28 Times Higher Education8 February 2018
O
nce, I had a flourishing career in
higher education. I had just been
promoted to associate professor
and was feeling that all the years of hard
work were starting to pay off. But these
days, I just have a job – and one that
I don’t really want any more.
How could this have happened? Did
my computer self-destruct, taking with it
years of research? Did an undergraduate
take out my eye with a well-aimed paper
dart during a particularly heavy Friday-
afternoon lecture?
No. Reader, I was suspended.
I’m now back at work because, well,
I didn’t do anything wrong. But it took
the management four months to admit
that. And there is so much that I want
to get off my chest.
I’m talking to you, Professor
Neoliberal Manager. I want you
to understand that if you suspend
academics, you are destroying their
careers in small or large measure.
They may regain their academic spirit
somehow, somewhere, but the damage
to their faith in universities will be
terminal. Academics are proud creatures
who don’t take kindly to attempts to
annihilate them with a steady stream of
official letters.
Perhaps you don’t care. But you
should be careful, because they will be
forever out to screw you over (prefer-
ably before they leave, but that’s just
a detail). They will take every opportun-
ity to bad-mouth your institution in
general and you in particular. Even if
you gag them with large amounts of
banknotes, they will never again trust
the colleagues who spoke ill of them
in your little investigation. The saintly
among them will forgive just one
person – the one they most need.
Everyone else will be dead to them.
Moreover, your lust for control opens
you up to lawsuits. I am now knee-deep
in knowledge of UK employment law
and disciplinary procedures. I know
what I’m talking about because of the
leisure you gave me. I have a folder
on my computer containing all the
university policies – it’s right next to
Hell hath no fury...
another one labelled “bullying”.
Your best hope is that the academic
you suspended doesn’t have the money
to hire a lawyer. But even without legal
help, many will mount a case against
you just for the buzz of seeing you wince
when they wheel outAgoreyovLondon
Borough of Lambeth: the landmark
2017 case that makes it clear that
suspending a professional, such as a
teacher, medic or academic, can inflict
particular damage on their careers, thus
obliging their employers to tread
particularly carefully.
Employers may be able to stretch
their employees on a rack of processes
provided that the rack appears status-
blind. But put one foot wrong and you
will be facing a tribunal. It might be for
discrimination by virtue of characteristic
or perception of characteristic. It might
be for faults in your process. But what-
ever it is, it will cost your institution
a lot to defend. Your vice-chancellor
won’t like it. It will come up at your
next appraisal.
Even those academics who use their
unexpected leisure time to walk in the
hills, admiring daffodils, will make your
life very uncomfortable when they
return. They will demand a face-to-face
meeting and will hold you morally
accountable for the harms you have
enacted under a guise of “neutrality”.
You may plead, in your defence, that
you were just doing your job. But we’ve
heard that one before. You abused your
power. You had alternatives. You could
have talked to the person you suspended
to get to the truth, instead of wielding
your power to cast them into limbo.
Now you are stuck with someone who
hates your guts.
My union representatives tell me
that academic “disappearances” are
becoming increasingly common across
the UK, as the screw is turned ever
tighter by the research excellence
framework and now, God help us, the
teaching excellence framework, too.
Perhaps the suspended are in some ways
the lucky ones. After all, ceasing to
believe in universities as righteous,
magnanimous or fair is to wake up to
the world as it is. It is a decisive learning
curve that may set its recipients free of
a bad dependence on a fantasy. Perhaps
it will even improve their scholarship.
But their indignation and horror will
always remain.The author is an academic at a UK
university.An unfairly traduced scholar says suspension is a legal and
emotional minefield that can blow up in managers’ faces
W
e are often warned against being judge-
mental. “Judge not, lest ye be judged”,
for example, reminds us how vulner-
able we are to others’ estimations of us, and
how likely those estimations are to be biased.
Nevertheless, we continue to make judge-
ments, both positive and negative, because
we have evolved to do so. Human brains have
been “domesticated” by our need to live in
groups to survive. We assess others carefully,
and monitor their views of us; if those views
are negative, we may be cast out of the group.
But the academic setting is often referred
to as an “ivory tower”: a biblical reference to
noble purity, implying that those who devote
themselves to intellectual work are untainted
by the personal vanities and vulnerabilities
associated with the daily round of praise and
blame. And academics rightly pride themselves
on making impartial, nuanced and evidence-
based assessments. Nonetheless, self-serving
biases abound.
These are evident not only in high-profile
debates between colourful personalities, but
also in the daily run of meetings, lectures and
informal discussions. The academic progress
towards enlightenment is full of what the
psychologist Oliver James calls “office politics”
and the New York University psychologist
Ben Dattner calls “the blame game”, whereby
people jockey for praise and display a some-
times ruthless determination to avoid blame.
For 15 years, my role in academia was at
the interface of pastoral and academicYou may plead that you were just
doing your job. But we’ve heard
that one before. You abused your
power. Now you are stuck with
someone who hates your guts