Report of Discussion: 9 December 2025

Tuesday, 9 December 2025

A Discussion was scheduled by videoconference. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Michael Rands, DAR, was presiding, with the Registrary’s deputy, the Senior Proctor and the Junior Pro‑Proctor as the attending officers.

Remarks were received as follows:

Remarks on the Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on exchanges of Professorships

(Reporter, 6804, 2025–26, p. 118).

Mr G. P. Allen (Wolfson College and former Academic Secretary):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, elections to established Professorships are a serious matter for the University. In the sciences they often entail a substantial investment of start-up funds and the subsequent recurrent salary and other costs of the Professor can be a seven-figure sum. The arrangements in Special Ordinance C (vii) set out detailed provisions for: reviewing the field of a forthcoming vacancy, the constitution of a Board of Electors representative of expertise internally and externally (usually from our international peers), to safeguard against an election being ‘stitched up’ internally, and for the maintenance of high academic standards. There is no ‘undo option’ if an unsatisfactory election is made and we know that Professors seldom leave before retirement, so the process must be taken seriously, and it may take time for a Board to search the field and secure the election of an internationally outstanding candidate.

This Report is the Board’s second attempt to effect the transfer of a Professor between Professorships without involving a Board of Electors. The response to the Discussion of the General Board’s (withdrawn) Report on the Herchel Smith Professorship of Biochemistry1 notes that ‘this scenario is rare but more common than originally thought’. Accordingly, the current Report briefly outlines a ‘light-touch’ process to give effect to Professorial transfers where the standard procedure is thought disproportionate. The Report is thin on process – in the case of the withdrawn Report the Board noted that the proposed exchange had the support of the Heads of Department, the relevant Fund Managers, and the Head of School – fine but that’s not the same as assuring academic standards. The current Report provides no enlightenment what such more common ‘scenarios’ might be and goes on to say that the General Board will consider each such case on its merits but is silent on how high standards are to be maintained and an internal stitch up, by three or so individuals, avoided.

I can think of two scenarios where an exchange might be thought by some to be appropriate. First, where the sole established Professorship in a small Department is vacant and the holder of a personal Professorship in that Department is recognised to be the outstanding candidate. There would be obvious advantages in electing the latter since it would create a consequential vacancy at a junior level and relieve the Department of an expensive Professorial salary. Secondly, where the vacant Professorship is endowed with substantial funds for research support and the holder of a personal Professorship in the Department promotes themselves as a strong candidate. Both cases arose on my watch as Academic Secretary and were dealt with in the usual way through Boards of Electors.

The standard process may be thought ‘disproportionate’ but how under the ‘light touch’ process is the standing of candidates to be established without external participation and testing the strength of the field of candidates, preferably internationally? Such safeguards are surely worthwhile to maintain the academic excellence of the University and in the best interests of successful candidates who will be seen to have been elected, after an open search, and will not risk being labelled ‘light touch’ Professors.

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it is proposed that in the case of ‘any vacant Professorship to which the General Board agrees to elect the holder of another Professorship’, the election to the vacant Professorship should take effect ‘from the date of resignation from the other Professorship’. That will ensure that no-one holds two Professorial offices simultaneously but it opens some questions about the process or permissibility of transfer of an individual from one to another. Special Ordinance C (vii) 7 permits transfer not of the Professor but of the office:

The University shall assign each Professorship to a Faculty or Department or other institution under the supervision of the General Board, as appropriate, and may change the assignment from time to time.

Three dissenters have added a Note to the present Report. They:

cannot support a proposal that would allow the General Board to elect its favoured candidates into some of the world’s most prestigious Professorships without so much as an explanatory Notice to the University. If transfers between Professorships are to be allowed they should be approved by Grace of the Regent House following the publication of a Report.

The University has been here before over the need to keep the General Board in its place in appointment to Professorships. In the Discussion of the Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, on standing and ad hoc Boards of Electors, dated 7 October 2025, it was pointed out that when ad hoc Boards were originally proposed in 1971, Professor O. L. Zangwill, (1913–1987),1 a member of what was then the Council of the Senate, had objected that ‘if a Board is constituted specially to fill a particular vacancy, electors may be nominated with the names of particular candidates in mind’. He knew of such a case, where the ad hoc Board was so constituted as to narrow the acceptable field and thus narrow the number of possible candidates. Could this be a risk as the dissenters suggest when the present proposal is approved, if in practice that allowed the General Board ‘to elect its favoured candidates’?

The role of the General Board proved controversial in 1997–98, during the last period of significant dispute about appointment to a Cambridge Professorship. A. W. F. Edwards, now Emeritus Professor, had been the Chairman of the General Board’s General Purposes Committee which had dealt with the extensive revision of 1978. In 1997 he made a representation to the Vice-Chancellor under what was then Statute K, 5 that undated Notices recording appointments to two Professorships were unconstitutional. A Grace was needed.

The representation that the procedures followed in the 1997 promotions exercise had been ‘flawed’ and had involved contraventions of the Statutes and Ordinances was referred to the Commissary, then Lord Oliver of Aylmerton. A Notice in the Reporter of 22 October 1997 on the Annual Report of the General Board on the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships included in full the documents he relied on, which may be read there.

He gave detailed consideration to the history of the then promotions procedure as it had been ‘introduced in 1966’. He considered that it had been followed in the case before him, though it was now ‘about to be amended for appointments for the year 1998’. He explained that the procedure then involved a consideration within Faculty Boards of ‘the case for promotion of eligible officers’. A Faculty Board assembled ‘supporting documents’ and provided the names of referees for the General Board to consult if it wished. The resulting proposals then went to the General Board’s Promotions Committee which asked the Secretary General ‘to call for written references from such of the named referees as it requires’.

The Commissary said he was ‘not persuaded’ that the current procedures had not been followed correctly. There followed an application for judicial review. Mr Justice Sedley perceived ‘arguable deficiencies’ in the 1997 procedures.2 He granted leave to proceed but ruled that all further proceedings should be stayed, and that an application to the Court to lift the stay may be made if ‘good cause’ can be shown, for example if the conduct of the 1998 round of promotions failed to cure them. The University sought to ensure that it had done so, and continued for some years to add that assurance when it announced a new round of annual promotions, namely that:

The Board were able to see how recommendations had been arrived at so that, without repeating the entire exercise itself, they could either approve the recommendations or, if they so wished, consider the basis on which any of the recommendations had been made.3

The Annual Report of the General Board on the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships published on 29 July 1998 called for any amendments, which were to be received by 5 August.4 On 30 October 1998 appeared a Report of the General Board on the procedure for the consideration of applications for the establishment of personal Professorships and Readerships in 1999 and subsequent years.5

With the General Board considering recommendations at its meeting of 1 December 1999, the then Registrary sought legal advice on its lawfulness. This made the important point that the word ‘Professor’ had a ‘status’ beyond the constitutional, which might well make it ‘a fundamental element of the contract of employment’.6 That encouraged the retention of the constitutional requirement that a Grace is needed to fill a Professorship.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the controversy of a quarter of a century ago was the expectation that ‘reasons’ should be given for the promotion of a given individual so that the ‘basis’ of the recommendation might be clear. ‘Criteria’ were introduced. The present Report proposes to set aside that requirement except for a promise that if this Grace is approved ‘the General Board will consider each new proposal for such an election on its merits’. It will then set steps to be taken – so as to ‘ascertain’ the ‘standing’ of the individual ‘in the field of the vacant Professorship’, bearing in mind ‘the need to maintain high standards of academic excellence in elections to all Professorships’.

It is envisaged that ‘a light-touch process may be appropriate’. Perhaps the General Board will explain when and why that will be acceptable and what elements of the requirements may then be set aside.

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it should be obvious from the Note of Dissent attached to this Report that my remarks are not made on behalf of the Council.

Statute A X 4 requires that

A Report of the Council, or of any other body that has the right of reporting to the University, shall be signed by those members of the reporting body who agree with the Report; provided that no person shall sign a Report if he or she has been excluded, under the provisions of any Statute or Ordinance for reserved business, from any part of the discussion of the Report.

The Report we are discussing attracted signatures from eleven of the twenty-three serving members of the Council (there is presently a vacancy in class (e), amongst the appointed members). Assuming no exclusions, that constitutes a minority.

Not all the Professorships in the University are alike. There are ‘personal Professorships’ and ‘Professorships [established] under a University promotions scheme’.1 When the General Board proposes the establishment of a Professorship of either sort it must publish a Report so that the proposal is put up for Discussion.2 Then, there are Professorships ‘to be established for an individual’. The Special Ordinances are not very clear as to how those differ from ‘personal Professorships’. Nevertheless, when the General Board proposes to establish one without publishing a Report, it must publish a Notice confirming ‘the process by which the individual was selected’.1

In these cases, where a Professorship is intended for a particular person, the proposal to appoint the individual to the Professorship is bound up with the proposal to establish the office. Since Special Ordinance C (vii) A 3 provides that ‘No Professorship shall be established in the University except by Grace of the Regent House’, the Regent House always has the opportunity to reject the proposed appointment by voting non placet on the proposal to establish the office, if it believes the process by which the individual was selected to have been inadequate, for example because it lacked independence or failed to protect academic standards.

The remaining Professorships are those established indefinitely, either by Statute or by Grace of the Regent House. They are often particularly prestigious and are sometimes supported by a generous endowment, the surplus income from which may be used by the holder of the Professorship to support his or her research. Except in a handful of cases listed in Special Ordinance C (vii) B 1, appointments to these Professorships are made by independent Boards of Electors (or if they fail to make an election, potentially by the Chancellor or High Steward), following the process specified in Special Ordinance C (vii) B.

At present then, except in exceptional cases, a Professor is either elected using the Board of Electors procedure or the Regent House must approve a proposed appointment by Grace. If the changes to the Special Ordinances proposed in this Report are approved, the General Board will gain the power to transfer into any vacant Professorship the holder of any other Professorship, without a requirement for it to give an academic justification or an explanation, and without the need for a Grace of the Regent House.

Does the General Board have the expertise to elect a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a Cavendish Professor of Physics, a Regius Professor of Greek, a Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity, or a Downing Professor of the Laws of England, even if it must do so only by choosing an existing Professor? What assurance is there that the General Board will make elections independently and in the interests of the academic standards of the University? At the very least, the proposal, if effected, must create a risk of the appearance of patronage. If exchanges of Professorships are to be allowed, what reasons are there not to require a Grace of the Regent House?

Remarks on the Report of the Council on removal of membership of the University Centre

(Reporter, 6804, 2025–26, p. 119).

Mr G. P. Allen (Wolfson College):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report makes dismal reading. It represents the final stage of the progressive withdrawal of catering and social facilities in the city centre for members of the University and staff without College membership, notwithstanding the growth of those staff, including the number of postdoctoral research staff. For decades, staff in the city centre could obtain snacks and light meals in both the University Combination Room and the Centre’s Main Dining Hall and Riverside Restaurant. I declare an interest as a regular user of all three for personal and official entertaining; all are now gone.

No clear rationale is given for finally closing the Centre’s facilities, other than that the catering operation lost money and that the Centre building requires a major refurbishment which the University apparently can’t afford for up to 15 years. There’s no mention of important considerations of maintaining the community, wellbeing, and supporting the postdoc population. Instead, the Report notes the temporary use of space in this (apparently crumbling) building, for various purposes including the Newcomers and Visiting Scholars organisation, and Occupational Health. Staff who work in the city centre and want food and social facilities can look forward to the prospect of ‘themed forums’ to be provided on an unspecified timescale – presumably no shorter than the timescale for refurbishing the Centre building? We often hear that staff are our greatest asset so can the Council think again and commit to a less vague timescale to accelerate some action?

Finally, the construction of the Centre was funded by the Wolfson Foundation, one of the University’s most long‑standing and generous donors. While recognising that the University needs flexibility to respond to changing needs, the situation of the Centre hardly reads like a model of good donor stewardship. What consultations have taken place with the Foundation about the changes of use set out in the Report and what was the Foundation’s reaction?

Professor G. R. Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the University is engaged in an adventurous development of its estate outwards into a ‘Greater Cambridge’.1 This Report asserts that a Grace seeking Regent House approval for the Report’s proposals is not required under Statute F II 3 because ‘none of the changes is intended to be permanent nor do they require substantial alterations’. It is true that the Statute has nothing to say about the permanence of any changes to a University building only that:

approval by Grace of the Regent House shall be required for the erection of a new University building or for the demolition or substantial alteration of an existing University building.

Nor does it expressly cover the use of the University’s land apart from any buildings erected upon it. However the ‘use’ of the University’s property has a place in Section K, para. 32.3 of the Financial Regulations, which requires that ‘the University’s Taxation Section must be consulted about VAT and the tax implications of property acquisitions, disposals, and usage’.2

The Report has a good deal to say about the proposed future ‘usage’ of the land, with plans ‘to develop facilities that better connect people across the University estate, within the principal University sites and buildings’. These are to be ‘in the region of ten ‘themed forums’ across the University’ with ‘collaborative spaces, a café, private working and meeting rooms as well as labs or workshops that will enable collaboration within and across Schools’ allowing ‘students, staff and visitors’ to ‘meet both for work and to socialise’.

So given the limitations of the wording of Statute F II 3 it is reassuring that the Council has agreed that it would now be appropriate to seek Regent House approval to remove the Ordinance for the University Centre before going ahead with the development of these considerable proposed innovations in the ways it is to be ‘used’.

Dr M. J. Rutter (Cavendish Laboratory):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the University Centre was built in the late 1960s to provide recreational and meeting space and catering facilities for those within the University community who did not have access to College amenities. Its construction was funded by the Wolfson Foundation. Informally it was known as the ‘Grad Pad’, referring to its use by postgraduate registered students to whom Ordinance grants membership. Though here we see an anomaly. Graduate registered students do have access to College amenities.

It has now been closed for so long that most of our graduate students and postdocs will never have seen it operational, and certainly not before it started a slow decline which led up to Covid. So first a brief description of its past facilities.

It had a main dining hall, open seven days a week for a cafeteria lunch and dinner. Its Sunday carveries were so popular that the queue sometimes reached down the stairs. Groups would wander in from nearby churches after their Sunday morning services, particularly from Little St Mary’s.

The floor below contained the ‘Riverside Restaurant’. Some Colleges used to direct their Fellows there during periods when their own kitchens were being refurbished. It was also a popular venue for people entertaining their parents when graduating – cheaper than central hotels, and with better views.

The top floor contained a coffee lounge, complete with newspapers, sandwiches, views over the Mill Pond and Darwin College, and no obligation to purchase the coffee and cakes on offer. It was an excellent place to meet and to chat.

Other facilities included a bar on the ground floor, a reading room, a television room, and rooms bookable for events. It was open late each evening, my recollection is until at least 11 p.m., and was certainly a safe place to be. Taxis could drop one the width of a narrow pavement from the front door, itself a short distance from a (slightly small) lift. It was quite, though not perfectly, disabled-friendly. The taxi drop-off point to front door distance at the West Hub is much greater.

It was an extremely convenient place to arrange to meet people from disparate Colleges. No-one had to play host and be the first to arrive and last to depart, as all were members. And waiting for others to arrive in a coffee lounge, or bar, was no hardship.

Though not members by Ordinance, alumni were welcome, as were the guests of members. The attraction of the Centre was remarkably broad, with regular visitors ranging from graduate students to emeriti.

The Report I am meant to be addressing states ‘the West Hub provides recreational and meeting space and catering facilities equivalent to those previously provided in the University Centre, albeit not in the historic city centre’. I do not believe that is so.

The West Hub is not open at weekends, and closes at 7 p.m. on weekdays. It is fully closed for two weeks this Christmas, and partially closed for three weeks. Social places are needed more when Departments are closed, not when Departments are open. In the 1990s the University Centre had impressively long opening hours and short holidays.

The addendum ‘albeit not in the historic city centre’ is quite significant. For anyone wishing to entertain family, other guests, or for visiting alumni, the West Hub, however pleasant the food (and it is pleasant), has the ambience of Milton Keynes, not of Cambridge. From the Coffee Lounge, or Riverside Restaurant, of the University Centre one could see the Cam, and a bridge or two. It was unequivocally in Cam–bridge and, lest there be any doubt, punts were usually visible too.

More practically, many had business nearby, whether in their Colleges, Departments, or the City’s shops. It is good that the West Hub exists for the increasing number of Departments and flats in West Cambridge, but the centre of gravity of the University is not yet on JJ Thomson Avenue. Perhaps its closure at weekends is an admission that few are likely to traipse out to West Cambridge just to access the West Hub.

The University Centre did have one problem. It lost money. In other words, the benefits afforded to the University community by its existence came at a financial cost. That sentence could also be applied to the University Library, to undergraduates who pay Home Fees, and to Discussions of the Regent House. Many of our graduates are investment fund managers, seeking every opportunity to maximise financial returns, but University managers should not act like fund managers.

The Report suggests that, given that the Centre has already been closed for five years, it should be closed for at least twenty years. I do not believe that such pessimistic timescales should be so lightly accepted. Many loss‑making activities were effectively suspended for Covid, but have since resumed. It is not obvious to me that the University Centre should be different, and is not needed as much today as it was in the 1960s when the Bridges Committee identified the need for such a facility. One might even argue that places for socialising are more important in our current stressful times with high rates of mental health issues than they were in the 1960s. In the 1960s it took under six years from Committee Report to building completion.

I was struck by how many candidates in the recent election process for the Chancellor expressed a desire to increase the amount of philanthropic donations to the University. The University has been unfortunate recently. I think particularly of the new Ray Dolby Centre, in which I have an office. The rumours I hear concerning the shortfall in the amount of money raised from external sources for constructing the new building, the move, and the demolition of the old, suggest that the University had to provide well over £100m for this project. The West Hub itself, a separate project, cost around £40m.

The Report makes no mention of the likely cost of refurbishing the University Centre building, other than ‘unlikely to be affordable for ten to fifteen years’ and ‘current figures suggest that those costs will exceed the existing allowance for capital expenditure’, phrases of which it is difficult to make a quantitative interpretation. Nor is it clear why something unaffordable now might become affordable in ten to fifteen years. Is the issue affordability, or prioritisation?

The Report reads to me as though we should accept the closure of a central social centre as permanent, and a fait accompli, and not a temporary aberration. With the optimism from various candidates for the Chancellorship about the possibility of increasing donations to the University, I am not so sure. Cambridge derives much of its strength from the way in which it is structured to encourage interactions between people, and particularly between people from different Departments. Casual, chance, social interactions often lead to valuable academic exchanges.

Colleges play a large part in this, but so too did the University Centre. Do we believe in reducing the privilege gap between those with meaningful College memberships, and those without? Do we believe that social interactions, particularly ones crossing Departmental and College boundaries, are important enough to be worth money? Or is our future narrower and cheaper?

Dr W. J. Astle (MRC Biostatistics Unit):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I do not make these remarks for the Council.

I confess that I suggested to the Council that the Ordinance for the University Centre should be rescinded. I did so because I was unconvinced that the Ordinance, which implies the existence of an institution offering catering services and social facilities to its members, can be consistent with a plan for the Centre’s building to be used for other purposes for at least the next ten years. The Board of Scrutiny had previously asked questions about the plans for current and future use of University Centre.1 Consequently, I thought that the Regent House ought to be given the opportunity to decide whether it wished to rescind the Ordinance or, perhaps, to indicate in Discussion how it might wish the Council to alter the University’s plans for the Centre.

It may be difficult to argue for additional investment in buildings during a period in which the Schools are expected to make 5% cuts in their operating expenditure. However, in better times I hope that the Council will consider the case for reopening a refurbished University Centre as a membership organisation along the lines originally envisaged. I am unconvinced that the ‘themed forums’ described in paragraph 6 of the Report can substitute for the catering and social facilities that the University Centre was intended to provide to staff without membership of a College, the number of whom continues to increase.