Mary Guzelian's Blog

If you have a Facebook account, please join the group Stop Philosophy Cuts at King’s College London http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=277389651575&ref=mf

For those who do not have a Facebook account, the following is taken from the group page:

“The management at King’s have decided to embark on an ill-conceived, immoral, and irrational attempt to make academic members of staff, including full professors, within the King’s philosophy department, redundant or retire under pressure (some details can be found here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/). Not only is this happening in an arbitrary and unaccountable fashion, but it will undermine the integrity and academic culture of one of the world’s best research departments. As is to be expected, the proposed changes entirely contradict King’s self-professed attempts to foster “an intellectually rigorous environment” (quote from the KCL website).

Nor is it true that “ all current students…will be largely unaffected by these proposals”, as many will lose their supervisors, or be affected by the ensuing academic deficit that is likely to linger indefinitely as the department attempts to counter the harm caused by the actions of King’s administration.

This group illustrates our complete disavowal of the content of these proposed changes, our disgust with the manner in which this process is taking place, and our solidarity with any member of staff who finds their job or career under threat.”

Further information at: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/01/budget-crisis-at-kings-college-london-kcl-firing-senior-faculty-in-philosophy-including-full-profess.html

Letter from Professor Shalom Lappin: http://gist.github.com/288062

Letter from Mary Margaret McCabe:

Dear all,

Thank you for responding to David’s email, Maximilian.

This  process has Shalom Lappin and Wilfried Meyer-Viol face redundancy in 90 days time (they were informed of this, out of the blue, on Monday), and it has all the rest of us, both in Philosophy and in the other Humanities departments, declared at risk of redundancy, and so required to reapply for our own jobs. The reappointments will then be made on the basis of performance, such that at least eleven members of staff will be found to fail this test, and so  will be sacked (that was the word used by the HR person at a staff meeting yesterday).  There are, many of us in the department believe, other effective ways of responding to the financial crisis.

If you think — as we think — that the College’s proposed action is wrong both academically (both Shalom and Wilfried are integral to the department’s academic activity) and morally (they expect us to compete with our long-standing colleagues for jobs, on the assumption that not all of us will win. What would it be like to win, under those circumstances?) then you could write in protest to the Principal, Prof. Rick Trainor.  If you do, could you also copy your letter to the Vice-Principal (Research) Mr C. Mottershead, the Vice-Principal (Strand) Prof Keith Hoggart, and the Head of the School of Arts and Humanities, Prof. Jan Palmowski?

Thank you so much for your support.

Very best

MM

Mary Margaret McCabe

Professor of Ancient Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

King¹s College London