Harassment hotspots should lose research funding, says Solloway

Bullying and harassment is everywhere. The government should clean up their own house first before they start imposing extreme measures on academia. I don’t know what Ms Solloway’s credentials are, but she shows her naïveté about academic research. Academics are under extreme pressure to gain external funding for research support, training postgraduate students and publishing their research, while expected to carry a heavy teaching load. Successful researchers are working overtime (nights and weekends) to achieve expected results. Universities need to lighten teaching loads for successful researchers. This will reduce stress levels, which will reduce incidents of harassment. To penalise by withholding research funds is not the way forward.

Actually the government needs to look further into bullying and harassment at universities. This must start with the toxic woke agenda often blatantly manifest throughout universities where people who can barely speak English are 'teaching' English Law and even English. Last time I checked University fees were well over £500 per course, students didn't pay to hear barely understandable mutterings and mispronounced words in a lecture. Not only that we are then treated to the most narrow view of life possible, by far too many staff of all hues, who have an inordinate amount of opportunity to make or break a career. That sort of bullying of students, when they are forced to write garbage to pass, particularly grinds on those with long string of qualifications and professional experience. They see the manipulation and bigotry immediately. This type of systemic bullying of any student let alone ones with professional experience cannot go on.

There are many aspects to bullying, and even more to harassment, as ever (in)Human Resources fail to deal with such things effectively, often threatening those Trades Union reps who are charged with protecting their members from abusive management in attempts to silence them, non-rep's without the protection of the law are simply dismissed. I put much of this down to the professional managerialism which now controls much of the sector, especially where Universities governing bodies comprised of business people appoint 'failed in the real world' managers to run the show, their CV's often make interesting reading with the phrase 'agent for change' being commonplace amongst the worst offenders. Harvard business school has much to be blamed for.