University of Tartu terminates employment contract with Raul Eamets 

Today, the Rector of the University of Tartu, Professor Toomas Asser, decided to end the University of Tartu’s employment relationship with Raul Eamets, Dean of the UT Faculty of Social Sciences and Professor of Macroeconomics.    

Toomas Asser said,  

“On Friday, 11 August, the university became aware of the fact that Professor Raul Eamets, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, had unlawfully signed a cooperation agreement on behalf of the university with the foundation Pere Sihtkapital, thereby violating several bylaws of the university and the law. I condemn the dean’s action without any justification and reported the situation as soon as it emerged to Raul Eamets and the general public. During our meeting today, I informed Raul Eamets that, given the severity of the breach, it is inconceivable for him to continue working at the university.  

I regard it important to justify the decision and pre-empt questions as to whether the university’s decision is proportionate. I believe that terminating the employment relationship is the only possible option because Raul Eamets has, in the position of a professor and a dean, made deliberate choices and decided 1) to violate the university’s governance rules (signing and hiding a fictitious agreement), 2) not to follow the Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the principles of research ethics, and 3) to disregard the requirements on procedural restrictions under the Anti-corruption Act. If there was one misconduct, the university might have considered a warning or a recall from the post of the dean. In the present case, however, that is not possible because the committing of successive violations was a conscious choice. Even after the situation became public, Raul Eamets has not understood the full gravity of his violations.

I consider it absolutely unacceptable that Raul Eamets signed an agreement on behalf of the university with a foundation in which he is a member of the supervisory board. What makes the breach even more serious is the fact that although the dean approached the university’s legal counsel for advice in connection with this agreement and got a clear answer that the university cannot sign such an agreement, he ignored the guidance. Already then, the legal counsel noted that under this agreement, the university would assume responsibility for activities with which it is not actually connected, and considering the content of the agreement, it would be a fabricated document authorising the foundation to receive people’s data from the population register. Although after hearing such a legal assessment, the dean said that he would not sign the agreement, it has now become clear that the opposite is true. Moreover, Eamets did not register the agreement in the university’s document management system. Thereby, Raul Eamets has disregarded a clear prohibition on concluding the agreement, violated the university’s internal regulations, the principles of research ethics, and the Anti-corruption Act. 

As it happens very rarely that someone is dismissed from the professor’s position, I will also explain this decision. The post of a professor is a high-level position, and a holder of this post is involved in both research and teaching. It is inconceivable that a person who has severely violated the principles of research ethics would teach research ethics to students and lead research teams.

I am sorry that with his actions, the dean has not only undermined the university’s reputation but also made work harder for all his colleagues who do independent research following all the strict procedural and ethics requirements. In the current case, the trust of the Estonian people has been abused, and the entire academic community needs to work hard to regain it. I call on colleagues and authorities to work together to find solutions to that.

I have always welcomed university researchers’ active involvement in society. However, this requires a strong sense of setting boundaries so as not to get into role conflicts or go against ethics and the law. The boundaries must be particularly clear when working in a managerial position.”