Genevieve Bell is out of the top job at ANU after less than two years as Vice-Chancellor. She announced her exit yesterday in the face of campus opposition to the “Renew ANU” plan to reduce spending by $250m, including $100m in already-underway voluntary and compulsory staff cuts.
Chancellor Julie Bishop announced Bell’s departure, and the interim appointment of Provost Rebekha Brown at a staff meeting yesterday. And she signalled change to come, “there are a number of pathways to achieving our goal … I and council will work with you to find options which will balance our need for financial stability with care and compassion for our people.”
And while Professor Brown did not announce an end of the savings plan, she signalled next steps were on hold, “we need to be listening and that will happen” and that the existing plan would change. “I will come back with a draft roadmap and I will be explicit about where I see attributes of Renew ANU in that.”
Professor Bell’s departure follows months of less opposition-to than demolition-of her savings program, in debate on campus and throughout the Canberra community. Independent Senator for the ACT David Pocock in particular has repeatedly raised issues in Parliament relating to the university’s administration.
Opposition originally focused on ANU management’s case for cuts, which failed to convince staff that the university had endemic funding problems, despite Professor Bell repeatedly pointing to an operating deficit of $140m; “the university spent around $2.7m per week more than we earned.” The state of the books should be settled in the new year when the Australian National Audit Office completes a performance audit, now underway.
But claims cash is not a catastrophe were overtaken by grass-roots resistance to specific job losses under restructure proposals, which were poorly presented and at times ambiguously-explained. An announcement last month was sufficiently badly worded for some staff to incorrectly assume that the last job-related announcement for the year meant there were no more jobs to go.
In the end, Professor Bell could not make herself heard above expressions of anxiety about the restructure and she lacked the skills to rebut regular allegations in old and social media about her behaviour with staff or to convince the community to rally round the ANU flag.
Professor Bell defended her intent and outcomes to date in a brief statement yesterday. “Like the rest of our community, I believe firmly in our delivering on our national mission – to create and transmit knowledge through research and teaching of the highest quality. And know that doing this requires a solid financial, cultural and operational foundation.”
But the overwhelming public response was that she should go and take her restructure plan with her. If Professor Bell has any friends on campus, they were not publicly lamenting the end of her term yesterday.
Rather than resign however, Professor Bell intends to continue at ANU, as a Professor of Cybernetics, returning after study leave. There is a precedent for this; her predecessor, Brian Schmidt continues at ANU as an astronomer.
But it is the bigger precedent in her departure that is remarkable. Vice-Chancellors occasionally leave over matters of personal impropriety and even rarer, outright incompetence, but Bell is out because staff refused to accept her competence and capacity to lead in their interest.
And her opponents recognise the opportunity her exit implies across the country. As National Tertiary Education Union official Lachlan Clohesy said yesterday. “Genevieve Bell will not be the last vice-chancellor to go in these circumstances if other universities fail to heed the lessons of what has gone wrong at the ANU. University staff deserve to be valued, supported, and respected.”
And Labor Senator Tony Sheldon (NSW) who chaired the original upper house committee governance inquiry argues Ms Bishop, who chaired the ANU Council as it agreed to the restructure, should also exit.
“Universities are public institutions. They exist to serve the public good, to be places of learning, leadership, and integrity. But too often, they’ve been run like personal empires by executives and governing bodies who believe the rules don’t apply to them,” he said.