I have written about my issue and my viva before,
In my university usually the examiners would write the viva report and then will send it to the examination unit and then the unit will send the report to the student.
After my viva I contacted the head of phd program in the department.
I literally complained about everything supervisor, examiners and my list of major corrections ,, right now I think it was immature as my supervisor is extremely angry with me and haven’t contacted me since the viva. ( I don’t really care about him as he is the one who chose the internal and refused to change him saying that I am worrying about nothing)
Anyway, the head of the phd program said that they will send me the report before sending it to the research unit as this is faster.
I don’t really know what is the point of this?? Why they want me to see the report first 😏
Also, the report included corrections that were not discussed in the viva.

My question is why are they doing this ? Why are they caring about my opinion of the report? I am just worried that if I said something about the report the examiners will add more corrections ( I feel that they are trying to say be silent or will give you more corrections). Also, I hope that I am not paranoid but I am pretty sure that one of the corrections in the report was passed to the examiner by my supervisor as this point has not been discussed in the viva and is not relevant to my work and it is related to my supervisor work.
The head of the program emailed me several times to discuss the report and claim to check on me.
I have not responded yet because I want the official report before I talk. Also it has been two weeks after the viva and my anger has not dropped at all.

Any insight on what should I do as I literally can not trust anyone in this department,

From an external perspective, they want your opinion before they decide how to proceed. I know at my university, there is a committee that reviews all viva reports and their decisions. That committee has the power to change or ignore examiners reports if they think it is unfair/unrealistic. If you talk with the head of department and he agrees with you, then the committee or examination unit could change the official report to remove the more stupid corrections. It is probably easier for everyone if the corrections are changed at that point otherwise it might have to go through the official complaint process. I don't think they are trying to threaten you by giving your the examiners report early but trying to be proactive and solve this as fast as possible.



That happens all the time.



This is off topic but I submitted a journal paper were my supervisor kept suggesting we do some extra analysis before submission. I was adamant not to do it because the method was extremely time consuming and the method itself was dodgy. However one of the reviewers said that it was very important and so I had to do method in order to publish. I still don't think it was relevant but the paper got published and it was worth it in the end. Also, your supervisor and examiner can agree on the same topic without talking with each other.

Thank you so much for your reply and it is extremely helpful
I was avoiding any meeting with the head of phd program because I became really paranoid from her over caring.

I will meet here this week and hopefully they will change some of the stupid corrections

I've read your other posts, and it is so disappointing to hear how unprofessional your viva was. However, I think you need to tread carefully here. You're clearly very angry, and you have every right to be, racism and discrimination are serious issues, but you need to try and separate things out. What corrections do you agree with? There are corrections I've had I don't necessarily agree with, but I can see why the examiners felt they will strengthen my thesis. There are going to be corrections you don't agree with, but have to concede. I would try to separate those out, then look at the other corrections - can you prove that those corrections are malicious rather than a genuine perspective? A PhD is so subjective, for example I've been asked to include things in my background that my supervisors had told me to remove. My structure was praised despite my supervisors feeling the structure was disjointed in many ways. There are changes to my data, such as un-grouping sets of participants that my supervisors had felt should be grouped. That is the nature of the PhD. At the moment it sounds like you are going to war with everyone involved in your PhD, and whilst I absolutely admire you for standing up to discrimination and racism, and honestly I think it takes great personal strength to stand up to this when you have the perpetrator as someone with authority, you're directing this anger at a wider proportion of people. My concern for you is that all this will cloud your complaints against the actual examiner and therefor diminish your complaint.
You might be in a better position if you can go through and highlight how you can make the corrections and the pro's and con's of adding them

I am glad you thought I was helpful, although I might be mistaken in my earlier comments. Em89 makes a really good point. A thesis can be subjective and you should pick careful which corrections to complain about. Some corrections can be minor and wholly subjective in which case it is better to just agree with the examiner and do the corrections. Also, if the corrections are vague you can ask for clarification on certain points from the examiners, so you have the ability to only do the bare minimum. You don't want to have to rewrite the entire thesis but there are always some corrections required.

I think part of the key here, have read your posts on the situation, is to work out what you want the outcome to be.

If it's that you think comments made were racist, and you want the person involved to be punished (which would probably be sacked/and or fined), then pursue this legally. Unhesitatingly. There should not be, and never be, any space for this.

This will not get you a PhD, though.

The important distinction to make is the 'academic judgement' about whether you got a PhD is not a legal thing; you can (and may well be very rightly entitled to) argue in a court for racial discrimination, or challenge for reimbursement of fees, as the University may have broken it's contract with you. But you can't argue that you should get a PhD for any reason other than you've done work worthy of one.

It's extremely difficult without seeing the video to understand the nature or basis of the discrimination. Bear in mind courts routinely deal with out-and-out racism, not perspectives of one country on the quality of academic outputs from another, so if it's that basis you intend to argue it will be difficult - but possible - to make a case.

It is generally best to be as open as possible to critique - no matter how harsh - but if this is based in racism, then you shouldn't hesitate to stand against it. Yet, as mentioned, this would be to prosecute a racist, not to get a PhD.

Personally, if this were on the basis of 'people from x country are sh*t academics', I'd just do the corrections, and spend the rest of my career proving them wrong. There's absolutely a fight to be had there (I've worked on many EU projects, and seen much casual discrimination), but if it's a direct attack on your ethnicity/gender, that's absolutely wrong and worth fighting against.