Skorupski's Law

"The most disgraceful meeting I have ever attended as an academic"

The Corner/Esler report was presented to Dr Brian Lang, Principal of the University of St Andrews, on 28 September 2001. Dr Lang then convened a meeting for 2 November 2001 to deliver the findings of the report. The meeting was to comprise the permanent staff of the Department of Social Anthropology and the new Chairman of the Department (Dr Peter Clark), who had been parachuted in from Philosophy following Professor Overing's summary removal as Chairperson in the wake of the Corner/Esler investigation. However, only three of the permanent staff of the Department of Social Anthropology (Drs Riches, Dilley and myself) arrived for this meeting. The other three tenured members of the Department (Professor Rapport, Professor Overing and Mr Platt), did not turn up. Mr Platt was doing research in Spain and simply refused to return even though Dr Clark insisted he should attend the meeting and that that the University would pay his travel expenses. Regarding the non-attendance of the two professors, Dr Clark and the Principal gave contradictory reasons for this to the employment tribunal. Dr Clark said that the Principal wanted a second meeting with the professors. The Principal himself said that this was not the case and he was surprised that more people had not been present at the meeting on 2 November 2001. On this, as on many occasions, it was difficult to know which, if any, representative of the University was telling the truth (see "Who lied?").

The meeting on 2 November 2001 lasted about 25 minutes. Dr Lang began by presenting a few lines of the Corner/Esler report. It was clear that Dr Clark was privy to the contents of the report but Dr Lang did not allow my two anthropology colleagues and me to see it, or to know what was in it. This could only be interpreted as an unusually bullying strategy given that Dr Lang reported that he had never in his professional career come across anything like the Corner/Esler report. (Eighteen months later, in the employment tribunal, Dr Lang compared the Social Anthropology Department to an infamous African group — the Ik — who were renowned for their lying and cheating.) He said that if things did not change, he would come down very heavily on the individual(s) responsible — life would be "nasty, brutish and short" — and he implied that all members of the Department were to blame. Dr Clark then invited the three members of the Department of Social Anthropology present to put their views to the Principal, saying that they would not get many such occasions in view of the Principal's busy schedule. In fact Dr Clark put it rather more colourfully than this, saying that they "should put [their] vomit on the table".

To my dismay, given that Dr Dilley and Dr Riches had complained bitterly to me on very many occasions about various malpractices since I had joined the University, neither was prepared to say anything to the Principal. Dr Riches later confided to me, and testified to the employment tribunal, that he had felt the behaviour of Dr Lang to be so abusive and intimidating that he did not know how to react, except perhaps to burst out laughing. Dr Dilley has never offered any explanation for his behaviour on 2 November. (For further comment on silence, see Who spoke up and who was silent?).

I then attempted to present to the Principal disturbing instances of defamation of Dr Dilley, Dr Riches and myself respectively which had been made by our "colleagues". All of these were potentially career-threatening. Dr Clark cut me off in the middle of my second example — a disgraceful comment that had been made about Dr Riches by Professor Skorupski — and the Principal then said he did not want to hear any more and that he would not listen to me. The atmosphere was extraordinarily tense and intimidating, with disciplinary action threatened by the Principal. My colleagues were cowed into silence as if the convention is that this is how one should behave in front of bullying senior managers. Since I had no support from my colleagues, it seemed to me that I had no option but to keep quiet for the rest of the meeting.

It is inconceivable that the Principal was not briefed in private by Mr Corner and others holding senior line management positions before delivering his comments on the Corner-Esler report at the meeting on 2 November 2001. Yet, Dr Lang, while brandishing the report, did not appear to know who was responsible for the unacceptable behaviour he was complaining about. He cannot, perhaps, be held entirely responsible for this. It transpired some weeks later that the report did not indicate who was responsible for the various "pathologies" it listed. What was more shocking, however, was that Dr Lang did not seem to care that his comments were directed at the wrong people. The evidence that was produced at the employment tribunal completely exonerated Dr Riches; nothing of any substance was submitted to the tribunal in relation to Dr Dilley; and no evidence was produced that I was guilty of anything bar standing up to abusive behaviour. The evidence that other members of the Department had been engaged in completely unacceptable behaviour was, on the other hand, compelling.

The meeting on 2 November 2001 would have been comic had it not been about such a serious matter and been conducted in such a threatening, bullying manner by the Principal, with Dr Clark acting as his accomplice. Dr Riches was so incensed by the Principal's behaviour that he subsequently made a complaint about it to the St Andrews AUT, and indeed wrote to the Principal himself about it on 11 January 2002 expressing a number of complaints about the Corner/Esler report and the manner of its delivery. I also wrote to Dr Lang about the report and his abusive behaviour at the 2 November 2001 meeting. He declined to respond to any of the points I raised (see The Principal's silence...).

Immediately following the meeting on 2 November 2001, I was standing outside the building talking to the Departmental secretary. Dr Clark came up to me and we then held a conversation in private in the quad. As in all my conversations with Dr Clark, we were perfectly quiet and amicable, in spite of the very strained circumstances we found ourselves in. I said that he had sabotaged the meeting at a crucial point, and that I could not tackle the problems of the Department on my own. Dr Clark agreed but said that no-one else would stand up to be counted. He then said that I had indicated to the Principal earlier in the week that I had had enough of intimidation in the University, and that I intended to resign as soon as I could sort out the practicalities with the Director of Personnel Services. (This had followed Dr Lang's increasingly insistent e-mails described in Principal's attack on academic freedom). Dr Clark noted that I had told the Principal that I would not be able to leave, for practical reasons, before 31 August 2002, and said that he was "sure" that if I wanted to leave, a "deal" could be made with the Director of Personnel Services. According to this deal, he said, I could leave the University at the end of the first semester (i.e. 31 January 2002) but my salary would be paid until 31 August 2002.

I told Dr Clark point blank that I would not consider any such compromising deal. He refused to say who had authorised it, though of course it would have had to come from a member or members of the Executive. It is difficult to imagine how any member of the Executive other than the Principal would have felt he had the authority to authorise such an arrangement. Some months later, during a phone call, I reminded Dr Clark about what he had proposed, and I asked him who had authorised it. He would not be drawn. Subsequently, on 25 March 2002, I mentioned it again in an e-mail to Dr Clark but he did not respond to this. Of course the "deal" was put in such a way that there was no written record of it, and Dr Clark testified to the employment tribunal that he had not made any such proposal. Dr Riches, however, testified to the employment tribunal that Dr Clark had spoken to him of this proposed arrangement. Obviously someone was lying (see Who lied?).

During the employment tribunal Mr David Corner, by then Deputy Principal of the University, described Dr Riches as "an extraordinarily honourable and sensible man". I do not know of anyone who would disagree with this characterisation. Dr Riches' description of the Principal's behaviour as "abusive and humiliating" is a very powerful statement because Dr Riches is not given to making statements of this kind. I myself told the employment tribunal that the meeting on 2 November 2001 was the most disgraceful meeting I had ever attended as an academic. In my view the behaviour of Dr Lang on that occasion, as in his attempt to require an academic to withdraw his professional opinion (see Principal's attack on academic freedom), showed that he was a regrettably common kind of managerial bully who was unfit to to be a vice chancellor of a major (or any other) university.

The author

**********

Skorupski's Law: "The more vain one's ambition, the more redundant one's grasp of morality"