Today, I have sent the following letter to Dr. Tamsyn Barton, Chair of the Alphawood programme (SAAAP). (PDF of the letter is here.)
16 November 2016
Dear Dr. Barton,
Thank you for your response of 26 October to my letter regarding the 2017-’18 Alphawood Scholarships. You kindly invited me to meet, and I look forward to sitting down with you. Ahead of our meeting, I would like to provide my detailed response to your letter.
First, I must note that new information about the Alphawood programme has recently been revealed which has a bearing on the statements expressed in your letter. On 31 October, documents related to the Mid-term Review of the programme were obtained by the SOAS Students’ Union through a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request. The seven documents are among those provided by the Project Board to the Reviewer ahead of her visit to SOAS in March 2016. The documents may be seen here.
Unfortunately, together with these disclosed documents, your letter deepens concerns about ethics, transparency and accountability, the three principles which SOAS has failed to uphold in the management of the Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme (SAAAP; the formal name of the Alphawood programme.) To summarise the specific concerns:
- SOAS used the Mid-term Review to whitewash the unethical conduct in the Alphawood Scholarships. The SAAAP Board lied outright to the Reviewer, as a document recently exposed under the FOI Act shows.
- SOAS still refuses to clarify the vague meaning of “ancient to pre-modern” art for Alphawood Scholarship applicants. This is institutional arrogance. Applicants deserve transparency and fairness.
- The lack of transparency and accountability in the Alphawood programme is also highlighted by SOAS’s recent effort to exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure the emails of Prof. Anna Contadini and Dr. Peter Sharrock, the two individuals at the centre of the Alphawood scandal.
- SOAS’s stated justification for the retroactive restriction of the Alphawood funding to art “in antiquity” – that the donor’s original intention had been neglected due to an administrative error – is based on thin evidence, as the newly released documents show. This raises a number of questions.
Below, I elaborate each of these points.
(1) SOAS used the Mid-term Review to whitewash the unethical conduct in the Alphawood Scholarships. The SAAAP Board lied outright to the Reviewer, as a document recently exposed under the FOI Act shows.
Your letter states that the Mid-term Review “did not find that ‘unethical behaviour’ or ‘abuse’ had taken place” in SAAAP. But recently exposed evidence shows that SOAS deliberately deceived the Reviewer to hide the unethical manipulation in the Alphawood Scholarships.
The Mid-term Review was conducted in late March 2016 by Prof. Shearer West, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University, who was commissioned by the SAAAP Board to undertake the review. Prof. West’s report, which revealed the “failure of leadership at several levels” of SAAAP, may be read here.
Among the documents newly obtained under a FOI request is one entitled “Self-Evaluation Statement.” This is a document signed by Prof. Gurharpal Singh, then Chair of the SAAAP Board, which presents SAAAP’s history, structure and activities to the Reviewer. Regarding the 2016-’17 Alphawood Scholarship selection process which had occurred in late January to early February 2016, the “Self-Evaluation Statement” claims:
“In the latest round of applications for Year 3 entry, the Scholarship Subgroup judged applications for the MA Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa along with all others [sic] programmes with reference to the criteria for selection. No applicants were deemed to be of sufficient quality to be worthy of scholarships in the MA Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa.” (paragraph 5.19)
This is a lie. As we know from emails exposed on 6 May 2016 through Freedom of Information, Prof. Anna Contadini, Chair of the Scholarships Committee, had specifically ordered Committee members not to accept any contemporary art applicants, even though SOAS had advertised for such candidates to apply. The order was reiterated by Prof. Singh. Dr. Peter Sharrock, a member of the Committee, wrote of how he was “marking all 10 [contemporary art applicants] low” to “contain them.” These shameful actions were concealed from the Reviewer under the bald lie that none of these applicants had been “of sufficient quality.”
(2) SOAS still refuses to clarify the vague meaning of “ancient to pre-modern” art for Alphawood Scholarship applicants. This is institutional arrogance. Applicants deserve transparency and fairness.
Your letter states, “The criteria for the scholarships are now quite clear, and of course applicants can address any queries on eligibility via the project administrator.” The Alphawood Scholarship criteria call for applicants to “demonstrate your interest in ancient to pre-modern Buddhist and/or Hindu art.” As I wrote to you previously, the definition of “pre-modern” in the context of Southeast Asian art is not at all obvious. The ongoing refusal by SOAS officials to provide even the slightest further insight into what they mean inescapably expresses arrogance. The Scholarship Committee members, under Prof. Anna Contadini’s chairmanship, can use this vague criteria as a screen behind which they may judge applications any way they like – as they did the last time. This sadly evokes a power play, in which a wealthy British institution takes advantage of Southeast Asian students’ need for funding.
You suggest that applicants “can address any queries on eligibility via the project administrator.” How will this work in practice? Who at SAAAP will be responsible for answering applicants’ queries about their eligibility? The most likely person would seem to be the Chair of the Scholarships Committee, Prof. Anna Contadini. This is problematic given Prof. Contadini’s demonstrated disregard for student rights as well as the fact that she utterly lacks expertise in Southeast Asian Buddhist and Hindu art, being herself a researcher of Islamic art of the Middle East. There is also the question of how other SAAAP Board members would answer if approached by applicants. In the Mid-term Review, the Reviewer stated that she got different answers when she asked each Board member to define “antiquity” in a Southeast Asian context. Has the SAAAP Board now developed an agreed definition? If no, then applicants will receive different answers depending on whom at SOAS they ask. If yes, why not share the definition openly with everyone?
If applicants can only check their eligibility by making individual inquiries, they may also be exposed to potential abuse in another way. SOAS has an incentive to tell as many applicants as possible they are eligible, so it could then report to the Alphawood Foundation a large number of applications as evidence for the popularity of the scholarship programme. Thus, some who receive encouragement to apply could in fact be wasting their time for the benefit of SOAS.
For the sake of fairness and transparency, SOAS must make a clear, considered set of evaluation criteria publicly available to all applicants, giving everyone the same message about what is needed and the same opportunity to succeed.
(3) The lack of transparency and accountability in the Alphawood programme is also highlighted by SOAS’s recent effort to exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure the emails of Prof. Anna Contadini and Dr. Peter Sharrock, the two individuals at the centre of the Alphawood scandal.
Your letter touches on the issue of transparency, stating that “all the key documents are being made available on the SAAAP website and intranet, including the Mid-term Review.” In fact, the Review has been publicly available on the SOAS website since 6 July 2016 and so is not a new disclosure. But the aim to increase transparency is welcome, and I look forward to the public release of more documents. However, there is worrying evidence that the senior levels of SOAS aim to continue to operate the Alphawood programme with minimal transparency and accountability. In July 2016, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails relating to the Mid-term Review by four members of SAAAP management. SOAS refused to release the emails of two of these, Prof. Anna Contadini and Dr. Peter Sharrock. This is even as the emails of the two other Board members were disclosed. In brief, SOAS has argued that the emails of Prof. Contadini and Dr. Sharrock were written in confidence and to expose them would erode the “safe space” staff require for the free and frank exchange of views. However, in this situation, this argument is consistent with neither the letter nor the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. Moreover, it is worrying that the official who made the determination that the emails from Prof. Contadini and Dr. Sharrock should be withheld from view is the Director of SOAS, in her capacity as Qualified Person for the purpose of Freedom of Information. I requested internal reconsideration of the Director’s decision and presented the legal arguments, but the Director’s exemption was upheld. I have submitted an appeal to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. What is in those emails that SOAS wishes to conceal?
Your letter states that the Director has made enhancements to governance and accountability at SAAAP. The change of Board Chair is indeed a productive development, and hopefully, other effective measures are also being deployed. However, the Director still allows Prof. Contadini, despite her evidenced unethical behaviour, and the lying to conceal it, to continue as Chair of the Scholarships Committee – and has also appointed her Chair of the Outreach Committee and a Member of the Board of SAAAP. She is the only individual holding so many positions in the management of the programme – why? Amos has also allowed Dr. Peter Sharrock to retain both his positions on the Scholarship Committee and as Outreach Manager, apparently ignoring his callous treatment of students, as well as the conflict of interest the Reviewer noted in his role, and the Reviewer’s advice to prevent personal friendships with the donor from interfering with decision-making. What does it say about the Director’s supposed commitment to accountability and governance that she has not punished unethical conduct but rewarded it?
(4) SOAS’s stated justification for the retroactive restriction of the Alphawood funding to art “in antiquity” – that the donor’s original intention had been neglected due to an administrative error – is based on thin evidence, as the newly released documents show. This raises a number of questions.
As you know, earlier this year, SOAS suddenly applied a restriction against awarding Alphawood Scholarships to students with interest or background in modern/contemporary art, even as SOAS had widely invited applications from, and indeed previously accepted, such applicants. To defend this unexpected, retroactive restriction to the Scholarships, the Director of SOAS claimed that the Alphawood Foundation “has made clear that their intention was to fund scholarships in Hindu and Buddhist art in antiquity,” and that “due to an administrative oversight, this was not clearly communicated to scholarship applicants.” This claim was further elaborated in the “Self-Evaluation Statement” provided to the Reviewer: the SAAAP Board related that the Alphawood Foundation had wished to fund only art “in antiquity” since the origin of the gift, citing as evidence a letter written by Alphawood to the Development Office in March 2014 and an email from the SOAS Development Office to the SAAAP Board in April 2014. The “Self-Evaluation Statement” refers to “an oversight caused by a deficit of communication” which led SOAS to fail to implement the donor’s limitation to “antiquity” until it received a letter from Alphawood in December 2015. (para. 2.6-2.9, 5.15-5.18).
The March 2014 letter and April 2014 email cited by SOAS as evidence have now been revealed in the latest Freedom of Information Act disclosure.
The letter, dated 26 March 2014, is from James D. McDonough, Executive Director at the Alphawood Foundation, to Fiona McWilliams, then Director of External Relations and Development at SOAS. It states, “It is and was our intention that this [donation] be limited to art produced by Hindu or Buddhist artists in the specified areas of Southeast Asia in antiquity.” However, the letter is clearly marked in the upper right, ‘DRAFT.’ It is unsigned. The paper does not bear the Alphawood Foundation’s logo.
The email is dated 2 April 2014. It is from Fiona McWilliams to the nine members of the SAAAP Board at that time. She states:
“Definition of Southeast Asian art – I am working with Alphawood on an agreed form of words, but it is clear from discussions between me and Jim, and between Fred and Paul yesterday, that Alphawood’s intention when making the gift was to focus on ‘heritage’ rather than ‘contemporary’, and on visual art and architecture, rather than performance.”
There is nothing in her statement that says modern/contemporary art should be totally excluded. What is considered “heritage” is undefined; she notes she is still “working with Alphawood on an agreed form of words.” Furthermore, although McWilliams (supposedly) received the draft letter from McDonough just a week earlier, she mentions nothing of it and her description does not echo his language. The fact that she notes the discussion with Alphawood is ongoing indicates why Board members who received this message didn’t respond with the modern/contemporary restriction now in place. They were reacting rationally to what was conveyed to them.
It was a year and eight months later, in December 2015, that McDonough of Alphawood wrote to the Director of SOAS with a statement that Alphawood had a pre-existing and ongoing wish to exclude modern art; that it was concerned that this wish was not being followed, and that SOAS should commission an external reviewer “to render a judgment regarding the fidelity of the program as implemented to the donor’s intent.” Yet, as the “Self-Evaluation Statement” testifies, over the previous two years Alphawood had received numerous, regular updates from SOAS. (para. 3.9) Alphawood was shown the lists of Scholarship candidates for both 2013-’14 and 2014-’15 and it approved them (para. 5.17); this included a total of five scholarships awarded for the MA Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa. (para. 5.13) There is no apparent evidence of an “administrative oversight” or “deficit of communication.” Why did Alphawood wait so long to complain to SOAS? Moreover, if Alphawood had at any time felt strongly about the restriction to “antiquity,” why didn’t it immediately seek to amend the Deed of Gift, the fundamental document governing the use of the donation? Through Freedom of Information, it is now known that the Deed was not modified until 8 September 2016.
Following the request for an external review from Alphawood – and despite the weak evidence that SOAS had made any mistake in its understanding of the gift – SOAS commissioned the review, stating that one of its main objectives was to “assess the extent to which SAAAP has met the purpose of the Deed of Gift signed between Alphawood and SOAS in October 2013 and clarified subsequently in March 2014 and December 2015.” (para. 10.1)
The claim for an earlier ‘history’ for Alphawood’s intention, and the legitimation of this claim, was thus a prime objective of the review. Why was the claim so pressingly needed? After all, Alphawood could have simply informed SOAS that it had new intentions for future activities, and then the restricted remit would be applied to work going forward. As it happened, however, the claim for an earlier intention was followed by retroactive action against particular individuals. For example, the Director rationalised the retroactive wielding of the restriction against modern art scholarship candidates as an institutional need to follow the donor’s wishes. (Of course, even if an error had been made by SOAS, it is hardly justifiable to force students to suffer because of it.) The December 2015 letter from McDonough of Alphawood also hinted at retroactive action – not only against students but academic staff. In the letter, McDonough explains why Alphawood sought a review of past decisions. He wrote,
“it was not our intention that art created in the modern era would be the subject of study by the faculty or scholarship recipients funded with the Alphawood grant. I have been advised that SAAAP, as implemented under the supervision of the Program Board, may have deviated somewhat from this charge by including contemporary art studies in the curriculum that is funded by our grant.”
The faculty members referred to are the three endowed chairs funded by the Alphawood donation in Southeast Asian art, Tibetan and Buddhist art, and Curating and Museology of Asian Art. The suggestion from the Alphawood Foundation that these scholars should have been barred from researching and teaching about modern art indicates a lack of knowledge about the nature of art historical study. Moreover, what does ‘modern’ mean here without the contextualisation needed for Southeast Asian Buddhist and Hindu art? Worryingly, there is perhaps also here a lack of understanding of the principle of academic freedom; the three were hired two years ago without the restriction. I hope that SOAS has had a discussion with the Alphawood Foundation to correct any misunderstanding – and that SOAS categorically rejects any hint of retroactive restriction of academic freedom against staff members.
The fact that the Mid-term Review arose from a highly questionable premise, that SOAS had for two years misunderstood the donor’s wishes, suggests further questions may be asked about the origins of the Mid-term Review. The review requested by Alphawood, according to McDonough’s December 2015 letter, was not a “Mid-term Review” but a specific evaluation of the programme’s adherence to the donor’s remit. McDonough wrote in his December 2015 letter, “I have been advised” about the existence of contemporary art studies at SOAS. Who advised him? What was said? How did the misunderstanding about academic study reflected in his letter arise? Why, in December 2015, two years after the start of SAAAP, was he prompted to write to SOAS? These questions are of interest as they relate directly to how SOAS manages the relationship with its largest private funder. As you may recall, the Reviewer highlighted the problem of unofficial contacts with the donor interfering with decision-making. She also recommended that the School “ensure that SOAS is established as the only authority for the donor’s vision and intention.” (emphasis in original) The restructuring, as described by the Director on 6 July, did not apparently account for these points. Have they been addressed?
I well appreciate that you only recently assumed the Chairmanship of the SAAAP Board and time is needed to understand the programme’s complex history and future challenges. I am sure, though, that in your brief tenure so far as Chair, you have quickly grasped the enormous potential for good of the Alphawood Foundation’s magnanimous donation. I hope that under your leadership, the Alphawood programme will be turned around for the better.
Kind regards,
Angela Chiu
