Lawyers for Trinity College Dublin have said they will produce statistics to show “chapter and verse” that it is “not a racist university” as they defend an academic’s workplace equality claim.
The Workplace Relations Commission is preparing to hear a complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 against the university by Abhijit Sarkar, a historian who has authored several works on the late colonial period in India.
He claimed the university’s lawyers were trying to “gag” him by seeking a direction that he not share legal documents related to his case.
At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, counsel for the university, Clíona Kimber, said there had been an email sent on Monday to “a number of assistant professors in the history department who have nothing to do with the case” as well as to a barrister whose name had been put forward as a proposed mediator in the matter.
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“The nature of the allegations are very sweeping criticisms made in a scattergun manner against Trinity and it is not appropriate that these be published or disclosed widely outside Trinity,” Kimber said.
“We will, when we put in our submissions, show chapter and verse that Trinity is not a racist university,” she added.
The university’s concern was that Sarkar would publish statistics its legal advisors proposed to submit in defence of the claim, she said. She asked adjudicator Brian Dalton to direct Sarkar not to share the legal papers outside the parties to the case.
Responding to Kimber’s application, Sarkar said all of those copied in the email were involved in an appointment process for an academic post in modern South American history, which he characterised as a “replacement post”.
He said his case was “directly related to this replacement post” and that it was important that those involved in the hiring process were “aware of the legal things that are going on”.
“The respondent basically wants to gag my voice now they have a problem with my cover letter,” he said.
Kimber objected to Sarkar’s reference to a “replacement post” and later said the university “rejected categorically” the assertion that there was “any replacement post”. “Given there’s a journalist present, I want to make that absolutely clear,” she said.
Sarkar said later: “Their legal counsel said it is not a replacement post [but] in their written submissions, they have said they don’t have money, therefore they cannot employ me.”
The complainant also pointed out that the correct legal title for the institution was “the provost, fellows, foundation scholars and the other members of board of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin”.
His view was that “all the fellows and scholars” were party to the case. Kimber said Sarkar ought to have registered individual complaints against “every one of those” if he proposed to rely on that. Trinity had a board of governors who had delegated the matter to the legal team, she added.
Kimber, who appeared instructed by Laura Osborne of Byrne Wallace Solicitors, cited a provision in the Employment Equality Act restricting the dissemination of information furnished to the authority hearing an equality claim in support of her application.
Dalton rose for a time to read the legislation and said when he returned to the hearing: “Dr Sarkar, I don’t have powers to stop you doing anything, and if anyone believes there’s liability as to an offence, that’s not for me to prosecute.”
He added, however, that it appeared from a “plain reading” of the legislation “that information submitted to me as part of my investigation should not be widely shared”. Kimber said this was a fair summation.
Dalton gave Trinity until later this month to file legal submissions replying to papers put in by Sarkar on Monday and adjourned the matter.
