Reporter 21/11/01: Report of a Discussion

Report of a Discussion

Tuesday, 13 November 2001. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Report:

The Annual Report of the General Board, dated 10 October 2001, on the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships (Reporter, p. 114).

Professor M. J. GRANT

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I offer a warm welcome to this Report. In doing so, I declare an interest. I am a member of the General Board, and of the Board's Promotions Committee. But my comments today are not offered on their behalf. They are made in a personal capacity. Having been so closely involved in the process this year, I am indeed confident that the promotions that the General Board have recommended are an appropriate reflection of the excellence, the breadth, and the depth of research that is currently under way at Cambridge. These are truly exceptional candidates, whose academic merits have been through a robust process of rigorous appraisal.

To put their achievements in focus, it may assist members of the Regent House if I flesh out some of the background to the bare bones of the Report, and if I demonstrate why I believe the process to have been fair.

An analysis of the some of statistics provides a useful starting point. There were in the current round fifty-one applications for Professorships, from forty-five men and six women. They were considered in the first instance by the Faculty Promotions Committees. They forwarded to the General Board's Committee the applications of thirty-eight men and six women. A further application (male) was forwarded following an appeal. With two exceptions, all candidates for Professorships already held Readerships in the University. The General Board's Committee proposed the award of Professorships to twenty-seven men and four women (the figures for the previous year were thirty-one and two respectively).

For Readerships, applications were received from eighty-four men and nineteen women, of which those for seventy men and thirteen women were forwarded to the General Board's Committee, with a further application (woman) forwarded following an appeal. The General Board's Committee proposed the award of Readerships to fifty-two men and twelve women (the figures for the previous year were forty-three and eight respectively).

There was a wide variation in age of candidates. No official record has been kept of the age profile. A candidate's age is irrelevant to the evaluation of the application, and in many cases the candidate's age was not disclosed in their curriculum vitae. However, personal curiosity drove me to do my own rough estimate. On my calculations, the average age of those applying for Readerships across the University was forty-seven, with a range of thirty-six to sixty-four. For Professorships, the average was fifty-three, with a range of age between forty-one to sixty-six. The mean was fairly constant across all the Schools of the University, particularly with Professorships, though the average age for Readership applications was slightly higher (at fifty-one) in the School of Arts and Humanities.

Now for the process. This is set out in skeletal form in the Report. However, the actual practice is more interesting. The General Board Committee is not a sub-committee of General Board members. Only two members of the General Board, the Vice-Chancellor and myself, were members of the Promotions Committee, although other General Board members will have participated as members of Faculty Committees. The General Board Committee drew on strengths from across the University. This year, it comprised the following members: Professor Ashby from the Department of Engineering; Professor Bonfield (Depart-ment of Materials Science and Metallurgy); Professor Bennett (Geography); Professor Daunton (Faculty of History); Professor Ford (Faculty of Divinity); Professor Robbins (Experimental Psychology); myself, and the Vice-Chancellor as Chair. It also had two external members: Professor Averill Cameron, Warden of Keble College, Oxford, and Professor Carol Jordan (Physics), Oxford.

The reality of membership only truly becomes apparent when the papers arrive. This year, they filled no fewer than nine lever arch files. For each candidate, we were provided with a copy of: the full application; the supporting case; a full set of references, in many cases going back for two or more years; the standard-form report of the appraisal by the Faculty Promotions Committee, and the minutes of that Committee. I found that it took me at least eight days to read all of the papers thoroughly, and to do a preliminary evalu-ation of each candidate. It became apparent in the deliberations of the Committee that all its members had done their homework with similar thoroughness. But we had not come to identical provisional conclusions on all candidates. Some were straightforward: the evi-dence pointed in only one direction. These were truly outstanding candidates, who had unqualified support from their peers in Cambridge and from a bank of internationally respected referees.

The Committee spent two days in its collective deliberations. For the first, it sub-divided. One committee considered the applications from (to put it loosely) the arts-side of the University (chaired by Professor Daunton), and the other the applications from the science-side (chaired by the Vice-Chancellor). On the second day, some weeks later, the whole committee met, chaired by the Vice-Chancellor. It reviewed the provisional conclusions of its sub-committees, and it considered in particular detail those cases where a sub-committee had felt that the conclusion was not clear cut.

This was a wholly evidence-based exercise. The criteria are clearly stated in the procedural booklet. As would be the case with a judge in a court of law, members of the Committee were obliged to dismiss all other considerations and focus on what was before them. They needed to be personally indifferent as to the outcomes for individual candidates. There were no quotas or financial limitations, and no a priori stipulations or assumptions as to desired success rates. While it was invaluable to have such a wide spread of academic background on the Committee, members were not appointed for their specific academic expertise.

The most important qualities they brought to the process were their personal integrity, and their long experience in judging evidence of research strength: their ability to read academic references with an appropriately judicious eye, to find evidence in support of the criteria the referees and the Faculty Committees had been invited to address, and to weigh and evaluate what was before them. In the great majority of cases, as the figures I have given demonstrate, the General Board Committee came to a conclusion identical to the Faculty Committee. The difference between the two levels of evaluation is that whereas the Faculty Committee sees only the applications from its particular Faculty, the General Board Committee sees all the applications forwarded to it, and applies the same perspective to all of them. It has external representation, which further enhances its moderating role. We are deeply indebted to our Oxford colleagues, Professors Cameron and Jordan, for their contribution to our work.

The quality of refereeing, incidentally, varied enormously. Many referees are content still to provide no more than a brief paragraph or two of assertion. Others, far more helpfully to the Committee, undertake a scrupulously careful review of the candidate's work and place it in its intellectual context.

For unsuccessful candidates, this description of the process may provide cold comfort. Yet in the great majority of unsuccessful cases, the question seemed to me to be not one of principle but of timing. The Committee's conclusion was that the evidence was not yet sufficient on one or more of the criteria. Many of this year's successful candidates had applied in earlier years, and I detected no bias against their applications. It is important to understand that the University will stand by its bargain of promoting those who satisfy its appropriately high criteria for promotion.

I look forward to this afternoon's Discussion. There are, I understand, no standing orders regulating these proceedings. Yet, speaking entirely personally, I believe that there are principles of conduct which I would hope that discussants would generally observe. Put simply, they derive from the qualities of courtesy and integrity.

First, I believe strongly that, in common with most other institutions, we should expect discussants to declare any personal interest they have in the matter under discussion, so that we may properly evaluate the independence of their viewpoint.

Second, I personally find quite unacceptable in an academic forum such as this, where contributions are published verbatim, the use of insults or gratuitous personal attacks on individuals. So, too, the unsubstantiated questioning of colleagues' motives. Parliamentary rules expect that a Member will be given advance warning of such an attack, and the opportunity to be present to provide an explanation or mount a defence. In this University, a member may only discover that such an attack has been made when it appears in the Reporter many days later, when there is no opportunity to reply or put the record straight. I believe that the University has a responsibility to protect its employees from this practice, which seems intended to humiliate its victims and has the capacity to cause deep hurt.

In my opinion (and I stress that it is only a personal view) the quality of Discussions in the Senate-House could greatly benefit were these simple precepts of courtesy and integrity to be more generally observed. I have no difficulty with rigorous argument, nor with accusations of impropriety that are firmly based on evidence that is capable, if need be, of standing up in a court of law.

I hope in particular that with the comments I have made on this year's promotions process I have set out sufficiently my own personal view on the character and integrity both of the process and of the other academics engaged in it.

Professor D. N. DUMVILLE

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as always on this annual occasion, it is a pleasure to congratulate those whose names appear in this Report and whose hard work and eminence in their respective fields have brought them recognition here. Let us, however, spare some thoughts for those whose names are absent from these lists and especially for those whose proximity to retirement has robbed them of a further application. Let us also think of our most famous unpromoted Lecturer, whose case continues to cause astonishment around the world and embarrassment in Cambridge. Some shenanigans behind the present lists will no doubt find their way into the public domain before long.

A few weeks ago, on 16 October, a member of the General Board and its committee on promotions, who happened to be present and armed with appropriate documentation, added an 'unscripted' note to a Discussion on another subject, assuring us that all was well with the General Board's promotions procedures and especially the actions of its Promotions Committee (Reporter, p. 132). I welcome the fact that Professor Grant has also taken the trouble to introduce this Report today. At the time, I charitably described this view as dangerously complacent and drew attention to the erratic quality of the results over the years (Reporter, p. 132).

I propose today to amplify those remarks, for they go to the heart of the matter. Various colleagues and I have had occasion in recent years to complain about the risks, and seeming role, of patronage and prejudice in our promotions process. This problem is given extra point by the current proposals for radical restructuring of the career-ladder for UTOs and of the associated promotions procedures. If implemented, these will place in very few hands extraordinary influence, not to say power and patronage - a retrograde step indeed.

The time has come to begin to illustrate these concerns with specific examples, the first today. The aim is not to heap obloquy on individuals, and I shall not name any person whose permission to be named has not been given. But the edge of discussion about our ad hominem promotions procedure needs further sharpening.

About four years ago, within the period of the General Board's reformed procedures, a Professor in a humane subject was appointed by this process, whose elevation occasioned much comment both within and outside this University. I have therefore, for the present purpose, investigated that Professor's publication record and report as follows.

The Professor's output at the time of promotion was two slender books, amounting in total to about 375 pages, and a handful of articles. When the same person had been promoted to Reader about a decade earlier (under the unreformed procedures) the output was of course less. The whole is able to be contained, in photocopied form, within a modestly gussetted A4 envelope which (with your permission, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor) I display here as my first visual illustration of my developing point: it is about three-quarters of an inch thick.

Take, by contrast, the notorious case of Dr Gillian Evans, to whom I have given private notice that once again I propose to discuss her case for promotion in this House. She has kindly made available to me, for my second visual illustration, a trolleyload of her publications (not including most of her almost two hundred scholarly articles) which now stand before you. There are, of course, different ways of stacking such a body of printed matter, but I shall perhaps be forgiven if I say in approximation that they stand some feet high. On the face of it, there is a cause for concern. Her principal publications, as far as 1998, were listed in the Reporter (1997-98, p. 716). As a scholar in an overlapping field, I gave my opinion as to the general quality of her work on mediaeval subjects in a Discussion on 7 December, 1999 (Reporter, 1999-2000, pp. 293-4). She famously remains a Lecturer, not appearing on the present lists of promotions (or on any since she was first put forward - belatedly - by her Faculty in 1992 when she was already the author of significantly more publications than was the Professor - who has been my point of comparison - at the time of that Professor's promotion some few years ago).

Now of course I can expect the objection to be raised that this very graphic comparison is one of quantity, not of quality. I have already given my opinion in public on the quality of Dr Evans's work, as far as I am competent to do so. This year, as is well known, the Promotions Committee of the Faculty of History at last put her forward, for a personal Professorship, with the highest possible recommendation. The General Board's Promotions Committee, as is also well known, took the view that there was reasonable doubt as to the quality of this trolleyload of published scholarship. Dr Evans's work has brought her worldwide recognition. What does the General Board think that it knows which is hidden from the rest of us?

I continue therefore with my comparison. I have sought competent opinions on the work (as it stood at the moment of promotion) of the Professor whom I am taking as a point of comparison. The resulting views I can summarize as follows (but slightly more fully than is provided in feedback from the General Board's Promotions Committee). There was not a large body of work. What was there is competent but not much more: there was no clear evidence of promise of more than just solid future publication. Editorship of collaborative volumes looked to be the form of future contributions.

What are we to conclude from such discrepancies? What those Professors who gave me their opinions added universally was that my comparative Professor was a useful person to have on a committee. I leave aside for the moment from my deductions the alliterative pair of patronage and prejudice, although it is hard to imagine that these twin evils have not played their accustomed roles. What I deduce is that the General Board may have wanted (and perhaps still wants) to have in senior academic positions persons whom it would find useful, whether to fulfil one particular function or another or to be politically reliable.

The first question which I raise is whether such an approach is necessary. Why should we not have a senior grade for such persons, giving them extra status and income, but without the implication that they have successfully leapt through the hoops to strictly academic promotion? What title would be appropriate? 'Director' has some current caché, but so too (it seems) does 'Secretary'. (If I were such a person, I might like the title 'Mr Secretary Dumville'.) Perhaps the Central Bodies could come forward with such a proposal, which as a structural reform might command widespread assent.

Over the years, we have become accustomed, given the demands of Headships of Departments and the like, for established Chairs to be filled by persons who have combined scholarly and administrative ability or who, if that happy balance could not be found, might be more qualified as administrators and academic politicians. (Perhaps now that Headships are no longer so universally and so tightly tied to established Chairs, we might see some reversal of that trend.) But ad hominem Readerships and Professorships are granted explicitly for scholarly achievement, and this has been very clearly canonized in our multicoloured series of annual instruction booklets.

If, therefore, in the period since reforms of our promotions procedures began (I say nothing now of the preceding era), promotions have been granted without the academic requirements having been clearly met, that would constitute corruption. It is devoutly to be wished that that has not happened. But sufficient doubts have arisen to sap what little confidence was placed in those reforms which the General Board was willing to concede. We have one very worrying prima facie case, and various colleagues around the University have pressed others on me.

What is to be done about this? At present we are being offered major structural reform of promotions procedures and career structure for UTOs, presumably to come into effect next year. We shall no doubt be discussing that here in due course. There is little sign that the General Board is grasping the double-headed nettle - rather the reverse. And the way in which the proposals have been laid out, with an Aunt-Sally option being put up against the General Board's preferred scheme, once again suggests an authority contemptuous of its colleagues in the Peripheral Bodies.

What is to be done is what it now seems should have been done long ago. I call on the General Board to resign its hold over the process and to hand it to an impartial and competent authority, one which has (and can have) no vested interest in the outcome of each year's competition. I say to Professor Grant and to his colleagues on the General Board's Promotions Committee and on the General Board itself that it is, to say the least, hard to have the confidence which we are invited to repose in their stewardship of the promotions procedure.

What else can be done? The result of the annual promotions round is one in which the University should be able to have not merely confidence but pride. Significant numbers of our colleagues are being recommended for promotion on grounds of their outstanding scholarly contributions. We could all rejoice unreservedly in this if a simple measure were implemented. Let a whole issue of the Reporter each year be devoted to the proposals for promotion. Let us publish either the full curriculum vitae or the list of publications of each person recommended for promotion. Let us publish too - and not anonymously - that one of the references (subject to the permission of its author, which is not likely to be withheld) for each successful candidate which in the view of the ultimate promotions committee best encapsulates the qualifications of that candidate for promotion. In other words, let the process come to a transparent conclusion, and let us enjoy celebrating and publishing a conclusion in which we can take justifiable pride.

I have suggested what could be done. What will be done? On past form, it will be not enough or indeed will be the wrong thing. Year after year, on this occasion, concerns have been voiced that the process has not worked well. Out of regard for colleagues who have achieved recommendations for promotion, no attempt has ever been made to challenge the General Board's annual Report on promotions. I have to say to this House and to the General Board that patience is wearing very thin. In future, if recommendations for promotion are brought forward which members of this community find questionable, the General Board must expect a challenge to its Report. That we should come to such a pass is a ghastly state of affairs and a grim commentary both on the process itself and on the mood of the University, which could do with peace on this matter and on others, and which would dearly like to feel pride in the working of its institutions.

The General Board has in general, and as is well known, refused to attempt any meeting of minds on this matter with those who have been urging reform. This points up a sharp contrast with the circumstances being applauded in the most recent Discussion on the Unified Administrative Service (Reporter, p. 145).

Indeed, when in the past members of the Regent House have put forward constructive suggestions for reform, members of the General Board have fanned out across the College dining-halls of Cambridge to practise the black arts of spin, rubbishing, and character assassination. I am most grateful to those many colleagues who have kept me informed of all that. No doubt we shall see more of it in the coming weeks. But these are the tactics of a body which has collectively, and over a good many years, lost its way, and which has in consequence more or less lost its legitimacy. It can begin to regain the trust of this community by showing that it is willing both to engage constructively in discussion to provide credible reform of the promotions procedures and to hand that process to an independent and impartial body.

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I have returned from working away in order to be present at and to contribute to this Discussion. We are discussing a process and an annual Report which, sooner or later, touch the lives of most of this University's teaching officers and some others besides. For the health of our community, now and in the future, this issue must be resolved.

Dr D. R. J. LAMING

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this year was the last occasion on which I was able to apply for promotion and, of course, I am disappointed not to see my name included in the General Board's list. But, because it was my last occasion, I am now able to say what I do on behalf of younger colleagues who are restrained from speaking out themselves for fear of damaging their future careers.

The Promotions Committee of the Faculty of Biology had this to say about my application:

Dr Laming is very highly esteemed by experts in psychophysics. His papers and books have had a high impact in this field, being original, rigorous, and scholarly. Unfortunately, psychophysics no longer occupies the central place in psychology that it once did, and his work has not had the high impact more widely in the subject that would ordinarily be expected from the holder of a Cambridge chair. This may be partly because the work has appeared too difficult and inaccessible to the community at large. It was agreed to recommend Dr Laming as a good candidate for promotion.

The first two sentences are, of course, 'bog standard'. It is the next two that matter and what especially merits attention is that they are not, in fact, about my research at all, but merely about other psychologists' reaction to it.

The view seems to be widespread that research, on the one hand, and the reaction of others in the subject to that research, on the other, are not distinct - that to evaluate the 'feedback' is to evaluate the research. Many applicants for promotion will have good objective arguments to support their case, but they are not allowed to present those arguments to their Promotions Committee. I went out of my way to establish that that was so before this present round began. The confusion between the research itself and what others say about that research is institutionalized (and, to anticipate one rejoinder here, the Personal Statement is much too easily disregarded). So why is it that Promotions Committees are not allowed to know about an applicant's research itself?

Let us suppose that one or more of the members of a Promotions Committee are out of their depth - that they lack the intellectual ability to appraise the work that their subordinates have published. A Promotions Committee that actually looked at the research would expose the limitations of such a member and that must never be allowed. So the deliberations of Promotions Committees are restricted - never mind what those committees pretend to be doing - are restricted to appraising 'feedback' only.

In The Gondoliers W. S. Gilbert lampooned the Duke of Plaza-Toro:

In enterprise of martial kind,

When there was any fighting,

He led his regiment from behind -

He found it less exciting.

But when away his regiment ran,

His place was at the fore, O -

Evaluating the reaction of others rather than the research itself is a 'Duke of Plaza-Toro' way of selecting candidates for promotion. But this University should be in the business of making reputations, not borrowing them.

But there is another viper hidden in the appraisal of 'feedback'. The Promotions Committee of the Faculty of Biology is comprised of the nine Heads of Departments, eight biology Departments and psychology, (together with a chairman and a member appointed by the General Board). The eight biology heads are not going to know much about current fashions in experimental psychology and the source of the comments on my application is obvious. But why should any Head of Department wish to disparage an application from one of his own subordinates?

Envisage this scenario: a Head of Department, or someone in a similar managerial position, wishes to secure the promotion of a favoured subordinate. That objective is complicated by another unorchestrated application, because promotion depends on securing support from fellow members of the Promotions Committee and it would be greedy to ask for support for two subordinates in the same round. One of the two applications has to be sacrificed. But the one to be sacrificed has a clean slate of referees' reports and the Promotions Committee will not agree to any statement that is in open conflict with those reports. So it is the 'feedback' that has to be disparaged - that is 'safe'.

'Unfortunately, psychophysics no longer occupies the central place in psychology that it once did' - that is true. Psychophysics occupied about one half of a famous textbook published in 1905. But what has that to do with my application for promotion? '… his work has not had the high impact more widely in the subject that would ordinarily be expected from the holder of a Cambridge chair.' Well, that depends on who one has been listening to, and a Head of Department who has no interest at all in psychophysics is scarcely going to be listening to anyone. But it is the next sentence that especially matters.

'This may be partly because the work has appeared too difficult and inaccessible to the community at large.' I have been told by the Chairman of my Faculty Promotions Committee that that sentence refers to the fact that I use mathematics in my published work. It happens that rather few psychologists have the intellectual equipment to read mathematics. Many of them, especially in this University, have entered the subject as an escape from the rigours of the physical sciences. But, after 150 years of careful quantitative experimentation, the accumulated volume of data is not going to be put together accurately without precise mathematical argument. Just imagine what engineering and physics would be like if the use of mathematics was systematically discouraged in those disciplines. The sentence quoted is the remark of an academic Luddite. What it really signifies is that certain areas of the subject - and my area is the historic core of experimental psychology - are effectively excluded as grounds for promotion because of the intellectual deficits, not of the applicant, but of psychologists at large.

There is also another problem here - a Head of Department, or someone in a similar managerial position, who has been appointed beyond his or her intellectual abilities. The first priority of such a head is not the leadership of a department, but keeping his or her intellectual deficits hidden. When exposure is felt to be threatened, he or she resorts to bullying and to harassment. Those subordinates who are thought to present a threat are, so far as possible, written out of the script. When such a Head of Department sits on a promotion committee, preference is given to those subordinates who are supportive of his or her intellectual shortcomings. Objective appraisal on the basis of published research is out of the question.

This has an obvious consequence for subordinates applying for promotion - and I am particularly conscious that I am speaking now on behalf of younger colleagues - and a less obvious one for the future of this University. We have a known problem in the recruitment, reward, and retention of teaching staff. So far as retention is concerned, the answer is 'promote them'. But do ensure that those who are promoted are those whom the University needs to keep (because of their likely contributions to their subjects) and not just those whom members of Faculty Promotions Committees wish to keep (because of the support they provide to a Head of Department out of his or her intellectual depth). But present promotions procedures will, in the long term, have this particularly undesirable consequence.

The university sector in this country is pretty much a closed system, with most teaching staff moving from one university to another within the country. There is an intellectual equilibrium to be reached when the distribution of ability is more or less uniform throughout the country, and physical scientists and engineers will recognize a similarity here to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Equilibrium is inevitable unless universities in general, and this university in particular, find a way to identify those staff who especially need to be promoted - not those who are supportive of less than adequate Heads of Departments, but those who have much to contribute to the corpus of knowledge and understanding in their respective subjects.

At present, this University stands at the top of the heap, chiefly consequent on its being the most wealthy. Intellectually speaking, the only way it can go is 'down'. And that is already happening. It is fashionable in Cambridge to refer to this University as 'world-class'. Now if this University were manifestly world-class, there would be no need to say it. But the fact that more than a few people feel a need to say it, again and again, signifies that subjectively they feel that it is no longer true. We are not yet world-class in the sense in which the former German Democratic Republic was democratic, but the similarity is there.

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, we need urgently to establish a promotions procedure in which promotion goes to the most able, not to the sycophants. This is not just a question of fairness in promotion, but of the long-term future of this University. A first step must be to remove Heads of Departments in their capacity as managers from any part of the promotion process. Otherwise the only way for this University to go, in the long term, is 'down'.

Dr G. R. EVANS

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, 'If I heard of a brilliant female lecturer, I would pounce on her,' said Lord St John of Fawsley to The Times yesterday. Once more this year I have not been pounced on. I am sure that is a sufficient declaration of interest, Professor Grant. CAPSA is next time, but that report must now form the context for our debates in this forum for many months to come. (We have had fair warning, THES, 9 November, that the National Audit Office will be here if it does not.) If it had not been for debates in this forum, for the rousing to action of our academic democracy, we should never have had the CAPSA inquiry. It would all have been hushed up. The pervasive mismanage-ment and maladministration, the sheer amateurishness of the conduct of their business by those untrained committees, infects the promotions process as it does everything else in the University. Glad though one is to see that a few more of the overdue promotions are now to be made, it is time for the Regent House to show its muscle again.

What confidence can we have that those who failed deserved to fail? No one is really telling them why. All candidates get a version of one or two standard sentences. In fact they could be told much more. The Data Protection Act entitles them to see a good deal more than the committees are giving them. Fears have been expressed to me that if candidates make use of the Data Protection Act to enforce their legal rights they will damage their chances for the future on resentful committees. One would have hoped that they need not make themselves conspicuous, that in future years the materials made available to candidates will be those they have a legal right to see anyway. More on that in a moment.

If you make a data subject request this year you will see the number of references sought. I know for sure that more than the five I would need if this were my first application say powerfully that I should have had a Chair long ago. Two of them from this year are now disclosed to me at their authors' wish and they make no bones about it. You will also learn how many people (but not who) declared an interest yet were still allowed to consider your case. For example, four of the half dozen on the Arts and Humanities sub-committee declared an interest. Only one actually withdrew. So when Professor Grant chaired (as he did in my case, though he has not admitted to that today) he had with him a committee a high proportion of whom felt they should not be there.

You will get the Minutes of the Committees as they relate to you. When Professor Grant's motley crew met on 27 July they minuted that in 1984 (yes, 1984) my work 'would have at that stage provided a strong case for promotion to a readership on the basis of the medieval work'. (I should think so, too. I was awarded a D.Litt. by Oxford in 1983.) So it is now established that I have lost professional standing and salary appropriate to a Reader in the University of Cambridge for nearly twenty years. But no, they got scared when they realized what they had said. In the Minutes of the full General Board Promotions Committee on 27 September they have chanced that 'would' to 'may'. Such a pity for the University if I seek damages for my loss in the courts, because the sloppy thinking which pervades this exercise allowed that discrepancy to stand.

More sloppy thinking. They are trying to show that my work has not 'developed' sufficiently in the last twenty years to show that I had progressed from the Readership they never gave me to the Chair they are not giving me now. So you would think recent references would be important. They admit they are positive. But they dismiss them. They say they are not as 'detailed' as other references. But if that is fair it means that the chance length or shortness of your references can deny you a Chair. They also say these recent very strong references are not as 'authoritative' as earlier ones. Why? Presumably all referees must be deemed to carry equal weight or it would be easy for committees to choose 'lightweights' for candidates they wished to sink. Despite this determined dismissal of the evidence, they did find this year that I deserved top evaluations on all but one criterion, lowering my Faculty's solid row of top evaluations by one. I am almost as interested in their ratification this year of evaluations they were denying me last year as I am in that mischievous lowering of a single one this year, which denied me a Chair.

The sub-committee gives a little more detail in its Minutes than the full General Board Committee. It asserts that 'the process was evidence-based, and it was their role to find the confirmatory evidence in the documentation for the evaluations awarded'. But I would have thought that meant including fair and equal reference to the urgent calls to give me a Chair. My Faculty flagged up one referee's comment that I have 'a unique position and international stature in modern scholarship'. The General Board Committee ignore that in their Minutes. But that was part of the evidence in the documentation. In the first year of these new procedures (the Yellow Book year) committees were required to check whether the referees themselves had a conflict of interest; how well they knew the candidate and the candidate's work. No one does that now. I am not impressed by skills in handling evidence which ought surely to be well-developed in a lawyer such as Professor Grant. I would not give him a Chair on the muddled thinking revealed in those Minutes. Just my 'peer' opinion as an academic in another field. But then he already has a Chair and all that goes with it.

I cannot end this glimpse of what really goes on on those committees without mentioning that yet again, although it did put me forward with all guns blazing this year, my Faculty Committee has not got to grips with the problem of the interdisciplinarity of my work. They said in the Minutes of their meeting of 1 February that they were not 'completely convinced of the validity' of my argument that 'an interdisciplinary methodology governed [my] work in medieval theology, ecumenism, and higher education governance'. Who are they to know? They have not read it all and I am quite sure they do not understand it. They deliberately chose only referees on medieval theology and ecumenism. The PP4 concedes that the work is interdisciplinary, while admitting that its author is unable to comment on the work on higher education. On 6 November I was given an honorary doctorate of letters by two institutions (adding to my Oxford and Cambridge higher doctorates) in recognition of my work in higher education reform. So it cannot be quite negligible. Some out there would disagree with you pretty resoundingly, Cambridge, about that aspect of my work.

It appears that a good few others were given top marks by Faculties which were downgraded just sufficiently by the General Board Committee to deny us promotion. (Do let me know if you were one of them.) Now of course Faculties can be over-eager on behalf of their own. But it is a real flaw of our present procedure that they can be overruled by a body of persons even less knowledgeable than the Faculty, about what the candidate has actually done. These 'seven veils' whisps of Minutes need to be replaced by a real encounter with the candidate; interviews; discussion, and a proper agreed record. Someone must be prepared to read those books and discuss them with the candidate in front of the committee. Did Professor Grant open even one of the books on that trolley? Candidates have got to have an opportunity to answer criticism. I resent being told that because I publish a good deal I must be doing so 'hastily'. Few of my books have been less than five years in the preparation. Why should they be able to rely on damaging inaccuracies? The Data Protection Act allows you to correct inaccurate statements about you. The Promotions Committees don't. Professor Grant says the General Board Committee conducts a 'comparative' exercise. He does not tell us how it finds a common basis on which to 'compare' linguists and astrophysicists.

I spoke about the present 'consultation' paper on promotions in some detail in a Discussion in the summer (Reporter, 2000-01, pp. 966-68). May those remarks please be taken into consideration now that the thing is circulating? And may we have a paper questionnaire sent out to everyone? That was done for the Schneider-Ross Report. The comments people write in the margins can be the most valuable part of such exercises. They may not survive for general inspection if they are merely sent in electronically. (And you can inspect them; I did in the last two promotions consultations.) You also get a better response-rate from a form in an envelope sent personally to everyone. To go back to the bad habits of the early 1990s and consult directly only 'heads of institution' and Faculty Boards (who never ask the troops), is retrogressive in the extreme. The call for electronic comments will not do as a substitute for proper consultation.

These policy matters require careful thought and consultation with us all. They should not be rushed. 'Family-friendly policies' (The Times, 12 November) discriminate against the single and the childless. And did you get a letter saying that one Appointments Committee was 'surprised not to receive any applications for Senior Lectureships this year?' I am not surprised. Those prepared to trade tenure for a modest salary rise have mostly done so, I suspect. The Old Schools will railroad through 'Model A' or 'Model B' if we don't put our collective foot down; look where the refusal to listen got us with CAPSA.

I intend to concentrate in the remainder of this speech on the detailed changes which are needed before a new promotions round is allowed to begin. A group letter to the Oxford Magazine (Fourth Week) describes promotions in Oxford as 'acutely embarrassing, both personally and corporately'. We in Cambridge must echo that when it seems no one has any control over those two, the Secretary and his Assistant. (And how am I to avoid pointing to them?). They have put out the same flawed procedures, with the General Board's rubber stamp, only in blue covers this time. Candidates are informed of their failure in a familiar cheap brown envelope with a bit of sellotape holding it shut. I think that is an accurate reflection of the contempt in which the General Board and its secretariat hold us as candidates.

The following are very serious flaws which must be put right before wagons roll again.

1. Feedback

i. The General Board has accepted a duty to give us reasons. These must be adequate to explain the decision in terms intelligible to the candidate. He must know what he is expected to do to improve. An explanation of the kind of chaotic juggling with evaluations I have experienced over the years is also a requirement.

ii. The reasons must be individual or they cannot be adequate. A series of assertions in standardized sentences is not good enough.

iii. Nor is it acceptable that Faculty Promotions Committee Chairmen know no more than the candidates they are expected to advise. I know that complaint has been made again and again by the Chairmen themselves.

2. Relevant expertise and training

This year the General Board Promotions Committee consisted of the following:

The Vice-Chancellor (an engineer)

Professor Ashby (an engineer)

Professor Bennett (a geographer)

Professor Bonfield (a materials scientist)

Professor Cameron (a Byzantinist)

Professor Daunton (a modern British economic historian)

Professor Ford (a modern theologian)

Professer Grant (a land economist and planning lawyer)

Professor Jordan (a physicist)

Professor Robbins (a cognitive neuroscientist)

These people had before them references and supporting documentation from the Faculties, which they could not possibly know how to weigh since they did not collectively, or in most cases individually, possess the required knowledge of the field. They have had no training in this kind of exercise. They may, as they claim, take time and trouble, but that is like a particularly stupid undergraduate turning in a very bad essay and protesting that he 'tried hard'. Professor Grant stresses that the procedure took a lot of reading time. That does not make it 'robust'.

3. The height of the hurdle

It is rumoured that candidates now have to get a complete row of top evaluations to get promoted. This means that the General Board Committee only has to lower one, and you are out. I know this used not to be the case. I have seen those grids of evaluations for previous years and promotions have taken place on less than top marks. But if top marks are now required that should be stated in the procedures. It is as though we failed to tell Tripos candidates where the pass mark was and then moved it to suit ourselves so as to ensure a statistically acceptable row of results. Has the General Board the guts to publish those statistics so that we can see? (Not the ones Professor Grant has given.) Or are they scared? There are whiffs of an unlawful policy decision behind the scenes. Witnesses can be found to directives from the General Board offices discouraging Faculties from putting forward too many with top marks. But there is no competition. There should be promotions for all who deserve it. So what is really being said? Keep the numbers down? (unlawful). Do not go with your honest opinion of a candidate? (unfair). Give us this year's favourites only? (the old approach).

4. The documents and information made available to candidates

Under the Data Protection Act candidates are now entitled to see manual records. Are we going to continue the farce of this year, where the documents I asked for could be requested under the Act only days before the closing date for the appeal, and with the Secretary of the General Board Committee still steadfastly refusing to tell me who actually considered my application. I surely have a right to know who my judges actually were. That is why we publish the names of the committees. You will all be amused to learn that I was sent my documents by fax (the Data Protection Officer doing his very best), at 2 p.m. on the afternoon of 7 November, when the appeals closed at 5 p.m. that afternoon.

5. Rigidity

The procedures contain statements that nothing may be varied. The General Board broke its own rules. It changed the closing date for the appeal, giving candidates three weeks less time. It says that no additional information may be admitted after the closing date. I can prove that it has been for some, and on a grand scale. Candidates who ask for reasonable adjustment to meet their own circumstances are ignored or sent a curt letter of refusal by the Secretary. Those of us with an enormous pile of references because we are interdisciplinary and have applied more than once, end up with hardly anyone nominated by ourselves and an unlimited number by the Faculty. Not to allow for special circumstances is unlawful. The powers of the Secretary to the Committee to chose when to be rigid and when to change the rules have to be reviewed and clarified.

6. Bias

It is not fair that the same people consider candidates year after year, first on a Faculty Committee perhaps, then on the General Board Committee or on an Appeal Committee. I am tired of seeing the same names 'on my case'.

On this year's humanities sub-committee Professor Bennett, Professor Ford, Professor Cameron, had all considered me before, and Grant had previously implied in a Discussion that I was putting research below campaigning for reform. Candidates must be allowed to object, as they can at the appeal stage. It should not be left to members of committees to declare interests. Once they have done so they should certainly not be allowed to serve regardless.

7. Appeal

Much of this would matter less if we had a robust appeal process, which could revisit the merits. In fact it can, but only to a candidate's detriment by deciding that any procedural flaw found made no difference. It may be remembered that last year the lack of a chairman and the mislaying of a whole year's references at the Faculty stage did not faze them a bit. They said that even with someone in the chair and all the references before them the committee would have refused to give me support. This is the same Faculty which this year gave me top marks for everything and said I had 'a unique position in modern scholarship'. The General Board Committee then ratified evaluations they had ratified differently last year on substantially the same work, but dropped that all important one evaluation. The smell of rat is very strong. The Appeal Committee can still make its decision against me on the merits but not for me on the merits.

Surely, Director of Personnel, these are more urgent matters than that 'consultation' document. We are looking for the advent of real professionalism into personnel matters. That includes demonstrating that you can get the General Board secretariat to listen to reason and the General Board itself to resign the task to others. Why are you letting this drift on year after year?

I trust the Registrary will not cause this speech to end in square brackets. Last time I merely sought to say that I would like to put in one word. He took out not just the word but a great many other completely innocuous words. I hope he will not presume that he can now edit speeches at will. With the CAPSA Discussion imminent this is not the moment for him to chance his arm in that way.

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