To Whom It May Concern,
Stop the Cuts is saddened, if not surprised, to hear that another group of crusading HE administrators is doing everything in its power to cleanse their university of its credibility as an institution of research. The projected closure of Middlesex Philosophy is not, as has been well enough known right from the moment it was made public, a decision made in the interests of better profiteering; it is a decision made in the grip of an ideology of astonishing potency and harmfulness.
That ideology is complex, and the means by which it gained its preeminency in UK Higher Education are complex too, but it contains as two of its central features the belief that, first, all “impact” made by academic work should be precisely measurable and, second, that the most apposite measure of Humanities degrees should be their success in shepherding flexibly skilled graduates into relevant sectors of the labour market. Thus the Middlesex philosopher Peter Hallward has disclosed that at the staff meeting in which the closure of Philosophy was announced, the Dean of Arts, one Ed Esche, explained to what he no doubt thinks of as his staff that their contribution to “the University as a whole” was, lamentably and incorrigibly, not measurable. A video of the same illustrious Professor Esche, currently circulating on YouTube, sees him waffling forth with slow and impressive unoriginality on the imperative need to ensure that academic degrees issue in labour market competitiveness.
Ed Esche is wrong that Middlesex Philosophy’s contribution to Middlesex University is not measurable. The Department has in fact been very recently measured by the state-mandated measurement circus known, until recently, as the Research Assessment Exercise. And what did the RAE find? It found that Middlesex’s Philosophy department possesses, and by some distance, the most impressive, or, let’s be clear, the highest scoring “quality profile” of all the academic departments within the University. The administration claims in the introduction to its Corporate Policy document to manage a University that develops “new knowledge and professional skills through research and scholarship”. This claim is false. It sees its sustainable development not in the development of its knowledge production but in its transformation into a training centre for business.
Ed Esche is not wrong that many students in HE wish to improve by their course of study their chances of employment. But he is catastrophically and unforgivably wrong if he believes that boosting employability statistics is the single function of HE. As Nina Power noted in her recent article for the Guardian, Middlesex Philosophy programmes have a socially various student intake: these students want from their degrees many things: what they do not all want is to inculcate in themselves a flexible skill set that can be shipped quickly onto a CV and into a job in some predesignated cranny of the creative industries. There is nothing new about managerial jukeboxes blurting out business’s tune on the necessity of integrating HE into the national economy; what is new is a situation in which people like Ed Esche and his immediate superiors feel so comfortable in the legitimacy of their parochial ideology that they can use it to justify the destruction of a brilliant department like Philosophy at Middlesex.
This makes it all the more urgent that this vicious and conniving attempt to close the department be repealed. Stop the Cuts sends its solidarity and encouragement to all those who are currently organising, at Middlesex and outside of it, to force the University’s management into a retreat. So much that we value depends on it.
See also: Open letter to the management at Middlesex University from Sussex staff
Posted by sussexstopthecuts 
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Hi,
As you are aware, I am under no obligation to reply to this attempt at
intimidation. Of course if I am asked after the strike day I will let
you know whether I was taking part or not, but it my powers of
clairvoyance are still not honed enough to tell you what is going to
happen before it happens.
In order to make my decision I would like to request that you complete
the attached form and return it to me by 09:00 on Tuesday 4th May.
I look forward to your response.
thanks,
paul.
(Click the link below to read the form!)
