Reporter 7/11/01: Report of a Discussion

Report of a Discussion

Tuesday, 30 October 2001. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Report:

The Report of the General Board, dated 3 October 2001, on the re-establishment of a Professorship of International Macroeconomics (Reporter, p. 92). Under the provisions of Regulation 6 for Discussions (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 112) the Registrary has omitted fourteen words from the remarks made by Dr Evans; these omissions are indicated by square brackets.

Dr G. R. EVANS

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I had intended to refrain from speaking on this Report, since the chief point of wider implication it raises is the need for us to consider systematically our practice and policy about continuing in existence Chairs created in principle for limited periods. We have slid, as in so many things, into dealing piecemeal with something which needs a policy.

The lack of vigilance in the General Board's conduct of its affairs is as relevant to candidates for Chairs by other routes, such as this one, as it is to those seeking personal promotions. So I shall speak very briefly to that aspect of what is proposed here. The Report (p. 114) has the usual paragraph (2), designed to satisfy the requirements of the judgement of Sedley, J, in my judicial review leave application in 1997 (Reporter, 22 October 1997). 'The Board were able to see how the Committee had arrived at their evaluations', it says. Professor Badger, member of the General Board and Chairman of my Faculty Promotions Committee told me in my feedback, which was tape-recorded and conducted in the presence of a witness, that he asked a question at the General Board meeting (of 10 October) about the absence of my name from the list. He said he 'was not looking for a rational account'. He admitted to me in the feedback that he could not give me a reasoned explanation of what had happened. Yet the General Board of which Professor Badger is a member has a duty under the University's Statute K,9 to satisfy itself that it can see how its committees to which it delegates the task of actually considering the candidates for promotion arrived at their decisions. Sedley, J, anticipated that the introduction of a system of evaluations would cure this defect. In the absence of adequate reasons to explain changes in the evaluations denying a candidate promotion, it is arguable in law that that defect has not been cured. But more importantly for the unsafe character of the decisions in all the cases where candidates failed this year, Professor Badger admits that he and the remainder of the General Board did not so satisfy themselves. I would just like candidates to know that before the new unlawful early closing date for appeals.

It will (just) not be too late when this is published for those seeking to appeal to ask for the documents in the process which relate to their own candidature, to which they are now entitled under the Data Protection Act from 24 October, including references where the referees have given consent for disclosure in the slip provided to them this year. Of course the General Board office could just send them straight out. Now.

The statistical grids which will tell us all whether the General Board Committees were operating a secret quota and, consciously or unconsciously, downgrading more candidates from their Faculties' top evaluations need to be made available too, if the appeals process is to be conducted fairly. There seem to have been rather a lot of those this year.

There is a hint on the Personnel section of the web page that there is now a policy of positive discrimination: degrading to women and unfair to men. The statistics will be revealing about that, too, if they will allow us to see them before we finalize our appeals.

So back to this General Board recommendation. How many seconds did they spend on their supervisory duties here? Who will 'supervise' the creation of that 'ad hoc Board of electors' (p. 92)? Whose names will come to the Nominations Committee ready-made? [Fourteen words omitted.]

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