Abuse in academia: Are universities protecting predatory professors?
42:35 Share

Are your ulcerative colitis symptoms proving difficult to manage? Tramphya, guselkumab, can help you manage the cycle of UC symptoms. At one year, many patients taking Tramphya achieved clinical remission, and some patients also achieved endoscopic remission. Individual results may vary. Tramphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur.

Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and TB. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Ask your doctor if Tramfiya can help you manage the cycle of UC symptoms. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tramfiyradio.com.

Your data is like gold to hackers, and they'll sell it to the highest bidder. Are you protected? McAfee helps shield you, blocking suspicious texts, malicious emails, and fraudulent websites. McAfee's secure VPN lets you browse safely, and its AI-powered text scam detector spots threats instantly. You'll also get up to $2 million of award-winning antivirus and identity theft protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year. Visit McAfee.com. Cancel any time. Terms apply.

Hi, MediaStormers. This week, we're heading back out on the investigative trail, scoping out sexual misconduct cases at universities, specifically sexual misconduct by university staff. It is clear from the many women we spoke to, including victims, survivors and colleagues who supported them, that the systems in place to deal with staff sexual misconduct are woefully inadequate.

There are simple solutions, as we'll also explore, but either the capacity is lacking to implement them or the will. Whichever it is, something's got to give. Not least because a law passed in October 2024 requiring UK employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and universities are running out of time to get in line.

And as academia struggles with financial strain, can it afford such a leaky pipeline that sees female staff dropping out disproportionately at every rung of the ladder? And finally, because if you can't safeguard the people working for you, what does that mean for the many young students entrusting themselves to the government?

in your care. A PhD student at University College London has appeared in court today accused of drugging and raping 10 women. Over 700 students turned up to address concerns about sexual misconduct on campus. 60% of women working in academic institutions have been sexually harassed, according to a recent study. Right now, our university's

faced some big questions. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's investigation, academia and abuse. Are universities protecting predatory professors? Warning, this episode contains mention of rape, sexual harassment and abuse. I was a second year undergraduate student and he was my lecturer.

I had what you could call like an innocent kind of crush on him because he was handsome. From that first kind of moment where we were alone together, I think he started to cross a few boundaries. And he asked me all these questions about my life. He started to burn me CDs every week to give to me at the lectures. And I felt very special because I was like, wow, this professor is interested in me and my ideas, you know. And as a 19-year-old girl, especially, I think it just felt very special.

It felt like he had recognized some intelligence in me or something like that. That's how I felt at the time.

This was a couple years later. We were out and my hands were very cold and he said, "Oh, just hold my hand." And then he kind of pulled me to the side and said, "Why don't we just go to my house? Nobody has to know. We could have such an amazing night. Just think about it." And I agreed. And that's how our relationship started. It went on for almost a year. Meet Alex Dietzel, a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol.

Alex wasn't always against staff-student relationships at universities, but this has changed. And it was a lesson she says she learned the hard way.

It was between my master's degree and my PhD, and I had gotten admitted with him as my supervisor. And he would say to me, if you reveal that we're in a relationship, nobody will ever take your PhD admission seriously. And there is a very slim chance you'll be a successful academic because people will judge you. At the time, I thought it was good advice, but now I see it more as like protecting his own reputation.

So how was it having your secret boyfriend as a PhD supervisor? It was not a good experience. In academia, a PhD supervisor doesn't just kind of look at your work and give you advice. They also open the door to your career. They provide mentorship. They connect you with relevant networks. So it's a hugely important role. And I felt very trapped, like I couldn't tell anyone about this.

I again considered whether I should switch supervisors. But I remembered that conversation we had and his warning to me that if I told anyone, I would not succeed as an academic. No one would take me seriously is what he said. And I really believed him. So I just soldiered on and no one knew. That sounds quite lonely. Yeah, it was lonely. And it was scary because I felt like if people found out, it would really ruin my life.

I held onto that belief for quite a long time. He had said to you, right, if you tell anyone, then people will not take your PhD admission seriously. Did you ever question your credentials on that basis? Definitely. Like, it was my life goal to be a university lecturer. It took me a long time to really accept, actually, I am a good academic and I do belong here and I deserve this.

Alex did go on to complete her PhD, with flying colours, and began her dreamed-of career as an academic. But she didn't feel able to do so at the university where she qualified. Instead, she moved cities. I knew I had to get away and to start my own kind of reputation where no one knew me. And where, you know, I could kind of start over and be...

someone who there were no rumors about. And I could kind of stand on my own reputation. Of course, I was really sad to leave that city that I lived in for such a long time. I did all my degrees there. And I still have friends there that I left. But it was important to me to leave that behind and start over.

This is a trend you'll start to notice as we collect stories along this trail. Junior female academics moving on from positions, sometimes dropping out of academia altogether, in the wake of what they describe as abuses of power or sexual misconduct by male senior counterparts who continue without consequence.

If someone is pursuing students, it's usually not a one-off event. So he always told me he hadn't ever pursued a student and that I was the first one. And then with time, I began to get to know some of his other, I would say victims, because it's not just people he dated. I was part of a complaint that was submitted at his current institution, which involved several women. Would you detail what that experience was?

was like for the women involved in the complaint and whether anything came of that complaint? From my own perspective, being part of a complaint is hard because you need to put a lot of emotional work into it because you have to write what happened to you and you're interviewed about it. And in this case, it drew on for almost two years. The person who submitted the complaint really struggled and had to take sick leave and reduced hours. And unfortunately, they didn't find enough evidence

it is very hard to evidence. And I think that's where these cases often end up with no resolution because the university has to have absolute assurance and certainty

So the person that led this complaint that you said had to take sick leave and reduce hours, is she a female academic working at the institution? Has that impacted his career? Has that impacted her career? It's definitely impacted her career in the sense that she's had to change her working pattern and take time off. In academia, it's a very fast spinning hamster wheel and

Taking time off or going part time can harm your career because of that. In terms of his career, people know of his reputation. So there is the kind of whisper network and rumors. But in terms of actual career, he's still a professor.

and has still the ability to supervise students and teach students. I do worry about his students. I think that someone who abuses their power and has a long reputation of sexual misconduct isn't going to suddenly stop that. And I think certainly if that investigation hasn't led to consequences, I fear that he might feel emboldened to keep acting how he acts.

And it probably hasn't affected him to the extent that we expected when we submitted a complaint. Or I guess to the extent that it affected some of the women involved. Exactly. Academia was designed...

at first for men, right? Women weren't admitted to university. And so there's lots of problems in academia for women. There is like what we call the leaky pipeline for women in academia. Basically, there's a drop off. So at undergrad, you'll have 50-50 women, men. And then slowly, slowly, as you move through master's, PhD, you're missing those women who started out. I do think sexual misconduct must come into it.

Because if you don't feel safe or heard in your workplace, then why would you want to be in support of that institution or remain there?

We started looking into this issue, the handling of sexual misconduct cases by universities, in particular involving faculty members. These are often individuals with powerful reputations that bring credentials and funds to academic institutions. But sometimes protecting them comes at the cost of other staff and of students.

It was a student who first brought us this story, an intern, Camilla, working here at MediaStorm. When did you first start working with us? 2022. 2022. Keep coming back for more. Yeah, wow.

You brought us the story by your work with Hands Off. Will you just tell us first, what is Hands Off and how did you get involved? Hands Off is a student-led campaign group at LSE. We campaign against sexual violence at the university. I first got involved in my second year where I did a course of self-defence sessions. Pretty cool. Yeah, pretty cool. I didn't teach them, to be clear. I just organised them. Did you participate? Yeah, I did participate.

So I shouldn't mess with you. Yeah, definitely not. I've done three self-defense sessions. I think it's pretty frowned upon to attack interns physically anyway. Yeah, definitely something, yeah. So at some point when you were working at Hands Off, things at Hands Off kind of kicked off, didn't they?

Yeah, so near the end of my second year, an article in The Beaver, which is the LSE student newspaper, was released and it made quite a big stir at the university. And obviously... What was the story? The story reported in The Beaver related to this case against a professor at LSE who had had 14 allegations against him. That was five formal complaints and then nine informal allegations.

In the end, out of the formal complaints, two of them were recommended to the disciplinary board and they were both dropped. The Beaver reports how the case was really mishandled and how the establishment at LSE really failed to deal with it according to best practice and support the women involved. And were these complaints coming from students? Were they coming from staff? It was mainly staff within the department or PhD students. So...

Today, as we record and release this episode, where are the women who were involved in making allegations against him?

So many of them have left, both because of the result of the case and the way that it was handled. And him, the professor, the man who was accused? So he is still to this day teaching at LSE and recently he's essentially received a promotion. Okay, so when you first told me about this, that outcome really struck me. That the result of this case was women who were involved or women who were just aware of it ended up leaving LSE.

the university and that the man who may or may not have committed an offence remains. I wondered sort of whether this was a pattern or whether this was a problem within the system at large because something that you often hear talked about is the higher up you go in academia

the fewer women there are. And we started looking at the data. Research from the University of Colorado Boulder from October 2023, led by Katie Spoon, showed that female faculty are more likely to leave academia than male faculty at all career stages and to leave by choice, right? This is called attrition. And they did qualitative data and they learned that one of the real push factors was to do with handling of sexual misconduct cases.

However, in the UK, we actually couldn't really find any research on this. Yeah, there's not much out there we found. So we tried to find some data ourselves. Camilla, you had a lot of fun trawling through all of our freedom of information data, didn't you? Did you like that? Yeah, super fun entering it all in the spreadsheet. Lots of fun doing an internship at MediaStorm. Apply now. Even more appealing when you learn that actually...

The attrition data we found was kind of inconclusive. I tried my best. I mean, part of the problem is, right, we FOI'd 100 universities and we got 22 usable sets of data, which starts to indicate why perhaps general research in this area is so thin. And ultimately, while we couldn't establish a pattern in terms of one gender or another willingly leaving their contracts, I was really struck. Actually, if you look at this other column I've done over here,

Okay, so there's our attrition rate. That's a ratio that doesn't really point to any particular pattern. However, this is the advancement odds, the likelihood of men advancing from lecturer to professor and the likelihood of women advancing from lecturer to professor. And what does it say? So across all data sets, we found ultimately men are twice as likely as

as women to advance to that stage. You can see here in some cases, you know, it was, they had a nine times higher success rate

at advancing from lecturer to professor than women. That's pretty depressing in itself. Yeah, and it does. It leads to this massively disproportionate picture at the top of the hierarchy, you know, where at postdoc stage, you'll have pretty much even ratio across unis of men to women. And then, you know, it gets to senior lecturer and you'll have one and a half times as many men. And then by the time it gets to

and you're looking at the staff members who make up your professors, you have more than twice as many male professors as you have female professors. I mean, looking at this, it's just like, where are all the women going? And also, why are they going? Why are they leaving? Exactly. Exactly.

So we reached out to a few women at LSE who'd been involved in the situation and we spoke to some off the record and some on the record. We also spoke to women at other universities. However, it all started with one woman in particular. One resignation. Yeah, Dr. Taylor Sherman. Her resignation letter leaves little to the imagination. She wrote to the chair of council at the London School of Economics, LSE,

She said, I write today to resign my position because the university has failed to address sexual misconduct and is perpetuating a culture of discrimination and misogyny. Do you want to read that and just blank out his name? It is a fact that four formal complaints were made by four separate named women. It is also a fact that a fifth testimony was provided, but the woman did not wish to make a formal complaint and reveal her identity because of a pattern of intimidation. Okay. She goes on.

The allegations include sexual harassment, sexual assault, and exploited consent, a form of rape. Just about every possible bureaucratic obstacle seems to have been hurled in the way of these brave and resilient women. And then Camilla, I just want you to read this line here.

Rudes like a textbook on how to turn a complaints process into a gauntlet, into a warning to women not to challenge the behaviour of men and the institution that protects them.

I wonder, Camilla, as a young female student at this institution, how does hearing that make you feel? It makes me personally, and it's kind of made most people at the university feel really unsafe because it just points out how the institution just won't protect you. And you just kind of feel vulnerable that if something were to happen, then you would kind of be on your own.

When Camilla first showed us this story, we thought, of course, what is the impact on the female staff? But also, what is the impact on universities, on this potential drain of female talent, both as a place of academic excellence and as a place of safety from abuse? It turns out this is an area that's very under-researched, though we've listed some academic resources that do exist in the show notes for you.

And luckily, someone is trying to plug this gap. So in the UK, we really don't know that much about staff experiences of gender-based violence and sexual misconduct. Policy and research and kind of practice has focused on students. But what's happened is that staff have been somewhat forgotten.

I'm Dr. Anna Bull. I'm a senior lecturer in education and social justice at the University of York. And I'm also a founder and co-director of the 1752 Group. And we're a campaigning and research organization that addresses sexual misconduct in higher education. Now, I know that you've mentioned research is sparse, but given you are a point of reference or a go-to for many women who may experience this,

Do you think an issue could be that women are feeling pushed out or sidelined in their academic careers as a result of sexual misconduct and also the mishandling of complaints? I suppose I'm trying to find out what impact this has on female staff, but also what impact it has on institutions who could be losing female staff.

Yeah, this is definitely an issue. In my most recent study, I also focused on staff experiences. And this was a qualitative study, which was really looking at reporting and disciplinary processes. So what happens when you report this issue? And I did have accounts from staff

particularly from junior staff, but also some senior women. And all of the people who came forward to speak to me were women. And quite often, it seems that universities are not very well equipped to hear about these issues and to handle complaints.

It affects people's careers very, very strongly. So one of the things that my research has found is the way it inhibits people's ability to network, maybe to go to conferences and to build those networks that are really crucial for having an academic career. It also affects people's physical health. I think that's something that we forget in relation to sexual harassment.

It causes post-traumatic stress disorder in some instances because often sexual harassment is ongoing over time. Just being able to build your career, to be able to go into the spaces that you need to be working in, sexual harassment really significantly impedes that. So it's very possible that people are being pushed out of their jobs as a result, both of the harassment, but also as a result of the institution being unable to keep them safe if they report it.

Now, you also work on researching and advocating for solutions. Can you tell us what those solutions look like? So one of the campaigns we've been running this year is about something called the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. And it's a really simple idea. It's the idea that if you're hiring somebody, you ask their previous employer or employers over the past few years,

are there any upheld or ongoing disciplinary investigations into sexual misconduct sexual exploitation and then if other people ask you that other employers ask your organization for that information you commit that you will provide that i have to say i'm so surprised that that's not happening already that someone can apply for another job while

being subjected to an investigation and that's never learned. This seems really basic and it's probably quite shocking that the most common or one of the most common outcomes for sexual harassment disciplinary investigations is the person under investigation leaves their job and moves to a new job elsewhere. So it's really, you know, we're not asking for the moon. We're deliberately asking for something quite tangible, quite specific and very doable.

We know that several higher education institutions have been discussing this. It's been put on the agenda of all of the relevant committees, but we haven't got anyone who's actually committed to doing this yet. While this is happening, we know that people who are under investigation or have upheld findings are moving between institutions. We also gathered some data on this for ourselves.

Asking universities how many staff being investigated under their dignity at work policy, which tackles bullying and harassment as well as sexual misconduct, were being dismissed. And how many, as Anna describes, are leaving by choice, perhaps to another job, before the disciplinary process has been fulfilled.

We asked for this data over a five-year period. Our findings confirm Anna's suspicion. Staff are more likely to leave of will during an ongoing investigation than they are to be dismissed as its result. Of the 57 UK universities who sent us usable data, 1.6 times as many people left by choice than were dismissed, and fewer than 5% of investigations resulted in formal dismissals.

Without mandatory disclosure, this leaves little ways other than the so-called "whisper network" to keep allegations from being drowned and forgotten. But Anna told us this had proven dangerous for some accusers.

You know, there's documented cases of, say, a colleague or another member of staff trying to reform the hiring institution of the upheld or ongoing disciplinary case against the person they're trying to hire. And then that person who tried to warn them getting sued for defamation. So it is a real risk for people who are trying to share this information through the whisper network. We need to have much better solutions in place.

Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home Yes! Cool! or attending one live Cool! you can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at cox.com slash internet. Cox Internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox Mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5G reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the U.S. to H2023. Results may vary, not an endorsement. Other restrictions apply.

I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three. Will that be cash or credit? Credit. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you. Get yours at Samsung.com. Compatible with select apps. Reparts Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.

Hi, my name is Johanna Thoma and I'm a professor of philosophy at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. Before Johanna moved to Germany, take a guess where she worked. At LSE, the university of our intern Camilla and the uni at the heart of the scandal she shared with us at Mediastorm.

That scandal was reported by student journalists at The Beaver and involved multiple inconclusive sexual misconduct accusations against a single member of staff who has been promoted while female staff resigned in protest. And when I asked Johanna whether these incidents were a factor in her leaving, well, the answer wasn't no. It certainly didn't help. Yeah.

And I think the staff that support women who come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, who are most often women themselves, often face a kind of lack of support from the institution. I find it puzzling that ultimately these women are doing a big service to the institution and they're acting in their capacities as employees of the institution. They're wanting to help the universities protect themselves

And I think as such, they should be strongly supported. And I think a lot of the time at best, they're being made to feel like they're valued less or supported less than the usually men accused of the sexual misconduct. And that ultimately risks losing not only the women who are the target of the sexual harassment, but also the women supporting them.

You hinted at this, but just to put it in explicit terms for anyone listening, around the same time as this very public case at LSE, you were supporting another student in your own department who alleged sexual misconduct by another staff member. Now, at this point, the student hadn't gone public or made a formal complaint, and she was consulting you in discretion.

When the Beaver story broke and everyone learned how little disciplinary action had been taken against this other staff member, in spite of 14 allegations to his name, where did that leave you and the student that you were trying to support?

I found it difficult to bear. It weakens the position of anyone who's dealing with women who are on the fence about coming forward because if that student is saying she's pessimistic, meaningful action will be taken. And you know at the same time of another case where there is a formal complaint and no meaningful action is taken, you can do nothing to reassure that student. It kind of puts you in an impossible situation because on the one hand, you believe the women involved,

At the same time, you don't want to pressure them to come forward. And you can't reassure them about the process in the face of legitimate doubts they have about it. And at the same time, you're at this impasse where you want to protect women who are currently at the university or future students. And there's really nothing you can do about it without there being a formal procedure. And it feels like the only way to kind of break that impasse would be

for, well, apart from, you know, abusive men just stopping it, would be for institutions to improve their procedures. Why do you think cases like this have proven so much more affecting for female staff? Or maybe you could tell us why was it for you? Yeah, I think often this kind of tension is easier to bear for somebody who has not themselves experienced violence

sexual harassment or sexual assault or abuse of power, especially in the academic context. I have made these experiences before I was even a PhD student. And then if you're sort of confronted with a situation where what's at stake is potentially protecting other women of similar experiences, it's very difficult to just sort of let it be.

Thank you for being so open. Would you be happy to give us any more specific details about your personal experiences? Yeah, I think I see where to start. So before I was a PhD student, even I experienced both sexual harassment and also abuse of power by a male faculty member.

I guess when you're a student, especially in a field where there aren't that many women and where the entire history of the field hasn't featured many women and there's this sort of string of genius men that you learn about, there's this kind of vulnerable place you might be in starting out in your academic trajectory where you find it hard to picture that

you could be someone who could be such a genius or who could be contributing to the field and where you might think really the message that's being conveyed to you is that as a woman, the best you can hope for is being genius adjacent or something. And then you get a certain sort of man who takes advantage of that. And it's just really corrosive. I mean, not only for like

the mental health effects for the women involved but also their academic trajectories that undermines your confidence. You are never quite sure when you get male attention whether it's because of your own academic achievements or because they are interested in you for other reasons.

And also indirectly, your male peers might suspect that if you get male attention, that it's not for academic reasons. And so it has this really corrosive effect for the entire academic community.

And I think that's sometimes not appreciated if you've not yourself been the target of this kind of behavior and why it was so important to me to, now that I'm a professor myself and in a position to potentially do something about it, help to do something.

So I guess one point I would want to make is that a lot of the time this isn't primarily about institutions harming women. They do in all sorts of ways, but ultimately the institutions themselves really lose out because these academics and budding academics are highly capable women. But the institutions, they lose all of those highly capable women

women. And it seems like just a really bad trade-off. I mean, a lot of the time you are protecting one male predator, but losing several women, either the ones who've been harassed themselves or maybe those who've been supporting them. And then an unknown number of additional women who would have joined the institution had they not heard of all of the stories about this sexual predator and the university having failed to adequately deal with

the case. So it's a really bad cost-benefit balance for the institution and it kind of makes it really puzzling or irrational but I guess that's the case for the patriarchy in general. There are so many parallels between my case and the PhD student's case and I realize how

LSE as an institution has a culture of impunity and indifference. If a university can't protect its own staff, what does that mean for the safety of its students?

People who had the power and people who were adequately equipped to sort of step in did not step in and they just turned their heads away. The women who were actively trying to sort of highlight those unjust issues were treated so horribly that they felt like moving away from the institution was the best option for them. Those things were terrible.

Charlotte, who is using a pseudonym, tells me she was raped by another student at LSE and reported it to the university as well as the police. While police eventually concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the case, a fate met by 98% of reported rape cases in the UK,

A disciplinary hearing at the university led to the acknowledgement that the violation had occurred and resulted in the agreement for an apology letter to be sent by the perpetrator to Charlotte via the university. The university actually forgot to send her this letter. It's just one of many small bureaucratic mistakes that Charlotte says made her feel like she wasn't a human being in their eyes so much as an administrative burden. Can you fill us in now a little bit about...

What happened academically for you after the incident? You said that your academic work suffered. Did you manage to complete the degree? I was diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety and PTSD and I just remember not being able to do any sort of daily tasks, whether it be cooking for myself, getting out of bed, let alone perform at an academic level at such a vigorous academic institution.

You know, I saw him studying and it just felt like life moves on for him. But for me, I was struggling to do even the most basic things.

The reason I spoke to Charlotte for this episode is because of her desperation to get institutions to care. And when this was happening to her, her frustration and sense of betrayal by the system was so extreme it led her to take drastic measures. These are not measures we seek to glamorize or normalize in any way, the opposite. And a content warning here: this next section contains mention of suicide.

I just remember not feeling heard or feeling like I didn't matter to them and they were just doing damage control to prevent any further legal repercussions from affecting the institution's reputation. That eventually led me to attempt overdose twice. I was just thinking, is my suffering not enough for them to acknowledge that this is such a flawed system? What does it take

for them to see that and change. If I die, would this problem be visible? Would other people start to care? Because I'm alive and trying to actively achieve change, but nothing was happening. So maybe in my death, they will then start to understand the gravity of things. And I thought about it every single day during that period. And I also distinctly remember if I jump off from the

new building that they just constructed. Maybe then they'll care and it is such a like dark thing to imagine and I can't believe I was thinking like that. If anyone's listening to this and then being affected, I just want to say to them that's completely false. Even though it feels like it's impossible for change to happen like immediately, sometimes it just takes years to see that change.

My case got me in touch with another survivor. She had basically experienced the same thing, if not worse, but like years back. I remember her telling me that she's very proud of me and you don't win a war by winning a single battle. You may lose the first few, you might win. The thing that matters is that you keep on trying. And actually, you're not alone. Yeah.

That's another big thing because I felt so alone, but I think I found my community and that really made me feel like I was like a human being that mattered. So that also really gave me sort of the confidence and the motivation to go back into academia. If you or anyone you know is struggling with suicidal ideation, you can contact Samaritans on 116 123.

Looking forwards, what does your academic career look like from here? Currently, I'm really enjoying my course. I'm doing gender studies and I would like to pursue a PhD at some point in my life. But it's just that the case with the postgraduate students, it just hinted at how LSE as an institution still has that culture of, as I said, indifference and impunity and

I just felt like if I were to encounter that situation again in an academic setting, I'm not sure if I'll be able to cope. I would love to do a PhD at some point in my life, but I'm not sure right now is the time. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. I'm going to stop the recording. Charlotte wanted it clarified that her view is not the official stance of the Gender Studies Department at LSE. It is personal.

Universities have a huge responsibility to keep students safe, and it's the most vulnerable who suffer when effective processes are not in place. The Good Law Project, whose experts have appeared on MediaStorm before, is currently fundraising to enable them to build a legal case against the accused staff member at LSE, the one at the heart of the Beavers article. They intend to name him publicly.

A spokesperson from LSE, the London School of Economics, sent Mediastorm this response: "LSE is committed to a working and learning environment where people can achieve their full potential free of all types of harassment and violence. We take reports of sexual harassment extremely seriously and encourage any members of the LSE community who have experienced or witnessed this to get in touch via one of our many channels."

Further, if a complaint of misconduct is received against any member of our faculty, staff or student body, we will always investigate fairly and fully, following our policies and procedures. LSE has developed and continues to develop a number of measures to ensure any allegation of misconduct receives a trauma-informed, robust and compassionate response."

They have listed various measures, including a new report and support system and a commission of Rape Crisis South London and Survivors UK to run an independent sexual violence advisory service for the school. We will include LSE's full response, which includes resources for people seeking help, in our show notes below. Thank you for listening. We'll be back on track next week with our Newswatch and Deep Dive, so tune in Thursday and Friday as usual.

Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcasts so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at MatildaMal, at HelenaWardia and follow the show via at MediaStormPod.

Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Sam Fire.