LIKE SOME epic of Milton, the saga of the Oxford professorship of poetry plunged on yesterday as Ruth Padel, who resigned from the post on Monday, conjured a conspiracy theory, which she said could have been intended to ruin her prospects.
Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival, in Hay, England, she said a smear campaign conducted against Derek Walcott, her chief rival for the post, could have been “a plan to undermine me”.
Padel began her day apologising to Walcott for tipping off journalists that students were concerned about his past conduct. But she strongly denied any involvement in the smear campaign – in which allegations that he had sexually harassed students were anonymously circulated to Oxford lecturers.
“I apologise to Derek Walcott for doing something which could be misconstrued in the context of a large campaign that had nothing to do with me and which I didn’t know about,” she said. “I don’t want to be against him. He is my revered colleague and I do not want him to be humiliated.”
She called the smear campaign an “insane and malicious action”.
Walcott, a West Indian poet, withdrew from the election for the post on May 12th after the allegations against him were revealed, leaving Padel without a close rival. She was duly elected on May 16th, only to resign on Monday. Though she denied any wrongdoing, she admitted she had made a “grave error of judgment” and had been “naive and stupid”.
At the literary festival, she has been trailed by security guards, a measure usually reserved for ex-presidents and pop stars. An event she chaired yesterday – a conversation with Emma Darwin, on the latter’s latest novel – was monitored by four stewards, a press officer and two guards.
Padel told the Guardianshe had no idea who mounted the campaign against Walcott, in which up to 200 Oxford lecturers were sent photocopied pages of a book detailing claims that Walcott had harassed students. "Who they were, I don't know. I suppose they were people who had a vendetta against Walcott, but I did very rapidly begin to feel there may have been a plan to undermine me as well. Because nobody in their right minds would begin to think it would help me to send those things and nor would I have wished it . . . It's all a terrible and horrible sequence of misdemeanours by people I don't know."
Her resignation was prompted, she said, by the increasing sense that opinion in Oxford was divided on her conduct.
Of the e-mails she sent, she said: “I was concerned about the students’ concerns because universities are about students. And I think it was a very foolish and indiscreet thing to do but I didn’t at the time believe it was wrong because all the things I passed to them were in the public domain, and had been known for years. It wasn’t news, so in that sense wasn’t a smear.”
The University of Oxford has indicated it will hold fresh elections for the post after a cooling-off period but Padel has ruled out standing again, saying, “people wouldn’t believe in me”.
The third candidate for the professorship, the Indian poet Arvind Mehrotra, secured 129 votes in the election as against Padel’s 297. He said: “I have not really given any thought to standing for election again. I will cross that bridge when Oxford invites fresh nominations. Much water would have flown under it by then. As with Walcott, when the sexual harassment story broke and he withdrew from the race, Ruth Padel’s resignation shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise. Once even her supporters started saying that she ought to resign, the writing was on the wall.
“From India, where I live, these extra-literary goings-on appear more unfortunate than amusing. I hope that some lessons are learnt from this, not least that the private lives of poets should, occasionally, be allowed to stay private. I don’t think the position itself is damaged. After all, it’s been around for 300 years and looks likely to continue for at least as long.”
The novelist Jeanette Winterson had told the Guardianshe believed Padel had been brought down by the misogynistic forces of Oxford, which she called a "sexist little dump". Padel said: "I don't know about that. The person I was dealing with, the chair of the faculty, was an extremely nice and pleasant woman." While Winterson said she favours Alice Oswald for the post, Don Paterson has been mooted by the novelist Clare Sambrook. Padel said: "I wish the next professor of poetry all the best, and I hope she's a woman." – ( Guardiannews service)