{"id":2554,"date":"2025-08-18T09:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T08:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2554"},"modified":"2025-08-18T19:17:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T18:17:32","slug":"university-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2554","title":{"rendered":"University Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the rewarding aspects of a blog is the exchange of thoughtful comments. In this posting, we highlight a contribution from Justius<\/em> in the thread here.<\/a> While he or she is describing events at Cambridge University, the 21 Group has evidence that these issues are widespread across the UK higher education sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“The reason that a culture of institutionalized bullying developed is twofold. First, the university has an insurance policy against legal cases brought against senior managers and administrators. And second, the university has a history of always settling cases \u2013 often at phenomenal financial cost \u2013 shortly before trial, along with the signing of an NDA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effect of these two policies was to allow a culture of impunity to arise within the organisation over many decades, such that heads of house, department, faculties and senior administration (HR, Registry, Legal Services) felt secure in being able to engage in all manner of wrongdoing without any prospect of eventual reputational, career, or financial cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This system, however, is now collapsing, for the following reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. In the hope of saving on cost, the university began allowing the risk of cases to reach court. This has led to accelerating press interest and awareness due to their witnessing evidence of abuse and mismanagement. Plus, it has finally resulted in complicit parties facing reputational damage when their profiles appear in the newspapers (e.g. the Daily Mail feature on the Connolly case).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Newspapers can publish stories on the basis of public interest (the \u201cReynolds defence\u201d, now formalized in the 2013 Defamation Act). The magnitude and nature of recent scandals at a national institution in receipt of taxpayer funding clearly passes that threshold. Similarly, whistleblower protection allows for greater public disclosure. This has allowed victims to come forward and feel secure in reporting their experiences, as well as newspapers to publish them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The culture of impunity has grown to such an extent over time that it is resulting in acts that have crossed beyond mere financial settlement, but may entail more severe consequences for the parties involved, such as revocation of professional licenses (e.g. for in-house lawyers), memberships of professional associations and titles, and in cases of criminal conduct even judicial sentencing, together with the justified loss of professional reputation that will result once acts are revealed to the profession and broader public. As such, mere insurance against legal cost alone, can no longer fully protect abusive individuals within the organisation from facing the consequences of their actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. As noted elsewhere legislation has been passed to restrict use of NDAs in certain domains (e.g. sexual crimes) and is in train to extend more broadly (to bullying across a wide variety of areas). This now renders the strategy of \u201csettlement and silence\u201d redundant, and is already causing potential perpetrators to rethink their collusion in organized staff abuse.” [Justius]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The 21 Group is in agreement. We have reached a turning point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 bans Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) used to silence complaints of sexual misconduct & harassment. Regulations are still pending, so until they’re finalized, the ban isn\u2019t actually in force. Additionally, the banning of NDAs for a broader range of offences (bullying, racial, sexual & disability discrimination) is likely to become law in Spring 2026, given the proposed changes<\/a> to the Government’s Employment Rights Bill. This will prohibit the widespread practice of using legally enforceable NDAs to conceal unacceptable behaviour at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government has also made very strong statements about protection of whistleblowers. Wes Streeting MP said here<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIf you silence whistleblowers, you will never work in the NHS again. I\u2019m determined to create a culture of honesty and openness in the NHS where whistleblowers are protected, and that demands tough enforcement. [Wes Streeting MP]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This announcement accompanied plans to ban NHS senior managers found to silence whistleblowers from taking up other senior health roles. This is clearly needed. For example, it is sobering to look at the scandals involving the deaths of mothers and babies in NHS childbirth & maternity units — Shrewsbury & Telford (2022) Northwick Park Hospital (2002 \u2013 2005), Morecambe Bay Hospitals (2004 \u2013 2013), Cwm Taf (2019), East Kent Hospitals (2016- 2021). Nottingham University Trust (2010 \u2013 2020), Bristol Royal Infirmary (1986-1995). In all of these, whistleblowers tried to intervene & were ignored or punished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Streeting has proposed a formal regulation of NHS management. Under Labour\u2019s proposals, there would be a regulatory framework <\/strong>similar to what exists for doctors and nurses, including the power to suspend or disbar managers guilty of serious misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the scandals at Dundee<\/a>, Cardiff<\/a> and Greater Manchester Universities<\/a>, the management of the higher education sector is coming under greater scrutiny. We must press the Government to extend the tough new protection of whistleblowers from the health service to education (both schools and universities).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need a regulatory framework to suspend or disbar university senior management guilty of serious misconduct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the rewarding aspects of a blog is the exchange of thoughtful comments. In this posting, we highlight a contribution from Justius in the thread here. While he or she is describing events at Cambridge University, the 21 Group has evidence that these issues are widespread across the UK […]<\/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-2554","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\/2554","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=2554"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2570,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2554\/revisions\/2570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}