Trouble at Mill
For some reason I’m slightly reluctant to blog about the current unfortunate goings on at SOAS (my college) - perhaps because they’re so depressing - but I feel obliged to nonetheless. The fact that SOAS Library has summarily sacked a number of respected specialist librarians as part of its restructuring is now causing controversy beyond these shores and upsetting people concerned with area studies in many other universities.
It seems at the moment that only the librarians responsible for Japan/Korea and China have been dismissed but the management may also want to get rid of other specialists like the Arabic librarian. This is obviously a huge threat to area studies in general and East Asia in particular, especially after the recent closure of East Asian programmes at Durham and the (averted) threat to Korean studies at Oxford. SOAS must have the best collection of Japanese, Korean and Chinese language books outside Asia and North America, making it a resource for the whole of Europe and beyond. With the loss of these librarians the school will not be able to properly maintain these collections and of course the level of teaching and research will likely be affected. All this doesn’t even begin to go into the unpleasant manner in which the librarians in question have been treated and the secrecy with which the school and library management have been carrying out this ‘restructuring’.
I don’t really want to comment further than this at the moment, but I can give the current situation. The sacked librarians have lost their appeal against the sackings and the school administration appears to be refusing any negotiations with academic staff. As a result it looked likely that some 20 academics in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures would officially resign their posts this afternoon (meaning their actual posts of responsibility rather than their teaching jobs). It’s very good to see that the academics have woken up to what is going on and are willing to fight this. Unfortunately it seems that the School admininstration has dug itself in and it would probably take considerably more drastic action to change their minds.
The Education Guardian has carried two articles on this issue: here and here.
