Stop Injustice from Public Bodies
Donation protected
I am Yeong-Ah Soh and after substantial courage I decided to start this fundraiser since I need your financial help but also your support to spread the word and bring awareness about the bullying (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/imperial-college-professor-stefan-grimm-was-given-grant-income-target/2017369.article), race discrimination, and injustice committed by public authorities. Spreading the word is the only way to deter further bullying (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/imperial-college-review-reveals-bullying-behaviour) by these immensely powerful organizations. In silence, it is impossible as an ordinary individual to survive against these powerful organisations when they make false statements, manipulate (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/professor-was-constructively-dismissed-tribunal-finds/407452.article) documents, conceal, and destroy evidences and work together against a single individual.
This fundraising will benefit me to help recover from the huge amount of legal costs and lost income since my dismissal in 2012, which combined exceeds 0.5 million USD, to defend myself against a public authority which has an annual budget of 1 billion UK pounds and has spent around 1 million UK pounds fighting this case to cover up racism, bullying, and exam malpractice at their institute.
Your support will have far more meaning to me than financial donation, which itself is extremely helpful. It will mean that you stand against bullying, racism, and injustice by powerful organsations. It will mean that you support that each of us as an individual has the right for the freedom of belief and expression and that we should not be punished and destroyed when we tell the truth even if the truth may be inconvenient for the powerful organisation. Your support will help deter these bullies from bullying other innocent victims. It is a necessary movement and I need your help.
I worked as an academic until I was unfairly dismissed in 2012 from Imperial College for holding a belief that a fellow academic, Dr David McPhail, was compromising the integrity of the examination by giving unusually strong indications as to what would be in the exam based on what I heard from 2 out of my 10 tutees and looking at his exam questions. One student told me that Dr McPhail told them what would be in the exam and indeed the exam had those problems. Another student told me that Dr McPhail had told them that conductivity would be in the exam and indeed it was in the exam. I saw the exam when the student made the comment and the bulk of the exam was simply to write down the conductivity equation several times. By academic standards, this is compromising the integrity (http://educationnext.org/cheatingtothetest/). Also, Dr McPhail's test in June 2011 was essentially the same as his test in January 2011 (which was mainly to write down the conductivity equation). So the students had seen the June 2011 test before taking it, which again is compromising the integrity. In addition, a student passed me an audio recording of a lecture delivered by Dr Jason Riley, who at the time was the Director of Undergraduate studies and was recorded saying to the class "all material scientists they all know what Dr McPhail's questions would be ... conductivity" and the students are heard bursting out laughing. All these evidences were put forward to the College and the Tribunals. Imperial College awarded Dr McPhail second time the Rector's teaching excellence award in 2012 despite all these evidences.
I made the disclosure in private and confidential settings (not in public) that some students had told me that Dr McPhail had told them what would be in the exam, and that indeed the exam had those problems. The College wanted me to reword it and say that Dr McPhail was "providing more guidance". However, I could not agree because I believed that what he did was more than providing guidance. On the other hand, I was careful not to label his practice by any words, but I simply described factually what I heard from the students. My dismissal for holding and expressing my belief was directly in violation of our basic human right and it was orchestrated by Prof Neil Alford who had been assigned to be my mentor.
I took this matter to the Tribunal in the UK for unfair dismissal, whistleblowing, and race discrimination. While the Tribunal led by Judge Sarah Goodman and two "lay members" ruled in 2014 that I made the disclosure in good faith and was unfairly dismissed, the Tribunal rejected that I blew the whistle on the basis that my belief was not that Dr McPhail was doing something wrong but that it was unfair to call him a good teacher when he was spoon feeding the students what would be in the exam. Certainly my belief based on the contemporaneous documents was that Dr McPhail was compromising his integrity as an educator. In the UK, the two "lay members" who sit at Tribunals are hired and paid by the UK Government, routinely sit in different cases for 5 years, and their appointment can be renewed if considered to be "competent",
so it is hard to consider them to be independent (https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/who-are-the-judiciary/judicial-roles/tribunals/fee-paid-judiciary-page-1-2/).
The Tribunal rejected my race discrimination claim on the basis that there was not a single remark made about my race by the College staff when they were hostile or treated me shabbily. This is astonishing given the fact that I was the only non-white academic staff in the department and was singled out for various processes including very formal disciplinary procedures. In the USA race discrimination does not require specific comment about the race; the disparity in the treatment is sufficient to suggest discrimination. I asked the College to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act how many employees were dismissed by reasons of "vexatious behaviour, breakdown of working relationship", which was the alleged reason for my dismissal, and their race. The College first stated that they did not hold the information, and then after I challenged them, they changed the answer: that they were exempt from releasing the information since it would take them more than 18 hrs to collect the information. However, in a separate email I obtained through the Data Protection Act, they had already prepared an answer, "Only 2 and both are Other Asians", but they concealed it. In an organisation of 8,000 employees, where "Other Asians" ( which is the category I fall into and excludes Chinese, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis) constitute only a few % of the staff members but the dismissal is 100%, this should have been sufficient to show a prima facie case of race discrimination. However, the Tribunal asserted that the race discrimination case was misconceived.
I appealed the Tribunal decision in 2014 and the Appeal Tribunal ruled in 2015 that there was an error in law regarding the whistleblowing and unfair dismissal but no error in the race discrimination claim. The matter was heard again in 2017 and the new Tribunal led by Judge H Grewal ruled that my unfair dismissal and whistleblowing claim failed. This ruling opposes the first ruling, stating that I held the belief that what Dr McPhail was doing was wrong, but that I was not protected by the law because I disclosed it in bad faith, i.e. in self-defence, or to critisize the method of how teachers are evaluated, or to discredit Dr McPhail, but not to remedy the wrong. In addition, the Tribunal ruled that the internal investigator, Prof David Nethercot, did not have to look at the exam questions when investigating Dr McPhail's exam practice since I had not seen them. Prof Alford had rejected Prof Peter Cheung as an investigator and specifically chose Prof Nethercot, a longtime colleague to be the investigator, which any reasonable person can conclude was to manipulate the outcome.
That acting in self-defence is acting in bad faith is a fundamental violation of our basic human rights and is against the Appeal Tribunal ruling (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/58ebb9db40f0b606e300012e/Dr_Y_A_Soh_v_Imperial_College_of_Science_Technology_and_Medicine_UKEAT_0350_14_DM.pdf). Furthermore, it goes against the European Court of Human Rights that declared whether a whistleblower acted in good faith is determined by whether the whistleblower believed in the truth of the information and not by the purpose of the disclosure (http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/1175.html&query=(Heinisch)+AND+(v)+AND+(Germany)).
Also, the ruling that I had not seen the exam questions is perverse. The Tribunal had overwhelming contemporaneous email evidence that I had seen the exam questions before I made the disclosure. We, as lecturers in the department, had a mandate from the department to study the exam that our tutees took in January and to look at each and every question with the tutees and explain to them how to think and solve them. The Tribunal had contemporaneous email evidence that I had received the exam by email and the mandate to set up a date with the tutees to go over them, that I had agreed that 10 Feb 2011 would be when I would go over them with my tutees, that I had asked for the exam answers and received them, and that I informed them that I was about to meet my tutees to go over the exam questions on 10 Feb 2011. As FBI former director, James Comey said in his interview with ABC news, it is very hard to prove that something did not happen. There was no reasonable way for the Tribunal to reach the conclusion that I did not see the exam questions despite my having gone over each and every question with my tutees.
Furthermore, it was perverse for the Tribunal to rule that the investigation was reasonable by interviewing 6 students, 4 of them being second year students having taken a second year course MSE 205 even though the exam in question was a first year course MSE 105, a different course taken by first year students, and that the investigator did not have to look at the exam questions since I had not looked at them (this was not the case). This implies that if there is whistleblowing about financial irregularity in a particular sector of a bank, for example, the investigator only needs to interview a couple of random customers to rule that there is no financial irregularity but does not need to look at any financial documents if the whistleblower has not seen them. Also what is different in a College is that the customers depend on the College for their degrees so it is natural for them to be afraid to tell the truth due to possible consequences.
The Tribunals brushed aside that the investigator had made false statements both in the internal procedures at the College and in submissions to the court including in his written witness statement that he had looked at the exam questions when he had not. Prof Nethercot was discovered during his cross examination in the first Tribunal that he had not. This should have shattered the credibility of the investigation and the College, but the Tribunals ignored these and many other false statements by the College, their barrister Judy Stone, and their solicitors even though they were contradicted by evidences. What was even more astonishing is that the Judges themselves made statements contrary to the truth that protected the College. There are reasonable grounds to believe that this was done to protect the College, which is a Public Authority and ranks #3 in the UK. As James Comey pointed out, the truth is crucial in order to preserve the Justice system but this was not the case, leading to perverse Judgments.
I appealed the second Tribunal decision in 2017 and the President of the Appeal Tribunal Ingrid Simler sided with the lower court in 2018. She in addition gave me a chilling warning against questioning Public Authorities, which I believe is a threat to democracy. She stated it was "unfortunate" that the College had destroyed the evidences of the original notes they had taken when they interviewed the students during the investigation. These notes were the only evidences that the College had relied on to conclude that Dr McPhail did not provide an improper amount of information regarding the exam to the students and instead I had made a "vexatious allegation". The investigator reached this conclusion despite in his own report stating that one of my tutees that he interviewed said that Dr McPhail told them that the conductivity equation would come up in the exam, and in the exam they were asked to state it. Dr McPhail himself told the investigator that he tells the students that the conductivity equation will definitely come up in the exam. When the bulk of the exam question is simply to write down the conductivity equation, this is not an acceptable practice according to normal academic standards. However, even if the College regarded it as providing "strong hints", this should not have been a reason for dismissal since what I said I heard from the students agreed with Dr McPhail's practice and what the student said. I had not put a label to Dr McPhail's exam practice but simply described what I heard. Just because I held a different belief from the College about what is compromising the integrity, it should not have led to a dismissal.
I have lived in 4 different continents (Asia, South and North America, and Europe) and in countries with very different cultures and languages (Korean, Spanish, and English) so I have a very diverse experience of different societies and cultures but what I experienced in the UK is unimaginable and still haunts me almost every day. Although I occasionally experienced racism or bullying in places where I was a minority, these were isolated events and not systemic. However, what I experienced in the UK has been entirely different and has completely shattered my life and career. I have experienced for the first time systemic racism, bullying, routine lying, and injustice by Public Authorities.
I need your help since in silence we as individuals cannot protect ourselves from bullying behaviour by Public Authorities.
This fundraising will benefit me to help recover from the huge amount of legal costs and lost income since my dismissal in 2012, which combined exceeds 0.5 million USD, to defend myself against a public authority which has an annual budget of 1 billion UK pounds and has spent around 1 million UK pounds fighting this case to cover up racism, bullying, and exam malpractice at their institute.
Your support will have far more meaning to me than financial donation, which itself is extremely helpful. It will mean that you stand against bullying, racism, and injustice by powerful organsations. It will mean that you support that each of us as an individual has the right for the freedom of belief and expression and that we should not be punished and destroyed when we tell the truth even if the truth may be inconvenient for the powerful organisation. Your support will help deter these bullies from bullying other innocent victims. It is a necessary movement and I need your help.
I worked as an academic until I was unfairly dismissed in 2012 from Imperial College for holding a belief that a fellow academic, Dr David McPhail, was compromising the integrity of the examination by giving unusually strong indications as to what would be in the exam based on what I heard from 2 out of my 10 tutees and looking at his exam questions. One student told me that Dr McPhail told them what would be in the exam and indeed the exam had those problems. Another student told me that Dr McPhail had told them that conductivity would be in the exam and indeed it was in the exam. I saw the exam when the student made the comment and the bulk of the exam was simply to write down the conductivity equation several times. By academic standards, this is compromising the integrity (http://educationnext.org/cheatingtothetest/). Also, Dr McPhail's test in June 2011 was essentially the same as his test in January 2011 (which was mainly to write down the conductivity equation). So the students had seen the June 2011 test before taking it, which again is compromising the integrity. In addition, a student passed me an audio recording of a lecture delivered by Dr Jason Riley, who at the time was the Director of Undergraduate studies and was recorded saying to the class "all material scientists they all know what Dr McPhail's questions would be ... conductivity" and the students are heard bursting out laughing. All these evidences were put forward to the College and the Tribunals. Imperial College awarded Dr McPhail second time the Rector's teaching excellence award in 2012 despite all these evidences.
I made the disclosure in private and confidential settings (not in public) that some students had told me that Dr McPhail had told them what would be in the exam, and that indeed the exam had those problems. The College wanted me to reword it and say that Dr McPhail was "providing more guidance". However, I could not agree because I believed that what he did was more than providing guidance. On the other hand, I was careful not to label his practice by any words, but I simply described factually what I heard from the students. My dismissal for holding and expressing my belief was directly in violation of our basic human right and it was orchestrated by Prof Neil Alford who had been assigned to be my mentor.
I took this matter to the Tribunal in the UK for unfair dismissal, whistleblowing, and race discrimination. While the Tribunal led by Judge Sarah Goodman and two "lay members" ruled in 2014 that I made the disclosure in good faith and was unfairly dismissed, the Tribunal rejected that I blew the whistle on the basis that my belief was not that Dr McPhail was doing something wrong but that it was unfair to call him a good teacher when he was spoon feeding the students what would be in the exam. Certainly my belief based on the contemporaneous documents was that Dr McPhail was compromising his integrity as an educator. In the UK, the two "lay members" who sit at Tribunals are hired and paid by the UK Government, routinely sit in different cases for 5 years, and their appointment can be renewed if considered to be "competent",
so it is hard to consider them to be independent (https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/who-are-the-judiciary/judicial-roles/tribunals/fee-paid-judiciary-page-1-2/).
The Tribunal rejected my race discrimination claim on the basis that there was not a single remark made about my race by the College staff when they were hostile or treated me shabbily. This is astonishing given the fact that I was the only non-white academic staff in the department and was singled out for various processes including very formal disciplinary procedures. In the USA race discrimination does not require specific comment about the race; the disparity in the treatment is sufficient to suggest discrimination. I asked the College to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act how many employees were dismissed by reasons of "vexatious behaviour, breakdown of working relationship", which was the alleged reason for my dismissal, and their race. The College first stated that they did not hold the information, and then after I challenged them, they changed the answer: that they were exempt from releasing the information since it would take them more than 18 hrs to collect the information. However, in a separate email I obtained through the Data Protection Act, they had already prepared an answer, "Only 2 and both are Other Asians", but they concealed it. In an organisation of 8,000 employees, where "Other Asians" ( which is the category I fall into and excludes Chinese, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis) constitute only a few % of the staff members but the dismissal is 100%, this should have been sufficient to show a prima facie case of race discrimination. However, the Tribunal asserted that the race discrimination case was misconceived.
I appealed the Tribunal decision in 2014 and the Appeal Tribunal ruled in 2015 that there was an error in law regarding the whistleblowing and unfair dismissal but no error in the race discrimination claim. The matter was heard again in 2017 and the new Tribunal led by Judge H Grewal ruled that my unfair dismissal and whistleblowing claim failed. This ruling opposes the first ruling, stating that I held the belief that what Dr McPhail was doing was wrong, but that I was not protected by the law because I disclosed it in bad faith, i.e. in self-defence, or to critisize the method of how teachers are evaluated, or to discredit Dr McPhail, but not to remedy the wrong. In addition, the Tribunal ruled that the internal investigator, Prof David Nethercot, did not have to look at the exam questions when investigating Dr McPhail's exam practice since I had not seen them. Prof Alford had rejected Prof Peter Cheung as an investigator and specifically chose Prof Nethercot, a longtime colleague to be the investigator, which any reasonable person can conclude was to manipulate the outcome.
That acting in self-defence is acting in bad faith is a fundamental violation of our basic human rights and is against the Appeal Tribunal ruling (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/58ebb9db40f0b606e300012e/Dr_Y_A_Soh_v_Imperial_College_of_Science_Technology_and_Medicine_UKEAT_0350_14_DM.pdf). Furthermore, it goes against the European Court of Human Rights that declared whether a whistleblower acted in good faith is determined by whether the whistleblower believed in the truth of the information and not by the purpose of the disclosure (http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/1175.html&query=(Heinisch)+AND+(v)+AND+(Germany)).
Also, the ruling that I had not seen the exam questions is perverse. The Tribunal had overwhelming contemporaneous email evidence that I had seen the exam questions before I made the disclosure. We, as lecturers in the department, had a mandate from the department to study the exam that our tutees took in January and to look at each and every question with the tutees and explain to them how to think and solve them. The Tribunal had contemporaneous email evidence that I had received the exam by email and the mandate to set up a date with the tutees to go over them, that I had agreed that 10 Feb 2011 would be when I would go over them with my tutees, that I had asked for the exam answers and received them, and that I informed them that I was about to meet my tutees to go over the exam questions on 10 Feb 2011. As FBI former director, James Comey said in his interview with ABC news, it is very hard to prove that something did not happen. There was no reasonable way for the Tribunal to reach the conclusion that I did not see the exam questions despite my having gone over each and every question with my tutees.
Furthermore, it was perverse for the Tribunal to rule that the investigation was reasonable by interviewing 6 students, 4 of them being second year students having taken a second year course MSE 205 even though the exam in question was a first year course MSE 105, a different course taken by first year students, and that the investigator did not have to look at the exam questions since I had not looked at them (this was not the case). This implies that if there is whistleblowing about financial irregularity in a particular sector of a bank, for example, the investigator only needs to interview a couple of random customers to rule that there is no financial irregularity but does not need to look at any financial documents if the whistleblower has not seen them. Also what is different in a College is that the customers depend on the College for their degrees so it is natural for them to be afraid to tell the truth due to possible consequences.
The Tribunals brushed aside that the investigator had made false statements both in the internal procedures at the College and in submissions to the court including in his written witness statement that he had looked at the exam questions when he had not. Prof Nethercot was discovered during his cross examination in the first Tribunal that he had not. This should have shattered the credibility of the investigation and the College, but the Tribunals ignored these and many other false statements by the College, their barrister Judy Stone, and their solicitors even though they were contradicted by evidences. What was even more astonishing is that the Judges themselves made statements contrary to the truth that protected the College. There are reasonable grounds to believe that this was done to protect the College, which is a Public Authority and ranks #3 in the UK. As James Comey pointed out, the truth is crucial in order to preserve the Justice system but this was not the case, leading to perverse Judgments.
I appealed the second Tribunal decision in 2017 and the President of the Appeal Tribunal Ingrid Simler sided with the lower court in 2018. She in addition gave me a chilling warning against questioning Public Authorities, which I believe is a threat to democracy. She stated it was "unfortunate" that the College had destroyed the evidences of the original notes they had taken when they interviewed the students during the investigation. These notes were the only evidences that the College had relied on to conclude that Dr McPhail did not provide an improper amount of information regarding the exam to the students and instead I had made a "vexatious allegation". The investigator reached this conclusion despite in his own report stating that one of my tutees that he interviewed said that Dr McPhail told them that the conductivity equation would come up in the exam, and in the exam they were asked to state it. Dr McPhail himself told the investigator that he tells the students that the conductivity equation will definitely come up in the exam. When the bulk of the exam question is simply to write down the conductivity equation, this is not an acceptable practice according to normal academic standards. However, even if the College regarded it as providing "strong hints", this should not have been a reason for dismissal since what I said I heard from the students agreed with Dr McPhail's practice and what the student said. I had not put a label to Dr McPhail's exam practice but simply described what I heard. Just because I held a different belief from the College about what is compromising the integrity, it should not have led to a dismissal.
I have lived in 4 different continents (Asia, South and North America, and Europe) and in countries with very different cultures and languages (Korean, Spanish, and English) so I have a very diverse experience of different societies and cultures but what I experienced in the UK is unimaginable and still haunts me almost every day. Although I occasionally experienced racism or bullying in places where I was a minority, these were isolated events and not systemic. However, what I experienced in the UK has been entirely different and has completely shattered my life and career. I have experienced for the first time systemic racism, bullying, routine lying, and injustice by Public Authorities.
I need your help since in silence we as individuals cannot protect ourselves from bullying behaviour by Public Authorities.
Organizer
Yeong-Ah Soh
Organizer
Hanover, NH