{"id":1205,"date":"2024-11-17T08:22:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T08:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1205"},"modified":"2024-11-18T10:23:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T10:23:20","slug":"the-magdalen-connolly-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1205","title":{"rendered":"Four Years — The Magdalen Connolly Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dr Magdalen Connolly started as a graduate student and went on to become a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge University\u2019s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies<\/a>. She completed a Humboldt Fellowship at Munich University just a few months ago. Despite having all the makings of a thriving academic career, she has left academia and is now dealing with stress-related health issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Connolly developed innovative ideas regarding a Judaeo-Arabic text, but one of her advisors appropriated them without acknowledgement. In the Daily Telegraph<\/a>, the alleged plagiarist is named. As noted in the Times Higher Educational Supplement<\/a>, a disturbing aspect of this matter is that the plagiarism was actually perpetrated by an advisor. Plagiarizing a student’s work undermines a university’s fundamental mission to mentor and develop the next generation of scholars. It is unfortunately not uncommon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Dr Connolly filed a formal complaint with Cambridge University, hoping for a swift resolution and an outcome acceptable to both parties. She then encountered one of the grotesque features of Cambridge University — the inordinate time taken to investigate and conclude staff complaints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took <\/strong>four years to investigate the grievance. Cambridge University finally concluded that Dr Connolly was correct and acts of plagiarism had taken place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four years!<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a truly astonishing length of time. A productive academic career might last 40 years, so this is 10% of an academic’s working life. Even for a senior academic, a grievance process lasting 4 years is a big chunk of time that affects research and teaching productivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a young scholar, it is an extinction level event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young scholars are employed on fixed term contracts, often just 2 or 3 years. They have their name to make, research articles to publish, teaching experience to gather. Time is critical as the fixed term contracts will soon run out. Normally only two or three such positions can be gotten before young scholars are expected to secure a permanent position — which are increasingly hard to find nowadays. They can’t afford to waste 4 years navigating an intransigent & labyrinthine grievance process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Dr Connolly said: “When this process began, I was assured that it would take between 3 and 6 months. I never expected it to last this long. And I honestly trusted the University to investigate the complaint thoroughly and fairly, which I now realise was a little na\u00efve<\/em>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone involved in the investigation of this grievance by Cambridge University should be truly ashamed at what has been done to Dr Connolly. The 21 Group has written to the Leverhulme Trust to insist that no more Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships should be awarded to Cambridge University’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies until it has demonstrated adequate safeguarding of young scholars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a legal obligation of an employer to have a fair and swift process to deal with grievances. The Board of Scrutiny<\/a>, which is an internal oversight committee of the University, raised the alarm in its most recent report “that the time taken to investigate and conclude staff complaints and grievances were unduly lengthy<\/em>“. Sadly, Dr Connolly’s case is not untypical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr Magdalen Connolly started as a graduate student and went on to become a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge University\u2019s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She completed a Humboldt Fellowship at Munich University just a few months ago. Despite having all the makings of a thriving academic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}