Debt-laden universities have been “ideologically captured” by woke activists, axing hundreds of academic teaching posts while at the same time creating well-paid equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) jobs, reports the Mail.
Nearly half of UK vice-chancellors expect their university to be in financial deficit this year following a drop in the number of lucrative international students and the impact of inflation on fees, running costs and pension contributions. As a result, academic departments are being merged and courses closed down, with some campuses facing strike action in opposition to the plans. Yet as hundreds of jobs are being cut, the sector’s EDI workforce appears immune.
Professor Dennis Hayes, director of Academics For Academic Freedom, said: “Universities have been ideologically captured by EDI because they have succumbed to victimhood culture. It is damaging to the aspiration of individuals in minorities – grouping them as ‘victims’ in need of help and a special education.”
Aston University in Birmingham, where 60 academics in the college of engineering and physical sciences are at risk of redundancy, has filled a £98,000-a-year post in ‘People, Culture and Inclusion’.
At Oxford Brookes, mathematics and music programmes are being cut as part of a bid to save £2 million, yet the institution is now seeking a £39k-a-year ‘anti-harassment and EDI adviser’.
Restructuring at Portsmouth University is likely to lead to the loss of 47 jobs, but a head of EDI was recently hired on a salary of up to £76,462. And while ‘double-figure redundancies’ of fixed-term contract staff have hit the history department at University College London, it has launched a search for a senior-level ‘Director of Equality, Inclusion and Culture’ on an undisclosed salary.
Queen Mary University of London has also defended its search for a £44,722-a-year EDI officer at the same time as making redundancies by merging its English, drama, languages, linguistics and film schools.
Meanwhile, at the Open University (OU), a record £25million operating deficit and an associated voluntary severance scheme for lecturers hasn’t prevented the institution filling two EDI vacancies, both offering salary packages of up to £46,223. One is a project officer working mainly on ‘gender equality’ who has to attend the office ‘at least twice a year’.
It might be argued that what the OU needs is fewer and better ‘gender equality’ project officers.
In an important victory for freedom of speech and academic freedom earlier this year, former OU Prof Jo Phoenix won her employment tribunal against the Open University, having suffered discrimination on the basis of her gender critical beliefs.
Upholding almost 20 of Prof Phoenix’s claims, the tribunal, chaired by employment judge Jennifer Young, said: “We do not consider that the [university] had a proper reason for allowing the harassment to continue without publicly taking action to prohibit it.”
According to the panel’s written ruling, the OU’s failure to protect Prof Phoenix from harassment from colleagues and trans activists was in fact motivated by “fear of being seen to support gender-critical beliefs” and “fear of the pro gender identity section” of the university.
The OU is currently facing two other legal challenges from former OU staff and students, both of whom say they have been discriminated against because they dared to express the gender critical view that sex matters in policy, language and law.
One is from Pilgrim Tucker, a PhD student who says that she has been bullied and harassed at the OU because of her gender critical views.
The most recent and, as Prof Alice Sullivan points outs for the Spectator, perhaps the most shocking case is that of Dr Almut Gadow, a former law lecture whom the FSU is currently supporting.
Dr Gadow was sacked from her role teaching criminal law at the OU after she challenged new requirements to teach gender identity theory as an uncontested truth.
With our support, Almut is bringing a groundbreaking employment tribunal claim against the OU, arguing that she was harassed, discriminated against and unfairly dismissed having been sacked for questioning new requirements to embed gender identity theory within that institution’s law curriculum.
The case is ‘groundbreaking’ in the sense that ‘academic free expression’ lies at its heart.
This concept, set out in a string of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), encapsulates how article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects academic freedom – not least by prohibiting universities from penalising academics for questioning an institution or its curricula.
UK courts have yet to properly consider ECtHR case law on academic free expression. In seeking judicial guidance on this from an English employment tribunal, Almut’s case can hopefully entrench these protections in domestic law.
Almut will also argue that valuing academic freedom is, in itself, a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010. Establishing this in law could protect many other academics whose careers are threatened by the rising tide of intolerance on UK campuses.
You can find out more about Almut’s case and pledge your support by clicking here.
