The Office for Students, the national watchdog for higher education, has received a formal complaint against the University of Buckingham over its recent suspension of vice-chancellor James Tooley. The Free Speech Union, which lodged the complaint, insists that the allegations against Tooley should have been dismissed as “tittle-tattle”.
As we have previously reported, Tooley was suspended from the University, and initially evicted from his grace-and-favour accommodation, over undisclosed but supposedly “serious” allegations. It recently emerged from a Daily Mail report that the accusations came from Tooley’s estranged wife, and included the alleged possession of an unlicensed firearm, which turned out to be an air pistol.
According to reporting in The Telegraph, these revelations about the accusations form the basis of the FSU’s complaint. In a letter to the Office for Students, the FSU argues that the “allegations appear to be vexatious in nature and relate to Prof Tooley’s behaviour in the couple’s private life, e.g. that he keeps a toy gun in his bedside drawer”.
The letter correctly points out that such allegations “have no bearing on his fitness to carry out his public role as vice-Chancellor”, adding that they should have been disregarded as “tittle-tattle”. This is a fair critique: even if such allegations might warrant some internal concerns, Tooley would still have been entitled to the benefit of the doubt and a measure of due process.
Instead, the university’s Council immediately suspended Tooley, attempted to expel him from his home, even placing security guards outside his front door, and publicly humiliated him by informing all staff and students at Buckingham of his suspension and pending investigation due to “a number of serious allegations”.
In a separate initiative, 37 peers from the House of Lords sent a letter to members of the University of Buckingham Council, voicing their “serious disquiet” regarding Tooley’s dismissal “on the basis of unproven allegations”, labelling the decision “entirely disproportionate”.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Lord Vinson, who is one the Buckingham’s largest donors and was a member of the committee that set of the University in 1976, criticised the Council’s actions for causing “unnecessary upset”, adding that Tooley’s suspension had been “unusual, to say the least”. Lord Vinson has also requested a seat on Buckingham’s board, hoping to ensure the University will take a “different” approach to similar matters in the future.
James Tooley continues to communicate through his solicitors at Griffin Law, and has not commented on the FSU’s complaint with the Office for Students. A spokesperson for the University of Buckingham, however, told The Telegraph that Tooley “was suspended following due process and legal advice to allow for an independent investigation”, insisting that Buckingham University remains “certain about the integrity of the process followed”.