A gender-critical professor who won an employment tribunal because her university failed to protect her from harassment has called on UK vice-chancellors to read the judgment as she fears there will still be similar cases unless institutions “stand up to their responsibilities”.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, Jo Phoenix said she felt her case against the Open University had “established the parameters within which debate can take place”, which “cuts to the heart of university culture” as well as showing that institutions have to step in when staff are being harassed.
Professor Phoenix was ruled to have faced a “hostile environment” at the OU and discrimination and harassment from colleagues because of her belief that people cannot change their biological sex. She left her post as professor of criminology in December 2021 to join the University of Reading.
“From my perspective, the big headline is that academics, students and people in universities cannot go round calling people who are gender critical or come from that perspective transphobes and terfs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] without it being both an insult but also opening the possibility of it being an act of harassment to do so,” said Professor Phoenix.
