RAE reject aims to log views of excluded - UK

An academic branded "research inactive" because his work will not be submitted for next year's research assessment exercise is forming a support group for other academics left out in the cold.

Launching an appeal in the letters page of today's Times Higher, Vic Truesdale, a professor of biogeochemistry at Oxford Brookes University, has invited academics "unexpectedly excluded from the RAE" to contact him by e mail at castaway@brookes.ac.uk

"There could be many of us who could do with some mutual support, and in any case somebody should be counting us and logging the insult," he writes.

Next year's RAE is expected to be the most selective ever, with some universities attempting to improve their research ratings by submitting only a small core of researchers, instead of including all their active researchers. There are reports that some universities are excluding even high-quality researchers as they attempt to second-guess the type of research the RAE judging panels will favour.

In the last RAE, in 2001, the work of about 50,000 researchers, out of 116,000 full-time academic staff, had their work submitted. Many claim that exclusion stigmatises academics and damages their careers.

Professor Truesdale said that the RAE "reduces the diversity of intellectual pursuit" and "moulds scientists into automatons".

"I suppose that in the big planning games, as in battle-planning, generals cannot be concerned with the plight of individual soldiers; they are merely cannon fodder," he said. "I want to register the plight of the individual, and to ask the question as to whether you think the cannon-fodder model is appropriate in a 21st-century democracy."

And the letter in Times Higher Education:

May I ask academics who have found themselves unexpectedly excluded from the research assessment exercise to write to me at: castaway@brookes.ac.uk. It seems to me there could be many of us who could do with some mutual support, and in any case somebody should be counting us and logging the insult. I will report back findings if people could describe their predicament as well as add permission for me to disclose information according to the Data Protection Act. This would be handled sensitively.

Vic Truesdale, Professor of biogeochemistry, Oxford Brookes University
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From: Times Higher Education Supplement

Wise words...

Only dead fish go with the flow.
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When injustice becomes Law, resistance becomes duty.

Council for Ethnic Minority [CEM]

The Council for Ethnic Minority [CEM] is a voluntary organisation based in London but its services to professional, non-professional and other victims are extended throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. The CEM provides confidential advice for a collective fight against all forms of discrimination in the Higher Education & other sectors.

During the last decade or so discrimination has become endemic in the Higher Education Sector and has severely threatened the tolerance, diversity and employment at places of learning. The statistics of discrimnation claims made in the Employment Tribunals and within Institutions is increasing at an alarming rate. Most employers rather than recognising problems and initiating positive actions to eliminate discrimination in the work place are busy employing punishment tactics, as Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT puts it very eloquently, "We are your masters and you shine our shoes. Any weaker enemy has to be crushed so that the right lessons are taught" [see, Guardian Weekly 1991]. John Carter, Steve Fenton & Tariq Moddod carried out a study funded by the CRE, AUT, NATFHE, CUCO, CVCP, HEFCE & SHEFC and others, whihc shows widespread institutionalised racsim within the Higher Education Sector, see: Ethnicity & Employment in Higher Education 1999. Unfortunately, the findings of that study have long been forgotten like Sir William McPherson’s Report on the Steve Lawrence Enquiry, it has become bedside reading for racist employers and a public relations exercise for the trade unions without the proper groundwork being done on ‘shop floor’.

Unfrotunately, the tribunal system which was supposed to allow the individual the opportunity to represent him or herself, or have their union represent him or her to resolve employment difficulties in a rather informal setting, and at little or no costs has now turned out to be a battleground where the individual is faced with the employers pitching huge legal teams, including QCs who often intimidate poorly qualified Chairmen's of the Tribunals or who came through the backdoor at the blessings of their political Masters or Lord Chancellor's fund raising campaign or under cash for hounour schemes. The employment legislation actually calls for an “equality of arms” between parties but with employers spending literally hundreds of thousands in legal fees to defend the action and quite minor awards given to successful applicants – the “scales of justice” are very heavily tilted against complainants seeking justice and especially claimants representing themselves in the absence of legal aid.

The Commission on Racial Equality [CRE] not only has very limited funds but is also toothless due to political appointments of Tony's cronies for shining shoes. The academic unions have a poor history of representation or committing funds or paying for representation for its members. In fact, despite overwhelming evidence and findings of racial discrimination & vicmtrisatin against a number of universities CRE has not ordered any investigation against them. Rather CRE has denied legal representation to a number of victims particularly from India and Indian subcontinent under the pretext of changes in its priorities. No wonder an Asian woman's [a senior complaint Officer of CRE] brought a claim against the CRE and found it guilty of discrimination by a Central London Tribunal. A number of complaints of Asian professionals are still pending against the CRE and Labour Party cronies. Obviously, CRE, REC and Law Centers have become talking shops and a den for complacency and incompetence. They do nothing except preserving their own existence and organise tea parties for public relations exercise.

Our objective is to guide victims and become an alternative forum for achieving objectives where the CRE and the Unions have failed. Advice is offered regarding harassment, victimization by employers, breach of the CRE Code of Practice under the Race Amendment Act 1976 [as amended].

If you feel the CRE and Unions have failed you and need last minute victim support and alternative advice, contact us before you decide to withdraw your claims. If we cannot help you we will tell you right away or recommend you an experienced legal team.

Since the establishment of CEM we have invited a number of people from abroad to give seminars and for reoresenting the victims in the tribunals. Mr. Prem Kishan Sharma, a leading Civil Right Lawyers of Supreme Court & Director of Barefoot Lawyers Training Institute in India, Professor S Rathore have agreed to provide advice and representation on a ProBono basis. The purpose of these invited lectures and workshops is to develop a Socio-Legal Strategy for the Millennium to equip grassroots voluntary social workers with basic legal knowledge of practical value and at the same time to develop trust and confidence through their commitment, dedication and orientation towards people's empowerment. We have assigned this responsibility to Mr. S. Deman, who was one of the founders & Chair of the CEM. To realize such a strategy we have to shift the emphasis from the Ivory Tower & Fat Cat Legal Frame to a real world approach to reflect expectations of the society at large and the Employment Tribunals in particulars to realise the principle of an ‘equality of arms’ in the administration of justice.

Perhaps you can appreciate very well that such a frame work necessarily has to be completely free from any kind of power play, whether of any agency or Government authority and for such a vocational organisation to survive it is vital to engage those who helped in creating them. Therefore, to eliminate dependency we have decided only to approach our well-wishers, both individual and institutions for financial assistance. We have already organized five such training programmes where we have had interactions with 120 participants from different organizations and different part of the world.

Further we have taken numerous cases in the Employment Tribunals, Employment Appeal Tribunals and also in the Court of Appeal at various stages. Our success has been above the average success rate in the Tribunals and much higher than the success rates of the CRE, REC and Law Centres. CEM’s programmes have been highly successful and the participants found them very enlightening, encouraging and innovative. The programmes are exercises for self-development and activation of thinking process. We are enclosing the concept note as well and the list of our Advisory Board with this appeal.

We appeal to you to advance your time and support according to your skills, ability and convenience. It would be greatly strengthen our efforts and facilitate programme organization and free representation to the needy.

Cheques of any amount may be remitted in the name of ‘Council for Ethnic Minority’.

With regards,

C Kumar & Mrs S. Mahadevan, Coordinators

From: http://cemkumar.googlepages.com/

Alice in Wonderland might do a better job of running the college...

Principal rejects 'insincere' apology - Times Higher Education Supplement - By Melanie Newman. Published: 20 July 2007

A lecturer is set to lose his job because his apology for publicly criticising the principal was judged to be insufficiently sincere.

Sam Richards was sacked after 30 years at Dartington College of Arts earlier this year over an article he posted on a campaign website opposing the college's forthcoming merger with University College Falmouth. The article suggested that characters from Alice in Wonderland might do a better job of running the college than its current principal, Andrew Brewerton.

College governors upheld the dismissal at an appeal hearing in June but advised that an apology might win the lecturer his job back. Mr Richards wrote to Professor Brewerton saying he had intended the article to be a satire. "I now realise that the nature and content of that posting could easily be interpreted as a personal attack against you," he added.

But Professor Brewerton did not accept the apology. He said the statement failed to adequately acknowledge the offence of gross misconduct, and that Mr Richards was "regrettably disingenuous" in his assertion that the article was "merely satirical".

He said the apology "fails fully and unreservedly to withdraw the unfounded allegations contained in your website article. For these reasons I do not regard this as a sincere basis for moving forward."

He encouraged Mr Richards to write a "full and unreserved apology" after which his dismissal would be reduced to a less severe penalty. But Mr Richards has declined to make an alternative apology.

"I produced an apology that I could sincerely make," he told The Times Higher. "Anything more would have been grovelling."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bullied_academics/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bullied_academics/

Bullied academics online forum - Yahoo group

Professor Ellen Larsen...

Coverning up fraud is a rule in Canadian academia

It is a routine procedure in Canadian academia to cover up plagiarism and other fraud. The last issue of Can.Med.Assoc.J. admits this. It starts thus:

“It’s the classic Canadian response to a problem like scientific misconduct, says Toronto physician– scientist Dr. Paul Pencharz. “Deny, deny, deny. Sweep it under the carpet.”

See: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/176/6/749

However, this organization is corrupt also. They did not even publish my letter to the Editor. This letter follows here.

Re: Call for arm’s-length national research integrity agency

There is no doubt that some highly placed individuals in Canadian academia act as a criminal organisation, committing fraud in research and higher education. I am the victim of such fraud. My case and the documents are posted on the Internet: “University of Toronto Fraud” at http://ca.geocities.com/uoftfraud/.

This fraud started in 1986 and is continuing now. My PhD supervisor, Ellen Larsen, had removed me, after five years of my very successful research from the University of Toronto by making a fraudulent academic decision, and then stole my research and my discoveries. Despite all my complaints, University of Toronto and then - NSERC only continued the fraud.

The case of Prof. V. Fabrikant in Concordia University is well known. In Concordia, the integrity of research was violated, Fabrikant’s legitimate complaints were ignored, moreover, he was threatened. He, in fact, was provoked for violence.

Yet, the Fabrikant case was not a good lesson for the corrupt academia: when documents of my case were received, they were treated the same way - officials continued the fraud. It is not possible to believe that the corrupt academia does not understand what it is doing the second time: this new provocation is continuing for twenty years now.

President of NSERC and its other officials, in my case, have committed concealment of fraud: instead of referring the case to the prosecution (which was a specific point in NSERC policy), they gave the same university administration that committed the fraud to “investigate” it. NSERC has intentionally covered up the fraud, supplied ridiculous “justifications” for it and was sending me one lie after another. All this is in the documents.

It can not be believed that the proposition to establish some new agency was even made seriously. Paul Pencharz knows very well about the fraud in his university. Jim Turk knows this very well also, the exchange of e-mails between him, UofT, CAUT and me is posted on my web site. All this is a criminal, indecent game.

Eventually, when corruption has corroded the officialdom, the victim whose life was destroyed should be able to find a way to expose the criminals in the press. In Canada it is not possible. This puts an end to the peaceful quest for justice.

By Michael Pyshnov, from: http://pyshnov.wordpress.com/
Also check: University of Toronto Fraud

The Higher Education Corruption Monitor

Corruption in all of its many forms has become a central issue in higher education worldwide. Rapid expansion, fueled by growing demand for access; dramatic increase in private higher education providers; the marketization of many aspects of higher education; and the financial problems faced by institutions and teaching and administrative staff have all contributed to a variety of corrupt practices.

Academic corruption can be found in all countries but is especially prevalent in countries facing severe economic hardships and resultant pressure on their higher education systems, in systems with little external supervision and inadequate quality assurance mechanisms, and in countries in which there is a good deal of societal corruption.

Because of its tradition of probity and reliance on objective and meritocratic values, the problem of corruption is especially important for higher education. Academic institutions and the professoriate claim a special status in all societies—the right to academic freedom and individual and institutional autonomy and a high social prestige. Universities, after all, are responsible for educating the next generation of leaders, conducting scholarly research, and providing objective social analysis. As the national competitiveness in the global economy comes to increasingly depend on the quality of knowledge generated within and on the quality of education provided by a country’s higher education institutions, the costs of academic corruption become considerable.

The dictionary definition of corruption will suffice for academe: “impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle; inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means.” Corruption in higher education can occur at both institutional and systemic levels and influences university examinations, the conferring of academic credentials, the procurement of goods and services, academic and administrative staff recruitment and promotion, budget allocation and utilization, property management, and the licensing and accreditation of institutions. Instances of academic corruption may involve bribery, facilitation of cheating and impersonation, the establishment of diploma mills, forgery and falsification of examination results, degrees and credentials, patronage, cronyism, and professional misconduct among teachers.

The primary goal of the Higher Education Corruption Monitor is to shed light on corrupt practices of all kinds in different countries, provide resources on current research on corruption in higher education, and serve as a forum for information exchange. The Monitor will collect and, in some cases, summarize news reports, documents, legal testimony, university reports, conference materials, research articles, and other kinds of documentation, and make the data available through a dedicated website.

The Monitor will also collect information on policies and initiatives of international agencies and on various measures and reforms undertaken in different countries to address the challenges of corruption in higher education. The Monitor will link its website with websites of other institutions and agencies interested in the topic and with other on-line resources on corruption in order to avoid duplication and at the same time provide maximum attention to the issue. From time to time, the Monitor may issue reports on specific themes relating to corruption in higher education. The Monitor will not seek to verify each item placed on its website but will make every effort to choose reputable reports. The website will be part of the Center for International Higher Education’s widely used website.

The Monitor will be coordinated by Natia Janashia, graduate assistant in the Center for Higher Education (e-mail: janashia@bc.edu).

From: The Higher Education Corruption Monitor

A reply from Boris...

Dear Mr Proudhon,

Thank you for your email and the blog link, which I read with interest.

Bullying is abhorrent wherever it takes place and I condemn it in the strongest terms. I don't think it right for me to comment further on specific cases, for the simple reason that universities are autonomous institutions and must be trusted to resolve internal disputes without interference from politicians.

Yours sincerely,

Boris Johnson MP
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Firstly, we are happy we got a reply. Secondly, we are unhappy about the reply itself. Boris has now moved on to become candidate for mayor of London - good luck to him. We await to hear and see who the next opposition spokesperson will be for higher education, and then we will ask them too to comment.

Regarding the above reply and in particular "...universities are autonomous institutions and must be trusted to resolve internal disputes without interference from politicians", well, Boris my friend you do live in dreamland. This is the point, they can't be trusted to resolve internal disputes, and if politicians don't stick their necks out, well... HEIs are not really accountable to anyone... and so the ritual continues... Thank you Boris for your thoughtful remarks, we are impressed.

Teachers asked if they are being bullied - Australia

School teachers can detail their experiences of being bullied by parents or senior colleagues in a nationwide survey to help curb the problem.

The University of New England (UNE) launched the online survey in late June and will take responses until October 1.

UNE professional studies lecturer Dan Riley leads the study and is working in collaboration with Professor Deirdre Duncan of Australian Catholic University.

The two have previously published results from a 2005 survey that revealed 97.5 per cent of Catholic schoolteachers had experienced some form of bullying in their career.

The survey showed teachers had been bullied most often by school executives, then parents, and followed by principals.

"While most of the situations experienced were at the lower levels of seriousness, including attempts to undermine or belittle a teacher's work or criticism in front of colleagues, they were serious enough to affect the mental or physical health of some of the respondents," Dr Riley said.

"It's a bit frightening – we didn't actually expect to find what we did."

Participating teachers will have their anonymity and confidentiality preserved, the UNE designer of the website said.

The findings of the survey are expected to be published by late December.

From: http://www.news.com.au/ dDan Riley's email is: driley2@une.edu.au