A high-profile barrister who was cleared of misconduct over social media posts has called on the head of the Bar Standards Board to resign. Dr Charlotte Proudman, who specialises in family law, had faced a Bar Standards Board (BSB) disciplinary tribunal over a 14-part Twitter thread criticising a judge’s ruling over a domestic abuse case, saying it echoed a “boys’ club”. However, the five charges against the 36-year-old were dropped on Thursday. In an interview with The Times, Dr Proudman described the position of Mark Neale, the board’s director-general, as “untenable” and said its chairwoman, Kathryn Stone, should also stand down. “They need a change, not just in those two individuals, though, because, of course, it seeps down to the rest of the organisation,” she said. She told the paper she “genuinely” wanted to work with the Bar Standards Board in helping them to understand how misogyny and sexism have impacted women at the bar. However, she said that “under the current leadership, it’s just not going to be possible”. The charges alleged Dr Proudman had “failed to act with integrity” in posting the tweets, that they amounted to professional misconduct, were “misleading” and “inaccurately reflected the findings of the judge” in the case. The women’s rights campaigner was also accused of behaving in a way “which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public placed in her and in the profession”, and that she “knowingly or recklessly misled or attempted to mislead the public” by making the posts. But panel chairman Nicholas Ainley found her tweets are protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right of freedom of expression. He said her tweets did not “gravely damage” the judiciary, which would “put them outside” of Article 10 protection, even if they “might not have been pleasant for any judge to read” or even “hurtful”. “We take the view that the judiciary of England and Wales is far more robust than that,” he said. The panel also concluded that some of the tweets were only inaccurate “to a minor degree” and not to the extent necessary for a charge of a lack of integrity. Speaking after the hearing, Dr Proudman told the PA news agency: “This ruling is a victory for women’s rights and a right to freedom of speech. “The prosecution against me brought by my regulatory body, the Bar Standards Board, should never have happened and I said that from day one. “I criticised a domestic abuse judgment. Everyone should have the right to do that, whether you’re a barrister or not. Our justice system, which I strongly believe in, is robust enough to withstand criticism from me.” She believes her tweets help “foster confidence” in the justice system, adding: “Only that way can we go about building change and a better treatment for all victims, women and children and men who are affected by domestic abuse.” Explaining that the BSB appears to have spent almost £40,000 “of barristers’ money” on instructing counsel in her case, she added: “I think it’s shameful that they’re using our money to pay for, in my view, malicious, vexatious prosecutions which I have no doubt was a personal attack against me as a woman and as a feminist, as an outspoken critic and advocate for women’s rights.” Dr Proudman called for “systemic change” within the board. “They don’t understand gender, they don’t understand diversity, I don’t think they’ve ever heard of the concept misogyny and certainly not institutional misogyny,” she said. “Until they recognise the deeply rooted, entrenched issue of bullying, harassment, sexism at the bar, for which I have suffered relentlessly... and own up to it I don’t think we’re going to see any change and I have no confidence in them.” She told of how male barristers have called her insulting names on social media and made derogatory comments about her. In the posts on April 6 2022, Dr Proudman referenced a case in which her client alleged she had been subjected to coercive and controlling behaviour by her husband, a part-time judge, meaning she had been “unable to freely enter” the couple’s “post-nuptial” financial agreement. Commenting on the ruling by Family Court judge Sir Jonathan Cohen, Dr Proudman wrote: “I represented Amanda Traharne. “She said she was coerced into signing a post-nuptial agreement by her husband (who is a part-time judge). I lost the case. “I do not accept the Judge’s reasoning. I will never accept the minimisation of domestic abuse.” She continued: “Demeaning the significance of domestic abuse has the affect of silencing victims and rendering perpetrators invisible. “This judgement has echoes of (t)he ‘boys club’ which still exists among men in powerful positions.” In the thread, Dr Proudman wrote that the judge had described the relationship of the couple as “tempestuous”, which she argued was a “trivialisation” of domestic abuse. “Tempestuous? Lose his temper? Isn’t this the trivialisation of domestic abuse & gendered language. This is not normal married life,” she wrote.Clay's 15 help Morehead State take down Alice Lloyd 94-63Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday stressing the strategic importance of maritime security said Pakistan Navy was fully prepared to defend the sea boundaries of the country. Addressing the closing session of the 7th National Maritime Security Workshop (MARSEW) at the Navy War College in Lahore, the PM lauded the Pakistan Navy’s unwavering commitment towards playing a significant role in maintaining national security. Terming blue economy vital for economic prosperity, PM Sharif lauded Pakistan Navy’s proactive measures to harness maritime resources for the nation’s development. PM Shehbaz Sharif said Gwadar Port due to its strategic location was a cornerstone of Pakistan’s economic future and blue economy. He highlighted Gwadar Port’s its role in the development of regional trade and connectivity and stressed streamlining of processes at the port to facilitate importers and exporters. He expressed a strong commitment to leveraging maritime resources for economic progress and enhancing national security. He also acknowledged China as a vital partner, expressing gratitude for its steadfast cooperation in the maritime domain. Sharif also emphasized equipping the Karachi Port Trust with modern technology to execute loading and unloading of consignments from across the world. He highlighted the importance of National Shipping Corporation and announces to re-establish it in accordance with the commercial needs. The prime minister expressed satisfaction that Pakistan had ample talent and resources, however stressed the need to utilize them properly to get rid of the shackles of debt. He expressed the government’s firm resolve to eliminate terrorism across the country and paid rich tribute to the martyrs of the armed forces for their great sacrifices during anti-terrorism operations. He told the participants that the meetings of the Apex Committee were held regularly which aimed at ensuring peace and security in the country. Earlier, PM Sharif was received by Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Naveed Ashraf, upon his arrival at PN War College. In his welcome address, Commandant Pakistan Navy War College, Rear Admiral Azhar Mahmood, provided an overview of workshop’s activities. A panel of participants presented a paper containing recommendations for a National Maritime Policy. The panel analyzed the maritime environment, highlighting its impact on national security and economic prosperity, and proposed measures to address challenges and capitalize on opportunities. The participants included parliamentarians, policymakers, bureaucrats, academics, entrepreneurs, armed forces officers, and media representatives. The Maritime Security Workshop is an annual event organized by Pakistan Navy to enhance understanding of maritime security dynamics, create awareness about Blue Economy, and explore Pakistan’s untapped maritime potential.Remember the story about the elephant seen from different perspectives? Here’s a twist. A biologist with a telescope peered at the animal and said, I see a hairy grayness horizon to horizon. A toenail fungus specialist examined its feet, and prescribed antibiotics. A climate change specialist didn’t see the elephant because he was fixated on plucking the dry grass. A physicist looked at the elephant and had nothing to say. Elon Musk was there, and he told them not to waste their time standing around an elephant. We need results in quantum mechanics, he explained; we need superconductivity at room temperature, we need research piped straight to technology. We need science to serve technology, which as you know improves man’s condition. This may not be the story as you remember it, but I assure you that a few things about it are true. The people around the elephant are scientists, but even in science, we can only see with the tools we have, and we create those tools in anticipation of what we might see. As a result, we are limited in our capacity to break out of this circle. We are primed to see or not in a certain way. However, breakouts can and do happen — often when two incommensurate ideas meet each other. Consider what happened when homo economicus or “economic man,” theory met psychology: a new field was born, behavioral psychology. Or consider the friction between gravity and God, a meeting of concepts that caused a huge shift in human society’s relationship to astronomy and divinity. Second, it’s not by chance that the examples cross the bridge between what we call humanistic knowledge and what we call science. Their conceptual distance from each other results in the possibility for innovation. The role played by metaphors in biology introduces future paths for research. Schizophrenics have a better prognosis when they are told they’re like shamans. Darwin’s nature acts, despite herself, as a causal force — like the very God that evolution puts into question. Falling in love felt so powerful that the ancients thought seeing the love object caused a wound in your eyes. It worked well with the theory that eyes emitted rays. You cannot, it turns out, take the human out of the science. Third, in separating the humanities and science, we are voting to blind ourselves for the future and to deplete the richness of multiple perspectives on reality. Worse, our now-isolated sciences are in danger of being kidnapped and reared as technology’s handmaiden. It wasn’t always so: the Aristotles, Leonardos and al-Haythams — even the Turings — had an intellectual background that incorporated the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, and their discoveries came out of that multifaceted approach. Now we have teams of specialists working for market-minded research that is not about truth, or even the search for truth, but for profit. Science is done at scale, and that is making a huge difference to its relationship to other fields of knowledge. There’s a place where we can intervene, but no one seems to be doing it. That place is higher education. We could teach our students that there is no hard boundary between science and humanistic learning. We could teach them how these fields influence each other. We could take down the hard walls around different fields, both bureaucratically and literally. Instead, we reproduce these unhealthy gulfs in our university’s outdated departments and divisions, which generate the kind of specialist knowledge without context that is our growing problem. If we want education to be relevant to the bigger problems we all face, this has to change. Perhaps the public feels this already, or our colleges wouldn’t be in a crisis of irrelevance. We need to put these forms of knowledge back together so that they can work with each other.