Save Middlesex Philosophy

To the members of the board of governors of Middlesex University,

In light of the new escalation of the dispute regarding the closure of Philosophy at Middlesex, the suspension of Peter Osborne, Peter Hallward, Christian Kerslake and several students from the University for peacefully showing their concern and opposition, I would like to voice my dismay and anger against this absurd and incomprehensible overreaction. With this decision you have made it now impossible for all of the students to continue studying, an irresponsible behavior for governors of a University and utterly destructive and damaging to the whole University of Middlesex. I already expressed my disagreement with the closure of the Department of Philosophy. I urge you again, for the University’s own good, to reverse these actions.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Weibel

Prof. Dr. h.c. Peter Weibel
Vorstand / Chairman and CEO

ZKM|Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Centre d’Art et de Technologie des Medias de Karlsruhe
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Dean Esche and Board of Governors
Middlesex University
The Burroughs
London NW4 4BT

25 May 2010

Dear Dean Esche and Board of Governors,

We write to express our shock and dismay at the suspension of students and Professor Hallward, Professor Osborne, and Dr Kerslake from Middlesex University. They stand accused of defending the practice of excellence in research and teaching against the academic vandalism of the closure of Philosophy at Middlesex. Do you see how this conveys a message that Middlesex has complete disregard for the proper academic and pedagogic values of a university?

These bullying and vindictive suspensions violate a long-standing convention of non-recrimination in university politics. By this move Middlesex University risks making itself an outcast in the international academic community. We urge you to rescind these suspensions and pull back from the disastrous decision to close this highly respected and influential institution.

Yours sincerely,

Members of the Sociology Discipline, University of Manchester:

Dr Bridget Byrne

Professor Nick Crossley, Head of Sociology Discipline

Dr Gemma Edwards

Dr Lucy Gibson

Dr Kevin Gillan

Dr Christian Greiffenhagen

Dr Brian Heaphy

Dr Virinder Kalra

Dr Paul Kelemen

Dr Graeme Kirkpatrick

Dr Vanessa May

Dr Peter McMylor

Dr Richie Nimmo

Dr Navtej Purewal

Professor Sheila Rowbotham

Professor Mike Savage, Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change

Dr Dale Southerton

Dr Nicholas Thoburn

Professor Alan Warde

Dr Sophie Woodward

24 May 2010

Dear Members of the Board:

Along with many educators and scholars throughout the world, we were horrified to learn of the suspension of faculty and students at your university. Such scornful tactics are ill-suited to the kind of intellectual inquiry and academic freedom expected of an accredited, post-1992 University.

Indeed, they are so beyond the pale of acceptable academic behaviour that we urge all responsible for the ill-conceived and unethical disregard for Professors Osborne and Hallward, as well as the students, be immediately suspended from their positions. We suggest further that those who proposed such a decision be reeducated in philosophy and critical thinking until such time that they are able to demonstrate an understanding of the place of thoughtful inquiry for academic excellence and human flourishing.
For the Editors and Board of Theory and Event,
Jodi Dean and Davide Panagia

Dear Middlesex University Governors and Management:

I emailed you a few weeks ago to express my utter bafflement at the decision to close your internationally renowned philosophy department.   You have failed so far to provide a considered rationale for this decision.    The explanation that this was a ‘purely financial decision’ won’t wash after it has been shown to be fictitious by several writers in the national press.

And now we are informed that Professors Hallward and Osborne, as well as a number of students, have been suspended for their role in the protests against this decision.   I can only conclude that this is the response of a vindictive and nervous management, digging an even bigger hole for itself to compound a flawed initial decision.

No administration of a reputable American university would dream of closing-down an academic department that is the most highly ranked department on campus and is world-renowned to boot–  in such a university a decision of this kind would be regarded as a guaranteed way to cut short the careers of the administrators involved!   You have now made two disastrous decisions, and I hope it is not too late to rescind them.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Surin, PhD
*****
Professor of Literature and Professor of Religion and Critical Theory
Chairman, Program in Literature
Campus Box 90670
Duke University
Durham NC 27708  USA

Dear Middlesex University Board of Governors:

As the Director of the Graduate Program in Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, I write to express my dismay at your decision to suspend our distinguished Middlesex colleagues, Professor Peter Hallward and Professor Peter Osborne, as well as several of the students involved in the heroic effort to save the discipline of philosophy at your university. Based on reports from London, it is my understanding that, as of yesterday (Friday, May 22nd, 2010), Professors Hallward and Osborne, along with the students, have been barred from entering any of the university’s premises and no longer even are allowed to make contact with other faculty, staff, and students at their university without prior approval by Dean Esche or the central executive branch of the institution. This is a deplorable state of affairs. I rise in strong opposition to this obvious disregard for free speech and academic freedom, a disregard that is all the more chilling because it has occurred in the context of a university.

Your fateful and misguided decision a few weeks ago to close the top-rated and internationally respected philosophy programs at Middlesex, a decision that has been met with outrage and disbelief around the globe, was sad enough. It is horrifying to learn that you are now intimidating and punishing those who are courageous enough to attempt to reverse your short-sighted decision — a corporate-style decision that is based on narrowly-defined business interests instead of a commitment to maintaining the intellectual integrity of your institution.

As the director of an interdisciplinary program comprised of some 50 professors from throughout the humanities and social sciences along with several dozen graduate students who work in the tradition of critical theory and European philosophy here at Davis, I strongly urge you to reverse your decision to suspend our respected Middlesex colleagues and their students. I also implore you in the strongest possible terms to keep your highly-ranked philosophy programs alive, rather than dismantle the national and international reputation of the very institution whose welfare you have been entrusted to protect.

The very idea of a university (and certainly of your university) is at stake.

Sincerely,
Gerhard Richter
Professor of German &
Director, Graduate Program in Critical Theory
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
USA

23 May 2010

Dear Mr. Esche

You must, at this point, be very well aware of all the arguments that have been marshalled against your bureaucratic philistinism. You must, at this point, be very well aware that you have already taken your place in the histories that will be written on the degeneration of the university at the hands of managers unwilling to recognise the value of scholarship as an end in-itself. You are, evidently, willing to accept complicity with this and the notority that will accompany this complicity.

You must, also, have been aware that the decision to respond to the reasoned and entirely justified opposition to your course of action with outright authoritarianism would rapidly escalate both the scale and intensity of international opposition that you are facing.

The fact that you have turned to outright authoritarianism – the court interdict and the suspensions – is a very clear admission on your part that you fear that you cannot win an open and free debate. As Gerrard Winstanley asked, a long time ago: [I]f their cause be so good, why will they not suffer us to speak and let reason and equity, the foundation of righteous laws, judge them and us?

The fact that you have turned to outright authoritarianism forces the very large network of people who have resolved to oppose that damage that you are determined to do to the study and teaching of philosophy to face up to the reality that this struggle will not be won with good arguments or moral suasion. It now has to be accepted that this struggle will be won, or lost, by the exercise of force.

You can interdict people against protesting and you can suspend staff and students. But there are also weapons in the grasp of those who have resolved to oppose you. A strike at the university, by academics and students, seems like a logical move. An international boycott against your university, or perhaps just against its managers, seems equally logical. No doubt people in and around Middlesex are currently discussing a way forward. Those of us further away will be guided by what they decide.

There is a long and sorry history of university managers doing exactly what you are doing. In some countries these battles have been fought with a great deal more brutality than you could get away with in England. The Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa has catalogued many of these battles in Africa – battles in which strikes have run on for years and people have been killed. Right now there is a major struggle on at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan.

But the fact that your actions have galvanised such incredible international anger and attracted such international attention has made Middlesex an international test case. This fact means that for people in many parts of the world it is clear that there will be wider consequences from what is won or lost at Middlesex.

If you do not step back from your attempt to resolve this crisis with authoritarian measures it seems highly likely that you will encounter more than letters of protest, petitions and opinion pieces in the newspapers. It seems highly likely that you will encounter direct oppositon to your attempts to run Middlesex University as a profitable business. I certainly hope so and would certainly be willing to support that in what ever way is possible.

Richard Pithouse
Grahamstown
South Africa

Board of Governors
Middlesex University in London
The Burroughs
London NW4 4BT

May 22, 2010

Dear Members of the Board,

I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms your decision to suspend from Middlesex University students of philosophy and professors Peter Hallward and Peter Osborne.  I have no doubt that your decision constitutes a scandalous attempt to silence and destroy free inquiry into truth and justice, the endeavor that formerly constituted the globally-admired project of the Middlesex University. It is not too late to change your course of action. I urgently call on you to abandon this threat to academic freedom, to withdraw from the cowardly paravent of your ‘property,’ and to take immediate, concrete measures to reaffirm that the university is defined not as a site for harassment, silencing, and police persecution, but one dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Should you persist, however, your attempts to silence those to whom you are in debt will in due course take their small place in history beside your more illustrious colleagues such as Grapin and Husák.

In solidarity with our colleagues and friends who have not hesitated to risk their well-being and very means of existence in the name of Truth, the spirit of Philosophy that you trample underfoot, I ask you to reconsider your decision, and to return Middlesex University to the global community of scholarship. Middlesex University defines itself as ‘Committed to […] innovative research, scholarship and professional practice.’ I ask you to do nothing more than to act with integrity, and to hold yourself to these values and the mission that you yourselves take to define your institution. These colleagues have put us all in their debt, proceeding unflinchingly as though they lived in a world in which one need not lose their job for publicly pursuing the wisdom they are contractually engaged to seek. In other times and places, a Socrates or Patočka would lose their life fulfilling this pursuit, and you have no doubt acted admirably in showing such restraint.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. F. Nick Nesbitt, Senior Lecturer
Centre for Modern Thought, French
University of Aberdeen

Dear Governors,

Having written earlier in relation to the initial decision at Middlesex, the news of the suspension of senior staff is depressing indeed. As a sociologist whose work and teaching is in the areas of social philosophy and sociology of culture, I can readily confirm the very high standing accorded to the scholarship of Professors Hallward and Osborne. It really cannot be emphasised enough that Middlesex (as an institution, but also of course, its students) is fortunate to have people of this calibre. As for their actions, they are now only doing what any academic of fibre would be ethically required to do, namely contest to the utmost a judgment that has no academic justification. In suspending them, you are in effect suspending the very idea of a university. If those of principle amongst you are not prepared or able to prevent the closure or revoke the suspensions, you should at least take the step of resigning.
Yours sincerely,

———————-
Gregor McLennan
Professor of Sociology     Director, Institute for Advanced Studies
University of Bristol      University of Bristol
12 Woodland Road           The Royal Fort House
Bristol BS8 1UQ            Bristol BS8 1UJ
Tel: 01179288214/6           Tel: 01179289171/0
g.mclennan@bristol.ac.uk

Subject: Suspensions at Middlesex
From:    mayt@clemson.edu
Date:    Sun, May 23, 2010 7:40 pm
To:      michael@partridges.org.uk, etc.

May 23, 2010

To the Board of Governors:

I have just learned, to my astonishment, that two professors and a number of students have been suspended from Middlesex University in the wake of the protests against the closing of the philosophy program.  It is difficult even to comprehend, much less sympathize with, such an action.

By what right are those who educate and are educated at a university suspended by those who do neither?  Through what logic does a university administration arrogate to itself such power?  Do those who have suspended the teachers and students at Middlesex see themselves as educators?  If so, through what individual and collective delusion do they do so?

To claim that these protests were somehow disruptive to the university’s functioning would display a keen lack of any sense of irony.  What could be more disruptive than dismantling one of the core faculties at any university, not to mention this particular faculty’s standing in the philosophical world? And if disruption cannot be appealed to as a justification, then what can?  There is simply nothing that can ground this suspension, nothing aside from the inconvenience it has caused those who have already done so much damage.

Several weeks ago, I wrote expressing my sadness at the possibility of the termination of the philosophy program at Middlesex.  That sadness has turned to anger.  This latest action cannot stand, and I will do whatever is in my power to ensure that it does not stand.  If the destruction of the philosophy program at Middlesex was a blow to higher education, this suspension is nothing more than a mockery of it.

Sincerely,

Todd May
Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities, Clemson University

From: S.J.Edwards
Sent: 24 May 2010 13:18
To: ‘michael@partridges.org.uk’; etc.

Subject: philosophy suspensions

Dear members of the Board of Governors

The decision to close the highly regarded philosophy department at Middlesex is one of the worst academic ideas of recent times. This is not only a department with an justifiable international reputation for its work in philosophy, but is one of the few humanities departments in any field that has a real impact in the wider culture. For sheer stupidity the idea to disband this prestigious centre and close the department must rank alongside the closure of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural studies at Birmingham. It is an act of national vandalism, which shows no respect for intellectual work or the life of a University. By this action Middlesex forfeits any right to be regarded as a serious institution of learning.

I was shocked and appalled to here that the management of Middlesex University have taken the decision to suspend several members of the philosophy department and a number of named students. Management have not only demonstrated a philistine disregard for us all, but by this action have shown no regard for academic freedom. In my view the staff and students of the philosophy department have engaged in a legitimate campaign to save not only their department and not merely the reputation of your institution, but a vital hub of critical thought for us all. I urge you as governors to make the strongest representations for the repeal of these suspensions and for the reversal of the closure of this indispensible department. It’s closure is simply unconscionable.

Yours sincerely

Dr Steve Edwards
Open University