Letter of No Confidence from College Deans to Vice Chancellor
Dear ANU FOI,
I refer to recent media articles referring to a majority of academic college deans informing the previous vice-chancellor, Genevieve Bell, that they lacked confidence in her leadership of the ANU.
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act 1982, I request the following:
- The letter from the majority of college deans to Professor Bell informing that they lacked confidence in her leadership.
- Any correspondence (emails, Teams messages, text messages, etc) between college deans discussing sending a letter informing of a lack of confidence in Professor Bell.
- Any correspondence (emails, Teams messages, text messages, etc) between the college dean who abstained from the letter informing Professor Bell of a lack of confidence in her leadership and other college deans.
- Any response to the no-confidence letter (either informal or formal) from Professor Bell to college deans.
- Any correspondence from the Chancellor, Julie Bishop, in response to the college deans' letter of no confidence.
To assist in the processing of this request, I agree to the redaction of the personal information of non senior employees of the university.
Yours faithfully,
Ferris Bueller
Good evening,
On 11 September 2025, the Australian National University (the University)
received your request for access to documents under the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act).
The University has taken your request to be as follows:
o The letter from the majority of college deans to Professor Bell
informing that they lacked confidence in her leadership.
o Any correspondence (emails, Teams messages, text messages, etc)
between college deans discussing sending a letter informing of a lack
of confidence in Professor Bell.
o Any correspondence (emails, Teams messages, text messages, etc)
between the college dean who abstained from the letter informing
Professor Bell of a lack of confidence in her leadership and other
college deans.
o Any response to the no-confidence letter (either informal or formal)
from Professor Bell to college deans.
o Any correspondence from the Chancellor, Julie Bishop, in response to
the college deans' letter of no confidence.
Your request has been assigned the case number 2025002226.
Processing Timeframe
The statutory time frame for processing your request is 30 calendar days
from day after the date your request was received by the University. You
should therefore expect a decision from us by 13 October 2025.
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Team via the functional email [1][ANU request email].
The FOI Team’s workload is currently at very high levels due to the
unprecedented volume of FOI requests.
We are using our best endeavors to process all requests expeditiously
however there may be some slippage due to the current workload. We will
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will, if necessary, seek extensions as permitted by the Act.
Yours sincerely
FOI Team
University Governance Office
The Australian National University
Email: [2][ANU request email]
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