This site has more information and details about the suspension of students and faculty who were protesting the decision to eliminate the school's most highly RAE-rated program.   In the United States, this kind of heavy-handed behavior by the administration would result in civil lawsuits, which the school would almost certainly lose; I do not know whether there are legal remedies available in the U.K. for this kind of punitive treatment of faculty, without even a semblance of due process.  But given the character of the sanctions imposed, the administration's purpose is quite clear:  it is to silence protest, and make it more difficult to organize opposition to the administrative decision to eliminate philosophy.  The Middlesex administrators are, indeed, bonkers, but they remain instrumentally rational in their vicious behavior.   An international outcry produced positive results at King's College, London, but in that case we were aided by the aspirations of the administration to retain KCL's status as an internationally-respected research university.  It is, alas, unclear at this point whether the administrators at Middlesex "University" [sic] are motivated by similar concerns.