The following is an excerpt from a meeting transcript at the University of Cambridge. It records a junior academic receiving feedback from their Professor.
Junior Academic: I’m sorry (sobbing)
Junior Academic: I I attempted suicide last year (chokes)
Junior Academic: I’m sorry (sobbing)
Junior Academic: (pause)
Junior Academic: I’m sorry
Junior Academic: I’m sorry
Junior Academic: (indistinct)
Junior Academic: Sorry
Junior Academic: I’m sorry
Junior Academic: I’m sorry
HR Staff: There’s nothing to be sorry for (pause)
Junior Academic: No no no no
HR Staff: There’s no reason to be sorry
Junior Academic: No no there is (pause) it would have hurt so many people (sobbing) just so irresponsible I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking just wasn’t thinking of the hurt to others
The Professor: the committee unanimously rated your application as the lowest you were rated as below the threshold for promotion on account of your poor teaching and service performance
Junior Academic: I’m sorry but I suppose this is what it is still I suppose it is good that it has come to this I didn’t come here meaning to say that but those are the facts and it is a good thing a good thing to get it in the open so in a way I am glad it just came out
Junior Academic: Sooner or later it would come to this the whole thing from the start it is all some kind of experiment like the Milgram Experiment where each person is told to increase the punishment
HR Staff: ummhmm
Junior Academic: (continues) no matter what happens at higher voltage. I am a real person. I am real, this is real, my pain is real.
The pain described by the junior academic was indeed real. Over the previous year, The Professor had imposed a formal ban on their junior colleague against being allowed to apply for research grants or supplement their modest income through per diems and honoraria for their talks, interviews, or consultation on their research. Scholarships had been blocked, projects shut down without explanation, and data access withdrawn.
The Professor did not pause the meeting, nor offer sympathy. They went on mechanically, simply ignoring their colleague’s distress.
In the following months, the junior academic waited patiently for a response from HR. Surely, someone would check in to find out more about the awful matters disclosed.
And yet, the months pass, without any communication from HR nor from the Professor to what they had learned about the potential death of their younger colleague.
Eventually, the junior academic contacts The Professor, to ask why they had not followed up about such a serious matter. The junior academic is met by dismissive and demeaning replies.
The academic contacts the Head of HR, to ask why nothing is being done. A week passes, before she sends a cursory and dismissive email. The scholar asks the HR director whether it is therefore her policy to ignore suicide reports. She never replies.
The junior academic emailed the Vice-Chancellor’s Committee directly to report their experience. An appeal is reviewed. Yet the Committee only asked The Professor for their account – never thinking, once, to ask the victim for input.
The Vice Chancellor dismissed the case in full.
Over the next year, The Professor turns the dial higher. The junior academic’s experience gets worse and worse. They inform Occupational Health, who repeatedly insist that the university conduct an investigation.
18 months later, the university never completes any investigation. It never has.
Cambridge, it seems, is very happy with this outcome.
Cambridge is happy to let the courts be the first to investigate.
And, as of this week, the 21 Group has learned that the University is still paying legal costs to protect The Professor – while the victim sinks further towards 150,000 in legal costs from their own savings.
This is happening now. Today, in October of 2026. After the Whistleblowing Tribunal, and after the tragic death of Professor Arday.
It is far from what we are told.
In August of 2026 an Employment Tribunal found that Cambridge had victimised Professor Wyn Evans for whistleblowing. It described a “clear pattern of trying to shut down” his complaints. The Vice-Chancellor said the University would make sure “that we can learn from them and make the necessary changes“. The University Council “reaffirmed its commitment to learning lessons“.
Little of that “learning” seems visible here.
And yet, our Vice Chancellor talks of “change”.
She is right. There must be change.
Somehow, it just gets worse and worse.
Alas, there is far, far worse to come.
We expect 2027 to be worse than 2026. We know what is coming down the line.
Council don’t, the VC probably doesn’t. They are not being told the truth either.
Wenn das der Führer wüsste!
Very good 😉
Hr seem to have pretty good idea though…
The same happened to me as well. Occupational Health then lobbied HR but they refused to do anything.
This is the UK’s employer of the universe, folks
There was grotesque mismanagement of HR & Legal from 2020 onwards, partly due to the idiot Stephen Toope & his fawning acolytes (Ferran, Peake, Harper, Vira). These mismanaged cases are now finally coming to Employment Tribunals & the High Court, so I can believe 2027 will indeed be worse than 2026. The guilty people prefer to stay and take down the whole fucking University.
As for Deborah Prentice, who knows or cares what she is doing. She is completely useless, grossly overvalued at 5 cents, but we are paying > 500k a year. Multiple individuals need to go, but I probably wouldn’t start with the VC. She’s maybe sixth or seventh in the queue.
This report is not about me, but it could well be. The entire Council is aware of my case, as are an increasing number of external parties, including UKRI and BBSRC in particular, the Betty Moore Foundation, the Royal Society, UKRIO, and MPs. The University’s solicitors set deadlines that they themselves do not respect, do not answer basic procedural questions, and no one at the University could care less. The University is in a state of complete disorganisation because of its nonexistent leadership.
21 Group, tell this victim that Andrea Hudson’s incompetence and dishonesty do not change the fact that she is the University’s Safeguarding Lead:
https://www.governanceandcompliance.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/university_safeguarding_statement_may_2025.pdf
Further reading
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20261016-the-shocking-truths-about-an-infamous-experiment-in-obedience
A chilling picture: lack of personal responsibility, removal of free choice, fear of lawsuits against individuals, the belief that challenge and disobedience is “bad” and that those who persist in being “disobedient” or those saying the “wrong” things should and will be punished, the belief, finally, that such punishment, however inhumane, must be “right”.
It is only when a group of crunchy academics – the type of sandal and shoulder-patch folk who would never jaywalk at a stop sign or cut a queue in an emergency – can be made to engage in collective murder that the experiment is finally complete. The same people who spend their afternoons fretting over perceived “micro” aggressions, correcting grammatical mistakes in research ethics forms, and voicing their endorsement of neurodiversity and inclusion, are not a bulwark against abuse of authority, but rather, the most susceptible to comply with and excuse acts of group violence.
“The same people who spend their afternoons fretting over perceived “micro” aggressions, correcting grammatical mistakes in research ethics forms, and voicing their endorsement of neurodiversity and inclusion, are not a bulwark against abuse of authority, but rather, the most susceptible to comply with and excuse acts of group violence.”
Indeed. Profs Ferran, Peake, Harper & Munir were very keen on stopping micro-aggressions. But, lying or stonewalling to facilitate huge macro-aggressions was right up their street
This is very hard to read. I hope the person concerned has better support around them now.
It seems the only way change happens at Cambridge is when the need for it is exposed by the courts and the press and then imposed from outside. Other avenues are Parliamentary select committees and the regulators. In this case the Health and Safety Executive would be relevant. As TheResearcher suggests, the research funders also need to know. Their own policies require it, and things do change when money is at stake.
Part One of the Arday review covers related matters, but it’s restricted to one case. The Regent House isn’t powerless. A question like this could be put at a Discussion: “Does the University have a protocol requiring follow-up when a member of staff discloses suicidal thoughts or a past attempt during a formal HR process, and who is responsible for acting on it?” The answer would be on the record. If the answer is no, that’s the first thing that needs fixing.
I notice that eight seats on the Council are up for election, for terms starting in January. Nominations close at noon on Friday 13 November. If you want to help make the changes required and you’re eligible, please consider standing.
Culture and behaviour are set from the top. Multiple senior people need to be held to account. The Statutes give the Vice-Chancellor the power “to ensure that all University officers duly perform their duties”. It’s not a power we often see used. Now would be a good time. Lives are quite literally at stake.
A junior academic is potentially struggling with teaching & service – assuming the promotions committee accurately evaluated the person on teaching & service & is not being driven by organisational cost cutting drives to harden promotion criteria in order to prevent increases in future staff salary expenditure – and the organisation responds by withdrawing organisational support for the junior academics research – what safe academic role performance space is the junior academic supposed to retreat to? It might even be that the junior academic is struggling with teaching & service because the organisation has withdrawn support for the junior academics research.
Is it is not psychologically/mentally less costly for a person to do service work for an organisation that demonstrates through its actions it cares what happens to the person? Is it not easier to maintain/improve teaching performance – assuming promotions committee assessment of teaching is accurate – from a position of having the organisational conditions to maintain strong research performance? Is keeping self in a position of being able to offer research projects to students not making a substantial contribution to teaching?
If a person has had or is having that type of health crisis is it not time to sit down with the person and with those taking decisions on behalf of the organisation in relation to the person & work out what is happening in the persons working relationship with the organisation?
The fact each person in an organisation is responsible for own performance does not mean stabilising individual performance in an organisation is completely decoupled from an organisations ability to stabilise its overall organisational performance, it means it’s more challenging to stabilise individual performance in an organisation that is struggling to stabilise its overall organisational performance than in an organisation not in that position. The higher the level of challenge in a situation the higher the level of communication – accuracy, clarity, appropriate modulation of frequency of communication – required to successfully navigate the challenge in the situation.
As an expelled student from Cambridge, and someone with a low tolerance for bullying by Professors, I have been thinking about this post. It describes a Professor allegedly exercising considerable authority over a junior academic, including restrictions on research grant applications, involvement in promotion decisions, and responses to formal complaints. These responsibilities suggest someone with line-management authority, potentially a Head of Department.
Could the department be POLIS? The 21 Group has previously reported on employment disputes, legal proceedings, and concerns about departmental management involving POLIS. Of course, employment disputes occur across Cambridge, and nothing in this post explicitly identifies POLIS.
Still, the combination of the 21 Group’s previous reporting and the institutional authority described raises an interesting question: could the anonymous account concern POLIS?
What do people at POLIS think?
Hard to say. POLIS is just one of a number of departments that have been set on fire and are burning merrily
They have a bad reputation for burning through short-term contract early career hires so that would not surprise me. But then again, so do many other departments, tenure is the dream of a forgotten era.
This brought up the painful memories of my own postdoc years before leaving for a safer profession in the private sector
There is something uniquely dysfunctional and toxic about academia compared to just about every other workplace I know
That is a very difficult read. I also attempted suicide due to a situation in this same university. My GP said similar about hurting so many people. Occupational health’s hands seem tied if a senior member of a department doesn’t agree.
I thank you for your courage in speaking up. This is the tip of an iceberg in the profession and one that I think is far more commonplace than most people realise.
If or when a review is ever conducted on Cambridge HR this is a pattern they will find again and again – HR ignoring safeguarding reports, spinning it out to counselling or OH, and the latter either not permitted to feed back urgent concerns to the university (“confidentiality” etc) or doing so and then simply being ignored.
Of course they are ignored. The recipient is the head of house or school or department who caused the problems in the first place. Why on earth would they ever comply with the advice and expose themselves?
It’s actually much worse than that.
OH reports are misused by HR as an encouragement to proceed to the next level, with further information as to how and where it will hurt most.
How? For anyone currently going this route it is important to know.
The blog notes the subject’s cost of legal action: “And, as of this week, the 21 Group has learned that the University is still paying legal costs to protect The Professor – while the victim sinks further towards 150,000 in legal costs from their own savings“.
We also note that the University paid Prof McMahon’s extensive legal costs in the matter at Astronomy, even though he has admitted defamation and has been found responsible for retaliation against a whistleblower.
Obviously, using public money to try to cover up lots of wrong doing is not a good look.
The costs of Cambridge University’s highly aggressive legal policy should now be disclosed. With regard to this, see the below from FacultyLeaks
https://www.facultyleaks.com/p/university-legal-fees-skyrocketing
“Consider Harvard. According to an Oct. 16 report in The Harvard Crimson, Harvard spent approximately $210 million on legal expenses in fiscal year 2026, up nearly 70% from the previous year and roughly 10 times what it spent just a few years ago.
To put that number in perspective, Harvard spent more on legal expenses in a single year than some prestigious colleges spend operating their entire institutions. Haverford College reported annual operating expenses of approximately $135 million in 2025, while Bryn Mawr College spent about $150 million. Harvard’s legal bill also exceeded the annual core operating budgets of several public universities, including Cal State Bakersfield and Sonoma State. Harvard’s $210 million legal bill was so large that it exceeded the annual revenue of dozens of the nation’s 200 highest-grossing law firms, according to the Am Law 200 rankings.
Meanwhile, despite its record $68 billion endowment, Harvard eliminated approximately 165 staff positions to save an estimated $20 million annually and initially slashed Ph.D. admissions by more than half. Much of Harvard’s endowment is restricted, and federal funding cuts have created real financial pressures. But the contrast is still striking: Harvard spent $210 million on legal expenses while eliminating jobs to save one-tenth that amount.“
What’s the figure at Princeton?
You may be pleased (or not) to know that Princeton’s annual legal costs more than trebled during Prentice’s service as Provost, from $3.2m in 2017-2018 to $11.1m in 2022-3.
Thanks — very interesting.
Cambridge employs roughly 1.6 times as many staff as Princeton.
Looks like £10-13m might be a reasonable annual figure for Cambridge. A significant fraction of the deficit, in other words
To be fair I suspect some of Cambridge’s apparent legal case bloat is a legacy of the Rampton era but an attentive VC would have shut it down early on instead of leaning in to spending blowout on the Evans case. We still don’t know how much that cost but I doubt any insurer would cover expensive KC, full legal support team, and all the rest of it
Worth noting that Harvard’s long era of dominance at the number 1 position in global rankings has also come to an end. It is now down to 5 on the QS list due to the same management chaos currently engulfing Cambridge.
For those of us based at lesser names there is something magically mind-bending about why a university with so much money to fall back upon chose instead to wage war on its talent pool, bloat the administration, and enrich the legal profession…
Great picture from Faculty Leaks. Is that Mike Glover first left on the podium, sipping champagne?
AI, though?
“We acknowledge the Employment Tribunal’s judgment of 10 August 2026 and are carefully reviewing it. We will now take time to reflect on the findings in detail.”
“Subject to legal and privacy considerations, a summary of the review’s findings, recommendations and resulting actions will be shared with the University community and the wider public.”
…They are taking their time on this. Meanwhile, as long as nothing changes, the scandals simply pile ever higher.
No surprises at all. What the media did to Arday, Cambridge lawyers have been doing to their own staff for years.
Lawyers are only doing because HR and the oligarchy allow them and instruct them!
The American Queen regime, following in the Little Canadian Lawyer footsteps is all about power and toxicity! Prof Teflon, Prof Smallman, Prof Crookery and Prof Viciouswoman thrive in the sewer.
True but solicitors are supposed to push back when actions break the law or their code of conduct. Also there is a gross conflict of interest in having line managers or HR instruct solicitors on behalf of the university to do things inherently in conflict with the university’s own interests.