Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Earlier this year, a
Speaker 1: woman approached Bloomberg's London office with the stories she thought
Speaker 1: needed telling about one of the oldest and most prestigious
Speaker 1: universities in the world.
Speaker 2: She's been trying to highlight problems with Oxford for a
Speaker 2: while now.
Speaker 1: Catherine Griffiths covers the city of London for Bloomberg with
Speaker 1: a focus on equality and workplace culture.
Speaker 2: And I thought, yes, we definitely should have a look
Speaker 2: at this story and see where it might take us.
Speaker 1: That one tip led Catherine to a deeper investigation into
Speaker 1: multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and bullying at Oxford
Speaker 1: University and what dozens of people Catherine talked to described
Speaker 1: as the university's failures in handling them.
Speaker 2: The sad truth is actually there are really quite a
Speaker 2: lot of women both there now in this current day
Speaker 2: and dating back years who have had really terrible experiences
Speaker 2: and not only have been the victims of sexual assault
Speaker 2: and harassment and bullying, but also then when they've taken
Speaker 2: these problems to the university, they have been very, very
Speaker 2: disappointed and traumatized because the university really hasn't dealt with
Speaker 2: those issues in a way that the women felt was
Speaker 2: the right way to deal with them.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, an investigation into allegations
Speaker 1: of harassment, bullying, and sexual misconduct at Oxford and why
Speaker 1: one of the world's leading universities has been slow to
Speaker 1: act against powerful male academics accused of inappropriate behavior. Oxford
Speaker 1: is one of the most famous universities on the planet.
Speaker 1: It's educated many of the world's most powerful people, including
Speaker 1: political leaders in the UK. Its research labs have made
Speaker 1: high profile scientific breakthroughs. Its gothic buildings are what many
Speaker 1: people imagine when they picture university campus. It's where many
Speaker 1: of the famous Hogwarts scenes were filmed for the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter movies, and Bloomberg's Catherine Griffith says that within the UK,
Speaker 1: the university looms large.
Speaker 2: It's a place of huge prestige. It's a place that
Speaker 2: attracts millions and millions of pounds of donations from individuals,
Speaker 2: from governments and from big business people who have an
Speaker 2: interest in putting their money at a place where they
Speaker 2: hope it can further science and further development, but where
Speaker 2: also I think it's probably fair to say hope they
Speaker 2: are going to get a little bit of that Oxford
Speaker 2: magic rubbing off on them. They want something out of
Speaker 2: that association too, So Oxford is all of those things.
Speaker 1: Catherine, You've been digging into how this story influential university
Speaker 1: handles something really important, allegations of harassment and misconduct. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you can give us a sense of your
Speaker 1: reporting process, how you know what you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, so we've spoken to nearly fifty people over many
Speaker 2: months now. Some of those people have been able to
Speaker 2: give us some documents that back up their own accounts
Speaker 2: that have been incredibly useful to really really be clear
Speaker 2: that what we've heard is accurate and fair. We found
Speaker 2: seven women who were able to tell us about their
Speaker 2: experiences over the last five years that included rapes and
Speaker 2: sexual assaults. We found there were thirty who described experiences
Speaker 2: of bullying and harassment dating back over about twenty years.
Speaker 2: In some cases, women who have themselves tried to come
Speaker 2: forward to highlight other people facing these problems and who
Speaker 2: have then found themselves to be squashed down, crushed, discouraged
Speaker 2: from taking things further. So the numbers are really quite big,
Speaker 2: and I think if we're being realistic, there'll be plenty
Speaker 2: of other people who who maybe have had similar experiences.
Speaker 1: One of the men who has been accused of harassment
Speaker 1: is Sumitra Dutta. Who is he and what triggered Oxford's
Speaker 1: initial investigation into him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Sumitra Dutta was the dean of Oxford's Sayid
Speaker 2: Business School and a female academic came forward earlier this
Speaker 2: year and made a complaint about him. She alleged that
Speaker 2: he harrassed her on several occasions. Oxford did a formal
Speaker 2: investigation into those allegations and came back over the summer
Speaker 2: to say it was upholding those allegations. Sumitra Dutta then
Speaker 2: left his job. None of the information about the investigation
Speaker 2: was made public at the time. There were no reasons
Speaker 2: given at the time for his departure, so we were
Speaker 2: able to report in September that he left the university
Speaker 2: after this investigation and after he had been found to
Speaker 2: have harassed her.
Speaker 1: What has the fallout been?
Speaker 2: So there were academics there who were very unhappy with
Speaker 2: the way the university was dealing with the investigation. They
Speaker 2: felt they weren't being kept informed properly, and they felt
Speaker 2: increasingly frustrated that, in their view, the university was being
Speaker 2: quite hostile to them and not being clear and fair
Speaker 2: in its processes.
Speaker 1: Catherine also learned something about Douta's behavior in a past
Speaker 1: workplace that could have raised flags at Oxford.
Speaker 2: Before Sumitra Detter worked at Oxford, he had been the
Speaker 2: dean of the Cornell Business School for a while and
Speaker 2: he'd had a personal relationship with a young woman, a subordinate,
Speaker 2: and when that became known at Cornell, Semitradeter stood down
Speaker 2: as dean of the Business school there. Again, none of
Speaker 2: that information was ever put into the public domain at
Speaker 2: the time, but.
Speaker 1: When he was hired at Oxford, they knew yeah.
Speaker 2: So he continued at Cornell, just not as dean for
Speaker 2: a few years, and then when he came to Oxford.
Speaker 2: My sources have said that Oxford was well aware of
Speaker 2: the fact that this had happened at Cornell, and they
Speaker 2: went ahead with the hiring Anyway.
Speaker 1: Dutta did not respond to Bloomberg's request for Karmet Catherine.
Speaker 1: The way Oxford University investigated and handled Judah's case, how
Speaker 1: similar is that to the way that they've handled other
Speaker 1: cases like this.
Speaker 2: So I think one of the biggest problems, both at
Speaker 2: Oxford and in other universities is people being accused of misconduct.
Speaker 2: They're potentially being an investigation of some description, and the
Speaker 2: person then leaving that job, and it all happening behind
Speaker 2: closed doors without any kind of disclosure or warning or
Speaker 2: any sort of way in which potentially a university and
Speaker 2: institution could try to ensure that that person maybe doesn't
Speaker 2: go somewhere else where. Clearly the risk is run that
Speaker 2: they may do it again. It seems to happen time
Speaker 2: and time again. Another person in our reporting was a
Speaker 2: really really prestigious professor at Oxford for a long period
Speaker 2: of time. His name is Miles Houston. He was a
Speaker 2: professor of social psychology. He's this really really famous person
Speaker 2: in his field. We've spoken to twenty women who had
Speaker 2: real problem with him over quite a long period of time.
Speaker 1: What did women tell you about Houston's behavior and how
Speaker 1: it affected them?
Speaker 2: So he ran a psychology lab and women and male
Speaker 2: students both felt incredibly privileged to work with him. Yet
Speaker 2: some of those women found that it was not the
Speaker 2: kind of experience they were hoping for or expecting. Miles
Speaker 2: Houston has behaved in a sexually harassing way to multiple
Speaker 2: women over many years. According to our reporting, some of
Speaker 2: these women described feeling flattered and overwhelmed by the tension,
Speaker 2: not quite knowing what to do given the extreme power
Speaker 2: and balance between them. He would give gifts to women
Speaker 2: that they felt were intended to make them feel grateful
Speaker 2: towards him. If they said to him that he had
Speaker 2: behaved in a way that men made them feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: he might use this phraseology, have I been a bad boy?
Speaker 1: What happened when women initially raise their concerns? How did
Speaker 1: the university respond?
Speaker 2: So in the case of Miles Houston, he was at
Speaker 2: Oxford for eighteen years, so it's a story that sort
Speaker 2: of evolved over a long time, and of course, you know,
Speaker 2: so did society in that time. There's women who've told
Speaker 2: us about trying to raise his behavior with others. One
Speaker 2: woman in particular told us about trying to talk to
Speaker 2: a harassment advisor at the university, but her recollection was
Speaker 2: that this harassment advisor was more worried about the potential
Speaker 2: fallout for the university. Eventually, in twenty seventeen, a woman
Speaker 2: did decide she could bring a formal complaint against him,
Speaker 2: and that really was the point at which things changed
Speaker 2: and there was an investigation. We don't know exactly what
Speaker 2: the outcome was, but we do know that Miles Houston
Speaker 2: left to Oxford University in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: And what do we know about how Houston has responded
Speaker 1: to the university investigations and the concerns raised about his behavior.
Speaker 2: So we have tried to ask him and he has
Speaker 2: not replied. I've been told by sources that he described
Speaker 2: retiring at the time from Oxford in twenty nineteen. He
Speaker 2: has done other things in public life since then, including
Speaker 2: now working for this Indian university. He remains a fellow
Speaker 2: of the British Academy, which is a very prestigious institution
Speaker 2: in UK society. But we haven't heard anything, certainly in
Speaker 2: the public domain from him that reflects what he may
Speaker 2: or may not think about these allegations.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, more broadly, how has Oxford's leadership responded to
Speaker 1: allegations of harassment, bullying, sexual misconduct in their home and
Speaker 1: what's the pattern that's emerged across all of these cases.
Speaker 2: For you, it has been different in different cases. We
Speaker 2: have reported in our story on two investigations where two
Speaker 2: men left Oxford, and the women involved in those cases
Speaker 2: felt the outcomes were significant victories. But we have also
Speaker 2: heard on multiple occasions about women who felt Oxford has
Speaker 2: not done a good job in pursuing their complaints. One
Speaker 2: woman described it as being like a deliberate chaos machine
Speaker 2: where the people involved never really intended to help.
Speaker 1: In response to Catherine's detailed questions, Oxford said it couldn't
Speaker 1: comment on individual cases, but provided a statement.
Speaker 2: It's said directly through a spokesperson. Sexual harassment has no
Speaker 2: place at Oxford. Our sympathies and thoughts are with anyone
Speaker 2: who has experienced harassment or misconduct. We strive to ensure
Speaker 2: that Oxford is always a safe place for all students
Speaker 2: and staff. We take concern and seriously applying robust procedures.
Speaker 2: Support for those affected is a priority, and we take
Speaker 2: precautionary and or disciplinary action where justified. And then it
Speaker 2: talked about a new approach. It's brought in that they
Speaker 2: say sets out our approach, support and training. We encourage
Speaker 2: anyone who has a concern to raise it.
Speaker 1: What have the last inconsequences been for women who have
Speaker 1: experienced harassment at Oxford, and for women who have reported
Speaker 1: harassment at Oxford.
Speaker 2: Some people who've been through even some of these recent
Speaker 2: investigations have said they have been very pleased with the
Speaker 2: way people have dealt with their complaints. But the lasting
Speaker 2: effect really is women who have been sexually assorted or
Speaker 2: harassed or bullied, and then on top of that, who
Speaker 2: have gone through processes that on the whole they have
Speaker 2: felt to be re traumatizing, upsetting. People describe feeling that
Speaker 2: they have post traumatic stress disorder. There are women who
Speaker 2: have left the university. There are women who are sort
Speaker 2: of now in limbo because they can't go back to
Speaker 2: their studies necessarily, they can't move forward, and yet they're
Speaker 2: alleged harasses have got on fine.
Speaker 1: So why has it been so challenging to get Oxford
Speaker 1: to hold people accountable after concerns are raised? That's next.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Catherine Griffiths has been investigating how Oxford University responds
Speaker 1: to allegations of misconduct, and she's uncovered a number of
Speaker 1: reasons why one of the UK's leading universities has lagged
Speaker 1: behind its peers. Part of it, she says, is structural.
Speaker 2: So Oxford University is made up of more than forty
Speaker 2: different colleges, and so if you're a student, you might
Speaker 2: study at one particular college or another particular college, and
Speaker 2: so if you are harrassed or assorted as a student,
Speaker 2: you have to take that complaint in most cases to
Speaker 2: your college rather than the central university. And that has
Speaker 2: created lots and lots of problems for women who've tried
Speaker 2: to hold their harassers to account. That's because these colleges
Speaker 2: are their own individual legal entities. There are information sharing
Speaker 2: arrangements in place, but in practice people say it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to happen that way, and it creates a complicated,
Speaker 2: fragmented system.
Speaker 1: Catherine says. Another challenge is cultural.
Speaker 2: So Oxford is a nine hundred odd year old institution.
Speaker 2: People love the history and the traditions, the special class,
Speaker 2: those people where to do exams. There's all sorts of
Speaker 2: things which make Oxford Oxford, but certainly linked to that
Speaker 2: are quite negative things. And those include a university that
Speaker 2: can in some ways be unwilling to make changes that
Speaker 2: other places, other parts of society, other universities maybe think
Speaker 2: are more appropriate and moving with the times. Now, Oxford
Speaker 2: would probably dispute that, and of course it is at
Speaker 2: the cutting edge in many, many different ways. But it
Speaker 2: is a university where the vast majority of senior professors
Speaker 2: are men. It also has a higher number than at
Speaker 2: some of its peers of particularly famous male professors who
Speaker 2: bring in lots and lots of grant funding. So Oxford
Speaker 2: very explicitly has said to us that it rejects any
Speaker 2: kind of suggestion that it puts people's reputation above other
Speaker 2: people's safety. But the experiences of people who have spoken
Speaker 2: to us is certainly their feeling is that the reputation
Speaker 2: of some of their alleged harassers has played into the
Speaker 2: way Oxford has dealt with this.
Speaker 1: In certain cases that surface during Catherine's reporting process, the
Speaker 1: way Oxford leadership responded also contributed to a chilling effect.
Speaker 2: So we spoke to a young woman who was studying
Speaker 2: for a PhD at Balliol College, and she has described
Speaker 2: to us being sexually assaulted by a male student at
Speaker 2: Bailliol College. She made a formal complaint about it, and
Speaker 2: then she says the college dealt with the matter in
Speaker 2: an incredibly unsupportive and in her view, unfair way. After that,
Speaker 2: she talked to a news organization about what had happened
Speaker 2: to her because she felt really upset and frustrated in
Speaker 2: the light of that. Helen Gosch, who is the head
Speaker 2: of Balliol College, she's a fairly well known person in
Speaker 2: UK public life. She's received a damehood. She called a
Speaker 2: meeting for students at which she challenged the young woman
Speaker 2: about her account of what had happened, and leaflets were
Speaker 2: printed out the young woman has told us, which had
Speaker 2: some details about her case on them, including some private
Speaker 2: information such as when the alleged sexual assault had taken place.
Speaker 1: Following a student backlash, Balliol appointed an external investigator who
Speaker 1: upheld some of the women's complaints. Balliol College told Bloomberg
Speaker 1: in a statement that it takes its responsibilities seriously to
Speaker 1: address and prevent harassment and has a rigorous set of
Speaker 1: policies and procedures in place. It said it implemented all
Speaker 1: the recommendations that were made in two independent reports it
Speaker 1: commissioned following a harassment complaint by a student. So, after
Speaker 1: doing all this reporting, what stands out about Oxford's process
Speaker 1: for handling these types of issues when compared to the
Speaker 1: measures and processes that other UK universities have.
Speaker 2: So Oxford has changed its measures in various ways over
Speaker 2: the years, and in September even this year has introduced
Speaker 2: a new policy for students which is clearer and easier
Speaker 2: to use for people who want to bring sexual harassment
Speaker 2: non academic misconduct complaints. And that seemed to be a
Speaker 2: broadly positive thing. But at the same time, there are
Speaker 2: ways in which the university probably is still quite out
Speaker 2: of step with other universities, and they may have policies,
Speaker 2: but it's really how those policies are implemented and how
Speaker 2: when people come forward in highly vulnerable states, how the
Speaker 2: university actually deals with those people.
Speaker 1: And Catherine's sources say there's more the university could do.
Speaker 2: The reality is it's actually quite difficult for Oxford, any university,
Speaker 2: any employer, to open the doors and give full disclosure
Speaker 2: on an investigation, how it's going, what might happen to
Speaker 2: a person who against whom discipline and reaction may be taken.
Speaker 2: That said, I think it comes back to this point
Speaker 2: about Oxford being a leader, and really people have told
Speaker 2: us that it should be a leader in this field too.
Speaker 2: It really needs to send the message to some of
Speaker 2: these senior men at the university that this kind of
Speaker 2: behavior is completely and utterly unacceptable. They need to make
Speaker 2: it clear that they are not going to tolerate it.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, in response to Catherine's investigation, the Member of
Speaker 1: Parliament for Oxford Western Abingdon Leila Moran, said she would
Speaker 1: be following up with university leadership to understand what more
Speaker 1: they can do to address this issue. This is the
Speaker 1: Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. The show
Speaker 1: was hosted by Me, David Gera and Wan Ha. The
Speaker 1: show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor Harrison Dengate,
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