A respected academic forced to quit her job after being labelled the “racist uncle at the dinner table” over her gender-critical views, has raised over £160,000 to take her former employer to court.
Prof. Jo Phoenix launched the crowdfunding appeal after leaving her criminologist role at Open University in 2021.
She says her employers failed to protect her from a bullying campaign mounted by colleagues after she expressed views about the silencing of academic debate on transgender issues.
Phoenix, who was the university’s chairman in criminology, claimed she had been made to feel like a “pariah” by colleagues and was subjected to a campaign of harassment for two years that made her life “unbearable.”
She is due to give evidence at an employment tribunal set for October this year.
The gender, law, and justice expert hopes the case will set a precedent for universities to better protect female academics from “vicious bullying perpetrated by those who disagree with our beliefs on sex and gender.”
Thousands of people, including fellow academics, have supported her campaign to raise the six-figure sum needed for legal costs to take the challenge.
‘Crushing’
The academic’s legal fight comes just weeks after another university trans row involving Prof. Kathleen Stock.It led to university chiefs, 40 academic dons, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, publicly defending Stock’s right to speak.
During the event, activists stormed the philosopher’s talk, with one gluing themselves to the floor.
Speaking after the protesters were pulled out of the hall, Stock said she was concerned that institutions listen to the protesters and then “become propaganda machines for a particular point of view and everyone else feels they can’t say what they want to say.
“That is happening, I’m afraid, in lots of workplaces and universities,” she said.
Writing on her Crowd Justice page last week, Phoenix said Stock’s treatment was “a perfect case study” of why her claim against Open University was important.
“Professor Kathleen Stock was invited by Oxford Union to give a talk. There were calls for it to be cancelled.
“Oxford University staff and students passed motions, wrote open letters, tweeted condemnatory statements all calling on the Union to disinvite Professor Stock in one way or another.
“The [now standard] accusation was that she is a transphobe,” she said.
Phoenix described the constant abuse and labelling of gender-critical academics within universities as “crushing.”
“In the documentary Gender Wars (which aired on Channel 4 last week), there was a very poignant moment when Prof Stock said it didn’t matter what she says now, there is a contingent of people who have decided that everything she says is transphobic and she cannot dissuade them otherwise.
“My heart broke for her and us when she said this. To be labelled and monstered is a dreadful thing. But for there to be such an intellectually and academically poor culture in our universities is crushing.”
Rape Survivor
Phoenix began working with the Open University in 2016 which she described as a “love match.”“I took a massive pay cut to work here, having previously held senior leadership roles including being Dean at Durham University,” she said.
“This position at the OU was my dream job because adult education is personally so important to me.”
“When I was 15, I was raped by two men and then endured a rape trial in 1970s Texas.
“During this time, I ran away from home and saw more of life than a child should. It was adult education which gave me a way out and allowed me to thrive.”
She had been researching sex, gender, and justice for around two decades when she started experiencing issues with her previous employer.
She said things started to go “horribly wrong” when she expressed views about the silencing of academic debate on trans issues, criticising Stonewall’s influence in universities.
“I also expressed views that male-bodied prisoners should not be in female prisons, and I set up the Open University Gender Critical Research Network,” she said.
“As a result, I have been publicly vilified by hundreds of my colleagues in a targeted campaign against members of the Gender Critical Research Network; I have been called transphobic; I have twice been compared to a racist by managers; and I have been silenced and shunned within my department.
“I have been made to feel like a pariah and have become very ill as a result,” she said.
The academic, who has been diagnosed with acute Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from her bullying ordeal, claims a senior manager referred to her as “like the racist uncle at the Christmas dinner table.”
“When I started to cry, she suggested that if I couldn’t cope with it she could put me in touch with counselling services,” Phoenix said.
Over 360 of her colleagues signed a public letter condemning Phoenix’s Gender Critical Research Network calling for the university to remove all support and funding from the network.
Her name was also circulated online by members of the university on a so-called “Terf list.”
The derogatory term, which stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist, is aimed at those who believe that “identifying” as a woman is not the same as being born a woman.
Phoenix felt she had no option but to resign from Open University.
She intends to claim that she has been discriminated against owing to her gender-critical views, which were deemed by a tribunal earlier this year to be a “protected characteristic” under the Equality Act 2010.
The Epoch Times contacted Open University for comment but did not receive a response.
