The End of the Legal Road but Hoping for the Beginnings of Change

Quick recap - In June 2020, I discovered by chance that my PhD supervisor from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama (RCSSD) was intending to publish a book which I believed was developed from my original theory and practice, Dialectical Collaborative Theatre (DCT). I challenged both my supervisor and the institution, pleading with them to recognise my ownership of DCT. My supervisor offered to make some amends, but the institution wanted a sole, male, white, senior, theatre academic who had strong links with the institution to arbitrate. As a south Asian academic who routinely experiences discrimination, I objected. RCSSD acknowledged my complaint and sought guidance from the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) to deal with my allegation of plagiarism. The RCSSD assured me about the impartiality of the screening panel they had convened to ascertain if there was a prima facie case of plagiarism to answer. This first panel found substance to my allegation resulting in RCSSD having to convene a formal research misconduct panel. The research misconduct panel found no case to answer, that the claim of plagiarism was established but superficial and hence recommended that my supervisor work with an expert scholar to revise his text. I have no knowledge of how the second panel was convened and I complained to RCSSD about potential bias. I engaged a solicitor to challenge the accuracy of the research misconduct panel’s draft findings. However, the report was not amended despite various representations being made, my complaint not addressed, so I was left with little choice but to resort to the Courts.

I applied to the High Court for a Judicial Review of the RCSSD’s investigation process of my allegation of plagiarism. Judicial Review is the process of challenging the lawfulness of decisions of public authorities. With limited financial means, I turned to supportive friends and members of the public. I succeeded in raising £30 000 to help me with fees for my solicitor and barrister. The RCSSD used its financial might to assemble a legal team of eight including a Queen’s Counsel, three partners in a leading firm of solicitors, one senior associate, two associates and one trainee solicitor. They informed the Court that the RCSSD would be pursuing me for costs in excess of £64,000, if a judge on reviewing the written grounds for judicial review, did not grant me permission to proceed to a substantive court hearing. My team of two were prepared for permission not being granted as the success rate at this stage is 20% but what we were astonished by was the exorbitant costs that the RCSSD intended to pursue against me. The next stage would have been for me to proceed to an oral hearing where my barrister would argue in open court why permission should be granted. With much sadness, I have accepted that if I proceed to an oral hearing, RCSSD would demand costs at this stage and even if I won permission in the next round, I would not have the financial means to proceed to a substantive hearing. I promised myself that I would not ask anyone for funds beyond the £30 000 already raised. I had come to the end of the legal road.

My solicitor wrote to the RCSSD offering not to proceed to an oral hearing if they provided us with an undertaking that they would not pursue us for costs. The RCSSD have given us this undertaking and accordingly I will not proceed to an oral hearing. I had always hoped that this matter would get to court so that all the issues raised by this case can be made public and you would be able to arrive at your own conclusion based on the facts. For all of you who supported me in spite of the limited evidence I have been able to provide, thank you for trusting me and giving me the courage to stand up to injustice.

The next step for all who believe in equality is to commit to realigning unequal power relationships when we observe these, and for all in positions of institutional authority to commit to changing the landscape. I pose a few questions in my hope for change:

• To University Senior Managers and Trustees of Management Boards, in this climate of league tables, competitive research funding and financial uncertainty, how do you exercise your societal responsibilities ethically?
• To UK national research bodies who supported Vitae’s publication, Research Integrity: a landscape study (2020) where it was disclosed that “90% of respondents believe research integrity is compromised at least some of the time”, what practical steps can you take to reposition integrity and ethics as central to knowledge creation?
• To members of the national Research Exercise Framework (REF) and all those associated with assessing the quality of research, isn’t it time to rethink research metrics which tempt academics and institutions into unethical practice? My supervisor had every opportunity to tell me about the book he was writing on my specialist subject which he had never published on before, but he chose instead to hide my contribution to the field. The RCSSD, instead of foregrounding my contribution, dismissed my status as an expert in the field and invested in an ‘expert scholar’ who supported my supervisor in changing his book so that he was no longer required to cite me. Surely this can’t be good practice. Wouldn’t good practice have been for my supervisor to have included me from the start, for the institution to support this partnership and for research panels to reward valuable collaborations like these? 
• To all academics, artists, teachers, researchers, students, and those vested with the responsibility of assessing the quality of art and research, I recently collaborated with two former students on a book chapter, another on a case study, and yet another on her journal contribution. In my view, our collective contribution to knowledge creation is more valuable to society than single authored contributions. In our respective roles, how can we promote ethical collaborative practice and break the hegemony of hierarchical knowledge creation?
• To researchers and academics, shouldn’t we be practising what we write about? My thesis on ownership and ethical collaboration was supervised by an academic who went on to use DCT to develop his ideas but excluded me, the originator of DCT. Worse still, on reading his book, I am concerned that without reference to my research, dialectics in the context of DCT could be used by others without it being underpinned by ethics as I had intended. I reflect on my participation at a workshop facilitated by the late Augusto Boal when I raised concern about forum theatre being used to justify unjust work policies. He said he was dismayed by practitioners using the tools of Theatre of the Oppressed to further, not overcome oppression but hoped more good than bad would come out of the applications of his theory and practice. What is the motivation for the research we undertake? I have two articles on DCT shortly to be published, one in Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance and the other in PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research. Please refer to these as the primary sources of DCT.   
• To Students, Academics and Artists who have been routinely marginalised, is it possible to navigate through current employment and/or future employment prospects while having the courage to call out your marginalisation? I didn’t think it was possible so last year I resigned from my fulltime academic post after 13 years. Ironically, now that the legal case is over, I am hopeful that positive change can come out of my actions, that students, academics, artists, and those who hold the most power in institutions, appreciate why I gave up so much to fight for justice, not only for myself, but for so many others who got in touch because of their own powerlessness within institutions.

I would like to conclude this final correspondence on #justiceforjo by thanking each of you who supported my campaign in ways which were right for you. I am humbled by the volume, variety, and depth of support. Please know that I will always be grateful to you and am sorry that I may not have been able to thank all of you individually. Finally, a big thank you to my solicitor Victor De Cruz, my barrister, Russell Holland, my two best lawyer pals from Singapore, Dennis Lui and Pamela Chong, my family, and friends – you walked the path of justice with me and cared for me along the way.    

£30,000 target hit 4 days ahead of schedule. I can’t thank you all enough for your generosity. I feel supported in taking my case to court.

The way Crowd Justice works is that you have to hit your minimum target to get you to court. We have collectively achieved this and we have the means to go to court for Judicial Review. However, the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, with its infinite resources, is intending to ask me to pay for their extensive legal bill if I don’t win this case. So, I am building up a buffer for a worst-case scenario. Crowd Justice calls this the stretch fund. While I would like to build up a buffer, this stage is more about building awareness for my case. As such, the stretch fund is left open for the duration of the case if this is what I choose to do. I can’t stress enough that this is primarily to make others aware of my situation and for them to have the opportunity to contribute but it is also a safeguard in case we have to pay costs.

The case is now in the hands of a judge who will decide whether they will give permission for Judicial Review. We’ll keep you posted when we hear the outcome.

It is no easy feat raising £30,00 ahead of schedule. I could not have done this without your support and generosity. Thank you for believing in justice and helping me get to court!

Having submitted our Grounds for Judicial Review, my lawyers have now received notification from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama’s (RCSSD) lawyers that they are challenging our grounds for seeking Judicial Review of the process leading to the findings of the investigation panel of the RCSSD. Central has not responded to our offer to negotiate.

They have also supplied the Court with a fee schedule reflecting the costs of their legal team to date which includes Leading Counsel (a QC), hugely disproportionate to the lawyers I have acting for me and the costs budget we are working with to get this heard by the court. Central intend to recoup all their legal costs from me if the Judge does not grant me permission for Judicial Review.

This is gaslighting in the extreme. How much further will Central, with their unlimited financial resources, go to silence me, to use their institutional power to try to make me doubt myself? My power lies in my research on the ethical ownership of processes and products of theatre. I will use the knowledge gained from this and the integrity of those who support me to stand up to the institution. I will continue to fight for the ownership of my thesis so that not only my labour, but the labour of all marginalised researchers can never again be exploited with callous disregard.

At 7:00 am today I noticed that the Times Higher published an article on my case: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/theatre-academic-legal-challenge-over-disputed-phd-thesis  It said I was going to court because of a ‘book chapter’ my supervisor was intending to publish. It was not a chapter but a whole book. I complained. Times Higher retracted and revised to ‘book’ at 9:30am. Again, gaslighting in the extreme, trivialising my Judicial Review application.

I am not sure where the Times Higher got this information from. My Crowd Justice page: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/was-the-investigation-into-alleged-theft-fair/ clearly states ‘In June 2020, I found out by chance that my PhD supervisor was about to publish a book based on Dialectical Collaborative Theatre, the original theory and practice I had developed in my thesis, without acknowledging it as mine.’ They chose not to check this fact with me and ignore the information on my Crowd Justice page. As the issue of a book chapter has arisen, I did in fact make a separate allegation of plagiarism for a book chapter my supervisor was intending to publish. The chapter was withdrawn from publication and as such was not included in my judicial review application.

Because of what I write about, I need to lead by example, even if at huge cost to me and my family. This is necessary if inequality in society is to be addressed. I trust and hope that the Court will grant me permission to judicially review the process leading to the decision of the investigation panel of the RCSSD. Knowledge created not underpinned by ethics is harmful and perpetuates inequality. This research culture of disjunct between what we write and what we do has to stop now.   

I now have to wait for when a judge reviews my judicial review application and makes a decision on on whether it goes to court. This could take weeks or months depending on the volume of cases being assessed.

Dear Supporters,

After my lawyers submitted our application for judicial review in March 2021, the RCSSD requested a stay i.e for the application to be in the system but not to be considered during the stay while Alternative Dispute Resolution takes place. My lawyers had earlier outlined seven areas of concern and proposed suggested actions in lieu of judicial review. We hoped that the RCSSD had requested the stay to give them more time to respond to our proposals. However, they continued to defend their investigation process in their response. They did not address any of the actions we proposed in lieu of judicial review. The stay expired on Friday the 7^th of May 2021. My lawyers have confirmed with the court that we are proceeding with our application for a judicial review of RCSSD’s investigation process. We will continue to raise awareness and funds.

We have raised £10 080 in 3 days! Your solidarity is going to make all the difference. Thank you. Continue to spread the word.

Day 1 and we have raised 10% of the target amount. I can't thank you all enough for your contributions. Any amount, however small, counts. Thank you for sharing the link and raising awareness. Your comments have been heartening. Appreciate very much the anonymous donors as well.