Arday investigation website, which takes you to this form
https://ardayinvestigation.net/contact
Hmmm … awkward for Cambridge senior leadership. They’ve already drafted the conclusions of the Cambridge review while waiting for Nazir to get started 😉
Not sure they’ll now be able to get away with the usual “lessons have been learned” or “processes are being reviewed” or the classic “we take these matters extremely seriously” which had all been provisionally pencilled in
CAF has an agenda, and it would be easy for the University to dismiss this review as an EDI culture-war hit job. However the panel announced here are all credible, serious people, or at least carefully chosen to guarantee attention from the press.
Cambridge hasn’t announced its Part 2 panel and terms of reference yet. CAF has given itself 6 months. It’s likely to report back first.
It has no powers to compel the University to disclose any information, so it’s important that anyone with information volunteers it if you can.
Pretty sure they can get a lot of information. There’s a lot of people with information to share and the press barely got a fraction of the real story.
If CAF reports first and people share info the uni are totally fucked
“To be sure, much of this is, as written, perfectly lawful. Sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010 permit proportionate positive action where disadvantage or under-representation is reasonably believed to exist and, in tightly defined circumstances, allow a protected characteristic to count when choosing between candidates who are as qualified as one another.”
Problem : Law introduced when group [a] is under-represented in the workforce and group [b] is over-represented in the workforce. In a competition between a group [a] candidate and a group [b] candidate if both are equally qualified a group [a] candidate gets into the workforce & a group [b] candidate doesn’t get into the workforce – the 50:50 coin toss always goes in favour of a group [a] candidate. At the point the law is introduced the demographics are such that group [a] is growing at a faster rate than group [b] so group [a] is permanently under-represented in the workforce because there is always a lag between demographic changes & representation in the workforce. The cumulative impact is that members of group [b] are less likely to be taken into and kept in the workforce than members of group [a] for equal qualifications & hence less likely to have the resources to start & sustain a family. Group [a] through higher rates of being taken into and kept in the workforce increases its collective resources relative to group [b], group [a] continues to grow at a higher rate relative to group [b], under-representation of group [a] in the workforce continues. The dynamics never stop, group [b] is never under-represented in the workforce despite making up a shrinking share of the overall population.
I think the equality act has grouped together protected characteristics based on the assumption the same basic approach could be taken with respect to protecting people from unfair treatment on the basis of any of that group of protected characteristics & that assumption is proving not to hold.
Problem : The UK has a higher education system that operates at two levels – national and international. For some of these protected characteristics – e.g. sex – what is representative at a national level doesn’t differ significantly from what is representative at an international level & accurate representation for an organisation operating at both a national level and an international level in respect of these protected characteristics is well defined. For other protected characteristics – e.g. age or race – what is representative at a national level does differ significantly from what is representative at an international level & accurate representation for organisation operating at both a national level and an international level is not well defined for these protected characteristics.
Afzal Report will be the usual University whitewash. Be best if independent regulator (Office for Students) looked into this, but CAF is better than nothing & better than the University
The people running the University are arrogant enough to ignore the HR Grace, run a dodgy investigation into HR & run an even more dodgy investigation into Arday. They seem not to understand the despair and anger in the university.
The OfS is the only body here with real power to act. Effective governance is a requirement of registration as a higher education institution. It acts when it receives complaints, not on public mood. That said, if any of the reviews scoped a measurement of the internal despair and anger at Cambridge, that would be a significant finding alone.
On 3 September, Education Minister Baroness Jacqui Smith confirmed in the House of Lords that Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice had assured the government that the investigation into the circumstances surrounding Jason Arday would be “independent and rigorous.” The minister made clear that both she and the Secretary of State were closely monitoring the matter, stating that they had been doing “more than just keeping our eye on this.” She indicated that the investigation’s findings and recommendations could lead to further action, reminding Parliament that the Office for Students (OfS) has powers to investigate and take regulatory action when universities fail to meet minimum requirements.
I hope that many members of the University will be prepared to raise their concerns directly with the minister if Cambridge’s senior leadership continues to turn this investigation into a circus.
Just sent the CAF review some big bombshells on what really happened behind the scenes with the Arday hire and his later removal. Time to start preparing those resignation letters.
Better if OfS intervened, there’s been complete breakdown in integrity & governance under our perjuring Vice Chancellor
Story about new review in The Times
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a01d97ce-a9c6-4596-aab1-7ec3b76cc8a2?shareToken=1c2932ffbdf4feabb6e74402ea8b15ec
And The Telegraph here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/15/cambridge-academics-begin-own-inquiry-arday-review/
The Master of Gonville and Caius College in action… “Gilbertson has now replied, effectively conceding that the College’s original communication to students was misleading.”
https://afcomm.org.uk/2026/10/15/caius-college-mandatory-inclusivity-training-response/
For some good reason he is known as… Prof Teflon! He always escapes between the rain drops. Like when he dodged misrepresentation of his supposed (false) qualification as a paediatric oncologist.
In the meanwhile the oncology/CRUK scandal… tic toc, tic, toc…
Priyamvada Gopal notes on X that it’s now 10 days since 45 senior academics wrote to the Chancellor, and there’s still no hint of acknowledgement. This is the same silence we saw over two weeks in the summer. This is why there’s so much anger and despair surrounding events in Cambridge. That’s not hyperbole by the way. My direct experience is that this blog is but the visible tip of a large and very real iceberg.
The University is running the classic Comms playbook of “ignore bad news, it’ll pass”. The gap allows organisations with distasteful agendas to run their own parallel investigations. It allows words like “perjury” to creep into the discourse. The anger stems from the way in which the University, in sticking to the Comms playbook, harms itself and others.
We know what the University thinks of employment tribunals. Will we shortly find out what it thinks about inquests?
Why hasn’t the VC resigned? And why is she protecting HR?
Because:1- she makes 550k/year; 2- the oligarchy does not want her to go.
I actually believe the VC would like to do and say the right things and for that reason thinks it worth staying on. But she is constrained by bad advice, a poor understanding of the University’s governance, and an over-reliance on committees. See also William Astle’s remarks in this week’s Reporter.
“The Titanic planning committee was split 50-50 over whether to turn port or starboard. After two hours of negotiation, a compromise was reached to steam direct ahead.”
Will Astle’s remarks here. It’s an important constitutional point
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I apologise that these remarks do not directly address the topic of the item. However, they concern a Grace intended to reconfigure the senior administrative offices of the University, including those senior officers responsible for finance, so there is a tangential connection.
At its meeting on 21 September, the Council agreed to publish a Notice endorsing a ruling by the Vice-Chancellor that a proposed amendment to Grace 2 of 29 July 2026, initiated by the Regent House, was incompatible with the main purpose of the Grace and therefore inadmissible. Notes of dissent are not attached to Council Notices, so I wish to express my opinion here that the Council should not have involved itself with the Vice-Chancellor’s ruling, whatever the merits of the original Grace, the proposed amendment, or the ruling itself.
In the absence of the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor is, by custom, the Chair of the University.1 She is, therefore, the presiding officer of the governing body, the Regent House. Her power to rule amendments inadmissible derives from that status, not from her role as Chair of the Council.2 The Council is an administrative body inferior to the Regent House. It ought not to intervene in the procedures of the governing body, to which it is accountable.
The Charities Act 2011 may make the members of the Council the trustees of the University, but that does not make the Council the governing body. Nor does it give the Council a general power to overrule the Regent House, contrary to the Statutes and Ordinances. By law, charity trustees are obliged to comply with, and to exercise their powers within, the provisions of their charity’s governing documents.3
Several members of the Regent House have suggested to me that the incident deserves to be reviewed by the Commissary. I think that is true, but I also think that the delay caused by an application to the Commissary is unlikely to be in the best interests of the University, because of the urgent need to fill the senior administrative offices and because it is unlikely to lead to a different result. The concern is whether the ruling would have been made in the first place had the Council not given its endorsement.
It is exactly like a Prime Minister refusing to comply with a parliamentary vote because the Cabinet said they disagreed.
That would usually trigger immediate royal intervention to assert parliamentary sovereignty and the subordinance of his minister to its rulings.
I think a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the government would happen first? Surely that must now be the next step for the Regent House?
Wait, did I understand it correctly that the Vice-Chancellor asked the Council to back her up because she wanted to have an anti-democratic decision? Well done, Professor Prentice, you keep showing that you have learned nothing in the last few months!
This was a silly and bad decision. Who is advising the VC?
“As I imagined standing here before you in my cassock, gown and bands, looking for all the world like a 19th century PARSON delivering the weekly sermon, I wanted to choose a topic that was both timely and timeless: something that speaks to our moment but also to the current shape and direction of the University (…) The topic I landed on finally is change.”
Who advised her? In days gone by the Registrary would have had sufficient grasp of Statutes and Ordinances to advise effectively on matters like this. We have no Registrary at the moment. Their powers are delegated to the Academic Secretary and there is a (part-time) Director of Governance and Compliance acting as Secretary to the Council. The VC may have taken the decision solo, or perhaps asked her cat. The fact that the senior leadership is dysfunctional enough that we can’t tell is rather the point.
As I recall the current head of legal services listed it as one of his responsibilities to “interpret the statutes”…
“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. […] It is people who animate the community of scholars, and people whose imaginations and ambitions fuel the impact of the public institution.”