By Elisabeth Bobrova Blyumin and Gonçalo Hora de Carvalho
The backlash the University of Groningen has received in the case of Susanne Täuber is unjustified, argue students Elisabeth Bobrova Blyumin and Gonçalo Hora de Carvalho. They say it is not the university that has failed Täuber; it is her that has failed the university.
We are writing this piece because we are afraid. The board of the university is desperately trying to remain professional about a private court case regarding the firing of an individual, while the media are trying – and succeeding – to shatter the image of our institution on what we think is a false basis.
This past month, the voices of the uninformed activists outside of the Academy building grew to a crescendo, going so far as to demand that the board of the university step down, or reinstate Susanne Täuber at the university. But do they know why she was even let go in the first place? Let’s start from the beginning: Täuber’s 2019 critical essay published after the university did not grant her a promotion in 2018.
The essay is based on her personal experience as a Rosalind Franklin Fellow (RFF). Claims are made about other RFF beneficiaries, but she never specifies how many fellows were interviewed – if any. Täuber states that ‘the disadvantage for fellows of the RFF scheme is potentiated: they are often excluded by male academic elites who nurture mostly other men’.
She makes a serious accusation about at least half of her co-workers on behalf of over a hundred women who, as far as we know, she never interviewed.
She makes a serious accusation about at least half of her co-workers
Täuber mentions that the scheme has resulted in structural discrimination, that it undermined meritocratic principles, and has led to diversity without inclusion. This very well may be true, but this is not something that she has seriously tried to investigate. No data was collected, yet the accusations of structural discrimination were made and taken by many to be gospel.
The explanation for the claim that ‘male academics have access to a much higher number of PhD students’ is left up to the imagination of the reader. Can this be due to the (known) gender imbalance caused by the slow entry of women in academia that extends into this century? Could this be because there are more men in your field, because it is a field that (for many possible reasons) interests men more than women?
One would hope that an essay from an academic examining this very topic as her main field of research would attempt to answer at least some questions. Alas, instead, we are left with non sequitur after non sequitur. That is all one gets from reading Täuber’s essay – a glimpse of her own assumptions about other people based on their gender.
This personal experience has been published without evidence in an academic journal and taken for real research when it is actually an accusation against members of Täuber’s faculty of illegally conspiring against her receiving a promotion.
It’s a personal reflection which gives false grounds for destroying the reputation of her co-workers and the university
We do not see how it is surprising that this caused work conflicts between Täuber and her supervisors and coworkers. Academics are typically free to allocate their time how they see fit to be doing their research, and this particular academic decided to spend her time writing this personal reflection, which gives false grounds for destroying the reputation of her co-workers and the university as well as a highly respected fellowship that is awarded to women in academia.
If we were her colleagues, we would feel victimised and confused that we weren’t approached to discuss the issue before involving the public.
Overall, according to this essay, the University of Groningen is conspiring against all its female academics, all male academics are sabotaging the careers of their female counterparts, and the university’s attempt at providing an opportunity for women in academia to kick-start their careers through the RFF is a colossal failure, achieving the opposite of what was intended.
Yet the claims in this essay have been given without proof, hiding behind a veil of a strange part of an academic journal which values opinions and experiences more than data.
We think Täuber has failed the university and has wrongly accused the very system that gave her a job. We do not think that the international backlash that the University of Groningen has received is justified, and it saddens us that this has recently become the topic of greatest interest.
The worst of all is seeing the best of us: the young, free and strong – the students of the university – gathering by the hundreds and setting fire to their alma mater in the public square, for all to see, when they could’ve at least read the goddamn paper.
Elisabeth Bobrova Blyumi is a physics bachelor student; Gonçalo Hora de Carvalho is doing a master’s in artificial intelligence