UK university staff who have been the victim of bullying are being offered support by a new network amid repeated evidence that the problem is “endemic” in higher education.
Those behind the 21 Group – named after the percentage of staff members at the University of Cambridge who reported experiencing bullying in a 2020 survey – said it was needed because of a failure of universities to tackle the issue beyond “sloganising”.
It aims to conduct research to establish the true extent of bullying in UK universities and campaign for the creation of an independent ombudsman position that would take the handling of complaints away from being the sole domain of the internal processes of institutions.
Wyn Evans, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge – and one of the founders of the network – said it has its roots in a Times Higher Education article in which he claimed that bullying was “a feature of UK research universities, not a bug”, which prompted several people to come forward to share their own experiences.
