29 April 2010

Dear Sirs and Madam,

I am personally appalled to learn of your decision to close down Philosophy at Middlesex University.  How is it possible that a department and its Research Centre which by all accounts is at the cutting edge of research in Philosophy, which is one of the most important such centres in the World for the study of Modern European philosophy, which runs a finacially viable MA research programme and whose research is recognised as ‘world leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’ can be closed down?   By any rational criterion such a decision is incomprehensible.

Some of us from far-flung regions of the World who have been associated with the Centre’s work and who have been influenced by some of its scholars are shaken by what appears to be extreme shortsightedness.  This is the kind of department which should be nurtured and kept open at all costs as it reminds us of what thinking is all about and what a humanist comitted  intellectual project should look like.  Without it the idea of a University and all it represents is unlikely to be sustainable.  This would be a great loss to world scholarship and to the prestige of the British university system.

I therefore hope that you will reconsider your decision and that for the sake of knowledge production and university teaching in Britain and the World you can see your way clear to keep both the philosophy Department and its Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy open.

Sincerely yours

Professor Michael Neocosmos (PhD)
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Humanities Research,
University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa;
Honorary Professor in Global Movements
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.