Australian National University (ANU) executives have come to the defence of their embattled vice-chancellor and accused staff of orchestrating leaks to “paint a false picture of the university’s culture”.
In a joint statement to the ANU community, 11 senior leaders professed their full support for the strategic direction of vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell and the university’s governing council. The move followed a series of Australian Financial Review (AFR) reports about the leadership style of Professor Bell, a renowned cultural anthropologist and former Silicon Valley executive, and the “culture of fear” she presided over at ANU.
“These articles are based on misrepresentations of institutional information,” the statement says. “We are all trusted to keep such information confidential. Failing to do so is not only unprofessional, it affects many of our colleagues who…have had their character, integrity or performance brought into question.
“We are concerned for our colleagues that have been personally named. The task is not an easy one but as leaders we are fully committed to…collectively reshaping ANU to ensure it is financially sustainable.”
Earlier, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said staff had “lost confidence” in Professor Bell over the reports and her planned A$250 million (£126 million) budget cuts.
“Staff are distressed and scared for their livelihood as a result of…poor governance, financial mismanagement and a damaged workplace culture,” said the NTEU’s ANU branch president, Millan Pintos-Lopez. “The vice-chancellor needs to spend less time hunting staff who speak up and more time working with us.”
The AFR reported that Professor Bell had told a leadership meeting that if anyone leaked information she would “find you out and hunt you down”. Professor Bell told the newspaper she could not recall saying those “precise words” but stressed the importance of “appropriate hygiene around who has access to data and who doesn’t”.
“Making sure that when information flows, it flows responsibly, is a hallmark of a good organisation,” she reportedly said. “When I first became vice-chancellor, there was a tremendous lack of controls on how information was distributed…there was information sitting in places that it probably shouldn’t, and I’ve been working to fix that.”
According to a subsequent AFR report, three ANU deans were summoned to change management meetings and told that the governing council had lost confidence in them. The joint leaders’ statement also expresses support for the deans.
The NTEU has been particularly outraged by Professor Bell’s request that staff forgo a scheduled 2.5 per cent pay increase to help minimise job losses. The union campaigned vigorously against this proposal and said 88 per cent of staff had voted against it.
Both Canberra-based universities are undergoing leadership and financial crises with a combined 800 or more job cuts predicted across the two institutions. The University of Canberra has its fourth leader inside a year, after interim vice-chancellor Stephen Parker lost confidence in the governing body and departed abruptly.
NTEU president Alison Barnes said an urgent parliamentary inquiry was needed into the “national university governance crisis”.
