the boycott petition link, again

Everyone needs to make their own decision on such matters, but I would strongly urge SIGNING THE PETITION for a boycott of Middlesex. There are now 377 signatures, some of them quite prominent.

There are a number of reasons why one should not wish to have anything further to do with this institution if it continues on its present course. Let’s recall some of them here.

*Universities must indeed sometimes close down departments and programs. There’s no avoiding that fact. What is perhaps unprecedented in this case is that Middlesex is closing down its best department, and without even valid financial reasons for doing so.

*Middlesex Philosophy’s excellent performance in the RAE earns the university a great deal of money for the next few years. And Middlesex will be able to use that money even following the dissolution of their Philosophy programs. Apparently this is legal, but anyone can see that it is also breathtakingly cruel and cynical.

*Middlesex officials continue to claim that there were “assaults and injuries” at the initial occupation. These are serious charges against protestors, and one wonders why the police are not investigating these supposed assaults and injuries if they really occurred. Are the police simply late in investigating them, or did Middlesex never report them? If the latter, then one wonders why they are being claimed in the media if the evidence was not sufficient to warrant police involvement.

*Furthermore, every time the police have been called to campus, they have found no wrongdoing, and left.

*The suspension of Hallward, Kerslake, Osborne, and at least four students is a staggering overreaction to normal peaceful sit-in tactics, and should not have been made prior to an investigation.

*The order that Hallward, Kerslake, and Osborne have no contact of any sort with Middlesex students is surely illegal, I would think. It is simply preposterous to think that a university can order specific people not to speak with one another, and especially so given that there are personal faculty-student friendships involved here as well, as is often the case in graduate programs in any field.

*Another evidently cynical claim by Middlesex is that they want to shift away from humanities and more toward lab-oriented fields (I’ve forgotten their terminology) in order to increase revenues. But the government funds laboratories more abundantly because they cost more. In other words, if funding is used properly, then there should be no net benefit from choosing any particular field– unless the new lab programs are to be funded on the cheap, with the difference being retained. Others made this point very early on.

I’ve spoken before of the “canary in a coal mine” aspect to this case, but I now think it’s a bit worse than that. For in the case of that old metaphor, it is not the miners themselves who introduce poisonous gas into the mines. The present case is more like someone deliberately euthanizing a canary, and if they get away with it then all the birds are in danger.