Archive for Staff Survey

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.

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Maynooth in the News

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 12, 2023 by telescoper

I was in a meeting this morning at which it was mentioned that the recent launch of the Euclid satellite has generated quite a lot of publicity in the news media for Maynooth University. There’s a piece in the Sunday Times (Ireland Edition), another in Silicon Republic, and an online feature for RTÉ Brainstorm as well as a radio segment on Morning Ireland and another on NewsTalk.

Maynooth University plugged these items in on the “Maynooth in the News” feed on its main webpage, along with many other items that show the University in a good light.

Conspicuous by its absence from that feed, however, is the biggest story surrounding Maynooth University in recent days, namely the appalling decision by the President to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University in favour of having representatives chosen only by the President. This is just one example of the increasingly intransigent and authoritarian management of the University. Can anyone justify the complete disenfranchisement of the staff of the University from the Governance of the university? Or that an Executive body should select the Board to which it is supposed to be accountable?

I know I’m not the only person employed by this University who thinks this decision is a terrible one – my Union, IFUT is strongly opposed- but it has been already been imposed and now we have no say. At least you can read about, e.g. here in the Times Higher.

One story you can’t read about however concerns the outcomes of Maynooth University’s “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” which was 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 has been wiped off the University’s web pages. I don’t know why this happened, but I venture to suggest that if the results had been good the Maynooth publicity team would not have hesitated to publish them.

Since the Management of Maynooth University has chosen to close off any internal channels by which academic and other staff can communicate their views, it seems that the only means of communication open to us is via the external media. Perhaps the Times Higher will run a story on the Curious Case of the Missing Staff Survey?

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