Conduct unbecoming

We are all professors at Leeds Metropolitan University and have been caught up in the controversy surrounding the sudden resignation of Simon Lee, the vice-chancellor. There is one aspect of your coverage that causes us seriously to question the integrity of your magazine.

The comments on your website, which have followed the two articles published on this matter, have expressed many good points of view and prompted some necessary open discussion. The three of us have made separate named contributions to these discussions.

However, these comments have also included innumerable posts that are anonymous, usually acrimonious and in many instances expressing downright untruths. Allowing the likes of these to muddle serious, open and necessary debate is unbecoming of a publication of principle, particularly one that is the national window on higher education and valued for that reason.

Simon Robinson, R. John Elford and Max Farrar, Leeds Metropolitan University.