University of Adelaide academic staff seek answers over ex-VC Peter Rathjen

Angry staff at the University of Adelaide are banding together to demand answers as to how serial sex predator Peter Rathjen was appointed vice-chancellor.

Peter Rathjen.

Angry staff at the University of Adelaide are banding together to demand answers as to how serial sex predator Peter Rathjen was appointed vice-chancellor and to seek a cast-iron guarantee it can never happen again.

In what looks increasingly like a revolt at the university’s most senior levels, staff have told The Australian that since the release of last week’s ICAC investigation finding Professor Rathjen guilty of serious misconduct, dozens of academics and professional employees had contacted the office of Chancellor Cathy Branson to air their concerns.

Staff fury is coming from the top of the university and includes professors and associate professors, about half a dozen of whom will meet on Thursday to consider creating an action group to give staff a stronger voice in the way the university is managed.

The tension has been exacerbated by a secret termination payout rumoured to be as high as $1.5m that UA made to Professor Rathjen when he quit because of ill health last month, by which point the university knew of allegations against the disgraced V-C.

The university has insisted it had no prior knowledge of Professor Rathjen’s misconduct ahead of his appointment as V-C in 2018, and ICAC Commissioner Bruce Lander made no such finding in a 12-page statement he released last week in lieu of the suppressed 170-page report, which has been withheld to protect the identities of the women Professor Rathjen harassed.

ICAC found Professor Rathjen physically harassed two women, known as A and B, at an alumni function in Sydney last year, grabbing their backsides and kissing them against their will.

The commission also examined serious claims of misconduct by Professor Rathjen involving a graduate student while at Melbourne University and an in­appropriate affair he had conducted with another staff member at UA last year, all of which he lied about to former chancellor Kevin Scarce and the ICAC commissioner.

In a tumultuous week for UA, a protest organised by the student union’s women collective on Monday was attended by 25 professors, 20 of them women; since then, talks involving about 80 staff have continued about what more can be done ahead of Thursday’s meeting.

“The key issues we want addressed are the due diligence around Rathjen’s appointment, management of his departure while such serious allegations had been levelled against him, and the general handling of complaints amid the lack of any policy to raise grievances,” a staff member said.