Revealed: Oxford student who campaigned against Walcott

A CANADIAN scholarship student at Oxford can be revealed today as a leading campaigner against the election of Derek Walcott as the university's professor of poetry.

Walcott was forced to withdraw from the contest after becoming the victim of a sex smear campaign. It emerged this week that his rival Ruth Padel had emailed journalists, including one at the Evening Standard, warning them of sexual harassment allegations made against Walcott, dating back more than 25 years.

Padel quit just nine days after being elected to the prestigious post.

Evening Standard can now disclose that Padel had been urging newspapers to contact Emily Paddon, a Canadian graduate on a scholarship to Oxford.

In one email sent to the Evening Standard on 1 May, Padel wrote: "Don't know if it is useful but have been contacted by a politics graduate at Oxford of Canadian origins, outraged that the harassment of university students in Walcott's past has been suppressed in putting him forward for a university post.

"She is Emily Paddon [Padel then gives Paddon's email address and mobile phone number] and seems to want to stage a protest. Don't know what to do about this, short of pass on what seems to be happening on the ground."

Contacted by the Standard, Miss Paddon said she was "surprised and concerned" that Oxford had not addressed the sexual harassment allegations.

Miss Paddon also contacted the student newspaper Cherwell, shortly after Padel had given reporters there an interview, to alert journalists to an article in the Independent on 28 April in which Walcott's alleged misdemeanours had been recounted by columnist John Walsh, a friend of Padel's.

Miss Paddon, who won a Trudeau scholarship to Oxford and is studying for a PhD in international relations, told the Standard she had only a minimal role in the saga. She also vehemently denied any role in the sending of dossiers containing allegations of sexual harassment against Walcott to Oxford dons. Evening Standard has no evidence of Miss Paddon or Miss Padel's involvement in that.

Miss Paddon said in her statement to the Standard today, issued through Oxford University's press office: "My only actions were, first, to send an email in May - in my own name and of my own volition - to some friends at Oxford expressing my concern about information about Derek Walcott's past that had been published on 28 April in the Independent; and second, I spoke with the student paper the Cherwell about the Independent article.

"I did not know anything of the incidents in Walcott's past prior to 28 April when the article appeared in the Independent. I did not send any anonymous material and I wholeheartedly deplore such actions. I have no further comment and will not be giving interviews."

Miss Paddon refused to say if she was previously friends with Padel while the poet failed to return calls.

In a Cherwell article on 8 May, the newspaper reported: "Cherwell conducted an interview with Ruth Padel on April 29. Following the interview, Emily Paddon, a doctoral student at St Antony's college and a friend of Ruth Padel, contacted Cherwell and raised the issue of Walcott's history."

Katie Bowden, the journalist who co-wrote the article, told the Standard: "Emily Paddon called us immediately after we did an interview with Ruth Padel. She didn't say Padel had asked her to phone but she knew we had just done the interview with her."

Miss Paddon, who is in her twenties, studied as an undergraduate at Brown University, an Ivy League college in Rhode Island.

She was a mentor of ethics at an American high school while her current thesis is on "Problems of Impartiality: UN-Authorized Intervention with Humanitarian Purposes".