Archive for 21 group

Bullying at Cambridge University

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 13, 2025 by telescoper

There’s a long article in today’s Observer about bullying at Cambridge University, which I encourage you to read, as it shows that the scale of the bullying problem in Cambridge is very worrying. I’ll just emphasize a couple of things here.

One is that Cambridge University is due to elect a new Chancellor this year and, as is mentioned in the Observer, Professor Wyn Evans of the Institute of Astronomy is planning to stand as a candidate on an anti-bullying platform. This position is largely ceremonial, and is usually occupied by a politician or external establishment figure of some sort, like the incumbent, (Lord) David Sainsbury. In my view Wyn Evans is to be applauded for putting himself forward to draw attention to Cambridge’s internal problems, and I wish him success.

UPDATE: See the comment below by Wyn for instructions on how to support his nomination; he needs 50 nominations to go forward.

(In case you weren’t aware, Wyn Evans has commented on this blog on a number of occasions, often on astrophysics, but on other matters too; he also contributed this guest post on bullying in academia another about the 21Group here.)

UPDATE: See the comment below by Wyn for instructions on how to support his nomination; he needs 50 nominations to go forward.

The other thing I wanted to draw attention to stems from this excerpt:

Cambridge undertook its staff culture survey in January 2024 and is now facing accusations from academics that it tried to cover up the “grim” results, which have been released through freedom of information (FoI) requests.

Cambridge University is not the only higher education institute to carry out a staff survey, try to bury the results when they were unfavourable to The Management, only to be forced to reveal them by a Freedom of Information request. Exactly the same thing happened here in Maynooth.

Maynooth University’s “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” carried out in 2022 with the promise made to participants that results would be published in early 2023. No such results were ever communicated to staff and all mention of this survey was wiped off the University’s web pages. It was only after a Freedom of Information request was submitted by the Union IFUT that the results were released and even then they were not – and never have been – distributed to all staff. If you had seen the results, as I have, you will see immediately why the University tried to suppress them. The key measures show the management of Maynooth University in a very dim light indeed – far worse than the sector average.

As well as the specific measures against bullying and harassment suggested in the Observer article, universities need to take steps to improve their general transparency and accountability. Only then would they have an incentive to remove known bullies and harassers from office instead of what that they do now – which is to promote them.

3 Comments »

Bullying and Harassment in Astronomy – The Report

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc, LGBTQ+ with tags , , , , , on May 19, 2024 by telescoper

As I advertised a few days ago, The Royal Astronomical Society has now released its report on Bullying and Harassment in Astronomy. You can download the full report (40 pages, PDF) here. I recommend you to read it as the statistics are stark. Here are a couple of graphical summaries from the RAS Website:

Note the greater prevalence of bullying and harassment directed towards LGBT astronomers.

The recommendations include the introduction of more effective bullying and harassment policies, procedures and safeguards to protect all colleagues, to support students, and to ensure that everyone can achieve their potential and work in a safe and satisfying environment, regardless of their background.

Noble sentiments, but the Royal Astronomical Society can do little itself to change policies, as it is not in the position of employer (except for its own staff in Burlington House) and there is no incentive for the universities and research institutions who employ most astronomers to comply. That will only happen if serious sanctions are imposed for mishandling bullying and harassment cases.

My view – born out by experience – is that it can’t be left to individual institutions to deal with this problem. In case after case, instead of dealing properly with bullying and harassment, senior managers have protected the perpetrators and silenced the victims. Reputation management, they call it. What is needed to start with is a system of independent adjudication, as recommended, for example, by the 21 Group.

This problem is neither confined to astronomy nor to the United Kingdom, and at least part of it is due to the ever-increasing cult of managerialism that places institutional branding ahead of positive workplace culture, paying at most lip-service to the latter.

1 Comment »

The 21 Group – Update

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , on November 2, 2023 by telescoper

You may have read last week (26th October) a guest post on this blog by Wyn Evans about the launch of the 21Group:

Following this post, the launch of this group has now been covered by the Times Higher

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/bullying-support-network-launched-due-universities-inaction

and Nature

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03418-3

I’ll update this post with further relevant links if and when I find them; you can also follow the campaign on the 21Group blog.

I very much hope this initiative succeeds in its aims, though it has powerful reactionary forces arrayed against it.

In other news, I’m told that the University of Manchester has blocked access to the 21group website by staff through centrally-managed devices. This may be inadvertent, but if it’s deliberate then it is both sinister and stupid.

1 Comment »

The 21 Group – Guest Post by Wyn Evans

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , , , on October 26, 2023 by telescoper

Here’s an important piece by Professor Wyn Evans of Cambridge University relating to the theme of harassment and bullying which I’ve returned to several times on this blog. I strongly support the creation of the 21 Group and agree with the recommendations made in the post below. Indeed, I have myself made a similar suggestion in the context of sexual harassment that the people involved in investigations of such cases…

…should not be employees of the university in question, as they would come under pressure to hush things up – which clearly happens now. It seems to me that far too many institutions prioritize limiting reputational damage over doing the right thing for their staff and students.

https://telescoper.blog/2019/06/12/investigating-sexual-harassment-in-universities/

Now over to Wyn.

—o—

My article on Whistleblowing in the UK Universities is in The Times Higher Education Supplement this week:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/investigating-serious-abuses-must-be-taken-out-universities-hands

Whistleblowing is ineffective in the UK Universities. There is no protection for whistleblowers. Any whistleblowing investigation is run by the university without properly independent scrutiny.

Self-directed investigations make no sense in an organisation in which poor behaviour has been tolerated for a long time. We have seen this in the scandals in the Post Office, in the NHS and in the Metropolitan Police.

The Universities are no exception. Organisations that investigate themselves exonerate themselves. They look for rugs enormous enough to sweep everything under.

Universities need an independent Ombudsman to look into serious complaints.

This already exists for complaints by undergraduates. It is the Office of the  Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.

https://www.oiahe.org.uk

If a student or a former student is dissatisfied with the handling of a matter by a University, then they can appeal to the independent adjudicator.

Postgraduate students and university staff do not have any such rights. We are regarded as ‘service providers’ rather than ‘paying customers’ in the monetized world of higher education.

Vice chancellors and senior managers from Cambridge to Maynooth pontificate that world-class universities are about ‘the people’. That’s where it ends. Senior management are indifferent as to whether the people in universities do actually work in an environment that promotes respect, dignity, safety and equality.

Pressure groups are needed to drive organisational and cultural change in the UK Universities.

So, we have founded the 21 Group

Our name derives from the fact that in a staff survey, 21% of employees at the University of Cambridge reported that they had been subjected to bullying or harassment in the workplace.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/07/third-cambridge-university-staff-experienced-bullying

The 21 Group operates nationally and offers support for staff in UK universities who are experiencing bullying, victimisation and harassment in the workplace. Amongst other things, we are running a national survey of bullying in the UK Universities.

Sadly, we have nothing to be proud of in astronomy. The only systematic survey of UK astronomy was carried out by the Royal Astronomical Society in 2020-2021. They obtained responses from over 650 people.

44% of respondents had suffered bullying and harassment in the workplace within the last year.

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/survey-finds-bullying-and-harassment-systemic-astronomy-and-geophysics

A figure of 44% is grotesque. It is almost a half of all respondents.

The Royal Astronomical Society deserves full credit for conducting the survey and publishing the results. What is sad is that the UK astronomical community has not made any discernible efforts to improve matters since its publication in 2021.

9 Comments »