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University suspends philosophy professors after sit-in over closure
Tim Ross and Miranda Bryant27 May 2010
Academics have been suspended by a university after staging a sit-in over the closure of their department.
Middlesex University disciplined two professors, one senior lecturer and four students after they occupied the philosophy department for 12 days this month. Staff and students are to hold fresh demonstrations later today against the suspensions and the decision to close the faculty.
Campaigners claim there is no justification for shutting the department, which has an international reputation and was the universitys highest rated research section. The Government this week announced a further £200 million of cuts to national university budgets, on top of almost £1 billion of reductions set out by Labour.
Universities are preparing to make thousands of redundancies and turn away hundreds of thousands of students. Leading academics from around the world have written in support of the Middlesex protesters. Professor Peter Hallward, one of the suspended lecturers, said: “The Middlesex philosophy programmes are among the most successful and highly regarded of their kind in the UK. There are no credible academic or financial grounds for closing them down.”
The others who have been suspended are Professor Peter Osborne, head of Middlesex's Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, and senior lecturer Dr Christian Kerslake.
Professor Osborne, who has taught there for more than 20 years, said: “I'm annoyed, to put it mildly. The suspension is unjustified because there's no specific allegation against me.
“The university is deliberately using the suspension to keep us from informing our colleagues about the details of the programme's closure. This is a spasm of managerial self-destruction. It's extraordinary.”
The academics are all banned from contacting each other or their students without university permission. The occupation ended after the university obtained a High Court injunction.
A University spokesman said: “The suspensions are part of standard policy to enable a thorough internal investigation into alleged misconduct to proceed unhindered.
“The university has to intervene when protest is illegal or puts the health and safety of staff at risk.”
Reader views (3)
It is important to see the significance of this closure independently of the larger context of cuts announced by the government. Although, clearly, the closure is symptomatic of a climate of financial scarcity, the reason why it has fired up such an enormous, international campaign has to do with the fact that not one of the reasons put forward by the managerial structure to justify its closure stands up to scrutiny. That the closure of a small department in north London with only 6 members of staff (1 part time) sparks a petition that reaches almost 18,000 signatories in a month, an academic boycott to which 1,500 academics have pledged their support in just 48 hours, not to mention a Facebook group with over 13,500 members, is a testament to the valuable asset this department is for M.U. If the managerial structure was so terribly concerned about funding, surely they should have understood, and made use of, the international appeal of the department, lending it the necessary support to keep on thriving. It is not the academics’ job to turn into marketing experts, especially at a time when universities, in their drive to become increasingly “business-savvy”, are diverting an enormous amount of resources towards marketing themselves. In short, it makes neither educational nor financial sense to close the department. If anything is clearly unsustainable at Middlesex, it is its incompetent and inefficient managerial team, whose only skill seems to lie in its ability to relentle
- Yaiza Hernández, Coventry, UK, 28/05/2010 22:02
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I'm thoroughly disgusted by the way humanities subjects are being targeted in this country. This same university has a BA in Jewellery and Accessories but is closing its philosophy department. What is the state of higher education coming to in this country? Can it really be considered that the degree of someone graduating in jewellery has the same value as someone who graduates in philosophy. Does the government and the higher education industry at large think employers will take these vocational qualifications seriously?
I am deeply concerned about what is occurring here. The value of a university education isn't in learning a vocational subject that will very likely have little to do with the career someone eventually takes up. It's in honing the ability to learn information and apply it at an advanced level. This continuing drive towards specialisation can only be detrimental to our workforce
- Ross Cranham, London, UK, 28/05/2010 16:05
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An academic department - charged with reflecting on rational and ethical behaviour and principles in society - a rare philosophy department which in fact specialises in radical criticism of how the management of our collective affairs at the political and economic level is increasingly hollowed out both rationally and ethically by the blind pursuit of naked greed - this very same department - is sacrificed in the financial crisis that emerges from such unethical irrationality, with the argument that we need more blind pursuit of naked greed and less rational and ethical reflection!!
Ah the sweet, ironic tragic cruelty of fate.
This civilisation must decline.
No questions asked.
- Chris Allsobrook, Brighton, UK, 28/05/2010 07:53
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