{"id":1360,"date":"2025-01-13T13:07:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1360"},"modified":"2025-01-13T13:28:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T13:28:47","slug":"the-worst-university-for-bullying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1360","title":{"rendered":"The Worst University for Bullying ?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s a hyper-competitive field! Like the most evil tech billionaire. Or the dumbest thing done by Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the destructive culture of modern universities, Oxbridge likes to be at the apex of the rankings. For example, Cambridge is at the top when it comes to Vice Chancellor pay<\/a>, Oxford leads in complaints to the Information Commissioner<\/a>. University College, London has had a number of extremely disturbing sexual harassment cases splattered across the media (such as the Christopher Backhouse<\/a> and Felipe Abdalla<\/a> affairs). Despite these strong contenders from ‘the Golden Triangle’, the 21 Group has received most bullying and harassment complaints from staff & students at the University of Warwick. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, complaints to the 21 Group are confidential, but the below three cases are a matter of public record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Thomas Docherty<\/a> is emeritus Professor of English and of Comparative Literature. He is also a prominent critic of higher education leadership and policy at Warwick University. In 2014, he was suspended by his university for \u201csighing<\/em>\u201d and \u201cprojecting negative body language\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/a> according to the then Head of the English Department. This \u2018Alice in Wonderland<\/em>\u2019 case ended with the charges being dismissed<\/a>, but not before Prof Docherty had been suspended for nine months. Ultimately, Warwick University had to pick up a legal bill of in excess of \u00a3109,000<\/a> for this ludicrous case. Its main purpose seemed to be to intimidate those who disagree with Warwick University\u2019s leadership and policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An ongoing but equally disturbing case is that of Professor Dora Kostakopoulou<\/a>. She joined the University of Warwick in 2012 as a professor of European Law. In 2016, after raising whistleblowing concerns about violations of data protection law, her Head of Department initiated disciplinary action against her. In response, she lodged complaints with both Warwick’s Human Resources department and Vice Chancellor, accusing the university of victimization and violations of its own procedures and legal standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following her complaint, Dora was suspended after counter-allegations were raised against her by senior figures at Warwick University. Although Dora provided evidence of the falseness of the charges, she was kept in suspension for months. In 2017, Dora initiated an employment tribunal case. She contends that during the proceedings, she faced further retaliatory and fabricated allegations of misconduct. She asserts that she raised grievances and provided evidence showing a pre-planned retaliatory strategy of bullying her out of her job. She remained suspended until she was made ill. Despite being medically unfit for work, the university then proceeded with a disciplinary hearing in her absence and ultimately dismissed her. She was informed of her dismissal by email in July 2020. Legal action in this case continues to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dora Kostakopoulou told us \u201cI was suicidal when senior figures at Warwick University manufactured false allegations in order to suspend me and to end my academic career<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 21 Group can reveal no evidence in this matter beyond what is already in the public domain, reported here<\/a> and here<\/a>. A common institutional ‘gaslighting’ strategy<\/a> is to force the whistleblower to repeatedly defend himself or herself against bogus disciplinary charges presented as genuine complaints. This is contrary to the Public Interest Disclosure Act. There is a major case against Cambridge University on this very matter pending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Warwick University was the centre of the Rape Chat scandal<\/a>. In 2019, a number of Warwick humanities students discussed graphic rape and sexual assault of fellow students in a WhatsApp messaging group. The messages are harrowing (“Rape the whole flat to teach them a lesson<\/em>“<\/strong>, “Sometimes it’s just fun to go wild and rape a 100 girls<\/em>“, “Which girl at uni would you like to rape the most<\/em>“, “Oh god. I would hate to be in the firing line if I had a vagina<\/em>“).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an investigation<\/a> and serious consequences were initially meted out to 5 students in the group. One was given a lifetime ban, two were banned for 10 years and two were excluded for one year. Subsequently, two of the male students appealed and successfully reduced their 10 year bans to one year, allowing them to return to Warwick. This meant that, in total, 4 of the 5 students initially banned from campus in effect merely just intermitted a year. At first, the university did not publicly disclose this information about the appeals due to “duties of confidentiality\u201d<\/em>. (This is the standard university excuse when something really nasty needs hushing up). Unsurprisingly, when it became public, many were very unimpressed with this lax conclusion. The Vice Chancellor was accused of failing to address the toxic culture at Warwick University<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many more bullying and harassment cases have been reported to the 21 Group by Warwick University staff & students. Leaders set the tone for the whole organization. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there need to be big changes at the top of RapeChat University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s a hyper-competitive field! Like the most evil tech billionaire. Or the dumbest thing done by Donald Trump. When it comes to the destructive culture of modern universities, Oxbridge likes to be at the apex of the rankings. For example, Cambridge is at the top when it comes to Vice […]<\/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-1360","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\/1360","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=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1370,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}