The national radio tells about it that the employee has been hired back to work at the school. Ólína Þorvarðardóttir Kjerúlf, the school’s rector, confirmed it to the state media.
The employee was one of three that Margrét Jónsdóttir Njarðvík, the then rector, had the school’s ethics committee investigate for academic articles they were co-authors of this winter. The ethics committee cleared the employees of blame.
The case caused a lot of controversy at Bifröst, but the Association of Academic Employees expressed a lack of confidence in the rector and two other administrators because of it. The company criticized, among other things, that the management had let an artificial intelligence program assess whether the employees had contributed enough to the articles to merit authorship. Margrét retired as rector earlier this year.
In the same week that the three employees were reported to be under investigation, one of them was fired. The reason was said to be a breach of confidentiality, as he had taught a course at another school. The school’s communications director told Vísi in February that the expulsion had been completely unrelated to the ethics committee case.
Wrongly accused
Ólína, the current rector, says that the employee in question did not commit a crime.
“The man has been cleared by the school’s ethics committee of the wrong accusation that was brought against him,” writes Ólína in Facebook post where she strongly criticizes RÚV’s report on the man’s re-employment.
Nevertheless, the rector reports in the RÚV news that the Association of Academic Employees has agreed to withdraw the vote of no confidence in the school’s director of research. RÚV says that he is one of the three administrators who started the ethics committee case, who is still involved in daily work at the school.
