An employment tribunal has found that the University of Oxford’s retirement policy is discriminatory and not pro-diversity, as the institution claims.
Four Oxford senior academics left the University of Oxford in England between 2019 and 2021 after their 68th birthday due to the institution’s Employer Justified Retirement Age Policy (EJRA). According to the institution, the policy was designed to promote ‘diversity.’ The scholars say they were dismissed at the peaks of their careers and their research projects.
The tribunal ruled in favor of the four academics and concluded “the overall contribution of the EJRA to promoting equality and diversity is very limited, the university has not produced any evidence to show the policy’s success,” therefore it should not serve as an excuse to discard scholars who are experts in their field and perfectly fit to continue their academic and research work simply because they reach certain age. Times of Higher Education reported that Oxford is reviewing the tribunal’s ruling and could appeal.
The scholars who won their case against Oxford, Nicholas Field-Johnson, formerly the Head of Development for the Department of Continuous Education; Bent Flyvbjerg, a former Professor in the Saïd Business School; Philip Candelas, formerly the Rouse Ball Chair of Mathematical Physics; and Duncan Snidal, a former Professor in International Relations were forced to leave the university between 2019 and 2021 because of the EJRA. But some of them went on to new roles rather than retiring.
The University of Oxford and University of Cambridge in England, and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland are the only universities to have such age-related retirement rules. These are the three oldest universities in the English-speaking world.
Previous to this ruling, in 2019, Oxford lost a similar case to physicist and former Head of Atomic and Laser Physics, currently Emeritus Professor Paul Ewart, who received £30,000 (approximately $36,621) in damages and was reinstated to his former position.
However, a few months before Professor Ewart won his case and in a different employment tribunal case against Oxford, Shakespearean scholar John Pitcher was unsuccessful in his claim of age discrimination and unfair dismissal over the EJRA rule. Professor Pitcher is currently Emeritus Research Fellow in English Literature.
In 2011, the University of Oxford introduced the Employer Justified Retirement Age (EJRA) policy in a bid to bring in younger and more diverse staff. According to Times of Higher Education, judges ruled that Oxford’s EJRA policy had a “highly discriminatory effect” because it removed “people from their jobs simply because they have attained a particular age.”
“The EJRA does contribute to the fulfillment of this aim, but to a very small degree, both in absolute and proportionate terms, […] and therefore such discrimination was not justified,” the judgment concluded, “
Knowledge is something that only gets better with time. Retiring professors who are mentally fit due to a certain age is, indeed, discriminatory. After reviewing its policy, the EJRA raised the retirement age to the date of September 30 before the 70th birthday. The new policy will apply from October 1, 2023.