Linguistics at King's College London

[Nikolas Gisborne]

Hello all,

Can I add to Ruth's note something that might not be quite clear. Meyer-Viol
does 75% of the teaching of Logic for the Philosophy programmes in the
*University
of London* under an intercollegiate scheme. That is, this proposal doesn't
just savage the teaching of logic at KCL -- it has significant consequences
for the other colleges too.

Apologies for cross posting.

Nik Gisborne.

On 2 February 2010 13:40, Doug Arnold <doug at essex.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm forwarding this at the request of Ruth Kempson. In short, it says that
> a number of
> colleagues at KCL in London are under threat, and asks for our support.
> Apologies for cross-posting.
> Best,
> Doug
>
> Linguists targeted for Redundancy at King's College London
>
> The management of King's College London has embarked on a program of
> radical
> restructuring in both its Science and Humanities Faculties. This program
> involves redefining research missions of Departments in these schools under
> thematic areas that, in Humanities at least, downplay many major areas of
> research and teaching, and explicitly exclude linguistics in any
> department.
> As part of this process, Jonathan Ginzburg has been targeted for redundancy
> on the grounds that he no longer fits the redefined group for applied logic
> and the theory of computing in the Computer Science: with testimony from
> leading international researchers that his work on the logical analysis of
> interaction falls directly within the new group description, this matter is
> now under appeal. Professor Shalom Lappin and Dr. Wilfried Meyer-Viol of
> the
> Philosophy Department have been summarily told that the College is
> "disinvesting" from computational linguistics, and that the plan for
> restructuring the School for Arts and Humanities will mean the elimination
> of their positions in Philosophy by August 31. The move is an attempt to
> use
> computational linguistics, a non-existent entity in Philosophy, to target
> these two researchers. Lappin's research is fundamentally
> interdisciplinary,
> integrating core areas of philosophy, specifically intensional logic,
> formal
> semantics, and philosophy of language into cognitive science, machine
> learning, and computational learning theory. Meyer-Viol is first and
> foremost a philosophical logician who does 75% of the logic teaching in the
> University, who publishes both in this area, in formal grammar, and in
> issues at the interface of syntax/semantics. They are fully integrated into
> the Department's research, teaching, and administrative activities. The
> School is also targeting other linguists, and other departments. It is
> worth
> pointing out that the King's Philosophy Dept. was ranked third in the UK in
> the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, and the Principal, Rick Trainor, has
> referred to the Philosophy Department as "the jewel in the crown" of the
> College, so that this is an extraordinary way to encourage one of its
> strongest departments, ironically at a time when interdisciplinary research
> is very generally recognized by national and international funding bodies
> as
> the way forward.
>
> The issue is however wider than this, since these moves are made as an
> instance of a broad procedure affecting the entire academic community of
> two
> primary Schools of the College. Initiating movements to give people notice
> is going on in parallel with supposed consultation, with no attempt at
> finding alternative ways of reducing the salary budget: indeed all
> academics
> in Humanities have been told that they are in effect “at risk of
> redundancy”, even though the consultation process is only now beginning to
> take place. This is part of a pattern of widespread cuts and
> “restructuring”
> that is currently going on in British universities, but for such a
> distinguished institution of research, scholarship, and teaching to allow
> these management-led procedures in determining both academic content and
> individuals/areas to be targeted sets a very dangerous precedent for the
> suppression of academic freedom and the destruction of the autonomy of
> research across the UK and beyond.
>
> We urge you to write to the management at King's to protest these actions.
> The people to send email to are:
>
> Professor Rick Trainor (principal at kcl.ac.uk) Principal,
>
> Professor Jan Palmowski (jan.palmowski at kcl.ac.uk), Head of School for Arts
> &
> Humanities,
>
> Professor Keith Hoggart (keith.hoggart at kcl.ac.uk),Vice Principal for Arts
> &
> Science,
>
> Mr C. Mottershead (chris.mottershead at kcl.ac.uk) Vice Principal for
> Research
> & Innovation
>
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