David Woods
RIGHT TO REPLY
Try to make sense of this scenario. An employee defames his colleagues, apologises unreservedly, and accepts a warning that, should he do so again, he will face disciplinary action
That same employee subsequently repeats the allegations for which he has apologised, defames a senior executive and his employer, and is called before a disciplinary inquiry.
During the four-day inquiry, which fills 541 pages of transcript, that employee is unable to prove that the remarks he published and republished bear any resemblance to the truth, or that those remarks were well meaning or even simply misguided.
The presiding officer finds that the employee is “not a man of his word”, concludes that the employment relationship is irreparably destroyed, and rules that the employee be dismissed. The employer accepts that ruling.
All this will make perfect sense to anybody vaguely familiar with labour law. However, in this case the employee happens to be Robert Shell, former head of the Population Research Unit (PRU) at Rhodes University.
Shell has indicated that he intends to appeal against his dismissal. Even so, he has bombarded the public through the media with a continuous stream of falsehoods. The latest example is a report in the Mail & Guardian (“Rhodes’s closure of research unit baffles academics”, March 23 to 29).
That article supports Shell’s preposterous claim that an “underlying” reason for his dismissal was that Rhodes wants to “suppress the findings of Dr Shell’s research into the scale of the HIV/Aids pandemic in Grahamstown”.
All that needs to be said about this nonsense is that Shell did not dare to make this claim at his disciplinary hearing, where it would naturally have been put to the test under cross-examination.
The only aspect of the “Shell affair” that does not make sense is how a dismissed employee has managed to dupe a handful of colleagues and reporters with lies, distortions and opportunistic claims about the value of his research, which has yet to be disclosed in written form.
Shell has pulled off this remarkable propaganda coup because Rhodes has until now respected the sub judice rule while Shell prepares for his appeal. However, his sustained vilification of Rhodes demands that I, as head of the university, now dispel some of the untruths conveyed in last week’s article.
The report in which Shell made the claims for which he apologised was not “commissioned by Rhodes’s East London campus on retrenchment and appointment practices there”. The report was not “commissioned” by anyone. It was styled a Report on the Structure and Function of the Board of Studies and its Liaison with other University Bodies. The single reference in the report to retrenchments and appointments was gratuitous and false.
Rhodes reacted to Shell’s report by appointing two senior academics to investigate it. They found that Shell’s report was “filled with examples of opinions and conclusions masquerading as fact”, and that Shell was driven by a desire to denigrate a particular colleague.
This report is a shocking and inaccurate piece of writing which is not the result of honest and objective research. It makes malicious and unfounded allegations against the university and nine individuals within and outside the institution. These are not academic issues or issues of academic freedom.
Shell’s agreement to retract the allegations and apologise did not follow “months of expensive negotiations”. That agreement was reached at the request of Shell’s attorney after discussions with myself lasting about a morning. Shell was well aware that had he not apologised he would have been forced to defend his claims.
Asked at his disciplinary hearing why he had repeated allegations for which he had already unreservedly apologised, Shell replied that he had not read the letters of apology he had personally signed. Another scurrilous allegation that Shell made was that Rhodes was “obstructing” the work of the PRU. The only “proof” that he provided was that Rhodes insisted that he must account for how the funder’s money was spent. Shell repeatedly ignored standard university financial procedures. Since Shell’s dismissal, Rhodes has uncovered evidence which appears to indicate that he was guilty of other highly questionable conduct while still head of the PRU. Rhodes has placed this evidence before Shell, and asked for an explanation. At the time of writing, it has received none. Further illustrative of the devious nature of Shell’s press campaign is what he has chosen not to disclose.
It is indeed unfortunate that the PRU, which was under the directorship of Shell, has had to close, and Rhodes recognises the importance and relevance of research emanating from such a unit. At no point has the university ever tried to suppress Shell’s research findings, but rather encourages the continuation of this work. The students currently undertaking research at the PRU will also continue to be catered for and supervised appropriately. Should the outcome of the research “slow the spread of HIV/Aids in the region” as is suggested in the article, Rhodes, along with all people in the country, would welcome that outcome.
Shell cannot be permitted to ride on the bandwagons of academic freedom and the HIV/Aids pandemic to defame an institution that has done its best to investigate his allegations, which have twice been found to be baseless.
No university worthy of its name and conscious of its responsibility to protect the integrity of innocent members of its staff can permit an employee to “draw inappropriate inferences” and make “unjustified accusations” (to quote Shell’s letter of apology) under the guise of academic freedom. Rhodes is no exception.
Dr David Woods is vice-chancellor of Rhodes University