Some background from Western Sydney historian Alison Downham Moore:
Today I was invited along with 6 of my history colleagues and 5 of my philosophy colleagues to meetings with our Dean in which we were told that our positions will be affected by a staff-change plan to be implemented by the higher administration of our university before the end of this year. This plan proposes that theses 7 historians and 5 philosophers must reduce their numbers to 5 and 3 respectively. If the university does not receive 4 voluntary retirements from among this group of accomplished scholars who are mostly in the 35-50 year age-range, then within next few weeks they will make ALL of our positions redundant and force us to apply in a competitive process for the newly reduced number of positions.
To place this in context, Western Sydney University has NOT been dramatically financially impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, due in part to its high ratio of local to international students and to the large number of online teaching-units we have been offering for many years already.
Another important context is that continuing academic positions at any level in both history and philosophy have been extremely rare for nearly 10 years now in Australian academia. They are likely to be exactly 0 over the coming years on account of recent Federal government fee-changes that now make it more expensive for students to study history and philosophy than other humanities disciplines deemed to be more vocational.
It seems likely then, that the scholars made redundant in this process may face many years of unemployment, if they are ever able to return to academic work in anything like their former capacity.
Among those targeted are authors of multiple scholarly books with major international academic presses, leaders of international and local research networks, current holders of major research grants, and all excellent, energetic academics on the cusp of their most significant achievements.
I thank you in advance for any support you are able to give. We are considering all angles to fight this attack and have the support of our union, but international pressure is particularly valuable since our institution prides itself on its developing international impact. Please feel free to pass this email on to any other colleagues you think may be prepared to support us.
You can contact Deborah Sweeney, Vice President of Research, Enterprise & International, at Western Sydney to protest these plans at: [email protected]
(Thanks to Steven Nadler for bringing this to my attention.)
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