The Times- Cambridge scholars ‘delighted’ by vice-chancellor Stephen Toope’s early exit
Cambridge scholars ‘delighted’ by vice-chancellor Stephen Toope’s early exit
When Professor Stephen Toope, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, resigned this week he said that he wanted to spend more time with his family.
While no doubt true, those close to him question whether his decision had more to do with negative press regarding his tenure that left him “rattled” and experiencing “the hardest time of his career”.
As Toope, a former human rights scholar, prepares to return to his Canadian homeland, senior academics at the university have told The Times they are “delighted” that he is leaving.
His term was expected to last seven years, as it had for his four predecessors, but he will depart next September two years early.
His time at Cambridge has been marked by a series of conflicts, including being accused of allowing China to infiltrate the university with the acceptance of hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding, and of stifling free speech.
According to one source the most bruising of those encounters occurred in May, when he was criticised for supporting the introduction of software that enabled students anonymously to accuse members of faculty of “racism, discrimination and micro-aggressions”.
The site encouraged students to report staff for “raising eyebrows when a black member of staff or student is speaking” and making “backhanded compliments”.
The source said: “He was very rattled by the reporting, particularly the piece in The Times and the leader column calling on him to reflect on whether he was doing more harm than good. It was one of the hardest times in his career and he was obviously frustrated at how it was received. I would not be surprised if he made the decision to go then but left the announcement until this week so it didn’t seem connected.”
After the criticism the software was removed and then updated. Toope said that parts of it had been launched in error.
The source added: “Throughout his time at the university he has wanted to have it both ways — to show that he cares about free speech but while listening to the extreme views of a vocal minority. I’m sure that he is concerned about free speech but you can’t do that without breaking a few eggs, and he was afraid to do that.”
One critic of the university’s direction of leadership is Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economics of poverty and nutrition professor and fellow of St John’s College. He spoke out against the decision to sign up to a diversity scheme run by the charity Stonewall.
When asked about the challenges Toope has faced, Dasgupta said: “I don’t believe university authorities ever faced a challenge, nor do they do so now. The ‘challenge’ is their own making. We are looking at attempts by a vocal minority of students and faculty — all hugely privileged in comparison to the average citizen — anxious to close freedom of expression that the average citizen has always exercised in her day-to-day life.
“It would have been easy for university administrators to have spoken categorically on the issue right at the first sign of disturbance on their campus. Instead they took refuge in paying Stonewall to give them guidelines of approved behaviour. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the 1970s was only an extreme form of this.”
Toope, 63, backed an initiative last year that required academics, students and visiting speakers to treat others and their opinions with “respect”. This provoked a backlash, including from the Cambridge alumnus Stephen Fry, who said that there were “many opinions, positions and points of view which I find I do not and cannot respect. That is surely true for all of us.”
An amendment, which changed the wording of the original proposals from “respect” to “tolerate”, was voted through overwhelmingly.
Arif Ahmed, a reader in philosophy at Gonville and Caius College who led opposition to the initiative, said he wished Toope “every success” but that he hoped that the new vice-chancellor “appreciates the need to prioritise free speech”.
John Marenbon, senior research fellow at Trinity College, said: “One hopes a new vice-chancellor will have more respect for the freedom of academics in how they go about their work than Toope and be less sympathetic to fashionable causes such as ‘decolonising the curriculum’.”
Another academic, who asked not to be named, said: “I am delighted that Toope is going, since one could scarcely imagine a worse vice-chancellor. He aroused a good deal of opposition and I imagine he prefers to retire from the job earlier than expected rather than face a struggle.
“The opposition has been to a variety of politically correct moves, such as the website for anonymous reporting of supposed micro-aggressions. Many of the scientists, I sense, feel that this direction is misguided, but they prefer not to bother themselves about it so long as it doesn’t affect them too much.
“I think that the stories in the papers have really had an effect on Toope, who might well be rather thin-skinned.”
Many have praised his time at Cambridge, highlighting the difficulties caused by Covid-19 and his championing of a university climate change programme.
Toope’s deputy, Professor Graham Virgo, senior pro-vice-chancellor, disputed the claims that he was leaving because of the criticism he faced. “He has received hundreds of messages from around the world from students, alumni and academics,” he said. “Of course he’s disappointed with some of the coverage, but that comes with the territory. What some of the reports fail to grasp is the colleges have autonomy, Stephen is not responsible for every decision undertaken. He has the complete confidence of the senior leadership team.”
A Cambridge University spokesman said: “Professor Toope has made it clear, both privately and publicly, that his decision to end his term after five years is entirely personal and unrelated to the demands of the role, which he intends to tackle vigorously while he remains in post.
“Since his announcement, he has received countless messages of support from students and staff thanking him for his contributions to the university and wishing him well for the future.
“There has been widespread misrepresentation of the vice-chancellor’s views on freedom of speech, and of the circumstances leading up to the launch of Report + Support — which he had neither seen nor approved.
“Professor Toope has always recognised freedom of speech as a core value at the heart of academic endeavour.
“The university is a democratic institution, governed by its academic community, and the university’s policy was the result of rigorous debate and an open vote. To suggest the vice-chancellor attempted to personally impose a policy is a nonsense that completely misunderstands and wilfully misrepresents the university’s decision-making processes.”
Announcing his departure, Toope said: “I am especially proud of our joint leadership across collegiate Cambridge to deliver on our dual mission of education and research through the unprecedented Covid crisis. We kept the university on track and safe during its hardest years since the Second World War.
“But at the same time, the upheaval of Covid has led me to reassess my own years ahead from a personal perspective. As an expat living far from home, being separated from my children and grandchildren by closed borders has been hard.
“Being near my own family and friends is more important than ever. It remains of course an extraordinary experience to serve this great university as its vice-chancellor, and a tremendous honour to work with colleagues across the collegiate university and beyond — one that I am proud and enthusiastic to continue for another full year.”
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