The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
UCL bans professor from China course to save ‘commercial interests’
A senior academic was left feeling suicidal after a perceived bias against her UCL Chinese students
A LEADING UK university has banned an academic from teaching a “provocative” course involving China to protect its commercial interests, The Telegraph can disclose.
Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), said she had “no choice” but to blow the whistle in order to “expose” how British universities are “conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students”.
Ms Shipworth, 58, was also accused of being anti-Chinese after she caught out two students from China who were cheating and they were subsequently expelled. One had used a body double in an attempt to hoodwink her during a supervision. Her head of department at UCL told her that he was taking action because “in order to be commercially viable” the university’s courses “need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants”.
UCL has the highest number of Chinese students anywhere in the UK, making up almost a quarter of its total student population. More than 10,000 Chinese students are at the university, typically paying two to three times the fees of home-grown students – up to £40,000 a year.
Ms Shipworth, who teaches in UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, found herself under investigation after a seminar last October examining data from the Global Slavery Index 2014. The data claimed China had the second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.
She asked small groups to discuss the question: “Why are there so many slaves in China?” in order to build their data assessment skills, leaving the methodology open to criticism.
She recalled that, at the end of the seminar, one of the Chinese students “stood up and said in a fairly cross tone – I wouldn’t even describe it as angry something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”
Prof Neil Strachan, Ms Shipworth’s boss, was alerted, culminating in her being told that another academic had been asked to “take over” the research module she had taught for the past 10 years.
In an email, Prof Strachan also informed Ms Shipworth that she had been accused of “being biased against students from a single country – China”.
He cited as an example of a “specific instance of bias” that, having caught out Chinese students for cheating, she was now “overly suspicious” of students cheating “and these students are all from China”.
Ms Shipworth told The Telegraph she “was suicidal” after being subjected to restrictions on her teaching, academic freedom and use of social media on the basis of a class she had taught without any previous known complaint for a decade.
A UCL spokesman said: “It would not be appropriate to discuss individual cases. UCL is proud to have a thriving and diverse student community. We also have a long tradition of safeguarding freedom of speech, and are committed to upholding the rights of our staff and students.”
MICHELLE SHIPWORTH, an associate professor, had taught the seminar without a hitch for 10 years.
Standing in a classroom in front of 80 students, of whom between 20 and 30 were Chinese, she showed them a slide in her Data Detectives course. It was just after 3pm on Oct 25. Now, more than four months later, Ms Shipworth is at the centre of a row over academic freedom.
The slide she had shown was taken from the Global Slavery Index 2014. She recalled: “I put the slide up and said: ‘Why are there so many slaves in China?’” It was a question intended as a starting point for students to explore data and how it is used.
In fact, she used the survey precisely because “there is a massive problem with it”, not least its ranking of China as the world’s second-worst country for modern slavery. But at the end of the seminar, one of the Chinese students, a young man in his 20s, stood up to lodge a complaint.
“I wouldn’t even describe him as angry,” said Ms Shipworth. “He said something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”
Sitting in the kitchen of her north London flat, the 58-year-old still appears bamboozled. “It’s a great question. I was just slightly concerned he was asking it after I had already demonstrated the problem with the dataset. It signalled that he hadn’t been paying attention. But I didn’t get the sense he had been stressed in any way. I certainly didn’t think anything of it.”
The next day, though, she received an email from a colleague. Another student, who was not Chinese, had flagged they were upset the Chinese student had been made “cross” in class.
Ms Shipworth, who has been teaching at UCL since 2009, was exasperated.
“I rolled my eyes,” she said. “It was like a child at kindergarten fell over and yelled a little bit and then another child that observed this got upset and then went to the headmistress. And then the headmistress goes to the person in charge and says: ‘What’s this all about?’ It happens occasionally. I couldn’t take it seriously. I didn’t bother to respond [to the email].”
But on Oct 30, Ms Shipworth’s department headt called to say that a “bunch of Chinese students are very upset” and asking for an explanation.
Ms Shipworth was loath to name her boss, but The Telegraph can disclose he is Prof Neil Strachan, head of department at UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources.
Ms Shipworth, whose husband is a professor in the same department, gave her version of events. Prof Strachan, she said, suggested she use India as an example too so that her Chinese students would not feel singled out.
She declined to alter a course she had taught for a decade. “In fact, I have had loads of Chinese students thanking me over the years,” she said.
When Ms Shipworth cited John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher, in her drive for academic freedom and her preference not to modify her teaching, Prof Strachan replied: “I would be pleased to continue this discussion in person… note that I am an economist and modeller and I have no idea who JS Mill is.”
He praised her seminar, but again stressed that the question “was phrased to be too controversial and difficult for them to understand”.
Ms Shipworth, an academic energy expert, said that response “p---ed me off massively”.
At that week’s seminar – seven days after the initial controversy – the students returned. The Chinese student who had complained sat at the front. “He was smiling broadly, like really grinning,” said Ms Shipworth.
“I really genuinely don’t think any of this situation had distressed him or the other students. If they were really distressed by me, they wouldn’t have come to the class.”
The following week, two colleagues – Ms Shipworth will not reveal their identities – “absolutely harangued me and insisted I completely remove this exercise for subsequent years”.
She admitted to caving in to the request. After suffering from mental health issues in the past, she took a
‘I couldn’t take it seriously. I didn’t bother to respond to the email’
nosedive. “I was suicidal. This is one of the problems of somebody who suffers from depression. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t making plans [to kill myself ] but I was telling my husband I didn’t see the point of living,” she said.
By now, it was mid-November. Ms Shipworth kept on teaching – and given her undertaking not to repeat the China slavery exercise, the problem had seemingly gone away.
In January, she attended a workshop with senior academics, among them Michael Spence, UCL’s provost, a man she describes as “fabulous” and hugely supportive.
She raised her case, and what she saw as the infringement of her academic freedom, at the workshop. “All the senior academics in the room agreed with me,” she said.
Ms Shipworth fired off an email to her departmental colleagues, informing them that senior staff at the workshop believed her academic freedom had been curtailed.
Three days afterwards, on Feb 6, she received an email from Prof Strachan informing her that two related complaints had been made against her under a UCL reporting system.
The professor cited specific instances that included her investigation into so-called contract cheating, where one student gets somebody else to do their work.
Twice she had discovered cheating, in 2018 and 2022, and both times Chinese students had been expelled.
She has asked UCL how many students have been kicked out for cheating, and has been given no answer. She suspects she is the only academic who has dared to call out a Chinese student for “contract cheating”.
In one case, a student had used a “body double” to take part in a Zoom call, and Ms Shipworth had spotted the deceit.
“He was getting other people to do all his work and then using a body double in meetings. It was due to my investigative work that the student was expelled,” she said.
The furore her class in October has created has left her scarred, and Ms Shipworth is adamant she is not biased against her Chinese students. “It is crazy. In my experience, Chinese students have been really robust because they are so focused on their studies,” she said. “That is what has startled me so much – this supposed distress when I know they are strong.”
A UCL spokesman said: “We always follow-up complaints received through our Report + Support tool. However, it would not be appropriate to discuss individual cases. UCL is proud to have a thriving and diverse student community, with the brightest minds from the UK and more than 150 other countries choosing to study and research here.”