UK university lecturer, who claimed she was sacked for being loud, wins 100,000 pounds in damages

Annette Plaut said she has a naturally loud voice because of her European Jewish background. (Image: University of Exeter)

A lecturer at university in the United Kingdom, who claimed that she was sacked because of her loud voice, has been awarded 100,000 pounds after winning a case against her dismissal.

Annette Plaut had worked at the University of Exeter in England for 29 years, according to The Guardian.

The university maintained that she was dismissed because of her behaviour towards students but Plaut alleged unfair treatment on the basis of her ethnic background.

Plaut told The Guardian that her loud voice came from her European-Jewish background. “In New York or Germany where I have lived and worked for years at a time, the loudness of my voice was never mentioned even once,” she added.

The lecturer described her loud voice as an “inherent characteristic” and claimed that in Exeter, she had been

“I have been consistently treated unfairly by the university over decades to the extent that I was targeted for dismissal, and that that targeting was tainted by sex, in a male-orientated department, and race as it was unconscious bias against my inherent characteristics, which were an integral part of my race,” Plaut was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

Plaut added that being female and loud contradicts stereotypes surrounding the behaviour of women.

In 2019, a tribunal in Exeter had observed that Plaut's students and colleagues found her "stereotypical loudness and demonstrative and argumentative style of interpersonal discourse" overbearing, even though she told them she meant nothing by it, the BBC reported.

The tribunal added that her dismissal in 2019 was unfair.