“Unconscious bias is pernicious and destructive"
An Indian academic has been awarded £450,000 in damages after a university was influenced by “pernicious and destructive” unconscious bias when it failed to reappoint her.
A tribunal found Dr Kajal Sharma was discriminated against by bosses at Portsmouth University when she failed in her application to continue her role in the Business and Law faculty.
Despite doing the job for five years, the university failed to reappoint her.
Instead, an inexperienced white candidate was recruited.
Over a three year period, Dr Sharma was one of only two senior lecturers at the university 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 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 began her role as associate head for organisational studies and human resources management on a five-year contract at the start of 2016.
The Indian academic and her manager Professor Gary Rees had a “difficult” relationship.
Dr Sharma cited examples of unfair treatment including wanting her to do university work shortly after her father’s death and failing to support her while she was caring for her sick son.
As her contract approached its end, Professor Rees failed to tell Dr Sharma that her job was being advertised.
After participating in the selection process, she lost out to Kerry Collier.
She made complaints but the university “ignored” them.
This led to an “unnecessarily slow” investigation which concluded she had not been treated unfairly.
Dr Sharma took the university to the tribunal, claiming race discrimination and victimisation.
The tribunal said it was not convinced by Professor Rees’ explanation of why he had preferred Mrs Collier’s candidacy over Dr Sharma’s.
It said: “We have found that the burden of proof requires (the university) to fully explain why the process of selection was not motivated consciously or unconsciously by race.
“We are not satisfied by the explanation.
“On that basis, we would have found that the process was tainted by race discrimination.”
“Whilst Prof Rees is clearly a respected senior academic his reluctance to recognise the skills and abilities and aspirations of Dr Sharma, and his failure to support and encourage her in the way that he supported and encouraged other white members of staff, points towards a subconscious or unconscious bias.”
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 and her family.
“There are no excuses for race discrimination at the university and we recognise and accept the strength of the tribunal’s judgment.”
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”.
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