Oxford don fights ‘forced retirement’ because of his age
AN Oxford physicist has claimed he was unfairly forced to retire before his 70th birthday despite the fact that his research was ‘blossoming’.
Former head of atomic and laser physics Professor Paul Ewart is the latest to challenge the university’s Employer Justified Retirement Age policy.
This was introduced in 2017 to ensure older professors make way for younger, more ethnically diverse academics. Last summer John Pitcher, a Shakespearean scholar at St John’s College, Oxford, lost his claim for age discrimination and unfair dismissal after an employment tribunal ruled the policy was a ‘necessary and appropriate means of achieving [a] legitimate aim’.
Now Professor Ewart, who worked at Oxford for 38 years until September 2017, is claiming his ‘dismissal’ was unfair and amounted to age discrimination, according to the Times Higher Education website.
In his witness statement to an employment tribunal, the physicist said that in 2014 he had been given an extension to carry on working until he was 69, and that he had expected to receive another allowing him to continue to 2020.
Professor Ewart argued that his research was ‘blossoming’ in his final two years, when he published 15 papers and won leading roles in projects to create ultra- efficient engines. His enforced retirement also scuppered efforts to set up a joint research centre in Beijing to tackle chronic air pollution in China and elsewhere, he said.
He argued that he should be reinstated as a senior lecturer so he can continue with projects that will have ‘ great importance for society, particularly in making a contribution to solving the problem of climate change and environmental pollution being driven by emissions from combustion’.
He also disputed the effectiveness of compulsory retirement in increasing diversity, saying he was replaced by two men. The policy has made no
‘Solving climate change’
significant difference to the age or gender profile of Oxford’s academic staff, he said.
Professor Ewart was told in February 2017 that his application for a three-year extension to work part time had been rejected. This was despite the fact that his salary would have been almost entirely covered by grants, he said.
He was told the bid was denied because a delay to the start of work on ultra-efficient engines, causing it to run into 2018, was ‘not unforeseeable’.
He appealed to Oxford’s internal appeal panel in March 2017 but his case was not heard until December – three months after his departure.
A seven-day employment tribunal in Reading ended on September 6. A judgment has not yet been published.