Save Middlesex Philosophy

May 10, 2010

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

Dear Board Members:

As fellow philosophers with a deep recognition of the need for long-term investment in higher education, we write to express our deep concern about the decision to terminate the philosophy programs at Middlesex University.

In a remarkably short time, Middlesex has achieved international acclaim for its renowned Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, Middlesex was rated first in philosophy among post-1992 universities in Britain, with 65% of its research activity judged “world-leading” or “internationally excellent.” The decision to close such a successful program is perplexing. We understand that it was motivated by financial incentives from the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Our organization, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), has over 2,500 members. As members of the SPEP Executive Committee, we believe that it is our responsibility to speak on behalf of our British colleagues. We are not unmindful of the short-term economic challenges facing universities everywhere. It is understandable that administrators with an eye on increased funding would be willing to cut programs of less obvious social benefit. Philosophy has always seemed to some people to be an unnecessary, if not socially pernicious, luxury. Just ask Socrates. Yet we know, or should know, that every decision to eliminate the study of philosophy altogether is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Without Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, where would we be? Where will we be in 100 years, if programs like Middlesex are put on the chopping block?

University administrators the world over are watching Middlesex. Will the precipitous decision to terminate the philosophy programs be allowed to stand? Or will considered reflection lead to a reaffirmation of the fundamental commitment that has made Middlesex an international leader in modern European philosophy? With all due respect, and with a keen appreciation of the cost of higher education, we urge you to opt for the heroic course: to maintain the philosophy programs at Middlesex.

Respectfully submitted,

Andrew Cutrofello, signing for the members of the SPEP Executive Committee:

Leonard Lawlor, Executive Co-Director

Cynthia Willett, Executive Co-Director

Shannon Lundeen, Secretary-Treasurer

Alia Al-Saji, Executive Committee Member at Large

Andrew Cutrofello, Executive Committee Member at large

Anthony Steinbock, Executive Committee Member at Large

From: gloughran@eircom.net
To: “e esche” <e.esche@mdx.ac.uk>, “m driscoll” <m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk>, “w ahmad” <w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk>, “m house” <m.house@mdx.ac.uk>,
Cc: savemdxphil@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, 10 May, 2010 11:17:22 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
Subject: Philosophy Dept

Dear Professors Driscoll, Ahmad, House and Esche,

We the researchers at The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GRADCAM) Dublin, Ireland are writing to express our shock, disbelief and utter condemnation of your decision to terminate the philosophy programs at Middlesex University.

We encourage you to re-consider the implications of your actions and their co-operation in the further development of Academic Institutions as little more than factories for the production of ‘Human Capital’. Education is historically recognised as far too ‘complex’, ‘versatile’ and ‘principled’ a phenomenon to be reduced to another form of ‘labour production’.

It is impossible to recognise this as a considered ‘decision’, decisions take ‘vision’, ‘courage’, and a ‘complexity’ of viewpoints, this is little more than the obliteration of what is valuable about progressive education, by what is valuable by economic measure. Philosophy at Middlesex, has been an inspiration to researchers and teachers at many levels, but what a legacy you will leave yourselves if you continue with this procedure.

Signed:

Glenn Loughran(GRAD)

Edia Connole(GRAD)

John Buckley(GRAD)

Francis Halsall(ACW NCAD/MA co-ordinator)

Declan Long(ACW NCAD/MA co-ordinator)

Tina Kinsella(NCAD)

Clodagh Emoe(GRAD)

Tim Stott(GRAD)

Joan Fowler(NCAD)

Claire Feely(IMOCA)

Geraldine Guyonnet(UCD)

Andrew Brady(DUB)

Gearoad Carvill(DUB)

Justine Emoe(DUB)

Cormac Browne(NCAD)

Thomas McGrawLewis(GRAD)

From: Martin McCabe
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 18:01:18 +0100
To: <m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk;>, <w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk;>, <m.house@mdx.ac.uk;>, <e.esche@mdx.ac.uk.>
Conversation: Letter of support for the CRMEP
Subject: Letter of support for the CRMEP

Dear Sir/Madam,

The staff and researchers at the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media
in Dublin, Ireland (comprised of the National College of Art and Design, the
Dublin Institute of Technology, Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun
Laoghaire and the University of Ulster) decry the planned closure of the
Philosophy programmes at Middlesex University.

The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy represents a beacon
across a diversity of disciplines and is a hub of intellectual and creative
activity that is an inspiration to the international community of
researchers in creative arts and critical humanities. The work of the staff
at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy has been central to
our reading and research activities here at the Graduate School. Many of our
researchers and staff have attended CRMEP events over the last number of
years and have found these an invaluable resource.  Its reputation and
status is beyond question, indeed so much so that this makes the decision
for closure both confounding and alarming.

We urge the University Executive to reconsider its decision and to reverse
the plan to close the Philosophy programmes at Middlesex as this closure
will have far-reaching impacts beyond the local institution.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Michael Wilson, Dean, Graduate School Creative Arts and Media, Ireland.
Martin McCabe, DIT Fellow, Graduate School Creative Arts and Media, Ireland.
Dr Elaine Sisson, IADT Fellow, Graduate School Creative Arts and Media, Ireland
Dr Lisa Godson, NCAD Fellow, Graduate School Creative Arts and Media, Ireland
Dr Francis Halsall, Associate Fellow, NCAD, Ireland

May 11, 2010

Michael Discoll, Vice Chancellor
Waqar Ahmad, Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Enterprise
Margaret House, Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic
Ed Esche, Dean, School of Arts & Education

Dear Sirs and Madam,

RE:     Middlesex University’s decision to close the Philosophy Department

It has come to our attention that the administration of Middlesex University plans to close its philosophy department. The University of Windsor Faculty Association (WUFA) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada urges you to reconsider this ill-conceived plan, since a university willing to let its philosophy department lapse has thereby made it obvious that it no longer has an interest in being a real university at all.

Every other human art and science has a common historical root in philosophy, and for this reason your plan in effect will cut off those other human endeavours from its own roots. Historical considerations aside, however, philosophy as a highly distinctive human enterprise inculcates habits of mind that are required of any reasonably informed citizen: critical and independent inquiry, logical analysis, and argument assessment readily come to mind as some of its key features.

Were philosophy allowed to disappear at your university, the most obvious implication would be that Middlesex University has no interest in helping to produce thoughtful, informed citizens (no matter what they do in life for a living)—and maybe even a positive interest in producing thoughtless, uninformed ones instead. While your proposed plan might serve purely economic interests, people are more than purely economic beings—and even if they were, the registration choices of your own students, given the option to enroll in philosophy courses, has to count for a significant indicator of real demand. At the University of Windsor, we could easily fill many more sections of philosophy than are currently allowed to be offered.

Philosophers by nature speak truth to power, and this fact does sometimes make powerful people uncomfortable. But they do so because they are convinced that this is the best way to ensure that only legitimate power survives, figuring that its fraudulent counterpart has no rational weapons at its disposal besides brute force. Such force, however, requires for its sustenance ever-increasing intensities to maintain whatever frail gains it has made; the reason is that human beings have a natural desire for free inquiry that cannot be long suppressed: once it tastes intellectual freedom, bondage is simply no longer an option, as the various uprisings on your campus are already making plain. Although in a slightly different context, your own history as a nation with respect to other peoples with regard to physical freedom and slavery should make this abundantly clear.

…/2

Page 2

We urge you, therefore, in the strongest possible terms to reconsider what closing your philosophy department will advertise concerning the reputation of your ‘university’. (The scare quotes are justified by the mere contemplation of this closure.) Philosophy is not expected to be a money-maker; its wealth consists in ideas that serve all kinds of human purposes, including but hardly limited to the generation of monetary wealth. Instead of being a place where all ideas are equally subject to testing in a common court of rational appeal, Middlesex will become a place in which that very court has been abolished. This is characteristic of military dictatorships, not of democratic constitutions. It hardly needs reminding that the rest of the civilized world looks to the UK as an exemplar of democracy.

Sincerely,

Brian E. Brown, President
Faculty Association, University of Windsor
366 Sunset Ave.,
Windsor ON N9B 3P4
(519) 253-3000 ext. 3366
wufa@uwindsor.ca

Date: 11 May 2010 11:11 +0100
From: “G McLennan, Sociology” <G.McLennan@bristol.ac.uk>
Subject: Proposed closure of Philosophy at Middlesex

Dear Governors,

In my personal academic capacity, I urge you to revoke the decision to
close the Philosophy programme at Middlesex. I don’t wish to rehearse all
the reasons – aired widely in the press – as to why this excellent group of
colleagues should be supported and showcased rather than chopped, I will
only say that the points for the defence are completely convincing. What I
would wish to add is that in my role at Bristol as Director of the
Institute for Advanced Studies, extremely fruitful linkages between our
leading philosophers, scientists and educationalists are being cultivated
and enhanced. This not only pertains to specialist research fronts (in
relation to current issues in physics, biology and the social sciences),
but more generally in terms of collective hard thinking about what sort of
cultures of knowledge we now need in universities if we are to meet the
double challenge of preserving what is great in the traditional disciplines
and encouraging new interdisciplinary thinking in relation to the
contemporary knowledge economy and educated citizenship. These
interdisciplinary liaisons, in other words, are vital for future thinking
about knowledge, science and society, and so it seems an untimely irony
that just when philosophy’s role in these forward-looking agendas is being
confirmed in some other universities, Middlesex sees fit, in the name of
the priority of the sciences, to phase Philosophy out.  Once again, then, I
hope you will reconsider this short-sighted decision.

Yours sincerely

Professor Gregor McLennan

———————-
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

10 May 2010

The Middlesex action is reprehensible in the extreme. It is an arbitrary administrative  intervention that has no serious budgetary basis and that was taken without adequate consulting and survey procedures — which would have confirmed that the Middlesex philosophy department is truly distinguished, nationally as well as internationally, in the field of continental philosophy. Such action must be disputed and resisted — and decisively reversed. The outpouring of support from around the world for such reversal is truly extraordinary. I hereby challenge the Middlesex Board of Governors to re-consider their unwarranted closure of the philosophy department.

Edward S. Casey,
Distinguished Professor,
SUNY at Stony Brook;

current President, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division.

cc: Prof. Edward Esche, Prof. Margaret House, Prof. Waqar Ahmad

30 April 2010

Dear Professor Driscoll

I am writing to you on behalf of the British Philosophical Association, the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and the American Philosophical Association concerning the recent announcement that Middlesex University is to close its philosophy department.

We are very disturbed, both at the decision itself and at the rationale behind it.
The Philosophy Department at Middlesex has an outstanding reputation for research, both within the UK and internationally. It is unquestionably one of the leading centres for continental philosophy in the UK, achieving a 5 in the 2001 RAE and a GPA of 2.8 in the 2008 RAE – the same as Leeds, Nottingham and Edinburgh and above (for example) Warwick, Sussex, Durham and Glasgow in the THE league table.

We understand that the Dean, Professor Esche, told staff that the Department’s high research reputation makes no ‘measurable’ contribution to the University. This claim is simply not true. In financial terms, the Department’s QR funding amounted (according to HEFCE figures) to over £150,000 in 09-10.

But of course direct financial contributions are not the only consideration. The Philosophy Department at Middlesex is surely one of its best-performing departments in research terms. This brings with it a huge boost in research reputation for the University as a whole – something that new universities struggle to achieve. One symptom of the Philosophy Department’s high research reputation is its very healthy recruitment to MA courses; we understand that 42 new MA students were recruited in 2009, a figure that almost all philosophy departments in the UK would be extremely envious of.

A further consideration is surely the immense damage that will be done to Middlesex as an institution by closing a department with an excellent research reputation and healthy postgraduate numbers. Prospective students – both undergraduate and postgraduate – will worry whether their chosen department will be next on the list, and prospective permanent staff will not regard Middlesex as a place where their job is safe.

We are also concerned about the rationale given for the decision to close Philosophy. We understand that the decision has been made on a purely financial basis. While of course we appreciate that universities are suffering financially at the moment, from what we can gather, the Department is only 2% off its target contribution of 55% of gross income to the central administration.

This is a very small shortfall, and one would normally expect that the problem could be dealt with in other, less draconian ways; particularly given that the department has all the hallmarks of long-term viability: an excellent research reputation, astonishingly good PGT recruitment, and increasing undergraduate applications.
Normal procedure – and certainly best practice – in circumstances where the closure of a department is being considered is to have a full-scale review of the department, with both internal and external expert panel members. Middlesex does not appear to have conducted such a review – something which, again, damages its institutional reputation and, perhaps more importantly, suggests that perhaps all the options have not been fully considered.

We urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to conduct such a review, so that all the options can be considered fully.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Helen Beebee, Director, British Philosophical Association

and on behalf of:

Prof. Paul Humphreys
Chair of American Philosophical Association Committee on International Relations

Prof. Graham Oppy
President, Australasian Association of Philosophy

De : “JeromeVidal @ RiLi” <jerome@revuedeslivres.net>

Date : 29 avril 2010 15:05:54 HAEC

À : m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk, w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk, m.house@mdx.ac.uk, e.esche@mdx.ac.uk

Objet : No to the closing of Middlesex University’s Philosophy programmes

Dear colleagues,

It is with great shock that I have learned that you are to close all Philosophy programmes at Middlesex University.

As editor of La Revue Internationale des Livres et des Idées (www.revuedeslivres.net), I must say that your plan, which amounts to depriving Middlesex University of its main source of international renown in the realm of ideas, is simply beyond comprehension.

I very much hope that you will reconsider your position and find a way to maintain all the said programmes at Middlesex University.

Respectfully yours,

Jerome Vidal
—

R i L i — La Revue Internationale des Livres et des Idées
www.revuedeslivres.net – /// – www.revuedeslivres.blogspot.com
31 rue Paul Fort, 75014 Paris, France – /// – Tel: + 33 (0)1 45 41 23 33 – /// – Fax: +33 (0)8 26 69 95 02

De : Ina Blom
Date : 29 avril 2010 15:20:51 HAEC
À : m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk, w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk, m.house@mdx.ac.uk, e.esche@mdx.ac.uk
Objet : philosophy at Middlesex

Dear Sirs, dear Madam,

I am writing to you to express my concern with your decision to end all of the philosophy programs at Middlesex University, including the internationally renowned MA and PhD degrees. I am extremely surprised that a university willingly closes down one of its most productive and original hubs of scholarship and research –  particularly at a moment when student numbers are increasing.

The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy holds a unique position in the academic community, both in the UK and internationally, and its activities, staff and publications are eagerly followed by colleagues from all over the world. My own faculty has benefited from extensive exchanges with key personnel from this centre – among other things through our doctoral programs – and we were hoping to develop and expand these contacts in the future.

Your decision seems to go against the grain of the most commonly held ideas about the principles of university management and academic life, and I am afraid this decision may damage the reputation of Middlesex both in the short and long run.

I do hope you will consider revising your current plan of action.

Sincerly

Ina Blom
Professor,
Department of Philosophy, Classics,
History of Art and Ideas
University of Oslo
Box 1020 Blindern
0315 Oslo
Norway
ina.blom@ifikk.uio.no

5 May 2010

Dear Vice-Chancellor

Every academic knows that these are difficult times for universities, in which they are sometimes obliged to take difficult and painful decisions. Moreover, to those responsible for running an institution and familiar with every aspect of its workings, interventions from outside may appear officious and ill-informed. None the less, there are many reasons why it seems justified to urge you to reconsider the decision that has, as I understand, been taken to close all Philosophy programmes at Middlesex.

The Philosophy department at Middlesex is very strong. Its performance in RAE2008 is impressive. By my calculations its GPA of 2.8 puts it just behind Cambridge, level with Nottingham, well ahead of Manchester, and vastly ahead of other post-92 universities. 20% of the submission was assessed as world-leading. This result is all the more impressive in that it is a very unusual department, one of the few that highlights the study of so-called ‘continental philosophy’, which is often dismissed by practitioners of the dominant Anglo-American tendency. It will be a severe blow to the subject nationally if this department were to close.

I gave a paper to the department seminar a couple of years ago. The attendance of staff and postgraduate students was excellent, the quality of discussion very high, and certainly challenging. This was a very strong indication of a thriving research culture, an atmosphere of keen debate informed by knowledge and understanding at a high level.

In short, this is a thriving and distinctive unit and its closure, whatever practical benefit it may have in the short term, must surely gravely weaken the academic standing of the University.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Moriarty, FBA
Centenary Professor of French Literature and Thought
Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques
School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film
Queen Mary, University of London
London E1 4NS