Regular readers of this blog may remember a couple of posts (here and here) about an Employment Tribunal taking place in Bury St Edmunds in relation to the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) at the University of Cambridge. The claimant in the case was Professor Neil Wyn Evans.
Well, the Employment Tribunal has completed its deliberations and the result is a decisive win for Wyn Evans. You can read more about the judgment here, but the salient points are visible here:
You can see that of the 14 complaints raised by the claimant, 11 succeeded and 3 were dismissed. Now that the judgment has been delivered it is possible to name all the respondents, including the name of the person initially redacted here, Prof. Richard McMahon.
You could call this a Wyn Win situation. (Sorry.)
I’d like to offer my personal congratulations to Wyn Evans on the success of his case. I know this has been a very difficult and stressful episode for him and he deserves enormous credit for pursuing the case to its conclusion. The decision by the University to pursue this case is incomprehensible to me.
It remains to be seen what the consequences will be for him and the respondents. The judgment (details here) refers to “systemic failures” in the University’s handling of the matter. These raise serious questions about governance and the operation of Human Resources at Cambridge University, to add to the questions already being asked in the light of the Jason Arday fiasco. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the end of line for the Vice-Chancellor, but that in itself will not be enough to put things right at Cambridge University.
P.S. Here’s the anonymous guest post on this blog in 2022 that aired the complaints for the first time:
In the Dark 