Russian departments in trouble

[Neil Bermel]

Dear colleagues,

I regret to report that it's time to put on your whining (or
whingeing) hats again and take up the cause.  Two more Russian
programs here in Britain are under threat, and they'll be grateful
for your letters of support.  Details of the proposed cuts are below
in a message from Professor Rosalind Marsh, the chair of BASEES (the
British Slavists' association); the addresses of the two
universities concerned are:

University of Wales
Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2RX
United Kingdom

University of Northumbria
Carlisle
Cumbria CA3 8TX
United Kingdom

More information about these universities can be found on the Web at:

www.bangor.ac.uk
www.unn.ac.uk

Thanks in advance for your support.

Neil Bermel
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies
University of Sheffield

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Tue, 2 Dec 1997 17:03:52 +0000 (GMT)
To:            Russian-studies at mailbase.ac.uk
Subject:       Russian departments in trouble
From:          mlsrjm at bath.ac.uk
Reply-to:      R J Marsh <mlsrjm at bath.ac.uk>

I am sorry to have to tell everyone that Russian departments now under
threat of closure are the Departments at Bangor and Northumbria.

The Vice-Chancellor of Bangor is Sir Roy Evans (copy to Professor Gareth
Jones and/or Marilyn Minto), and the Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria is
Professor L.Barden (copy to Mrs Svetlana le Fleming).

It may be too late to organize an orchestrated campaign, but these
problems demonstrate yet again how individual universities are using the
underfunding of higher education in general to target Russian and East
European languages departments, which are small and vulnerable (though
often of high quality). This completely goes against the spirit of the
1995 HEFCE Report into Russian and East European Studies, which said that
Russian in 1995 was 'at about the right level'.

I hope that anyone who feels strongly will write in support of these
universities, as our own departments could be the next on the list...

I have already written on behalf of BASEES, and will probably also write
to the Higher Education Funding Councils and to the Ministers of Education
(for all the good that may do).