Response to Article on Integrity of PRME Signatory and Membership

2 March 2021

In light of a recent news item which raised a question about the integrity of our membership system and a certain PRME Signatory, the PRME Secretariat would like to clarify a few facts regarding the concern:

• The school in question does in fact meet the two basic requirements to be a Signatory of the initiative: being publicly recognised and degree-granting. The school in question does grant degrees which are accredited and recognised by various government authorities, including the government where the school is located.
• The named Professor did in fact attend a PRME Chapter Regional Meeting in February 2020. Originally, there was confusion regarding the Professor's presence as he sometimes went by one of his two last names, rather than both, so a PRME spokesperson initially had difficulty confirming his attendance.
• There was a simple mistake in the press release by the institution in question which mislabeled the name of the Chapter holding the meeting. This has since been corrected.
• Any delays in response time on the related queries were a result of the time taken to do a thorough review of the situation and contact the relevant parties.

The PRME Secretariat team has done the required due diligence and, to the best of our knowledge, we believe there are no further issues to be resolved.

PRME always welcomes constructive scrutiny and is committed to upholding the Six Principles laid out in our mandate.