The Trouble with Hiding the Faculty

In a move that I find completely and utterly shocking, but not truly unexpected, the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education staff list is now offline.

Try to access it and you get a simple message: “You are not authorized to access this page.”

While this is hugely important to me as a professor, it wouldn’t be odd to ask why should anyone in America care that the faculty directory of an education school at a British university has disappeared? My answer is that what is going on with a former professor at the University of Cambridge represents a much bigger problem that has gone wrong in higher education.

Cambridge is currently facing serious questions about its appointment of Jason Arday, the now former professor of sociology of education who resigned last week amid questions about his academic work, credentials, and biography. The university has announced an independent investigation, and Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice has promised it will be “thorough and transparent.”

While it remains to be seen how thorough and transparent Cambridge will be with any investigation, the sentiments expressed by its Vice-Chancellor are correct and exactly what should happen.

Amazingly, at the very moment transparency is called for, the very faculty directory on which Jason Arday was a member has disappeared. As the world tries to make sense of what happened inside the Faculty of Education, one of the most basic pieces of information about the school - who actually works there - is suddenly no longer publicly accessible.

Maybe there is a real and innocent explanation for this page going down. If there is, Cambridge should certainly offer it. But I can’t help but notice the timing and the fact that the faculty responsible for evaluating, hiring, and celebrating Arday have suddenly become harder to identify.

Higher education is designed to question and investigate everything. In social science, we study governments, societies, socio-political movements and virtually every other institution and structure in society.

To arrive at the truth, we dig through data and collect evidence, we have to ask uncomfortable questions, and we challenge explanations and each other not out of spite but because we are searching for facts. Historically, we look for stories and truths that some would prefer not to discuss or reveal and that mode of operation is why higher education is so important.

But any commitment to truth and reality has to work in both directions. Increasingly, when scrutiny turns toward those inside the university, people turn inward and questions are treated as attacks and criticism is characterized as harassment. Outsider attention and questions are viewed as threats and institutions founded on the idea of open inquiry seem deeply uncomfortable with people asking about it.

This is where higher education is today and helps explain why public trust in education is so low.

The University of Cambridge is not a private institution either; it is a public institution in the United Kingdom with public funding and is subject to public regulation - it cannot ignore public questioning and accountability.

Certainly, professors should not be harassed and should be protected from genuine threats. However, too many in academia believe that harassment and scrutiny are essentially interchangeable and they are not.

Reading and then questioning someone’s published work is not harassment. Nor is asking about a credential. Asking how one of the world’s most prestigious schools made a senior appointment is not persecution either; it is scrutiny and being able to defend ideas and choices is exactly what universities exist to do.

Thinking about the Arday appointment, maybe Cambridge did everything right or maybe it didn’t. I suspect Cambridge failed to do its due diligence and ask the appropriate questions because it is hard to understand how Arday went through any serious review and was so widely praised and celebrated given what is now known about his record and background. But I have no idea - I wasn’t there and I don’t know and neither do Cambridge’s critics or defenders.

That is precisely my point now. A transparent and thorough investigation should reveal what happened, with the records to prove it. How was the appointment made? What questions were asked and what was missed? The faculty who were part of this process need to explain what happened and taking down their page is telling and the circumstances around the appointment cannot be beyond scrutiny.

So put the faculty information back online and let people ask questions and examine the evidence. Cambridge must explain what happened; that is accountability. And it is the only way Cambridge can prove that it is honestly interested in academic excellence and the pursuit of truth.