Payout for Indian academic after unconscious bias ruling

A UNIVERSITY influenced by “pernicious and destructive” unconscious bias when it failed to reappoint an Indian academic has been ordered to pay at least £450,000 in damages.

Dr Kajal Sharma was discriminated against by bosses at Portsmouth University when she failed in her application to carry on in her role in the Business and Law faculty, a tribunal found.

The university refused to reappoint her to a job she had been doing for five years and recruited an inexperienced white candidate instead. Over a threeyear period the 41-year-old was one of only two senior lecturers at the institution to not be reappointed to their job. She was the only ethnic minority candidate to apply for reappointment during that period while 11 out of 12 white colleagues had all been retained.

Employment Judge Catherine Rayner said: “The fact that the discrimination was not intentional or deliberate in this case, does not reduce the level of hurt experienced by [Dr Sharma]. Unconscious bias is pernicious and destructive, and [she] was entitled to assume that senior members of academic institutions would behave with scrupulous fairness and have an awareness of the possibility of their own potential biases.”

Dr Sharma was awarded at least £450,000 in compensation with the possibility of a further £300,000 depending on pension calculations after the tribunal concluded that the selection process was “tainted by race discrimination”.

She began her role as associate head for organisational studies and human resources management on a five-year contract in 2016. She told the tribunal that she and Prof Gary Rees, her manager, had a “difficult” relationship and cited examples of unfair treatment including wanting her to do university work in the aftermath of her father’s death and failing to support her while she was caring for her sick infant son.

Fiona Hnatow, chief people officer at Portsmouth University, told the tribunal: “On behalf of the university I would like to apologise for the conduct found to have been unlawful and for the impact this has had on Dr Sharma. There are no excuses for race discrimination at the university.”