Sexual misconduct in UK higher education and the precarity of institutional knowledge

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Abstract
This article draws upon the 2020 review commissioned by the University of Strathclyde in the UK into the sexual misconduct of an academic staff member, Kevin O’Gorman, to examine competing and multi-varied forms of precarity in UK higher education. It considers how precarity as a political condition has the ability to shift and attach to different kinds of structures and bodies, including institutions. The case at Strathclyde helps to illustrate how a claim to precarity can be appropriated by an institution, while simultaneously divesting this term of meaning and attachment to human experience. The article builds on this examination of precarity to investigate the precarious status of knowledge in relation to violence. It argues that despite claims to want to know, institutional failure to understand and act on sexual misconduct is a form of wilful ignorance and an exertion of epistemological power that protects the institution.

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