{"id":2769,"date":"2025-10-12T10:04:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T09:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2769"},"modified":"2025-10-12T20:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T19:52:09","slug":"silenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2769","title":{"rendered":"Silenced?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

The modern university is a place where exposing misconduct is a disciplinary offence, and protecting senior professors is a core value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The victimisation is usually performed by the institution itself \u2013- either by the HR and Legal Departments, or the Heads of School, or the VCs and pro-VCs or the Head of Research Integrity. This stands in stark opposition to the very purpose of the university and to the values and aspirations of the academic community it exists to serve. The gravest cases are, at present, obscured from the broader community (and perhaps even from some individuals in positions of authority). Instead, decisions of profound and damaging consequence are being made behind closed doors \u2014 by senior administrators, bureaucrats and lawyers \u2014 rather than by those who uphold the principles of scholarship and integrity on which any university is founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One key way for accountability is to make the cases public and force people to recognise the reality.  Fortunately, there are a number of determined individuals who are taking a number of universities to Employment Tribunals to expose repeated and serious misconduct. Matters at Employment Tribunals can be freely reported, as we already saw in the Magdalen Connolly case<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalists are sitting on a number of stories about egregious wrong-doing at universities, particularly by members of their HR and Legal Departments. There is a major sexual harassment case taking place at the University of WW, with the trail of wrongdoing leading to the very top of the institution. It presently cannot be reported as gagging orders are in place. At the University of XX, the legal costs of a bully were paid as they tried to bankrupt a whistleblower. There is a major plagiarism case at the University of YY. A very prominent academic with a high public profile is being protected by the University who have hired a fierce libel firm. Will the scandal still break? There is major corruption case at the University of ZZ, where the promotion process has been undermined by the falsification of documents and reference letters. The University has hired lawyers who are threatening journalists. If the scandal breaks, the University will be inundated with young scholars wanting their own promotion cases re-evaluated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

London\u2019s top lawyers at firms like Carter-Ruck, Schillings, Mishcon de Reya and Harbottle & Lewis command rates of more than \u00a3500 per hour. So some universities are spending a lot of money to protect some misbehaving senior administrators\/academics and to burnish their own reputations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is neither sensible nor sustainable. It is completely contrary to the mission statements and core values of universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather this makes the scandals much worse. The money that is being used to hush the scandals up is public money — money from students via tuition fees, money from overheads on research grants, money from donors. Neither students, nor the Research Councils, nor Government, nor donors will approve of their money being use to hush up institutional corruption. This has the potential to become a major public scandal. It’s even more unfortunate, as the reputation and influence of universities is low with the public and Government at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When oligarchs or crypto-queens engage libel lawyers to protect their own reputations, they are spending their own money (albeit acquired by fraud, as in the case of Ruja Ignatova<\/a>). So this is fundamentally different from the behaviour discussed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism<\/em> here<\/a> or here<\/a>. Public money is being wasted by universities to hide misbehaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are only a very few cases in which public money has been used to hire libel lawyers — the only prominent example known to us is the case of Michael Martin<\/a>. Here, the then Speaker of the House of Commons used more than \u00a320,000 of taxpayers’ money on lawyers to challenge claims about his impartiality during debates. He was widely criticised and finally resigned as a result of diminishing parliamentary and public confidence owing to his role in the expenses scandal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In universities, who is signing off this spending? Who is taking responsibility for these actions? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who will carry the can?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The modern university is a place where exposing misconduct is a disciplinary offence, and protecting senior professors is a core value.  The victimisation is usually performed by the institution itself \u2013- either by the HR and Legal Departments, or the Heads of School, or the VCs and pro-VCs or the Head […]<\/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-2769","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\/2769","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=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2785,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}