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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

The Full Scope of the Proposed Faculty Firings at KCL

Brian Leiter

I've now been sent a copy of a KCL document outlining the full scale of the proposed firings of faculty:

The following activities would be restructured, with 11 fte academic staff at risk:

1. The Department of American Studies would close. One member of staff has successfully applied to the VLS, three further posts will become at risk of redundancy upon the termination of the BA degree in 2012. It may be possible for two members of staff to be relocated to the Department of English to offer courses in American and Comparative Literature, in particular on transnational literatures and cultural exchange, and on visual culture and modern cultural studies. Of these two, one post is essential to the process of restructuring and will be saved. The other post would be deployed in the English department, to respond to a need for teaching and research in visual culture and modern cultural studies.  At risk:  3 posts.

2. Linguistics would cease as a distinct activity at the School, although the MLC will continue to offer courses to the MA in Language and Cultural Diversity, which it organizes at an administrative level for the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication. Beyond this Linguistics would cease as a distinct activity in the School of Arts and Humanities. Four posts in German, Spanish, and BMGS would be at risk of redundancy. Three members of staff would be made redundant by 31 August 2010 if no suitable alternative employment could be found and one member of staff, assessed on the need for continuing PhD supervision, would be made redundant on 31 August 2011 if there was no suitable alternative. At risk:  4 posts.

  3.  Paleography would cease as a distinct activity. At risk: 1 post by 31 August 2010. 

   4.  Computational Linguistics would cease as an activity in the School. At risk: 2 posts in the Department of Philosophy by 31 August 2010.

5. Within the Department of Classics, there is excess capacity in Classical Archaeology and Art. It is proposed that this group of staff is reduced from currently four academics to three.At risk: 1 post by 31 August 2010, chosen on the basis of performance.

 

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6 responses to “The Full Scope of the Proposed Faculty Firings at KCL”

  1. Matthew Kramer

    Mike Otsuka's comment on the earlier thread about the KCL situation was a valuable clarification of the situation concerning job security for academics in the UK, but it somewhat overstated the difference between the situation here and the situation in the USA. Although a dismissal on grounds of redundancy does not have to involve the closure of a whole department, it does have to be based on clear evidence that the permanent discontinuation of an institution's pursuit of certain pedagogical and scholarly areas of enquiry is the best available means of promoting the institution's general academic objectives. In connection with the proposed dismissals of philosophers at KCL, that standard is almost certainly unsatisfied (even if we leave aside the other legal problems relating to the provision of explicit reassurances).

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  2. J. Otto Pohl

    Wow, they are eliminating up to eleven positions. That is quite a lot of faculty to be firing. I wonder if this will spread to other institutions as well. If KCL's purge is successful from a business point of view, I can see the temptation by administrators to emulate this model.

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  3. Leandro

    22 (academic) positions are currently threatened. The KCL Arts & Humanities 'Consultation' document can now be found online:

    http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/consultation/

    Reply
  4. a college administrator

    Wow, amazing that the document fails both as an example of the English language and as a business proposal. Notice that they are making Ancient Philosophy an area of special strength by firing a quarter of their classics department.

    After identifying the people they plan to fire, they say "It is proposed that all academic roles within the School of Arts & Humanities . . . will be declared at risk of redundancy. Selection of those roles which will be redundant will be done through an assessment based on the performance of each role holder." Rather than just firing professors, they make them write a report defending their job, but with the deck stacked against the people already slated for termination by requiring them to describe such things as their "fit" with the new strategic priorities. These reports will be evaluated by the Vice Principal and two people of like mind whom he selects. They don't even establish a formal method for weighting, e.g., teaching load against research output, which makes a mockery of the professed financial motives. This looks like an administrator using the economy to remake an entire college as he sees fit.

    By the way, who posts a document labeled "Strictly Private and Confidential" on a public website?

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  5. David Hyder

    "By the way, who posts a document labeled "Strictly Private and Confidential" on a public website?

    Posted by: a college administrator"

    Note the following:

    "Timetable of Proceedings
    27/1 Proposals circulated to staff and unions (group consultation) and
    commencement of formal consultation period
    22/2 Deadline for submissions of CV and data in specified format
    …"

    By circulating this document, the employer has begun the formal consultation period, and the "pool" from which selection for redundancy will be taken has been specified as "all academic roles within the School of Arts & Humanities."

    On this subject, I refer you to:

    http://www.pjhlaw.co.uk/employment-law-resources/a-managers-guide-to-redundancy-mt20reds.pdf

    where the significance of the above is explained:

    "2. Selection: The proposed pools (groups of employees from which selection will occur) and the selection criteria are part of the collective consultation process. If the pools and criteria are agreed, or accepted, then managers can apply the criteria to identify individuals provisionally selected for redundancy. *The beauty of collective consultation is that individuals will find it difficult to dispute the selection criteria if it [sic.] has been agreed.*" [emphasis added]

    So the purpose of circulating the document and consulting is to bind all faculty in a process that will make individual appeals difficult to impossible. I'd be curious to hear from those in the UK, but from my reading around the web, it certainly appears unusual to designate a selection "pool" of this size. The pool is supposed to be a group of employees who fulfill a particular role or function, it is not supposed to be the universe of employees, no?

    It doesn't appear to me that the letter of my own Collective Agreement (we have a union) really differs that much from the _intent_ of UK Law that I've read: my university (Ottawa) seems to have quite a bit of latitude to declare a program redundant (the language is: "if the Senate decides after an evaluation of the quality and relevance of a teaching or research unit to proceed with a substantial reform of the content or the orientation of these activities, or to abandon them wholly or partly…"). So if they interpreted "teaching or research unit" to mean "Faculty of Arts", they could do the same thing as King's is now doing. It would provoke a scandal, but perhaps no more than the one we are now seeing.

    I'm not sure of the situation in the US–all Canadian universities are unionised, so faculty are in a reasonably strong position. I do not know Matthew Kremer's source for the above claim ("it does have to be based on clear evidence that the permanent discontinuation of an institution's pursuit of certain pedagogical and scholarly areas of enquiry is the best available means of promoting the institution's general academic objectives.") but I doubt (1) that there is much consistency across institutions in the USA, given their very diverse histories, structures and legal systems, (2) that protections are formally much stronger than here in Canada (indeed, I would expect the opposite, given "Right-to-work" legislation in many southern and southwestern states, and the fact that many schools are private and non-union anyhow). But of course I stand to be corrected.

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  6. anon

    Thanks for your magnificent coverage of the events in the UK. As we are without a written constitution or the provisions of the First Amendment we are I fear going to be relying on you more and more to state our case.

    Can I draw your attention to the response from palaeographers world wide to the proposal to end the chair at kings?

    http://www.palaeographia.org/cipl/actu/paleoatkings.htm

    And the petition which now has almost 5000 signatures.

    Reply

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