Sexual misconduct strikes at the heart of university life

Content warning: sexual misconduct

The car-crash-level mishandling of sexual misconduct reports about a professor at the London School of Economics comes as no surprise. As an activist and researcher into sexual misconduct by academic staff, this case fits a familiar pattern. Serial perpetrators harm generation after generation of students and junior colleagues. The women, queer and/or non-binary people targeted are kept in the dark and exposed to further risk. And they continue to pay a devastating, life-changing toll.

In 2024, the Office for Students found that at least a third of respondents had experienced sexual harassment in a university setting in the past year (PDF). A study from 2023 found that 7% of students who experienced sexual harassment said it was from a member of academic staff. And a significant number of people reporting intimate relationships with a member of staff said they felt under pressure in these relationships because they were worried that a refusal would harm them, their studies or their career.

In academia, predatory behaviour comes in many forms, from sexist comments to rape and from one-off incidents to grooming, where a member of staff isolates the student, makes them feel special, uses academic excuses to build trust and get them on their own, and then tries to get them to engage in sexual behaviour. While students at all stages of study are targeted, PhD students are particularly at risk because they rely on academic staff to support their careers, offer mentorship and help them build networks. 

In other professions where professionals hold positions of trust – such as medicine, clinical psychology and social work – regulators set clear professional boundaries, and sexual or romantic relationships are not allowed. By contrast, most universities have turned a blind eye. Manchester University’s current policy even states that “the University does not wish to prevent liaisons between staff and students and it relies upon the integrity of both parties to ensure that abuses of power do not occur.” How students – who rely on academic staff for grades, references, and career-building – are supposed to “ensure that abuses of power do not occur” is entirely unclear.

Things have started to change. In England – though not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland – the Office for Students will introduce a requirement in August for universities and colleges to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct and prevent abuses of power. And the new Worker Protection Act puts a duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace – although this doesn’t cover students. 

But with minimal oversight from regulators these changes will not prevent further cases such as at LSE from occurring.

Universities need to clear up the basic errors and myths which hobble their response when people report sexual misconduct from staff, so that staff and students are kept safe and informed. And they need to stop passing the perpetrators from one institution to another. 

When students or staff report sexual misconduct, the person responsible often leaves the institution either during or after an investigation. So a professor can simply move to another university, without their new employer ever finding out about the investigation, and carry on as before.

Last year we at The 1752 Group joined with allies to campaign for universities to join the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme – a programme that promotes simple safer hiring practices. But a year later, precisely zero universities have joined this scheme – a stark demonstration of how low a priority this issue takes across the sector. 

These experiences are silencing women, queer and non-binary people, leaving them unable to pursue their research freely because some academic spaces are just not safe. Students can only learn effectively if they can trust their professors. So sexual misconduct can make students and early career academics lose confidence, change their area of study, avoid campus or even drop out.

When I asked a PhD student about a non-consensual relationship with her supervisor, she told me it was “the worst single thing that has ever happened to me”.

“I think of it in terms of before and after that happened,” she said, “and my life will never be the same. Five years later, and I still think about it every day.”

Even though the higher education sector is in the middle of a financial crisis – my own job may be at risk – universities have finally begun to tackle peer on peer sexual misconduct. But staff can be abusers too. And – as the LSE case shows – universities are still failing their students when they are brave enough to report misconduct. Students need and deserve better.