The week in higher education – 10 June 2021

A Cambridge Classics scholar’s 23-year quest to write the definitive ancient Greek dictionary has finally been completed, The Times reports. When the idea for a text to revise the language’s standard reference book – which was originally published in 1843 – first arose in 1997, it was hoped the enterprise would take five years. It soon emerged that an entirely new work was required. “For the last 15 years or more I did little else,” said James Diggle, whose labour of love – the 1,500-page Cambridge Greek Lexicon – has been hailed “the largest-scale project of new lexicography on Greek literature since the 16th century”. Of the 37,000 words contained in his opus, it is unsurprisingly the inclusion of crude words from the Homeric era, left out by Victorian prudes, that have gained the most attention, with Professor Diggle promising that his definitions “spare no blushes” for the modern reader.

With universities across the world falling prey to devastating cyberattacks, IT security teams have stepped up efforts to raise awareness about phishing emails. But the University of Adelaide has admitted it may have taken things too far after it sent its staff a bogus email offering Covid vaccines, which sparked a rush on the institution’s health service. According to The Australian, almost half of staff clicked on the link that purported to come from a suspiciously named account dreamed up by the university. It didn’t take long for the South Australian institution to think twice about the exercise, with its chief operating officer, Bruce Lines, writing to staff to offer his “deepest apologies” for the coronavirus-inspired ruse, which he said was “totally inappropriate and in the worst possible taste” during a pandemic when people were “under significant stress and anxiety. It should never have been sent, regardless of the requirements of the simulation exercise,” he said.

Despite Prince Philip’s politically incorrect gaffes while visiting campuses (he once asked an eminent Polish scientist at Cambridge whether he “came here to pick raspberries”) many university staff held him in high affection. But the duke’s lifetime of opening university buildings clearly cut no ice with some members of the academic community who objected to the inclusion of his photo in a recent staff email. Joleen Clarke, a librarian at King’s College London, later apologised for sending the picture of the duke opening its Maughan Library with the Queen in 2002 because of his “history of racist and sexist comments”, The Times reported. The mea culpa followed objections by a university anti-racism group, although others felt the apology was not needed, with Ms Clarke “made to account for herself in a kangaroo court” by colleagues, said a source, despite having played an active role in the King’s anti-racism programme.

Imperial College London has fired an eminent cancer researcher after an independent investigation identified what it called a “clear case of research misconduct”. Not long ago Eric Lam’s work into treating breast cancer was so lauded that his 18-strong lab was named a charity’s “Research Team of the Year” at a House of Lords event. But the one-time professor of molecular oncology has been dismissed, Imperial confirmed, after an independent investigation commissioned by the university concluded that a 2018 paper contained altered test results and manipulated data. Professor Lam’s abrupt departure does not mean the end of his career, with the ousted scientist landing a new role at China’s Sun Yat-sen University.

A don whose university received £3.7 million from a Chinese fund to cover his professorship cautioned against debating the plight of the Uighur Muslims on campus because it would not help “mutual understanding”, The Sunday Times reported. Peter Nolan, a fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, advised colleagues to avoid contentious debates on China’s human rights record, claiming his college risked being perceived as “a campaigning college for freedom for Hong Kong, freedom for the Uighurs” if it held overtly anti-China events, and that even a more balanced debate would lead to a “very, very contentious outcome”, which would be “unhelpful”. The remarks were made in a meeting of the advisory committee for the Jesus College China Centre, with a transcript of the discussion made available to the newspaper. In response, Professor Nolan told the paper that he “support[s] Jesus College’s position that no topic is out of bounds for academic discussion” and his comments took place in a debate about “the challenges inherent in organising balanced debates on contentious topics”.