Harassment Concerns at Oxford Went Unaddressed for Years

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1:07Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Earlier this year, a woman approached Bloomberg's London office with a story she thought needed telling about one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. She's been trying to highlight problems with Oxford for a while now. Catherine Griffiths covers the city of London for Bloomberg, with a focus on equality and workplace culture. And I thought, yes, we definitely should have a look at this story and see where it might take us. That one tip led Catherine to a deeper investigation into multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment and bullying at Oxford University.

1:51and what dozens of people Catherine talked to described as the university's failures in handling them. The sad truth is actually there are really quite a lot of women, both there now in this current day and dating back years, who have had really terrible experiences and not only have been the victims of sexual assault and harassment and bullying, but also then when they've taken these problems to the university, they have been very, very disappointed and traumatized because the university really hasn't dealt with those issues in a way that the women felt was the right way to deal with them.

2:34I'm Sarah Holder, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, an investigation into allegations of harassment, bullying and sexual misconduct at Oxford, and why one of the world's leading universities has been slow to act against powerful male academics accused of inappropriate behavior.

3:00Oxford is one of the most famous universities on the planet. It's educated many of the world's most powerful people, including political leaders in the UK. Its research labs have made high-profile scientific breakthroughs. Its gothic buildings are what many people imagine when they picture a university campus. It's where many of the famous Hogwarts scenes were filmed for the Harry Potter movies. And Bloomberg's Catherine Griffiths says that within the UK, the university looms large. It's a place of huge prestige. It's a place that attracts millions and millions of pounds of donations from individuals, from governments, and from big business people.

3:43who have an interest in putting their money at a place where they hope it can further science and further development, but where also, I think it's probably fair to say, hope they are going to get a little bit of that Oxford magic rubbing off on them. They want something out of that association too. So Oxford is all of those things. Catherine, you've been digging into how this storied, influential university handles something really important, allegations of harassment and misconduct. I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of your reporting process, how you know what you know. Yes, so we've spoken to nearly 50 people over many months now.

4:25Some of those people have been able to give us some documents that back up their own accounts that have been incredibly useful to really, really be clear that what we've heard is accurate and fair. We found seven women who were able to tell us about their experiences over the last five years that included rapes and sexual assaults. We found there were 30 who described experiences of bullying and harassment dating back over about 20 years. In some cases, women who have themselves tried to come forward to highlight other people facing these problems and who have then found themselves to be squashed down, crushed, discouraged from taking things further.

5:09So the numbers are really quite big. And I think if we're being realistic, there'll be plenty of other people who maybe have had similar experiences. One of the men who's been accused of harassment is Sumitra Dutta. Who is he and what triggered Oxford's initial investigation into him? Yeah, so Sumitra Dutta was the dean of Oxford's Saeed Business School and a female academic came forward earlier this year and made a complaint about him. She alleged that he harassed her on several occasions. Oxford did a formal investigation into those allegations and came back over the summer to say it was upholding those allegations.

5:58Sumitra Dutta then left his job. None of the information about the investigation was made public at the time. There were no reasons given at the time for his departure. So we were able to report in September that he left the university after this investigation and after he had been found to have harassed her. What has the fallout been? So there were academics there who were very unhappy with the way the university was dealing with the investigation. They felt they weren't being kept informed properly and they felt increasingly frustrated that, in their view, the university was being quite hostile to them and not being clear and fair in its processes.

6:49Catherine also learned something about Dutta's behavior in a past workplace that could have raised flags at Oxford. Before Sumitra Dutta worked at Oxford, he had been the dean of the Cornell Business School for a while. And he'd had a personal relationship with a young woman, a subordinate. And when that became known at Cornell, Sumitra Dutta stood down as dean of the business school there. Again, none of that information was ever put into the public domain at the time. But when he was hired at Oxford, they knew? Yeah, so he continued at Cornell, just not as dean for a few years. And then when he came to Oxford, my sources have said that Oxford was well aware of the fact that this had happened at Cornell, and they went ahead with the hiring anyway.

7:44Dutta did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment. Catherine, the way Oxford University investigated and handled Duda's case, how similar is that to the way that they've handled other cases like this? So I think one of the biggest problems both at Oxford and in other universities is people being accused of misconduct. They're potentially being an investigation of some description and the person then leaving that job. and it all happening behind closed doors without any kind of disclosure or warning or any sort of way in which potentially a university and institution could try to ensure that that person maybe doesn't go somewhere else where clearly the risk is run that they may do it again.

8:39It seems to happen time and time again. Another person in our reporting was a really, really prestigious professor at Oxford for a long period of time. His name is Miles Houston. He was a professor of social psychology. He's this really, really famous person in his field. We've spoken to 20 women who had real problems with him over quite a long period of time. What did women tell you about Houston's behavior and how it affected them? So he ran a psychology lab and women and male students both felt incredibly privileged to work with him. Yet some of those women found that it was not the kind of experience they were hoping for or expecting.

9:32Miles Houston has behaved in a sexually harassing way to multiple women over many years, according to our reporting. Some of these women described feeling flattered and overwhelmed by the tension, not quite knowing what to do given the extreme power imbalance between them. He would give gifts to women that they felt were intended to make them feel grateful towards him. if they said to him that he had behaved in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, he might use this phraseology, have I been a bad boy? What happened when women initially raised their concerns? How did the university respond? So in the case of Miles Houston, he was at Oxford for 18 years.

10:20So it's a story that sort of evolved over a long time. And of course, you know, so did society in that time. There's women who've told us about trying to raise his behaviour with others. One woman in particular told us about trying to talk to a harassment advisor at the university. But her recollection was that this harassment advisor was more worried about the potential fallout for the university. Eventually, in 2017, a woman did decide she could bring a formal complaint against him. And that really was the point at which things changed and there was an investigation. We don't know exactly what the outcome was, but we do know that Miles Houston left Oxford University in 2019.

11:07And what do we know about how Houston has responded to the university investigations and the concerns raised about his behavior? So we have tried to ask him and he has not replied. I've been told by sources that he described retiring at the time from Oxford in 2019. He has done other things in public life since then, including now working for this Indian university. He remains a fellow of the British Academy, which is a very prestigious institution in UK society. But we haven't heard anything, certainly in the public domain, from him that reflects what he may or may not think about these allegations.

11:56I'm wondering more broadly, how has Oxford's leadership responded to allegations of harassment, bullying, sexual misconduct in their halls? And what's the pattern that's emerged across all of these cases for you? It has been different in different cases. We have reported in our story on two investigations where two men left Oxford and the women involved in those cases felt the outcomes were significant victories. But we have also heard on multiple occasions about women who felt Oxford has not done a good job in pursuing their complaints. One woman described it as being like a deliberate chaos machine where the people involved never really intended to help.

12:38In response to Catherine's detailed questions, Oxford said it couldn't comment on individual cases, but provided a statement.

13:06robust procedures. Support for those affected is a priority and we take precautionary and or disciplinary action where justified. And then it talks about a new approach it's brought in that they say sets out our approach, support and training. We encourage anyone who has a concern to raise it. What have the lasting consequences been for women who have experienced harassment at Oxford and for women who have reported harassment at Oxford. Some people who've been through even some of these recent investigations have said they have been very pleased with the way people have dealt with their complaints.

13:47But the lasting effect really is women who have been sexually assaulted or harassed or bullied and then on top of that, who have gone through processes that on the whole they have felt to be re-traumatising, upsetting. People describe feeling that they have post-traumatic stress disorder. There are women who have left the university. There are women who are sort of now in limbo because they can't go back to their studies necessarily. They can't move forward. And yet their alleged harassers have got on fine. So why has it been so challenging to get Oxford to hold people accountable after concerns are raised?

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15:48Bloomberg's Catherine Griffiths has been investigating how Oxford University responds to allegations of misconduct. And she's uncovered a number of reasons why one of the UK's leading universities has lagged behind its peers. Part of it, she says, is structural. So Oxford University is made up of more than 40 different colleges. And so if you're a student, you might study at one particular college or another particular college. And so if you are harassed or assaulted as a student, you have to take that complaint in most cases to your college rather than the central university. And that has created lots and lots of problems for women who've tried to hold their harassers to account.

16:36That's because these colleges are their own individual legal entities. There are information sharing arrangements in place. But in practice, people say it doesn't seem to happen that way. And it creates a complicated, fragmented system. Catherine says another challenge is cultural. So Oxford is a 900-odd-year-old institution. people love the history and the traditions the special clothes people wear to do exams there's all sorts of things which make Oxford Oxford but certainly linked to that are quite negative things and those include a university that can in some ways be unwilling to make changes that other places, other parts of society, other universities maybe, think are more appropriate and moving with the times.

17:34Now, Oxford would probably dispute that, and of course it is at the cutting edge in many, many different ways. But it is a university where the vast majority of senior professors are men. It also has a higher number than at some of its peers of particularly famous male professors. who bring in lots and lots of grant funding. So Oxford very explicitly has said to us that it rejects any kind of suggestion that it puts people's reputation above other people's safety. But the experiences of people who have spoken to us is certainly their feeling is that the reputation of some of their alleged harassers has played into the way Oxford has dealt with this.

18:24In certain cases that surfaced during Catherine's reporting process, the way Oxford leadership responded also contributed to a chilling effect. So we spoke to a young woman who was studying for a PhD at Balliol College and she has described to us being sexually assaulted by a male student at Balliol College. She made a formal complaint about it and then she says the college dealt with the matter in an incredibly unsupportive and, in her view, unfair way. after that she talked to a news organisation about what had happened to her because she felt really upset and frustrated in the light of that Helen Ghosh who is the head of Balliol College she's a fairly well-known person in UK public life she's received a damehood she called a meeting for students at which she challenged the young woman about her account of what had happened and leaflets were printed out, the young woman has told us, which had some details about her case on them, including some private information, such as when the alleged sexual assault had taken place.

19:38Following a student backlash, Balliol appointed an external investigator who upheld some of the woman's complaints. Balliol College told Bloomberg in a statement that it takes its responsibility seriously to address and prevent harassment and has a rigorous set of policies and procedures in place. It said it implemented all the recommendations that were made in two independent reports it commissioned, following a harassment complaint by a student. So after doing all this reporting, what stands out about Oxford's process for handling these types of issues when compared to the measures and processes that other UK universities have?

20:16So Oxford has changed its measures in various ways over the years. And in September, even this year, has introduced a new policy for students, which is clearer and easier to use for people who want to bring sexual harassment, non-academic misconduct complaints. And that seemed to be a broadly positive thing. But at the same time, there are ways in which the university probably is still quite out of step with other universities. And they may have policies, but it's really how those policies are implemented and how when people come forward in highly vulnerable states, how the university actually deals with those people.

21:01And Catherine's sources say there's more the university could do. The reality is it's actually quite difficult for Oxford, any university, any employer to open the doors and give kind of full disclosure on an investigation, how it's going, what might happen to a person against whom disciplinary action may be taken. That said, I think it comes back to this point about Oxford being a leader. And really, people have told us that it should be a leader in this field too. It really needs to send the message to some of these senior men at the university that this kind of behaviour is completely and utterly unacceptable.

21:46They need to make it clear that they are not going to tolerate it. On Thursday, in response to Catherine's investigation, the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon, Layla Moran, said she would be following up with university leadership to understand what more they can do to address this issue.

22:11This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. The show is hosted by me, David Gura, and Wan Ha. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Patty Hirsch, Rachel Lewis-Kriskie, Naomi Ng, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Sugiura, Julia Weaver, Yang Yang, and Taka Yasuzawa. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg.com, subscribe today at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.

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