Prof Wyn Evans, who raised concerns over treatment of female staff at Institute of Astronomy, was subject to ‘baseless’ investigation, judge rules

A University of Cambridge whistleblower who alleged bullying of female staff inside the university’s Institute of Astronomy has won a tribunal against his employer.

Prof Wyn Evans told a tribunal hearing in June that the Institute suffered from “a bad history of misogyny”. He claimed that one woman in the department had been “hounded out of a job”, another was “left a frightened woman”, and a third had faced “aggressive professors” at the institute.

The tribunal found that after raising concerns, Evans was “subjected to a prolonged nearly two-year investigation by the university”, even though the allegations against him “contained scant particularisation, and no evidence to support them”.

The tribunal said its job was not to “conduct a public inquiry into alleged bullying or misogyny within the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge” but concluded it was “satisfied that the claimant genuinely believed that there was a problem within the institute about the way female administrators were being treated”.

It found that Cambridge “did not even want to consider” Evans’s complaints under its whistleblowing policy, and described “an institutional mindset” that viewed the professor of astrophysics as “a source of difficulty and continuing reputational risk due to his protected disclosures which might damage the institute...

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