The Vice Chancellor of Australian National University (ANU) has offered its resignation after a tumultuous two years in the institution, characterized by dismissal, proposed price closures and accusations of a toxic working culture.
Chancellor Julie Bishop confirmed that Prof Genevieve Bell had resigned on Thursday morning. Several sources said that Bell advised the Council on Wednesday evening about its decision, where Provost Rebekah Brown Interim -Vice -Kanselier is found until a replacement has been found.
Bell said she would return to Anu’s School of Cybernetics as a distinguished professor after taking a period of study leave, and added that it was “not an easy decision” to ensure that the 13th Vice Chancellor of the University had been an “extraordinary privilege and also a serious responsibility”.
“I believe firmly in our delivery of our national mission … and know that this requires a solid financial, cultural and operational basis,” she said in the Thursday statement.
“Reaching such a foundation has been difficult and this has been a very difficult time for our community … I really want to see that the Anu thrives in the future and that it will remain a remarkable place and I don’t want to stand in the way.”
The pressure was mounted for Bell to leave after five of the six deans had advised the council and Chancellor that they no longer had faith in her leadership, sources confirmed.
Last week Bishop held a full day of meetings on campus with deans, councilors and members of the trade union, sources told Guardian Australia.
She returned to the campus on Wednesday to meet members of the Anu Governance Project, a group of academics and employees who formed this year in the midst of a growing “confidence crisis” in leadership at the university, and again met members of the Union on Thursday morning.
It followed the release of a destructive report Through the board project that 96% of the approximately 600 respondents thought that the board of Anu was not suitable for the goal and had to be reformed.
Bisschop said that “she would encourage the council to make an open and constructive dialogue with the group about the proposed recommendations”.
“On behalf of the Anu Council I thank Distinguished Prof Bell for her service as a vice-channelier and president.”
The board of Anu was examined for a drastic restructuring that led to at least 399 dismissed and the proposed decoupling of the Australian National Dictionary Center, the Center for European Studies, the Humanities Research Center and the Anu School of Music.
About 100 employees are still confronted with the ax as part of the Renew Anu process, the National Tertiary Education Union (Nteu) Schat.
A study of Anu by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) is underway after “significant worries” have been brought by Jason Clare in a rare Commonwealth intervention in university administration in June.
Anu has been released since then self -insurance report And letter of application For Teqsa, and will conduct his own research into her advice and senior leadership team after a prominent academicist who claimed last month in a senate investigation that she was “bullied in the vicinity of suicide”, while she served in Anu’s University Council and suffered a miscarriage in the weeks after two fatal meetings with Bashop.
The notification to Teqsa showed that there had been 627 psychosocial risk and hazard reports recorded by staff in 2024 and 337 in the year to date.
“I reject every suggestion that I have a different way than with respect, courtesy and politeness,” Bishop said in August.
“The witness involved has started complaints procedures and it is not appropriate that I have given further comments at the moment.”
Independent senator David Pocock has consistently called on Bell and Bishop to go aside after Renew Anu started 12 months ago.
“Although there is a broad concept of the need to put the Anu on a more sustainable financial feet, there have been serious failures of leadership and governance in the performance of Renew Anu,” he said.
Pocock said that he approved the council’s decision, but further changes in leadership were needed and all further forced redundancies were to be stopped until there was “transparency” about the finances of Anu and “real consultation” with staff.
The Nteu Act Division Secretary, Dr. Lachlan Clohey, welcomed the news, but said that Bell would not be “the last Vice Chancellor to go” if other universities “do not observe the lessons of what went wrong”.
“Anu -leadership has chosen an approach to move quickly and break things,” he said. “Unfortunately too many of those things were people.”
A Grassroots group of academics who campaigns against staff savings, our Anu said, said
“The” problems in the heart of this crisis go beyond the Vice Chancellor “.
“This has been in the making for years, the product of mistakes of deep board … Only real responsibility will enable Anu to reset and reset it.”
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