“Foul Play” by “Cowboy” Journalists; or, how to be an internet troll.

Regular readers of my rants will know that from time to time (regularly and often) I criticise what I see as dangerous and destructive ethics and practices increasingly being forced on academia from without and within.  If you’re not a regular reader, check out the last two posts and you’ll see what I mean.  It was with some widening of the eyes therefore the other morning that I read an email from one of my bosses about “allegations” and “accusations” made against my employer, Swansea University.  (It was very clear what said boss felt about the accuracy of these allegations and accusations, but as it was an email from him to staff I don’t feel it’s right for me to put anything but the neutral terms he used into the public domain.)  I soon realised, though, by virtue of another email, that in momentarily thinking that the first missive might have something to do with something I’d written, I was vastly overestimating my own significance.  The momentary relief that followed, however, was very soon replaced with anger at the second email and, on this occasion, total sympathy with my boss and empathy with his sentiments.  I trust that my previous perhaps all-too-well-documented criticisms of the current state of the sector I work in will only add weight to the defence I make here of my colleagues and my institution against what I will say is certainly an appallingly unfair attack in terms of its methodology and I would guess at this stage an appallingly unfair one in factual terms.  (I’d say here as well that even in my critical moments I am in fact defending my colleagues and my institutions and indeed academia itself, however much some inside and outside of academia may disagree with that self-assessment.)

The attack I read that morning came from a group that calls itself UK Academic Monitor, or, to give it its IT moniker, ukacademicmonitor.org.  The essential accusations are that certain colleagues of mine in a cognate department wrongly declined to award a student a PhD degree at his first attempted defence of his thesis, then unfairly denied the student the opportunity to appeal against the deferment of his degree award—before awarding the student his PhD at his second attempted defence just under a year later.  It’s perfectly normal, by the way, for PhDs to be deferred, which means go back, do some revisions, and defend the thesis again after a period of time commensurate with the extent of revisions required—thus allowing the maintenance of standards while giving a student a second chance, rather than saying at the end of his or her three or more years, that’s it, one strike and you’re out, you’ve failed, end of, bugger off.  It seems to me an obviously sensible and fair procedure in general, though, admittedly, unfairness is always possible in particular cases.  But, anyway, my university more broadly is accused of failing to have sufficiently robust procedures to prevent these alleged injustices or to discipline the colleagues concerned for committing them and indeed in engaging in secrecy and a cover-up of these misdeeds and failures.  Now, as a historian, and as, I hope, a fair-minded person, I hereby provide a link to the accusations that was emailed to me and all my colleagues, as produced by UKAM and as is on their website.  I believe that one of the first things that may become clear from your reading of this report, though, is that its writers did not do those they are accusing or indeed you the reader the same basic courtesy.  The criticisms that follow are, like this one, mostly methodological.  They are not about the case itself, but about the conduct of UKAM.  They alone, however, ought to cast some considerable doubt, to say the very least, on UKAM’s supposed findings about this case.  You can find their findings and from there their homepage here: http://www.ukacademicmonitor.org/

Indeed the first thing that becomes clear is that it is not at all clear who UKAM is or are (I’m going to assume the organisation consists of more than one individual, though, and call them are from here on in).  As I’ve said, they call themselves UK Academic Monitor, which is very grand.  That “UK” and that “Academic” might invite readers of their website to suppose that UK Academic Monitoring are some kind of official authority.  That they are perhaps legitimated if not licensed by an independent university sector investigator (such as a University Visitor, analogous to the Police Complaints Authority or the Press Complaints Commission, for example), or by the government itself (a kind of educational ombudsman or a QUANGO, maybe), or, best and most appropriate of all, given the circumstances, by the National Union of Students whose job it is, after all, to look after students’ interests.  All I can find about UKAM, however, is a kind of mission statement on their website (linked above) and a short chain of likes and mentions of them on Facebook—from just three pages worth of citations a Google search threw up, suggesting the group is new as well as unauthorised by anyone but its website founders.  Also, Swansea so far is their only target, although their website indicates that there is at least a plurality and implies that the generality of UK universities are short-changing their students and covering it up.  But, anyway, the point is there are no known associations with any known authorities by which one might know the provenance or judge the legitimacy of UKAM. 

Indeed there is no way of knowing anything about them at all, as neither do its members name themselves as individuals.  They might argue back on that count, I suppose, that they are maintaining anonymity for their own personal protection.  To which I answer (and from here on in I switch register and address UKAM directly): guys, you’re alleging unfairness to university students—it’s not exactly Ayan Hirsi Ali territory, is it?  And if you’re worried about the effects on your career prospects (as opposed to your lives, like Ayan Hirsi Ali), well, as I say, I frequently have a go at the authorities over me and it might get me in trouble one day and it might already have buggered up my promotion prospects, but that doesn’t bloody well stop me doing so and from doing it under my own name with my name, contact details, photo, and bio all there for anyone and everyone to see.  I know a lot of others go under pseudonyms, but in all cases they give enough away so you know where they’re coming from and usually enough so you can even figure out who they actually are, rather like eighteenth-century radical pamphleteers who called themselves Cato and Plato but who weren’t fooling anyone and who knew they weren’t fooling anyone.  It’s a matter of honesty and honour. 

It’s also a basic principle of justice that any kind of accused person, whether accused by the media or in a court of law, is entitled to know the identity of their accuser and thereby among other things to have a fair chance to answer back and explain or defend themselves.  Whoever you are, UK Academic Monitor, like some vigilante group, you have deprived those you accuse of these basic rights. 

It’s also a matter of your own credibility with anyone who might read you.  First of all, how can anyone take your accusations of secrecy and cover-ups on the part of others seriously when you refuse to reveal anything about who you are?  It’s just a little hypocritical, isn’t it?  And really, more seriously still, how dare you—HOW VERY BLOODY DARE YOU—“name and shame” others as you, exposing them to extremely serious accusations, while protecting yourselves with anonymity.  I guess you think of yourselves as masked avengers of some kind.  To me you’re just cyber-muggers, nothing more than bullies in balaclavas.  Also, how can anyone credit anything you say, hypocritical or not, when no one even knows who you are?  For all anyone knows, you could be anyone at all.  You might be perfectly nice, decent, fair-minded people (and just be misguided and if so perhaps now regretful of your balaclava-wearing antics), and maybe you’re simply out to the help the less powerful and the aggrieved.  On the hand, you might be just a bunch of internet trolls.  Or, worse, you could be undercover Daily Mail journalists.  No one has any way of telling.  At the very least, one might quite reasonably suspect that you have some sort of axe to grind, and that for that reason, whatever it is, you might be less than fair and partial, and you might even be total liars.  Who knows?  I don’t.  I can’t.  No one can. 

That said, and continuing with theme of your methods, having read your accusations, I can see that you are at the very least manifestly less than fair and partial.  Or, rather, having read between the lines of your accusations, I can see that you are indeed at the very least less than fair and partial, as it’s what you don’t say as much what you do say that says so much about you and possibly about your accusations as well.  Just as your title, UK Academic Monitoring, gives an impression of legitimacy, so your long narrative of events gives an impression of authoritatively forensic investigation.  But, just as there are no affiliations, links, or even individual names to go with your title and therefore there is no real legitimacy, so there is something missing from your narrative, and therefore from its authority.  And it’s rather a big thing too: namely, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.  Did you give any of the people you shamelessly named, and who you accused of serious malpractice, a chance to answer or explain themselves?  Did you even ask a university spokesperson for a comment before you attempted to blacken an institution’s name in cyberspace?  If you did, and they refused to comment for whatever reason, you do not say, and nor do you give what might in the circumstances be perfectly good reasons for not doing so.  Even the basest tabloid journalists at least make a show of asking for comments from those they accuse of whatever they accuse them of.  They might not be sincere and might not relate their accusers’ answers fairly or properly, but even then at least they acknowledge the existence of and make at least a show of following these basic rules of fair and proper journalism.  You don’t even do that. 

Because you apparently forewarned no one of the accusations you made the other day, I no more than anyone can comment on their factual veracity.  And, unlike you, I’m not going to take half a story and present it as fact.  That is why all I’ve done so far is take your anonymity and your story-gathering or presentational methodologies, and comment on those alone.  If you are the perfectly nice, decent, fair-minded (but misguided) people I acknowledged you might be, then I hope you will retract your accusations or at least revise them extensively accordingly.  I’m certainly not going to comment on the student or his case.  He may very well have felt aggrieved at his deferral and at the difficulties of the appeal process, for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, fairly or otherwise.  These things happen in all organisations.  That’s meant neutrally and it’s all I can fairly say.  I do know, though, that the student got his PhD from Swansea University, and I trust my colleagues enough to presume that he deserved it.  And I know he got his degree because you said so in your story, albeit very late in your story, indeed very, very late in your story.  I guess that putting the happy ending at the beginning, even though it’s a rather crucial part of the story as a whole, would have put your hoped-for readers off reading the rest of what turns out in fact to be not much of a story at all: student gets PhD—difficult process, as it often is, it’s the highest academic qualification anyone can get after all, but he got it. 

A couple of other facts I do know and will comment on.  I know the people you accuse of all the above, and who you labelled “Cowboy Academics” in yesterday’s version of your web story and committers of “Foul Play” in a previous iteration of it.  They are not cowboys and they do not do foul play.  They are highly dedicated and professional people who are in university teaching to help people get degrees, not to hinder them.  So I say the following with the fullest confidence.  At the end of your narrative you say that “the public, and, more importantly, the thousands of students who,” you proclaim, rather hubristically it seems to me, “will now have second thoughts about applying” to Swansea, are the best judges of whether Swansea is a university worth applying to or not.  Yes, there’s some truth in that, your hubris aside.  I suggest that “the public” or those prospective students indeed come to Swansea and talk with the members of staff concerned (you named them, so they’ll be easy enough to find), and indeed any members of staff, and to other Swansea students, and see what we say we have to say and to offer, and then these prospective students can make the judgement in fairness, having had the chance you didn’t given them to see if there’s another side to all of this.  They definitely shouldn’t and I hope won’t make any judgements about my colleagues or about Swansea University on the basis of manifestly one-sided accusations made by anonymous, untraceable, unknowable, faceless, unaccountable people like you.        

A couple of final things....  If you want to have a go back at me, you can easily do so as you have my name, contact details, picture, bio, etc.  You know who I am and can easily find me.  But if you do have a go at me, and indeed if you have a go at anyone else for that matter, how about you do it fair and square and equal?  That is, how about you take your mask off so I and others can see who you are?  And finally, if you want to put right anything you feel is wrong or unfair in what I’ve said about you in the above, please reply in the box below and I will acknowledge and correct all verifiable errors.  I hope you will see fit to offer others the same opportunity in the future.

PS I put a link to this post on UKAM's Facebook site this morning.  They have since taken it down and issued a denial of my claims while depriving of access to them.  Which couldn't be in closer accord with what I claim about them.     

PPS http://whois.domaintools.com/ukacademicmonitor.com