{"id":2819,"date":"2025-10-21T09:08:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2819"},"modified":"2025-10-21T09:53:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:53:45","slug":"sex-lies-and-senior-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2819","title":{"rendered":"Sex, Lies and Senior Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Nothing surprises us about university HR departments any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, The Times <\/a>and Personnel Today<\/a> reported an extraordinary story. A famous UK university, which is currently implicated in a case involving allegations that a senior professor sexually harassed a female colleague, has been granted complete anonymity by an Employment Tribunal judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university requested the confidentiality order, citing concerns about safeguarding its reputation and that of its staff. The judge approved the request, but did not provide any legal justification for the decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do not know which university this is. There are some obvious clues in the story, so the gagging order was likely a complete waste of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the university is very wealthy with an international “reputation<\/em>” that it needs to protect. Of course by “international reputation<\/em>“, what is really meant here is “donors<\/em>“. This suggests that the University is likely at the very top of the Russell Group and probably a member of the Golden Triangle<\/a> of London, Oxford and Cambridge (one of these universities is particularly famous for sex pests).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, this is very unusual. The Professor at the centre of these allegations is no ordinary Professor. After all, Oxford University despatched Prof Soumitra Dutta, the Dean of the Sa\u00efd Business School, for sexual harassment only a few weeks ago<\/a>, whilst the names of other professorial sex abusers at the London School of Economics<\/a>, University College, London<\/a>, Cambridge University <\/a>and Oxford University<\/a> have been widely reported in the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A university would not go to such trouble and expense to gag the name of any old bog-standard Professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We surmise that (i) the individual is at or close to the most senior levels in the University — perhaps a close colleague of the Vice Chancellor, or a pro Vice Chancellor, or the Master of an Oxbridge College; or (ii) the individual is an academic with a very high media profile whose name would be instantly recognisable to the public as the face of the institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judgment has alarmed those campaigning for open justice. It is one thing for dodgy financiers or oligarchs or Andrew Windsor to use gagging orders. We expect no better of them. It is quite another thing for a prestigious and distinguished university to use public funds to do this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere are no circumstances in which an institution such as a university should be granted anonymity in this way. To do so represents a gross breach of the principles of open justice. Public confidence in the judicial system depends on transparency. This drift towards secrecy must be resisted and reversed.\u201d [Sayra Tekin, legal director of the News Media Association]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The hypocrisy becomes even clearer when we see this is clearly at variance with the Athena SWAN principles. For example, Oxford<\/a> and Cambridge<\/a> Universities openly brag of their silver Athena SWAN awards. The awards are completely meaningless if it can be shown that such institutions are gagging the victims of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The female victim of the harassment is appealing the judgment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an appeal we must win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The illustration is Professor Rath (Emil Jannings) looking lecherously at Lola (Marlene Dietrich) in The Blue Angel<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Nothing surprises us about university HR departments any more. Last week, The Times and Personnel Today reported an extraordinary story. A famous UK university, which is currently implicated in a case involving allegations that a senior professor sexually harassed a female colleague, has been granted complete anonymity by an Employment […]<\/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-2819","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\/2819","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=2819"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2836,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions\/2836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}