{"id":3254,"date":"2026-02-20T16:41:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3254"},"modified":"2026-02-20T17:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T17:00:17","slug":"the-cloisters-of-power-hiring-at-cambridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3254","title":{"rendered":"The Cloisters of Power: Hiring at Cambridge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dr Bernhard Fulda<\/a> is a College Teaching Officer<\/em> (CTO) at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He is also Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History. In 2023, he applied for a permanent University Teaching Officer (UTO) position in Twentieth-Century German History in the Faculty of History, but was not appointed. (The successful candidate was external to the College system). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Fulda took Cambridge University to Employment Tribunal. He alleged that the Faculty applied an informal provision, criterion or practice that disadvantaged CTOs in hiring for UTO posts, which he argued amounted to indirect age discrimination under the Equality Act. He claimed that such a practice was entrenched over many years and disproportionately affected older CTO applicants, who tend to be more senior than many external applicants.  The University denied there was any discriminatory practice and maintained that appointments were made solely on merit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Employment Tribunal concluded that Dr Fulda’s evidence had not met the legal test for indirect age discrimination with this judgment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tribunal write-up offers a fascinating insight into how UTO appointments really operate at Cambridge. It should be essential reading for anyone considering applying to an academic position in any department. It reads like a C. P. Snow novel, updated for the 2020s, with its betrayals and double-crosses, and its portrayal of how power isolates and morally compromises individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 21 Group has no doubt that there is a practice that acts against CTO applicants, based on evidence from departments other than history. It is described picturesquely by Scott Mandelbrote<\/a> of Peterhouse thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He goes on to suggest that the idea that CTO were \u2018helots\u2019 (one of a class of serfs in ancient Sparta whose status was below that of a free Spartan citizen \u2013 presumably, by analogy, a UTO) was \u201cincreasingly replaced by the realisation that CTOs might not only be teaching slaves but also useful cash cows who could add to the faculty\u2019s (and university\u2019s) performance in research provision and funding at no extra cost\u201d. He asserts that, \u201cAppointment of an incumbent CTO brought neither benefit to the professors, nor the faculty, nor the university. It benefited the individual (in terms of status and earning potential) as well as the individual\u2019s college, which now saved most of the salary\u201d [Scott Mandelbrote, quoted at para 28 in judgment<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Comments ascribed to a number of senior figures in the history faculty — \u201cperhaps good enough to be a CTO, but not a UTO”<\/em> … “CTOs are not necessarily good for a UTO post<\/em>” … “there would be no benefit to the Faculty in appointing someone [a CTO] who we already have<\/em>” … “Why would I ever appoint a CTO? We have them already<\/em>” — ring true. They are consistent with similar expressions made by senior figures in other lectureship appointments elsewhere in the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gig economy that ultimately drives this is articulated crisply by Prof Adam Tooze<\/a> <\/a><\/em> (now at Columbia University):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Tooze says that by the time he arrived in Cambridge as a UTO in 1996, appointment to a UTO or CTO position was largely a matter of luck and timing and that the borders between CTOs and UTOs were still relatively porous but that over the last 25 years declining real levels of teaching income and the substantial growth in postgraduate numbers who need teaching, together with a shift towards research funding, has led the Faculty to become, \u201cincreasingly dependent on casualised labour and a new hierarchy of auxiliary teaching has emerged enabling the Faculty to continue functioning as \u201cnot normal\u201d \u2026 paid by the University at low piece rates (or, for many tasks, unpaid), College-employed CTOs allow the Faculty to deliver its core functions, in an organisational context of overwork and underfunding.\u201d [Adam Tooze, quoted at para 38 in judgment<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In our view, the Tribunal put too little weight on these economic arguments, apparently accepting contrary statements: “Professor Arnold went as far as to suggest that academics\u00a0really don\u2019t have a clue about budgets\u00a0as finances are controlled centrally, and the economics are\u00a0not on their radar<\/em>\u201d. If so, the Tribunal was being asked to accept that those entrusted with shaping the Faculty\u2019s future were doing so in ignorance of the material consequences of their decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if true in the past, this is about to change very radically with the introduction of ‘Enhanced Financial Transparency’ throughout the University (see Report of Council here<\/a>). The reality is that academic hiring decisions inevitably shape \u2014 and are shaped by \u2014 resource constraints, teaching needs and long-term strategic priorities. Departmental economics will be absolutely central to UTO appointments in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judgment highlighted multiple shortcomings in how the University handles recruitment and related processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Administrative Failures and Procedural Weakness<\/strong>es<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Tribunal acknowledged that its conclusions depended heavily on a single recruitment exercise because: \u201cthe 2023 recruitment exercise provides us with the only detailed and documented account of how recruitment exercises within the Faculty are handled<\/em>.\u201d The absence of well-maintained documentation is a common feature of many of our problems at Cambridge University. The Tribunal noted significant gaps in the underlying evidential framework used to evaluate recruitment fairness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cthere is no further data available to us to evaluate the statistical significance\u2026 we do not know how many other applicants there were for each position or what percentage of CTO Applicants were short-listed for interview compared to non-CTO Applicants [quoted at para 22 in judgment<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Universities are expected to maintain recruitment metrics, including application numbers, shortlist rates and appointment rates, to monitor equality outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more damaging were the Tribunal’s comments on the haphazard and lackadaisical nature of the interviewing process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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… we consider the scoring system that was used to shortlist applicants was not fit for purpose even if, as Professor Eisner explained at Tribunal in relation to the scoring exercise undertaken two weeks later following the candidate interviews, the scoring was intended to capture the Committee\u2019s initial individual views to reduce the risk that one or more voices might unduly influence any initial assessment of the relative strengths of the applicants. Whilst we accept that this was a laudable aim, the scoring guide described above detracts from the advertised selection criteria, since it directed the Committee members\u2019 attention away from the criteria, encouraging a focus instead on the rather nebulous question of whether and, if so, to what extent each candidate was \u201cworth interviewing\u201d. In our judgement, the guide potentially supported an idiosyncratic approach in which each member of the Committee was effectively left to define for themselves what attributes made a candidate \u201cworth interviewing\u201d [quoted at para 58 in judgment<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cidiosyncratic<\/em>\u201d is well chosen. The shortlisting process permitted individual committee members to substitute their own subjective and inconsistent criteria for the formally advertised selection standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of Transparency<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Tribunal stressed the importance of probing how decisions were reached: \u201cthere is a need for careful enquiry as to how a group has come to its decision and what was in the minds of the decision makers.<\/em>\u201d Here, as often happens in Cambridge University, the process was not properly recorded at the time and had to be reconstructed years later from fallible witness recollections rather than contemporaneous evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments attributed to committee members \u2014 suggesting bias or informal preferences \u2014 were not consistently documented or objectively verified. Equally troubling, some allegations and contextual evidence were left inadequately explored. As the Tribunal noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“[It was claimed that] the successful candidate in 2017 was not appointed on merit but because she and Professor Arnold were former colleagues at Birbeck University, it is all the more surprising that Professor Arnold was not questioned further … , specifically regarding the non-discriminatory explanation he provides as to why the two CTO Applicants were not shortlisted” [Para 35 in judgment<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Deficiencies in Equality Monitoring and Institutional Self-Assessment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A serious governance failing identified in the judgment was the University\u2019s inability to provide meaningful comparative recruitment data. The Tribunal noted explicitly: \u201cwe do not have any information\u2026 to undertake some comparison\u2026 or\u2026 evaluate the statistical significance<\/em>\u201d. Without such information, neither the Tribunal nor the University itself can determine whether apparent disparities reflected legitimate academic selection or structural bias. This absence of systematic monitoring is particularly striking given the stark raw statistics noted by the Tribunal:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFour CTO Applicants were successful\u2026 with just one successful applicant between 2004 and 2023.\u201d [quoted at para 21 in judgment<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Such figures would normally trigger internal institutional review in a well-run organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employers have an obligation to monitor hiring outcomes systematically and identify potential barriers to equal opportunity. The University should be maintaining and publishing robust data on applicants’ comparative success rates, demographic breakdowns, as well as comparisons with similar institutions (such as Oxford and other Russell Group universities).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without such data, an institution cannot robustly evaluate potential disparate impacts or monitor the fairness of recruitment outcomes — including discrimination against any protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage\/civil partnership, pregnancy\/maternity, race, religion\/belief, sex, and sexual orientation). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Dr Bernhard Fulda is a College Teaching Officer (CTO) at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He is also Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History. In 2023, he applied for a permanent University Teaching Officer (UTO) position in Twentieth-Century German History in the Faculty of History, but was not appointed. (The successful candidate was external to the College system). […]<\/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-3254","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\/3254","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=3254"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3291,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions\/3291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}