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#AcademicVenting No doubt the lovely - avatared- person above calling me an enabler & a coward for saying in the first toot of this 
people might be afraid to really say what is going on will not be impressed that this book is anonymous!
#AcademicVenting Swansea is the latest university to announce major cuts. I think this brings it to 50 or more UK institutions.
This really is a major crisis. Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at non-elite universities are crumbling. The last few months of Tories and their disastrous anti-woke, anti-thought agenda is destroying the whole sector, all critical thinking. And many 100s of us out of jobs, all scrambling for the laar few positions. It is really bad!!
#AcademicVenting I don’t know how many of you have children who are about to go to university, but if you do: it might be time to mobilise!
#AcademicVenting Please read this wonderful piece by Goldsmiths Emeritus Professor Angela McRobbie, capturing why we all weep and weep at what is happening at Goldsmiths now. It was and is something so important: brilliant arts, research, critical thinking in a very non-elite setting, for and by non-elite students. It is so important we don't lose all this. But read the piece.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/a-goldsmiths-diary
"With low or no fees, undergraduates felt freer to pursue their own dreams of being taught by the kinds of leading scholars and world-renowned artists found in an institution like my own. They could afford to take the time to find their own feet, to chop and change courses and module options. Many would tell me they had discovered for the first time the wonders of anthropology, not having had any idea of the field previously."
So lovely that a colleague from a different
.. discipline talks about the "wonders of anthropology". It really is a wonderful field! Adding here a on 8 reasons why the world needs #Anthropology. But really what I should have said: the world needs non-elite anthropologists and non-elite institutions teaching anthropology. It can't just be for the privileged at Oxbridge; it needs to be what we do at Goldsmiths - by and for everyone, especially those normally marginalised.
#AcademicVenting Ok so this piece by Glen O’Hara really is venting.
I am conscious that I & others might come across as incredible whiners. And of course I am aware that we are, for now (50% chance of unemployment for me in 3 months) incredibly privileged. But what O’Hara describes here is completely accurate. In addition to so much other awfulness in the world, the reality of academic life creates its own unhappiness - linked to ideals of what we feel it should be.
“The modern university has become a site of moral harm or injury, perhaps mildly so, but a hard place to work and keep one’s sense of purpose and morality intact. Universities have moved progressively out of line with their staff’s view of the world, and that gap is another element in the increasing difficulty of keeping a grip on reality.“
#AcademicVenting Yes this too happened. All just borrowing from each other, or the same SMT people moving from uni to uni, wreaking havoc everywhere they go, with every step enhancing their own careers
#AcademicVenting we have now all received invitations to atend our “Stage 1 Individual Consultations”. Lovely to be encouraged by the corporate booking system they used to “grab a meeting”. Grab a reduncancy meeting, yeah!
#AcademicVenting Was a bit hard at first to read - at Goldsmiths we tend to think of UCL as the “Hoover”, sucking up all students, and indeed cohorts of 300+ history students make you weep! - but of course awful for staff being made redundant there, too, and for students having fewer and fewer module choices, vast classes, etc etc.
Universities ARE staff & students, yet management cares about neither. This is what marketisation does.
“The redundancies show that UCL cares not for their students’ role as a ‘consumer’. With the marketisation of higher education, something that has been critical in making universities neoliberal hellscapes, the student has been poised as a customer, rather than a learner. University is now meant to be a means to a greater end, with that end solely being employment.”
#AcademicVenting I think i said “neoliberal shitshow” at one point somewhere above, but “neoliberal hellscape” excellent too.
Pondering now how UK neoliberalism really is always simultaneously shitshow and hellscape. Shitty hellscape or hellish shitshow maybe. HE, water companies, NHS, the lovely Tory government itself- everywhere the same combination of cruelty, ineptitude and, of course, MONEY thinking.
#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney here!)
Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything.
#AcademicVenting . Different theme but all related anyway: Dr Abu-Sittah’s truly brilliant inauguration speech at Glasgow. Highlighting the moral role that universities play, but also their complicity. He and Glasgow now provide important moral backbone, but all this has withered through neoliberal marketisation in English universities (see Glen O’Hara above). Mostly just shamefully neutral, bland statements on “middleeast crisis”.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/dr-ghassan-abu-sittah-tomorrow-is-a-palestinian-day/
#AcademicVenting . Just realised I hadn’t added here yet Zoe William’s excellently researched piece about our crisis at Goldsmiths. Really great we have had so many people speaking out for us. Loved this piece in particular as it’s also about the student occupation about #Gaza, and it cites a brilliant student who I have had the pleasure of teaching, Danna.
Best perhaps the final sentence: “But I don’t think ita done deal”.
#AcademicVenting The vice chancellor of York (a Russell group university!), Charlie Jeffery:
“There is no other way of saying this. The UK higher education system is in crisis. The way it is funded just doesn’t work anymore. A rough guess is that about half of the sector is responding by cutting jobs and courses”.
#AcademicVenting another really excellent piece on the UK higher education crisis, by Hannah Rose Woods in The New Statesman”:
Experts believe it is already “too late” to avert the oncoming funding disaster: “all everyone can do now is brace”.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/university-funding-is-in-crisis
“With wearying inevitability, cuts will be borne disproportionately by arts, humanities & social sciences. Some will doubtlessly cheer the trimming of supposedly “low-value” subject areas. They may be less enthusiastic about the knock-on effect their demise would have on more expensive to teach science and technology subjects, or the wider impact of rapid restructuring in a sector that supports more than three quarters of a million jobs and contributes £130bn to the economy.”
One reason why it’s all falling apart this year are changes in visa regulations for international students - Tory gov trying to curb immigration - who are no longer allowed to bring dependents.
Hey James Cleverley and Michelle Donelan - stop denying and ignoring this MASSIVE crisis that you are causing! You are destroying a vital sector with your stupid short-sighted policies. You will lose anyway- stop wreaking havock now! (I know this is 
pointless)
#AcademicVenting Finally read Jonathan Miller's #DeathSpiral piece, and I wish all SMTs across the country getting rid of all their PRODUCTIVE lecturers (ie, the people actually making money for universities, through student fees and research income) would read it, too. They genuinely don't understand what they are doing!
Please, understand the British Leyland's 1970s coat [*EDIT: this should be cost! I copied a typo! See @rubinjoni
below!* 
] allocation death spiral
#AcademicVenting I think I have actually not really expressed so far how awful the redundancy process is. To everyone who has been through this or is going through this right now: HUGE solidarity. To those who haven't: what has taken me by surprise is an exponential, unbelievable increase in work. All the normal stuff plus endless meetings, strategies, statements, reports, questionnaires, campaigns, counterproposals, for weeks and weeks on end. Frazzled!
#AcademicVenting Couldn’t have put it any better. Not just the redundancy process; just so sick of all it, what it has become. #Neoliberalism #university
“I am sick of higher education leaders, I am sick of neoliberal thinking, I am sick of scarcity mindsets, I am sick of austerity, I am sick of senior management lacking morals, I am sick of education being decimated, I don’t know how we hang on + do important work for students”
#AcademicVenting Good 2021 piece by Asheesh Kapur Siddique linking rightwing university politics - ie, the oppression of #Gaza student protests we are currently seeing - to this ’s overall theme: the marketisation of HE. Tight establishment control (with all its crappy values) is a direct result of marketisation.
About the US but much of it applicable to UK and Australia too.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/campus-cancel-culture-university-boards
#AcademicVenting and now this piece by Jessica Wildfire @aral shared earlier today.
“Universities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.”
#AcademicVenting Reading "Tips for Redundancy" compiled by a UCU colleague elsewhere:
"Keep a Diary
Going through a redundancy process is traumatic but you will find that you become hardened and come to expect the mistreatment to which you are being subjected. Keeping a diary of how you felt at points throughout the whole process is a way of tracking how it is impacting upon your life (both work and personal)."
It's true, writing things down helps! But also: you definitely harden up.
#AcademicVenting I had not mentioned so far: Goldsmiths lectures and union are resisting redundancies in many ways, including a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB). Senior Management have responded with highly punitive 50% salary deductions, for 2 months. So we are losing one month pay!!
This too is unbelievably stressful - in fact, is stressing me out more than anything at the moment (unappreciative teenage children for a start). Especially when you might still end up jobless. #UCU.
#AcademicVenting We now have a GoFundMe for our Goldsmiths #UCU hardship fund, due to 50% salary reductions for marking boycott. If you are in HE and in your union, perhaps you could ask your branch whether they could contribute? Feel awkward about saying this but: every donation welcome.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-goldsmiths-ucu-fight-mass-redundancies
#AcademicVenting we are trying to fight draconian redundancies at Goldsmiths at a time when there is a concerted effort by government, the anti-woke brigade and others to reduce the HE sector as a whole. There are more and more articles like this one, talking about how little bits of optimism amount to a collective “cloud cuckooland”.
There is a real onslaught.
#AcademicVenting this coincides with the UK government’s calamitous attempt to combat “net migration” by reducing the number of international students; they are no longer allowed to bring dependents (neither are care workers. The cruelty!) This is a tweet by our lovely prime minister. We have a government that is actively hostile to HE (one of the economically most important sectors in the country)
#AcademicVenting They tried to go one step further by abolishing the current work visa for international students (allowing int students to stay for 2 years after graduating). Luckily the Migratory Advice Committee firmly pushed back on this last week, and hopefully none of this will come to anything once Tories are out, but it’s impacting
International students decision making - we already have offer holders pulling out of our MAs.
#AcademicVenting Just to say again: all this is so stressful- losing 50% of your salary for a marking boycott that maybe won’t make any difference, given the wider hostile environment. It’s not even about the reality of challenges; it’s the fact that all these reports are out there, right now. It gives ammunition to those wanting to fire us, and weakens our case.
#AcademicVenting The crisis in HE (higher education) is so tangible it’s making headline news; our dangerous exposure to changes in migration/visa regimes and therefore whims of government ever more apparent.
Who is completely silent on all this (as fas as I know), as on everything else? Starmer, Labour. It would make a massive difference, and would work for them. But no. Everyone beholden to the same - imagined! - anti-woke, anti-immigration, anti-university voter.
#AcademicVenting Anyway, here a nice comment piece by Polly Toynbee
“Tories and their pollsters see as clear as day that the growth in highly educated citizens, above the OECD average, is a social and political revolution not in their favour: the more educated people are, the less likely they are to vote for what John Stuart Mill called “the stupidest party”.”
#AcademicVenting I haven't been writing much here as it's just been too stressful. We are now officially in Stage 2; none of the counterproposals, none of our objections during "collective consultation" made any difference; still planning to make over 130 of us redundant. But we are resisting! Students have occupied Deptford Town Hall! #NotADoneDeal #UCU @ucu
#AcademicVenting if anyone wants to know what Stage 2 of the redundancy process is like:
#HungerGames with mitigation forms.
Today our “Individual Assessment Form” (IAFs - formerly known as SMQs - “skills management questionnaires” - no idea why the name change but who cares)
are due in. We all have to attach things like student evaluations and progression data as well as publications, grants, etc. Then we will be scored against each other and some of us selected for redundancy. I am in a pool of 4 (with 3 wonderful colleagues) - we are going down to 2.
#AcademicVenting #HungerGames for the last two days i have been getting the loveliest student testimonials and frankly been in a complete state. All that kindness and caring. But i can’t bear that simultaneously these are also instruments of potential harm against my colleagues. I have not even started work on my IAF, partly due to other deadlines, partly because i simply can’t bring myself to.
#AcademicVenting #HungerGames Here is my lovely colleague Michael Rosen at the picket line yesterday, asking:
how will they score “We Are Going On A Bearhunt”?
#AcademicVenting Did this post separately but want to add to 
#AcademicVenting Well, we all submitted our "Individual Assessment Forms" last Wednesday. Now looks like ALL cuts in my department will be made at my level, Senior Lecturer; 3 out 5 of us are supposed to go.
It is absolutely INSANE how all this is unfolding; the kinds of people who are in charge of all this. We are supposed to hear on Friday who it will be.
#AcademicVenting Surreally, I am on my way to a big conference, Anthropology and Education. Doing a panel on regenerative anthropology. But the conference cost an obscene £320, that I only secured at the last second - we don’t have a research budget anymore, but suddenly we did get one now (in June). Meanwhile of course also #redundancy looming. We so desperately need a new everything. #RegenerativeAnthropology, #RegenerativeAcademia, everything.
For the (self-pitying) record: we will hear Monday or Tuesday who will be made redundant. “We” being those of us still in scope; there has been a bewildering reduction of “in scope” groups this past week, after everyone spent days and days on their IAFs (see above).
I am in scope; all reduncancies in my dep are at SL/Reader grade. 5 of us scored (out of “90”) and ranked. Top 2 stay, bottom 2 go, middle gets 0.5. It is psychologically torturous. We are friends! #HungerGames
Well this is it. i am being made redundant.
#AcademicVenting #Redundancy It’s now been a week - what a week, with two historic elections thrown in too!
A HUGE thank you for all the lovely, supportive messages. They have really helped me, hugely. Knowing that others have gone through this (what a total experience), and that there are other possibilities. It’s early days (and there is so much work in the reduncancy process itself), but as so many of you’ve said: other doors may open.
Maybe i will keep this to share this transition?
#AcademicVenting #Redundancy Two weeks today and sadly not quite there yet with finding new ways forward - for one, there is just so much to do, get your head around, decisions to make around redundancy process itself. And this past week a physical reaction set in, just sheer exhaustion.
Also want to note once more: it really is unbelievable what is being done to myself and 96 brilliant colleagues. The “how” aa much as the “what”. And to Goldsmiths. It is total vandalism, brutal, traumatic.
#AcademicVenting #Redundancy These days I really can’t find the words to recount what’s going on. Let’s just say a lot of back and forth; chaos, incompetence and cruelty; never ending visionless mediocrity that destroys everything.
One thing to report: i have now had the privilege of an ACAS webinar. More competent than anything coming from SMT, but no faces, no in person questions, and a cheery “See you next time” screen at the end. Corporate dystopia, straight from #BlackMirror
After more back and forth (a great 0.5 was advertised for us 3 to compete for - same duties, half pay - but none of us applied) and more charming communications from our “Transformatipn Programme team” (always anonymous!) I have now accepted “enhanced redundancy”. Onwards and upwards!
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry 
.
@pvonhellermannn This is incredibly stressful and absolutely toxic.
I don't know how any of you will be able to do much work this week.
I hope it get resolved for you
@pvonhellermannn Absolutely horrendous that they force people to do this. Really disturbing. 
It’s awful. Hugs from me too.
Things aren’t fabulous in the US either — we just quit paying taxes - esp the wealthy amongst us - and made all of our young people take on more debt than salary they’ll ever see in a lifetime.
@pvonhellermannn I am sorry to hear that. I imagine jobs in your field are not common and would probably involve moving. It must be a nightmare. I hope it turns out ok x
@Beedazzled exactly this. That is exactly it. If i find one! But thank you for this message
Hugs (or sincere best wishes if you don't like hugs.)
@pvonhellermannn Sorry to hear it.
@pvonhellermannn i am so SO sorry.
it's been a really tough decade to be an academic scientist.
i hope you can take some time for yourself and just relax for a bit before you have to start worrying about the next thing.
@pvonhellermannn Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Take care 
@pvonhellermannn Oh god. I'm so sorry Pauline.
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry. Wishing you all you need to get through this.
@pvonhellermannn I am so sorry to hear this. Sending you good thoughts for the best next steps, and also for right now, as you process the news.
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry. I hope you find something. The work you do is important and has certainly meant something to me
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry. Best wishes for the future.
I am so sorry.
(And what terrible language they impose on us. Your _job_ was declared redundant. _You_ remain vital.)
@pvonhellermannn that really awful. I hope that you can find somewhere else to continue your work. Given where we are now in running down our universities I can't see that being that easy in your own field at least in this country and international moves have become so much harder to engineer now too.
When I took redundancy (in 2003, in much better economic times) I found that I was considered overqualified (and too expensive as I was top of grade) to get another SL position and ended up leaving academia for somewhere else, in my case the civil service, where they valued my expertise and actually paid me more. But back then there were jobs to apply for.
@marjolica maybe that’s where i should head too! Open for anything at the moment. Thank you for your support and really helpful message
@pvonhellermannn god that's awful, I'm so sorry :(
@pvonhellermannn I am so sorry, and enraged.
@pvonhellermannn Wishing you all the best. You'll always have friends here. 
Thinking of you, and hoping there's some scope for it to eventually be a "one door closes, another opens". But meanwhile, condolences for the loss & the unwanted change & upheaval.
@pvonhellermannn Dreadful news.
Damn. It's awful in principle, and it's terrible that it's you.
@pvonhellermannn Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear it. What a terrible thing to go through.
@pvonhellermannn Well crap. I hope this will miraculously turn into a good thing from some perspective later in life.
It ain't right but I hope you will be 
@pvonhellermannn What the actual fuck?
@pvonhellermannn Oh no, so sorry to hear this!
@pvonhellermannn truly appalling. I’m so sorry. What a mess UK higher education is in. And Goldsmiths especially.
@pvonhellermannn my department is suffering the same unfair cuts. We have just balloted to strike again, it's always get rid of the lecturing staff, never the bloated management class.
@pvonhellermannn I’m so sorry.
@pvonhellermannn really sorry to hear that Pauline.
@pvonhellermannn Very sorry to hear this. It's monstrous to treat people like this.
I'm so sorry Pauline. I've come to admire your work so much through your posting - now it is their loss, but your struggle. And in the midst of all this you've done such a service by documenting this mad hellish situation.
I'm beaming you all the best vibes from across the Pond!
@pvonhellermannn I am so sorry you had to go through this and yes please keep us updated.
I missed your previous post Pauline, telling us you'd been made redundant - so sorry.
@pvonhellermannn Just keeping you in my thoughts as I know many others here are.
@kate Thank you Kate 
@pvonhellermannn I'm so sorry to hear this, Pauline. It is absolutely absurd that the people who teach, the people who literally make the university a university, are the ones being let go.
@hydropsyche yes, it really is crazy, and yet this is what is happening. So many aspects of this (the financial instability, the minds and values of the people in charge) are all thr result of marketisation. Universities are now run like corporations, but they are really are not the same.
@pvonhellermannn
So sorry to hear of this, it is really no way to treat faculty. You aren't producing light bulbs, but science and students who will eventually run the place.
First: self-care! Drop everything and treat yourself to a chocolate ice cream! Things will sort out better if you are good to yourself.
Then figure out what you want to do, and do it! And keep us informed, we are all with you in spirit!
@pvonhellermannn I hadn't realised that you have been made redundant. I am sorry to hear.
As a side note, I hate the use of the word "redundant" in English to mean "fired for economical reasons". You can only be redundant if there is a merger, otherwise there is a decision being made for economy reasons (or whatever else)
@CCochard yes, agree! It’s a horrible word
@pvonhellermannn I think it creates extra violence with misnaming things.
You are not (made) redundant, someone took the decision to reduce the amount of staff. It's a very different thing
@pvonhellermannn the corporate dystopia, hideous!