Skorupski's Law

Why put these pages on the web?

A number of people have asked me why I have put up these pages. The story that is presented here would be relatively insignificant if it illustrated an isolated problem. I am very sure that this is not the case. Within the University of St Andrews I was not the only person who was affected by the "pathologies" (as University Executive members called them) that are documented in these pages. Nor was I the only person to leave the University because of them.

I have also received reports from a number of academics in other universities which make it plain that the difficulties I faced illustrate problems that are endemic in many universities today. I am thus fairly sure that others will find themselves in circumstances that are very similar to the circumstances that I found myself in. As an anthropologist, my job is to understand social context, and I can perhaps give those who find themselves in my position some idea of what they are up against.

Another answer is that I spent most of two years preparing for and fighting an employment tribunal following what I regarded to be completely unacceptable behaviour by certain managers at the University of St Andrews. Since I could have used this time to do what I should have been doing — teaching and doing research — there is a logic in producing a document of the situation I unfortunately found myself in. Most of the information these pages contain was produced for the employment tribunal, so it was not difficult to re-organise the material for publication on the internet.

The University of St Andrews is a very prestigious, ancient institution and I was delighted to go there in 1999. It is important to understand that my rationale for putting up these web pages is not to bring the University of St Andrews into disrepute. In 2002, since I was filing a claim of breach of contract, my only legal option was to bring an action against the University as an institution rather than against a relatively small number of managers who seemed to me to have hijacked the University in order to further their own ends. In my view, these managers were doing considerable damage to the running and reputation of the University, as I have explained in the page entitled "Some costs". I have not been presented with any evidence to show that managerial behaviour has changed in any significant way since I brought my case. Indeed it was quite clear from evidence presented to the employment tribunal that certain problems remained intractable after my departure from the University of St Andrews.

When I brought my case for constructive dismissal against the University of St Andrews, I attempted to do so in relation to the Public Interest Disclosures Act 1998 — an amendment to the Employment Rights Act 1996 that is designed to protect whistle-blowers. For legal reasons this was disallowed and the case was then heard under the Employment Rights Act 1996 alone. Had I understood my legal position better, I would have appealed the Public Interest Disclosures decision. I had decided to represent myself following some pretty shabby work by the solicitors provided by the AUT, and, while I learned quickly how an employment tribunal worked, inevitably my inexperience led me to make mistakes. Equally inevitably I was at times out-manoeuvred by the top-notch lawyers hired by the University. It would have been surprising if this had not been the case since the University Executive were paying very large fees for the best employment barrister in Scotland and he had a team of solicitors behind him. (How much the University paid in legal fees over two years to try to defeat me is itself an interesting question.) At the beginning of the tribunal proceedings I also felt rather intimidated by some of the pronouncements of the Chairman of the Tribunal. My decision not to appeal the Public Interest Disclosures decision was certainly a mistake, but once I had agreed not to appeal, I had closed that door.

It is, however, surely in the public interest when managers at a major British university are behaving in such an abusive manner that it costs employees their careers and their health; that the egoistic research interests of some academics are allowed to threaten the general welfare of staff and students alike; that academic freedom is trampled upon by a vice chancellor; and that scores of thousands of pounds of public money are spent in an employment tribunal trying to defend abusive behaviour. One does not need to be an anthropologist, a philosopher (as my immediate line managers were), or indeed a lawyer to realise that what is documented in these pages represents a corruption of what a university should be.

It is also clear that the obsession with research ratings which underlies these problems is having very destructive effects in many other universities besides St Andrews. The widespread silence of academics on this matter is allowing certain managers to do extraordinary damage in universities (though see Some links). If you are a manager, an academic or a student, and if what you see in these pages reminds you of what you see in your own university, I hope these pages will encourage you to do something about it. If they do, then this web site will have served its purpose.

The author

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