This is terrible news.

This is dreadful – how can they call themselves a university if they do not value excellence in research?

This is really appalling news. But it’s not a done deal, departments and jobs have been saved in higher education already in the last 12 months, and it can be done again.

Apart from the appalling academic failure of a university to appreciate such meritorious philosophy, just what kind of outfit is it that requires 55% of the department’s gross income for central administration? A mere 45% kept for teaching and research, the university’s only proper business? Does HEFCE know what is going on there?

What a terrible decision. From what I’ve seen/heard, the state of many Philosophy departments around the world is dire, but this is shocking. The ubiquity of the profit motive is truly regrettable; Universities should (and do) serve roles other than generating profit.

55% of income for central admin? That is sheer managerial exploitation and power-grabbing.

Dreadful news in any case. University life just doesn’t exist any more in this country. When the powers that be figure out the negative consequences of this trend it will be too late.

Can anyone explain what Band D/Band C students are, and why one is considered better than the other?

What is Dean Esche’s ‘measurable’ contribution to the University? And is there a ‘+’ or ‘-’ before that figure?

Yet another instance of a disquieting trend: higher education accommodating itself to the goals, standards, and business models of the corporate world. The Dean thinks universities succeed when they produce profit and future consumers/employees. It used to be that the university’s goal was to produce humanity. What a loss!

First Athens sins against philosophy; now Middlesex administration.

this is terrible news. The middlesex philosophy department is a unique and essential voice in the landscape of academic philosophy, especially in a country still so dominated by one particular form of philosophy. A real shame.

In a recent speech, Lord Mandelson encouraged Universities to concentrate on ’sustainable excellence’. This decision suggests that true excellence will not itself be sustainable at many British Universities. It is a shameful indictment of the current culture of audit in which Univesities make a performance of their mission to deliver for users, but can no longer maintain the University as a space for critical thought.

This is a deplorable decision. Philosophy at Middlesex is an oasis of radical, critical, modern European thought in a disciplinary desert of lifeless analysis. This decision must be resisted. What can we do?

It would be really useful to have a list of names & addresses for people to write & complain to, not only within Middlesex but also others who might have an influence on the situation.

The four people to write to are as follows:

Vice-Chancellor of the University, Michael Driscoll, m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk;

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise, Waqar Ahmad, w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk;

Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, Margaret House, m.house@mdx.ac.uk;

Dean of the School of Arts & Education, Ed Esche, e.esche@mdx.ac.uk.

This is crazy! The philosophy department put Middlesex on the map. They are cutting their most famous programme? I can’t believe this is happening.

This is sad. I am a great admirer of Professors Peter Hallward and Osborn. Probably, consideration is not just financial. I hope these two giants would move ahead with their philosophy teaching in one way or the other. Probably, by running short-term philosophy courses for activists outside academia or running on-line philosophy courses.
If this decision got anything to do with the radical implications of their philosophy, the establishment’s decision is self-defeating. The great bridge these two philosophers represent – between the philosophies of Continental and English-speaking world- will be more effective if its focus shifts from academia to activist world.

The coproratization of education is the end of civilization.
PS.It is no news that contemporary “market” methods of discipline and control are more effective than old-style “totalitarian” censorship. What is new is that what used to be the loci of resistance against censorship—the institutions of intellectuals—now become its complicit, if not active leaders.

A disgraceful decision, suggesting that the management have no awareness of the deserved prestige of Middlesex philosophy worldwide.

Is this the beginning of the end of Britain’s long tradition of critical thinking and deep scholarship? The work of the Middlesex Department (and the journal, Radical Philosophy), have been are at the fore-front of innovative thinking in a range of disciplinary tributaries. If this is the harbinger of what is to come, universities in the UK (and elsewhere, too) face dark times.

Today, I’m truly disgusted my that my enlightened British ancestry has come to this!

I’m all but speechless only because my out rage prevents me from saying anything that woouldn’t sound like angry garble. You can, however, lay this saud state of affairs at the doorstep of Mandelson and his “so-called” business model plan for UK universities. As disgraceful as this is, I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

This is shocking, as well as disgusting. I notice that the Departments seem to contribute more than 50% of their earnings to the administration of the University: This is even more shocking and disgusting. Are full-time administrators necessary to the running of a good university? They do not research, they do not teaching, they would seem to do no service, except to themselves. Just like Goldman Sachs — produces nothing, steals everything. Capitalism at its best!

This is shocking, as well as disgusting. I notice that the Departments seem to contribute more than 50% of their earnings to the administration of the University: This is even more shocking and disgusting. Are full-time administrators necessary to the running of a good university? They do not do research, they do not teach, they would seem to do no service, except to themselves. Just like Goldman Sachs — produces nothing, steals everything. Capitalism at its best!

Look on the bright side chaps, it’s one less university department peddling Marxism. I’d call that a result.

Fewer.

I too am horrified. Obviously the people who run Middlesex have no idea what a university is. We need an international campaign to reverse this barbaric act.

Middlesex University is sleep walking into a global public relations disaster by the announcement of the imminent closure of Philosophy. The world-wide condemnation of this boneheaded decision, which is surely gathering force, can only be avoided by a volte-face which, judging by the low level of decision making exhibited thus far, seems unlikely. The blind pursuit of the bean counters holy grail of 2% is regrettably entirely understandable in an institution that clearly has no morality, holds nothing dear and is merely beholden to a crass accountancy that is blindly indifferent to wider values. By proposing to close the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University has transformed itself, as if by magic, into a world centre for excellence in the worship of the bottom line. This short termism leaves Middlesex University standing proud as a beacon of incompetence, indifference, and the second rate. Henceforth Middlesex will have an international reputation as an educational institution unfit to call itself a university.

If the modern British university is to be run as a university – i.e. by academic criteria – then this decision is indefensible. If it is to be run by some other criteria then what are these? By any business criterion the position of the university managers themselves is indefensible – they can’t manage for toffee, they couldn’t live in the world of profit and loss whose surface characteristics they pathetically ape, and they’re running our once-great higher education system into the ground. Please sign the petition at:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy/sign.html

I will be one more to say that the consideration is not financial. This is only the excuse. We are talking here about the continuation of the more than one thousand year effort to turn the human being into a materialistic animal instead of a spiritual being for better control of them over us. Philosophy of course is the food for the human being’s spiritual and mental evolution.
To proceed in such disgraceful actions so openly and stupidly, (it is not the only incident lately), means that “they” have come to a state of horror. The human spirit cannot be beaten by “their” materialistic, low to the ground methods and ways of being, which “they” are trying to inject into the humans.
I am sure that In spite of everything, there are democratic mechanisms in Britain that must be used to stop such a disgrace. We will all try to help to this direction regardless state or country, if we want to hold a position amongst the thinking human beings!
Deep at heart, “They”, has nothing to do with political parties and ideologies, religion or country. It has only to do with material, translated now days to money and profit. Human Spirit is their horror, because they cannot fight it.

Of course the closure of this successful (by any criteria) department is ideological and political—not financial. The same was true of the closure of CCCS in Birmingham some years ago. Whoever took what Mdx has said at face value, about “financial” reasons for this, simply has not been paying attention. Well known for their irrational, (by the standards of modern management), deeply unethical and debased practices, Mdx management are now simply furthering their agenda of transforming the university into a training centre for “business”. Sites of critical, radical thought and work have no place in this “vision” of Mdx management, even if they are “financially successful”. That they can make such a decision in an untransparent and unacccountable way, is testimony to what happens when seemingly unlimited power is concentrated into the hands of the unaccountable few. The idea that anyone, from business or elsewhere, will be interested in the graduates of their university-as-training centre, rather than graduates of a real university, such as those of the highly respected Philosophy department, is gross hubris. Mass, direct action is needed and a restructuring of power and control within the institution.

Further to the previous posts, I would argue this is both financial and political. This is part of a process of swingeing cuts across the public sector (following the £850bn bailout of the banking sector) that provides managers with the opportunity to reconfigure services in line with neo-liberal priorities. But only if we let them.
We need resistance and direct action if we are to challenge this agenda. I’m a researcher within the NHS. I have just come from a rally and Day of Action to save from closure the A&E Dept at the Whittington hospital, which is opposite one of Middlesex Uni campuses. In fact we have just heard that we have won our campaign to save the Dept as a result of demonstrations and intensive political campaigning. We need the same in higher education: rallies, demonstrations, strikes, occupations. I’d recommend following these links and joining these networks as a good starting point:

http://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/
http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=4565

Linking the campaigns and building solidarity across institutions will strengthen our hand.

The decision to close philosophy at Middlesex is stupid, offensive, and sneaky.

It is stupid for the obvious reason that philosophy at Middlesex is a centre of excellence. For the greater part of my career, I taught at London Metropolitan University, which is, as it were, Middlesex’s ‘next door neighbour’. We had a great deal of contact with Middlesex, and we benefited enormously from it, – especially at the level of original research. I can therefore confirm that Peter Hallward, Peter Osborne, and Stella Sandford ar quite right to describe the department as ‘widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world’.

I find it impossible to believe that a ‘Russell group’ university would close such a high-grade department. How come the management of a ‘new’ university can be so thick?

The decision is offensive, because it appeals to arbitrarily selected, spurious, short-term financial criteria. It seems to be based on the sort of calculation which would be appropriately conducted by a barrow-boy, seeking to undercut the price of bananas being charged by his mate, – the one running the adjacent barrow. It would be interesting to know how Dean Esche’s ‘contribution’ to the university has been ‘measured’. (Can a numerical value really be attached to this sort of thing?) My feeling is that no satisfactory account of such ‘measurement’ can be given, and that the Dean should be told to go back to selling bananas.

Finally, the decision is sneaky because it has been announced right at the end of the summer term, at the beginning of a period when staff and students will be taking a well-deserved break, and when – as a consequence – there will be few people around to protest. In my experience this is absolutely typical of the way management tend to behave in the new universities. I expect they are hoping that staff and students will return to a ‘fait accompli’.

The snake under the stone waits patiently for it’s moment to strike, – and so do Deans of Arts and Humanities.

The threatened closure of the Philosophy programme at Middlesex is terrible news.
From afar, it looks like intellectual and institutional suicide given the outstandong work and recognition that the programme has both nationally and internationally. In the area of the human and social sciences, Middlesex is largely recognised precisely because of its outstanding philosophers.
I frankly find the idea of closing the programm very short-sighted, and ultimately pervese: a form of institutional masochism.
I sincerely hope that there is a change of mind.

Those with the power can exercise it as they damn well please, unfortunately. If staff strike over this, that might be the only thing to pressure the administration to reverse this decision. But the staff will have to be ready and willing to sustain the financial squeeze, and I’m quite sure that UCU will do little or nothing by way of strike pay to support staff in this regard, since they’re totally in bed with management (at least UCU at the national level is).

Boo-hoo, the department of marxist bullshit got shut down, even though it met standards of ‘excellence’ which boil down to being the most unthinking acolytes of bullshit totalitarian ideologies. What will circlejerking fascist rent-seekers do now?

Philosophy is important, but what is still more important is that it does not become part of a university system in such a way that ‘excellence’ means to adhere to fascist rent-seeking ideologies.

And that, M’Lud, is the case for the defence.

It looks to me like a shot across the bow of all academics in the humanities. If they took down a truly ailing department, it would hardly be a show of power, would it? I agree that schools should strive towards financial sustainability, but this feels completely different–more like an act of intimidation. The fact that it also employed left-leaning academics is icing on the cake for university administration. I suppose the message intended for us all is “watch what you say and do–you could be next.”

Just needing to add to my voice to the chorus against this closure. What a sad day it is when ubiquitous managerial-speak like ‘no measurable contribution’ becomes mandate for closure. I hope this decision is overturned.
One more reason why a corporate business model should not be applied to education.