When Julie Bishop fronted hundreds of staff at the Australian National University to announce the vice-chancellor’s resignation on Thursday, she noted at the beginning of her chancellory address that it was R U OK? Day.
In response, the crowd laughed.
The departure of Prof Genevieve Bell has been anticipated for more than a week but it throws up more questions than answers. Staff are yet to hear whether about 100 jobs remain on the line, or if eight change proposals will still go ahead.
In the past 12 months a drastic university restructure has led to at least 399 redundancies and the proposed disestablishment of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, the Centre for European Studies, the Humanities Research Centre and the ANU School of Music.
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The restructure, and how it has been handled, has placed ANU at the centre of a governance crisis. The National Tertiary Education Union, students, the sector’s regulator and politicians have raised the alarm over an alleged culture of fear that has driven an academic to consider taking her life.
Fronting a Senate inquiry last month, Dr Liz Allen, a prominent academic at ANU, alleged through tears that she was “bullied into near suicide” while serving on ANU’s university council and had suffered a miscarriage in the weeks after two distressing meetings with Bishop.
Addressing the inquiry in the town hall meeting on Thursday, Bishop said she rejected “each and every allegation” Allen had made, and that the Senate hearing had been the first time she was given notice of the situation. Allen’s “ventilation” was “compromising” to other witnesses, Bishop, the former foreign affairs minister, said.
Bell didn’t appear at the town hall address. She will return to ANU’s school of cybernetics as a distinguished professor after taking a period of study leave, with her payout yet to be announced.
She said in a statement on Thursday that being the university’s 13th vice-chancellor had been an “extraordinary privilege and also a heavy responsibility”.
“I very much want to see the ANU thrive into the future and for it to continue to be a remarkable place and I don’t want to stand in the way of that,” she said.
‘The deans work for me’
Bell must have known it wasn’t going to be an easy job when she was appointed to the role in late 2023.
According to ANU’s management, the financial situation was dire, with operating deficits of more than $400m between 2020 and 2023 due to the pandemic, bushfires, a hailstorm and increased expenses.
ANU had also progressively slipped in the QS World University Rankings from 19th in 2016 to 34th in 2024, performing poorly in its employer reputation, employment outcomes and faculty-to-student ratio.
The outgoing vice-chancellor, Prof Brian Schmidt, noted in his 2023 final annual report that there was “no doubt” ANU had gone through “several tough years”.
“Genevieve has a clear and aspirational vision for the future of our university, and I hope everyone will join me in supporting her journey in the next chapter,” he wrote.
Her leadership style was different to Schmidt’s, something she acknowledged in an interview with the ABC.
“The [college] deans are … accountable for their parts of the university but ultimately it does stop with me,” she said in March. “It is the case I have had to say at this university, ‘The deans work for me, not the other way around.’”
‘Another day, another headline’
Less than a year into Bell’s tenure, major reforms were on the way.
Last October Renew ANU was announced – a “targeted reorganisation” that would disestablish the ANU college of health and medicine and reduce operating costs by $250m. Redundancies, Bell wrote, were “unavoidable”.
Over the coming weeks, staff anxiety grew, exacerbated by Bell’s request for employees to forgo a 2.5% December pay rise to save jobs, one which was overwhelmingly rejected in an all-staff vote.
Then in May the Nixon report was released. It delivered a damning indictment of the “toxic” culture operating within ANU’s former college of health and medicine and its associated schools. The report alleged bullying, harassment, sexism and racial discrimination had been rife.
At the same time, ANU was progressively releasing its change proposals, which outlined future redundancies, the closures of a string of centres and schools and mergers of degrees including political science, international relations and public policy.
Confusion remained over the number of cuts and their financial justification, prompting 95% of 800 voters to back a no-confidence motion against Bell and Bishop in a union-led poll.
“Another day, another headline about ANU,” Bell wrote to staff in a June update titled “sitting in hard moments”. “It’s never easy to read about a place you love couched in constantly critical terms, especially when you know how much good happens here too.”
The following month music students set up a makeshift stage outside ANU’s Llewellyn Hall in protest against the cuts to their department, jamming from 8pm until the next morning.
A ‘critical point in history’
Good news appeared to be on the horizon late last month, when Bell advised that no further non-voluntary redundancies would happen as part of the restructure.
But to staff, who were informed of the news about midday, the same time an opinion piece by Bell justifying the changes was published in the Canberra Times, it rubbed salt in the wound.
The language of her email, which said “all future changes under Renew ANU will be achieved without involuntary redundancies”, left many wondering if their jobs were safe.
But according to the National Tertiary Education Union, an estimated 100 jobs, including in the college of arts and social sciences and the college of science and medicine, were still on the chopping block.
Sources told Guardian Australia the ambiguous wording of Bell’s email was a tipping point for the deans. Last week five of six advised the council and Bishop that they no longer had confidence in Bell’s leadership, prompting exit talks.
The remaining questions
Bell’s resignation has not fixed the deeper problems facing the ANU.
Multiple investigations are ongoing, including with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, after the education minister raised “significant concerns” in a rare commonwealth intervention into university governance.
ANU has released its self-assurance report and cover letter for the standards agency, and will undertake its own investigation into its council and senior leadership team.
The report referred to two open letters signed by several hundred staff that disputed the basis for the cuts, suggesting: “The willingness of staff to attach their names to these letters demonstrates … that staff are not afraid to voice concerns about decisions.”
In this Shakespearean-level drama, whether Bell is the only senior staff member to go is likely to be the next chapter.
On Thursday the Labor senator Tony Sheldon drew Bishop’s leadership into question, noting that under her tenure “the council signed off on sweeping restructures, oversaw rising dissatisfaction among students and staff … and failed to provide transparency around serious governance concerns”.
In a press conference on Thursday, Bishop said there were “no grounds” for her to step aside and she had the full backing of council to continue until 2026.
“The university’s financial situation … began a very long time ago,” she said. “We’re not the only university that has found itself in this kind of difficulty.”
As the community awaits further consultation, staff have resorted to encrypted apps to communicate amid fears their messages are being monitored.
A grassroots group of academics, Our ANU, said “only genuine accountability” would allow the institution to reset and rebuild.
“We ask all remaining executives to ask themselves if they are the people right for the job of finding new ways to work with the ANU community,” they said.
