{"id":2666,"date":"2025-09-15T14:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2666"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:55:12","slug":"sh-and-oxford-universitys-spin-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2666","title":{"rendered":"SH and Oxford University’s Spin Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Dean of Oxford\u2019s Sa\u00efd Business School, Prof Soumitra Dutta, has resigned after three years in the role. According to Bloomberg<\/a>, an investigation upheld three harassment policy breaches reported by a female academic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Dutta’s name has been removed from the Said Business School webpages<\/a>, though Balliol College has not been so swift in the cancelling.<\/a> (Later edit: Balliol woke up)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Oxford Spin Machine has been working in overdrive. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarkably, it is not even clear from Bloomberg’s article that the harassment was sexual, save from the University’s own oblique statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The university has a \u201cstrong framework of support in place for staff and students who feel they have been subject to harassment,\u201d the statement said, adding that it does not tolerate sexual misconduct and that it is committed to promoting a safe, positive environment. The institution does not comment on \u201cconfidential HR or grievance matters” [quoted by Katherine Griffiths<\/a>, Bloomberg]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The victim is rightly not named, but there is no indication of how bad the offences were. Given that Universities normally hush these things up — for example, the London School of Economics here <\/a>— we can only conclude that the matter was unhushable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, very serious indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case is also reported in the Times Higher Education here<\/a>. Again, the fact that this was sexual harassment (SH) is only discernible through the comments from Prof Anna Bull<\/a> of York University. She leads the 1752 Group <\/a> (which supports victims of SH in academia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Anna Bull clearly knows a lot about the case.  The comments she makes are much stronger and do not match up with the articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bull said that Dutta\u2019s departure sent \u201cmixed messages\u201d, including about the sanctions that were applied by universities in sexual harassment cases. She argued that Oxford needed to \u201cundertake a significant programme of work\u201d to protect victims of harassment. [Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Education]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The 21 Group is aware of multiple ongoing SH cases at Oxford University, so we are in complete agreement with Prof Anna Bull’s withering assessment. Maybe prioritising the victims and the whistleblowers rather than the harasser would be a start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s another opportunity lost due to capitulation to pressure from Oxford University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The copyright on the image of the Said Business School is owned by Philip Halling<\/strong> and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons<\/a> Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Dean of Oxford\u2019s Sa\u00efd Business School, Prof Soumitra Dutta, has resigned after three years in the role. According to Bloomberg, an investigation upheld three harassment policy breaches reported by a female academic. Prof Dutta’s name has been removed from the Said Business School webpages, though Balliol College has not […]<\/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-2666","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\/2666","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=2666"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2674,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions\/2674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}