Imperial College under investigation by OfS over bullying scandal

 

One of Britain’s most prestigious universities is being formally investigated by the universities watchdog as result of the controversy over bullying of staff by two leaders of the institution.

Two of Imperial College London’s most senior executives, its president, Alice Gast, and its chief financial officer, Muir Sanderson, have admitted they bullied colleagues, as the university bowed to pressure in December and published parts of a report into the scandal.

The investigation is only the second to have been launched into a university by the Office for Students (OfS), which has powers to scrutinise whether members of senior university management meet a test for being “fit and proper” to exercise their roles.

Gast and Sanderson have remained in their posts despite coming under continuing pressure from staff, students and others. A motion of no confidence in both was passed last month by members of the University and College Union (UCU), which represents academic staff.

“Those of us who think this has gone on far too long and that they should have stood down when it was the decent thing to do are very hopeful about this OfS intervention,” the Guardian was told by a source close to one of the whistleblowers whose original allegations of bullying led to a lawyer being brought in to investigate.

“It’s clearly very serous for an institution as prestigious as Imperial to have this hanging over it and we think that all aspects should now be looked at.”

A spokesperson for the OfS confirmed an investigation was ongoing. “We are looking into regulatory matters relating to Imperial College. While this work continues, it would be inappropriate to comment further,” they said.

Members of Imperial’s governing council, who are expected to meet again as early as Monday, are understood to be divided on how to proceed and have been discussing whether to issue a statement in relation to Gast and Sanderson.

The university blamed a “clerical error” after the Guardian reported in December that its longstanding policy on bullying was altered days before staff were told of a completed investigation into bullying allegations against the president and CFO.

Gast, Sanderson and other senior figures were to undergo bullying and harassment training in line with the recommendations of a review conducted last year by Jane McNeill QC, who was called in to investigate.

“I am very sorry that I bullied someone,” Gast, Imperial’s self-described “CEO”, said in December, while Sanderson said he had bullied two colleagues.

The report by McNeill – who was called in by the chair of Imperial’s governing council, the Tesco non-executive chairman, John Allan – led to a disciplinary hearing for both Gast and Sanderson. McNeill found Gast had bullied one senior colleague while Sanderson was found to have bullied two colleagues between late February and mid-March.

The OfS, which was established in 2018 and comes under the auspices of the Department for Education, has previously investigated De Montfort University. Its then vice-chancellor, Dominic Shellard, resigned in 2019 in advance of the investigation, which went on to identify “significant and systemic” failings in governance.

A spokesperson for Imperial College London said: “We fully support OfS undertaking this investigation and have provided all relevant information as requested. We are confident in our process and its outcomes and we await the OfS findings.”

From: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/feb/14/imperial-college-london-university-investigated-bullying-scandal

Survivor Case study: A decade of bullying in high education. The failure of anti-bullying structures

This article presents a case study of an immigrant female, a survivor of bullying in two different international academic institutions. The bullying started at her Ph.D. studies endured during her Postdoctoral studies. A long-term academic case of mobbing perpetrated with impunity...

Cases of bullying in high education are underreported because moral harassment is normalized, accepted and positively associated with higher standards of academic productivity and success. Based on the normalization of this behavior, victims do not dare to report their situation. They fear of dismissal, bad reference letters or authorship usurpation, as examples...

Targets can be persons in inferior positions but also newcomers, existing a potential bias towards immigrants and women, despite their ethnicity, gender or personal background what all the targets seem to share is the fact of commonly being ethical workers. So, academic bullies´ ultimate goal may withhold potential fear on being overshadowed by a more accomplished and ethical coworker (Gorlewski et al. 2014), obscuring their own weaknesses and incompetence by eradicating the target (Khoo 2010). Bullies can be employers at different levels at the academic institutional hierarchy. However, around 72% of the incidents involved harassers from higher ranks (Cassell 2011; Anonymous 2018) abusing of their power.

...Bullying generates economic consequences for targets, academic institutions, and public health systems. For example, around 30% of the victims experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (Wajngurt 2014), and about 70% of them leave the organization (Gravois 2006). Consequences on victims are also common, being removed from their positions, their academic lives terminated through retirement, but also suicide, mental breakdown, cardiovascular diseases due to the high level of stress have been registered (Westhues 2006). Bullies can display active, subtle or inactive conducts (Cassell 2011), from subtle isolated unconscious or conscious events, micro-aggressions, to flagrant intimidations (Farrington 2010). 

...The first years of bullying shows the profile of an inactive bully maybe empowered by his untouchable self-perception and the lack of effective anti-harassment policies within the European Union. The second period represent a case of academic mobbing still under investigation. Years of inactivity, incompressible delays, misinterpretation, manipulations, alteration of events, persons, blames, badmouthing, sabotages, authorship usurpation or gaslighting have been a common issues Dr. L suffered for a decade, jeopardizing her research and professionality. 

Competitive and success in academia is associated with publishing results, but the process behind a published article is never considered. Competition to get funds it is exceptionally high, and the supervision of ethics in research is low. Victims of academic mobbing who dare to fill a grievance would have to wait for eternal processes of investigations, where the target of the inquiry would be commonly the victim. Opacity and secrecy usually surround the processes of investigation of reported cases, affecting the mental health of the victims, jeopardizing job opportunities and retaliation.

...The process of hiring in academia is hugely dependent on “old-boy networking” based on good references. If falling into the wrong mentor hands, the only mechanism available for targets is being submissive and quiet. A more in-depth investigation of harassment in high educations is needed. Universities and colleges need to develop a better mechanism for the prevention of misconducts and implement mechanism to approach and reconduct this type of behaviors.

"Survivor Case study: A decade of bullying in high education. The failure of

anti-bullying structures" DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16970.82887

When a law is made, the cunning that finds loopholes goes to work...

“When a law is made, the cunning that finds loopholes goes to work. One cannot deny that there is a certain slyness among younger players, a slyness which, when rules are written to prevent slyness, makes use of the rules themselves.”

Yasunari Kawabata,
The Master of Go (1951)

Stop Making Excuses for Toxic Bosses

...In a recent study published in Personnel Psychology, we examined one possibility: After a run-in with a toxic boss, the tendency of many people is to heed what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” and forgive the indiscretion, especially when the boss appears to be making amends for their uncivil behavior. For example, former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson was notoriously ruthless toward his staff, constantly berating them in public, calling for favors at all hours of the night, and throwing objects at them when they did not work as quickly as they wanted. George Reedy, a long-time aide of President Johnson, wrote in a memoir about how Johnson’s cruelty extended “even to people who had virtually walked the last mile for him.” 

However, it seemed that whenever Reedy considered resigning, Johnson would present “a lavish gift” or do something else that made it so Reedy “forgot his grievances” and kept working for Johnson. However, Johnson’s abusive behavior toward Reedy persisted — and even worsened — during the 15 years they worked together...

We found that when bosses reported having abused their employees, they viewed their social image as being damaged, with this effect being especially pronounced among those who reported at the outset of the study that it was important to them that they appear moral to their employees. In other words, among those bosses who were highly focused on having an image of adhering to a strict moral code, engaging in abusive behaviors, such as ridiculing employees, made them feel more concerned with their social image...

Consequently, even though abusive bosses may appear on the surface to be considerate to their victims following one of their abusive episodes, the bosses in our study reported behavior that was instead a superficial attempt at impression management. As a result, toxic bosses were not likely to change their ways, mainly because their focus was on covering up their bad behavior through manipulative ingratiation and self-promotion behaviors, not on actually changing their toxic behaviors...

https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2021/01/stop-making-excuses-for-toxic-bosses

I am so scared...

...I just came across this blog, as I contemplate some of the consequences of bullying from a couple of PhD supervisors. The bullying is also (like the blog author and commenters) from the same origin as this blog. I am so scared, I have to write cryptically, even when this post is anonymous. I am not that far into the my research project, but already, if the comments and experiences I receive are as common as this blog suggests, then, the people who are entrusted with a duty of care to help and guide people are perhaps falling short of professional standards of implied common ethical practices and codes of conduct that might be more readily observed in other professions. I wish there was a forum for help and advice. I am fearful of tomorrow's consequences and I'm not sure what do to. I am motivated by my passion for the project I have proposed and the possibility of helping marginalised people. My project has significant impact potential, yet, I am not sure of my future...

Anonymous

Prompted by complaints, Temple taps law firm to probe education college leadership

...Conditions had reached a breaking point with Gregory M. Anderson, dean of Temple’s college of education and human development, she wrote to the university’s provost in August 2019. In a six-page memo, Goldrick-Rab complained about “hostile behavior” by Anderson and asked that she and the center she runs be transferred to another college within the university.

Anderson once stood over her and yelled for 14 minutes, she wrote, despite her repeatedly asking him to stop. When she told him she wanted a transfer, he allegedly responded: “You’re not going anywhere. You can’t — I own you.”

Asked this month about the memo, obtained by The Inquirer, she declined to comment. But her complaints weren’t unique. About half of the 70 full-time faculty in July signed a letter in which they raised issues about the dean’s leadership, saying faculty were “deeply concerned about faculty members’ loss of voice in our own college, and about a growing climate of fear, mistrust, and intimidation.”

...Temple would not describe the scope of the education college review. A faculty member interviewed by the lawyers said they indicated they were looking at the culture and climate of the college, the decisions around program changes, and whether there were questionable ethical decisions.

In a statement, Anderson said he is cooperating with the review.

“As a Black academic whose research focuses on access and equity, I am particularly committed to accountability,” he said. “University deans must make difficult, and sometimes unpopular, decisions each day. I believe once the process has concluded, the facts will show that all my decisions adhere to university policies and contractual obligations.”

...Aneta Pavlenko, a tenured professor of applied linguistics, resigned in December 2016 after she said the dean unfairly attempted to increase her course load and assign her to classes she wasn’t qualified to teach. The move, she contended, was part of retaliation after she shared an email with graduate students in 2014 about a plan to discontinue all graduate assistantships for doctoral students. She said a program coordinator position and other responsibilities also were taken from her...

From: https://www.inquirer.com/education/temple-gregory-anderson-education-college-complaints-faculty-20210118.html

“Bullying and harassment are rife in my workplace”: Adelaide Uni staff raise red flags

 

University of Adelaide employees have described a workplace culture of “veiled terror”, where bullying is “the norm” and senior leaders are focussed on turning the institution into a “degree factory”, an Independent Commissioner Against Corruption survey reveals.

In an email to staff yesterday – seen by InDaily – University of Adelaide interim Vice-Chancellor Professor Mike Brooks wrote that the survey findings made “uncomfortable and challenging reading”, but he was “firmly committed to improving the integrity and accountability” of the 140-year institution.

The survey results, linked to staff in Brooks’ email, were used to inform the ICAC’s “University Integrity Survey” of South Australia’s top three universities, which was released to the public earlier this month.

Surveys were conducted with staff at the University of Adelaide, University of South Australia and Flinders University between March and April this year to determine the “attitudes and experiences” of employees regarding corruption and inappropriate conduct at their respective workplaces.

Of the 1364 respondents to the Adelaide University survey, 31.6 per cent reported experiencing bullying and harassment at work, while a further 62.7 per cent claimed they encountered those behaviours in the past three years...

https://indaily.com.au/news/2020/12/17/bullying-and-harassment-are-rife-in-my-workplace-adelaide-uni-staff-raise-red-flags/

Imperial College London’s Alice Gast ‘very sorry’ for bullying

 

Imperial College London’s president has issued an apology and has faced a disciplinary hearing after an independent investigation concluded that she had bullied someone.

Alice Gast and Muir Sanderson, the university’s chief financial officer, have also been offered coaching, following an investigation into allegations of bullying and a dysfunctional culture, which came to light last week.

Jane McNeill QC, who conducted the investigation, found that Professor Gast had bullied one person, while Mr Sanderson was found to have bullied two colleagues between late February and mid-March.

The QC recommended that Imperial’s chair of council John Allan hold disciplinary hearings against the pair, which have now concluded, and that he should oversee reviews of the institution’s bullying policy and governance structure.

Imperial said it was in the process of implementing recommendations that annual appraisals for the president’s direct reports are conducted “with improved record-keeping and oversight from HR” and for the introduction of a 360-degree appraisal system – where feedback is kept anonymous – for senior leaders.

It will also implement further training on processes around bullying and harassment and on the use of settlement agreements for senior managers.

...Professor Gast said she was “sorry that, at times, I made some senior staff feel unappreciated and left out. I am very sorry that I bullied someone.”

“I have offered full apologies to colleagues who have been personally affected. Making difficult decisions, often under time pressure, is expected of a leader and I have fallen short. I have learned a lot from this experience and have focused on using it as a catalyst for positive change for me and my leadership team,” she said...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/imperial-college-londons-alice-gast-very-sorry-bullying

Wayne’s world: How universities are crushing academics

 

...Depending on how determined a university might be to scale the research ladder, it could go as far as recruiting an entire suite of research “superstars” from overseas on a part-time basis, fly them in occasionally to Australian shores, maybe for a few weeks to give a masterclass or workshop, and then just as quickly fly them back out again to their respective home campuses. These “fly in/fly out” professors would, in return, hand over their bulky CV’s to their Australian hosts, who would put these towards the goal of climbing up the ERA ladder, in the hope of one day reaching the highest rung — the stratospheric “well above world standard” (whatever that means).

...The teaching-research nexus is further undermined when those who are charged with teaching duties are saddled with increasingly heavier teaching loads each year, so as to help fund the activities of the full-time researchers and the institutes that house them. As a result, a lecturer’s capacity for original research and to remain up-to-date in their field is weakened, and students do not get the benefit of the kind of expertise that should be part of a higher education.

A further consequence concerns the ways in which research is controlled and circumscribed, where the attempt to ascend the league tables or attract greater funds or citations increases the pressure towards hyper-specialisation and publication in a narrow band of outlets (usually obscure journals with ridiculously low acceptance rates). 

A tragic case in point is Stefan Grimm, Professor of Toxicology at Imperial College London, who had, by any reasonable measure, established a highly productive track-record over two decades in his field of research. Despite this, he was told he would, effectively, be fired if he did not bring in an “attributable share” of £200,000 per year in research funding. In September 2014 he killed himself, at the age of 51. In an email circulated to his colleagues shortly before his death, he wrote about his university’s managers: “What these guys don’t know is that they destroy lives. Well, they certainly destroyed mine.”

...Among the countless, painfully familiar comments on blogs and op-eds, I came across the following from an anonymous academic: “Here I am — I’ve ‘made it’ — and all I feel is resentment, burnout, and bitterness towards the university and the system.” Another, after going year in, year out, from contract to contract and campus to campus, eventually acknowledges: “I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. It’s not me; it’s the system. The system is broken. I am not a failure; the system failed me.”

The grief and anger, however, gradually morph into contentment and joy as one moves beyond the academy, finding in the most unexpected places (even the corporate sector) what one was denied for so long: their voice and dignity, a sense of liberation, feeling valued and fulfilled, and an anxiety-free work-life balance to boot...

The movie version of Wayne’s World ends in disaster: having sold out to the corporate world, Wayne ends up being fired from the very show he helped create, losing his girlfriend, and even losing his house and his friend Garth to a fire. But, being Hollywood, the plot is revised in order to reveal the “true ending” where its characters are reconciled to one another and finally find love and success.

The university sector in Australia has been in crisis for some time now — a condition that has been recently exacerbated by the loss of international revenue and the prospect of huge staff cuts due to the pandemic, as well as by government attacks on subjects like philosophy which do not produce “job-ready graduates” (or so federal education minister Dan Tehan says). But this also provides the university sector with a unique opportunity, if not its “last chance,” as it was recently put by Simon Cooper.
To seek to justify the value of higher education by “spruiking the economic and technocratic achievements of the university is to learn nothing at all,” writes Cooper. A wholesale reconceptualisation of the nature and purpose of the university is required...

From: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/universities-in-crises-and-what-to-do-about-it/12714252

Ten rules for succeeding in academia through upward toxicity

Think the way to forge a brilliant career in academe is to produce good research, teach skilfully and mentor generously? That arduous approach works for some – but there is an easier way.

Universities sing the song of meritocracy but dance to a different tune. In reality, they will do everything to reward and protect their most destructive, abusive and uncooperative faculty. The more thoroughly such scholars poison departments, programmes and individual lives, the more universities double down to please them.

Universities are even willing to ruin their own reputations and alienate their alumni to protect bullies and abusers. They might think that reputation management demands that such behaviour be swept under the carpet, but they ought to know that the scandals will break eventually, and that the cover-up will make them look worse. Some universities even hire people in the full knowledge of abuse allegations against them, thereby becoming invested in keeping secret their decision to put their students in harm’s way.

You too can become upwardly toxic; if you are the sort of person who likes harassing less powerful people, you will enjoy it, too. It is not necessary to actually be a genius scholar or administrator. Once enough people buy into the elaborate fiction of your irreplaceability, everyone will play along. To maintain it, universities will devalue the work of colleagues and students who are more brilliant, productive or collegial. These people, in turn, will internalise the message that they are inferior, and will be too busy dealing with their shattered confidence to pose a threat.

Your indiscretions – on occasion, even your crimes – will be kept quiet through regimes of fear. Threaten lawsuits, repercussions, closed-off opportunities. The more people cave to fear, the more they become implicated in shared guilt and work to maintain silence whether they want to or not. Colleagues who used to get along fine will be divided by resentment of their mutual failure to stand up to you.

Upward toxicity can work in any industry, but it is particularly effective in a career with few escape routes. If your students and colleagues want to get away from you, it could mean moving their family to another country, or even abandoning their life’s work altogether. Most are forced to deal with you for the long term.

There are many fringe benefits to being upwardly toxic. Use service assignments to benefit yourself at the expense of colleagues and you will magically find yourself doing less service. You will not get certain duties because you are not trusted. Of course, you can also ignore remaining work; your colleagues will learn to compensate accordingly.

Carry out a steady programme of harassment and gradually you will be released from duties to students, too. They will tell each other to avoid you. Your colleagues will take on extra work to protect them from your roving hands. Eventually, you will mentor only a select group of acolytes, who always do your bidding. If you behave egregiously enough, you may even win the grand prize: paid leave from teaching, which you can use to publish more research, bolstering your reputation for genius.

Still unclear? Try following these 10 easy rules:

1. Cultivate powerful friends. Gain power over as many publication organs and scholarly bodies as possible and use them to promote your clique.
2. Do nothing for anyone unimportant.
3. Find a less successful scholar who will fear and admire you. Flatter them into becoming your sidekick and count on them to denigrate your colleagues and defend your reputation.
4. Crush the confidence of students with the potential to surpass you. Or sleep with them. Or both.
5. Manipulate students and employees into feeling they owe you, long after you no longer have power over them. Make outrageous, unethical promises they will feel bad about accepting or refusing.
6. Promote a zero-sum model of success. Anyone else’s gain is your loss. Claim your students’ work as your own and reassign their best ideas to your favourites. Collaboration is for losers.
7. Systematically badmouth your colleagues so you can improve your own standing. Shut out the students of rival scholars. Mock those rivals for having less successful students.
8. Gaslight and spread misinformation about anyone who stands up to you. Complain about the “rumour mill” and “witch-hunts”. Accuse your critics of jealousy. 
9. Ask loudly why no one is willing to come forward officially to substantiate the rumours of abuse against you. If someone overcomes their terror, call them crazy.
10. Lie brazenly. Accuse others of lying.

By following these rules, you can absorb enormous amounts of attention, time and resources with impunity. Sure, there will be critics. They will grumble among themselves that universities ought to foster talent, not protect abuse, and that research and education should serve society, not the gratification of a few egos. They may even call for a breaking of the conspiratorial silence that drives good people out of academe and leaves psyches shattered.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ten-rules-succeeding-academia-through-upward-toxicity#node-comments

Don’t worry. They will be too afraid even to share this article.