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Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 16 February 1999. A discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:

The Report, dated 25 January 1999, of the Council on the construction of a Library at Clarkson Road for the Physical Sciences, Technology, and Mathematics (p. 301).

Professor M. SCHOFIELD:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as Chairman of the Library Syndicate I rise simply to express the Syndicate's pleasure that the Council has been able to put this Report to the Regent House, thanks to the efforts of the Vice-Chancellor and many other colleagues, but above all to the generosity of Mr Gordon Moore and Mrs Betty Moore.

It is only a couple of years ago that some of us served on a General Board Working Party charged with making recommendations for the future of library provision for the Sciences in the University. We became very conscious of the richness of library holdings, but equally of the unsatisfactoriness of the arrangements for housing them, with, as I recall, 87% of the stock held by the Scientific Periodicals Library kept underground in stacks reaching their limit of possible expansion and not ordinarily visitable by readers.

Now, two years later, we can celebrate the good fortune of our colleagues in Physical Sciences, Technology, and Mathematics in the prospect of a new building adequate for the twenty-first century.

The Report of the General Board, dated 27 January 1999, on the establishment of a Professorship of Haemato-oncology (p. 331).

Dr G. R. EVANS:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report should not be before the Regent House at all yet. The new rules for the conduct of Council business between its less frequent meetings enable the Executive Committee to take the decision to publish such Reports on our behalf, unless a member of the Council asks within a rather narrow time-frame for them to come before the full Council. An accident led to my message not being received in time. So my first point is to underline a continuing concern with the leaching of the Council's decision-making to the unelected Executive Committee. (The unelected Committee on Committees chooses who shall be on the Executive Committee, on principles not disclosed to the Council. It will not surprise that I am not among its membership.) But I am sure no Report will again come before the University without proper opportunity for the whole Council to take the decision.

In other respects the spacing out of Council meetings seems a good thing, because it should allow us more time to reflect on the papers. Nearly a ream of them used to come on Friday afternoons for disposal on Monday morning, and that allowed scant time for stock-taking and consultation.

One of the concerns I wished to raise quietly, in the context of our duty to look at the whole context of the lodging-place of a prospective new Chair, has now been in the national press. The Independent of 9 February carried an article about a trial in France over the supply of HIV-contaminated blood for transfusion. The Times of 10 February carried the story, too, of 'controversy over the absence of key witnesses, including a Cambridge professor'. 'Jean-Pierre Allain...was convicted of fraud in connection with the scandal in 1992.' What is going on in Haematology?, I wanted to ask the Council to enquire, for this and other reasons which I shall put to them in a less public way before the Grace is published. It is proposed that in the haematology area of this University's work we should go ahead with a new Chair in white cell, not red cell work. As a member of the Council I should like to be aware of the reasons.

At the end of the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo wrote a monograph De ordine, an early work on chaos theory, after he had been kept awake at night by the gurglings in the pipes caused by fallen leaves. The leaves were first blocking the pipes and then being shifted by the pressure of the water to move on and cause another blockage. The larger point I want to make concerns this contrast of block and flow in our own affairs.

The contrast between what finds its way easily through the channels in this University when the right people are moving the leaves aside, and what stops up the sinks when the influential neglect to telephone the plumber, is of concern to us all.

Let me illustrate. In February, 1981 (Reporter, 1980-81, pp. 330-62) there was a huge Discussion of the denial of upgrading to a University Assistant Lecturer, who has since made a successful career for himself as a professor elsewhere. It went on for two days and overflowed into Great St Mary's and tickets had to be issued. Speaker after speaker called for an inquiry. 'The English Faculty is a shambles, bureaucratically and pedagogically,' said D. E. Simpson (p. 349). He lamented that 'nobody is going to be able to change it, within the proper channels at present available.' I do not know whether the affairs of the English Faculty are now better regulated but there was certainly never any inquiry. No response to this Discussion was, it seems, ever published. Inaction set in.

Is it going to be like that again, as we face the outcome of the ballots and the beginning of a new promotions round? Will it all blunder on, unconcernedly pushing aside the fallen leaves of the careers of our academic staff? I received today a letter from Professor Iliffe, who is Chair of our Faculty Committee this year. I asked him what I was to do about the failure of Professor Skinner to give me the feedback I had asked for. 'I understand from Professor Skinner that feedback...was provided in accordance with the requirements of the scheme as described in the yellow booklet,' he says. But it was not provided at all. I am being blocked by the influential persons in this equation.

If a few such influential figures are prepared to insist that we resolve our present problems, and in a way which will do the University credit, that is what will happen. It will take no more than the kind of purposeful exercise of will which got this proposal for the establishment of a Chair of Haemato-oncology through the system. I am encouraged by signs that this may now be becoming possible centrally, despite the deeply dispiriting correspondence with Professor Iliffe about the Faculty Committee's determination to go remorselessly on without examining its conduct in the light of the material disclosed to me in the victimization case.

All is not well yet. Yesterday I received my copy of the expensively produced, porphyrous booklet, containing the new promotions procedures. But we are in the middle of voting about those procedures. The ballot papers are not due to be returned until 19 February. How much did it cost to go ahead with the printing and circulation of this fait accompli?

And can the dates realistically be met? I have questions (see p. 5 of the booklet). I need some of the terms used in the booklet defined. I need in particular to know what is meant by an 'interdisciplinary subject' so that I may identify mine. I need to know what I am to do as a candidate who has been refused by the Chairman of her committee the feedback she needs to enable her to make a new application. I need to know what is being done about the queries I have raised about the evidence of carelessness and negligent misstatement in the documentation disclosed to me, which is all going back into consideration of my case for this year. I need to know what is going to happen about the impossibility of any member of the committees considering my case impartially now.

I do not think I shall get answers to these questions in time to apply by 1 March. But if I do not apply by 1 March I cannot apply at all. And if I do apply, I shall not be able to change anything in the light of any answers I may be given. Surely others will have similar pressing questions to telephone through to 32270.

Perhaps one way of handling these concerns will be to deem a speech on what is technically a non-Report to be a non-speech and not to publish it. Non-speeches now appear a real possibility.

You may have been puzzled by a note on p. 364 of the Reporter of 10 February. Perhaps I may take a moment to explain it, since it is not irrelevant to what I have been saying about the 'block and flow' patterns of our conduct of our affairs. The note says that 'the Editor of the Reporter regrets the delay in publishing the remarks' made on 26 January about the Annual Abstract of Accounts. 'It is hoped to publish the remarks at an early date.' What is going on?, you ask.

It is extremely rare for a speech not to be published as given and immediately. On a previous occasion, I believe, a former Treasurer was called a 'demented alchemist'; that phrase was then suppressed. It will be interesting to see if the words can be published now, when their context is forgotten. The delay in publication this time has been caused by legal advice comprehensively to emasculate my remarks, under a provision in the Ordinances (p. 115).

But what I said was true. (Though one member of last year's Promotions Committee of the General Board has been saying things about my veracity which must lead one to suspect that this newly created Professor has not been able to preserve the impartiality which is surely a duty and condition of membership of the General Board's Committee, and I hope that individual will be removed from the Committee in disgrace after a full and impartial inquiry. That should not be blocked now it has been publicly raised.)

The Registrary and I have had a frank exchange of views on the contrast between the present delay in publication of a speech for three weeks; and what happened after the Discussion of 12 May last year. I went to him at 8 a.m. the next morning and represented to him that I had been defamed. The University took legal advice then and went ahead and published every word, the very next week. The Registrary knows that I accept he is acting in each case in good faith, on legal advice, and that he has behaved as the Statutes and Ordinances require. Chemist though he is, I do not allege that there has been any maddened mixing of potions here, any distillation in alembics. He and I have been able to have this out face to face. Some of what was to be deleted has been restored. It is to his credit (and perhaps to mine) that we remain on the best of terms. That is the way to do it, and more of the same will obviate the need for the raising of concerns quite so publicly.

It is just that the legal advice went in opposite directions. In a world of 'fair is foul and foul is fair', this is a foul against the little man. A single individual was held up to ridicule and contempt in this forum last May, by speakers, several of whom spoke as serving members of the General Board and Council, and by a Pro-Vice-Chancellor who admitted that he had agreed at a meeting of himself, the Vice-Chancellor, the Registrary, the Secretary-General, and the Treasurer, to make a speech against me. (It will be recollected that Professor Needham claimed to describe the contents of a document he had not seen.) After the Discussion of 12 May, Radio 4 was going to run the story on the 10 p.m. news except that it could not get my detractors to repeat their allegations on air. (I would have said 'cowardly detractors', but I expect that would have been defamatory.) I have never had any apology, from any individual, or from the University in which I hold a higher doctorate and my modest University Office, for what was done to me on that 'day of infamy' (cf. Reporter, 1997-98, pp. 714-16 and 826, and Reporter, 3 February 1999, pp. 335 and 339-40 for comment).

In the cutting of my published speech without my consent there has been an infringement of my moral rights of authorship (which I assert publicly here); attempted censorship in the face of the Public Interest Disclosure Act, and of s. 202 of the Education Reform Act of 1988, which gives academic staff a special protection of their freedom of speech; possibly a breach of European human rights legislation. Our precious historic freedom to speak out in this Senate-House in the interest of the University is imperilled.

I understand that even if what is said is true, it may be held to be defamatory, from the context in which it is set. So I propose now to indicate what is in the deleted portions, out of their original context.

In tomorrow's Reporter [17 February], before 'I have been punished', dots will replace 'The prolegomena to this bill contain'; what followed after that you may entertain yourselves by speculating.

My assertion before 'So Taylor Vinters must be held responsible in part,' has disappeared. It has unquestionably been on legal advice that the Vice-Chancellor has for so long refused to meet me for talks towards finding solutions. The lawyers have taken that out, though I think it important that that be said in his defence. After 'in-house legal service', dots will replace my attempt to encourage the University to think hard about whether it ought to go on using Taylor Vinters as its solicitor for a conflict of interest reason I will not identify now out of consideration for the person it concerns. But the problem needs looking at.

Since I made the speech you are all waiting to read (I do not flatter myself with impatience), I have taken advice on the subject of costs. My adviser used the words 'excessive', 'unreasonable', again and again, with his hair standing on end like that of the demented alchemist whose censored ghost I see hovering over your head, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

I now ask: have Taylor Vinters warned the University about the difference between 'own client costs' and 'inter partes costs', i.e., that what the hearing was costing the University, and for which it has already paid, might not be recoverable? It is a duty of a solicitor to make that clear to a client so that the client may decide whether to pursue the matter in the knowledge that it is certainly throwing some money away. The University itself has a right to challenge its bill. Has it regularly sought a remuneration certificate from the Law Society to enable it to question the figures Taylor Vinters were presenting?

Taylor Vinters give a single rate for all work. They should set separate rates for travelling time and waiting time and hearing time and conference time. No rates are given for telephone calls out, letters out. There has been charging at full partner's rates for non-fee work, which is normally absorbed in the overheads of the firm. These are routine secretarial jobs. Why is the partner collating papers at £140 an hour?

There has been duplication, with the same work being charged for more than once. There is also the question of use of an unnecessarily expensive Counsel. His fee of £5,500 for a two-hour hearing is apparently startling for someone who is not a QC. And there is no breakdown of what he is charging for.

The costs question has now been resolved. It has been agreed that the University will not take the £14,000 and that, in the interests of trying to solve things amicably I will drop current litigation.

One last point on the Chair of Haemato-oncology itself. Will the Council look into the exact process by which the NHS money was brought into the picture?

This has, I fear, been what politicians call a 'wide-ranging' speech, but our problems are now so intri-cately meshed that I am sure it will be easy for the intellectually sure-footed members of the Regent House to follow me from 'blood' to 'clots' without its being taken that any metaphorical sense of the latter term is intended. That might be defamatory. We shall have to tread cautiously in future with our verba propria, translata, simplicia, composita,...honesta,...amoena1, not for the sake of style but for fear of the lawyers.

1 M. Cornelius Fronto, letter to Marcus Aurelius.


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Cambridge University Reporter, 24 February 1999
Copyright © 1999 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.