Professor Kostakopoulou has asked me to update all signatories of the petition as follows:

Dear All,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to sign the petition and for your support and solidarity! Your action has been life-affirming and a source of strength in my struggle for justice.

I write to let you know that I have been summarily dismissed by the Provost’s deputy and another colleague at a disciplinary hearing which was organised during my certified sickness leave and took place in my absence, without my documentary evidence and without witnesses.

The trumped-up charges the University of Warwick used against me were as follows:

1.      I should have cancelled pre-arranged external examining duties at another University, even though the PhD student was travelling to the UK from abroad, in order to act on the Head of Department’s orders ‘…I instruct you to come to my office…’, ‘I confirm the meeting on 2 December. This is not negotiable, and I will not enter into no further correspondence about it before 2 December’. The facts that I had informed him of my unavailability and had suggested four alternative dates were deemed to be irrelevant.

2.       I should have contacted and arranged to see my 25 tutees between the 1st and the 10th of October on the basis of a (non-existent) School protocol. Of course, there is no such rule, policy or protocol at Warwick Law School or, as far as I know, at any other university in the UK. The facts that the termly meetings with the tutees had been completed, the online University system had been informed and I had provided an incredible number of office hours were deemed to be irrelevant.

3.      When I lodged a formal complaint about the above false allegations, I was suspended in January 2020, and have now been dismissed, owing to further false allegations. A brief email enquiry into the veracity of the Head of Department’s statements to me (‘Hello X, Thank you for your kind email – did you meet with him? I am asking these questions because he sent me an email similar to the email you wrote and he instigated disciplinary proceedings on the basis of what I see as lies. Happy New Year to you!) provided evidence that ‘I attempted to influence potential witnesses [in plural, my emphasis], specifically in the relation to complaints they may have made against me, in an effort to undermine the on-going investigation in to the fulfilment of my duties and that I have harassed and displayed threatening and intimidating behaviour towards students [in plural, my emphasis] when questioning them in relation to complaints they may have made against me’. There has been no student complaint via either the informal route of my employer’s procedure or the formal procedure.

Honesty, integrity, human decency and dignity are important values which all units in society and institutions ought to respect. The same applies to non-discrimination and the prohibition of victimisation. Speaking up has its price, but, notwithstanding my suffering and its impact on my family, I intend to continue my struggle for justice and change. After all, success without integrity, humaneness and respect for persons, their rights and their equal moral worth is meaningless.

Thank you, once again, for everything!

Best wishes,

Dora