Tribunal backs the professor’s return but warns him not to read it as vindication

The University of Melbourne sacked a tenured professor in December 2023 for serious misconduct after finding he had sexually harassed a woman who reported to him. He challenged the sacking, won reinstatement, and the university appealed. On September 4, 2026, a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission dismissed that appeal.

He keeps his job. The decision, though, reads nothing like a clearing of his name.

The conduct traced back to a dinner in September 2019. The professor was then acting dean of the university’s science faculty; the woman was the faculty’s executive director and reported directly to him. According to the decision, he reached across the table, took her hand and said words to the effect of “I can see us being in each other’s lives for the rest of our lives. I love you.” Outside afterwards, the tribunal recorded, he hugged her and said he had “never felt like this before.” The next morning he sent a text the tribunal described as “euphoric language,” signed “Yours always.” She had made clear she wanted a professional relationship only. Unwelcome contact continued in other forms over the months that followed.

Here is the detail HR teams should sit with. The faculty’s HR manager knew about the dinner and the text at the time - the woman had shown her the message. Yet the university took no formal action until 2023, after the professor applied for a role that would put him back in...

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