Students and lecturers at Middlesex University (Trent Campus), campaigning to stop the closure of the phiolosophy department, were stood up by their Dean this morning – and took matters into their own hands. 

Some students are staging a sit-in in the corridor outside the Dean’s office, others have locked themselves inside, demanding that the Dean turn up and face his accusers.  The proposed closure of Middlesex Philosophy has provoked wide outrage and gained a significant profile in the press.  The occupiers need our support: send messages of solidarity to 07799156481.

The campaign has also agreed to send a delegation to the UCU strike demo in Central London tomorrow, starting at 1pm in front of the King’s College picket lines, Strand WC2.

This morning, for the first time in 10 years, graduate employees at New York University returned to the offices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to file a petition for recognition of their union and a formal union election.
From hand to hand, organizers passed a hefty box full of cards signed by a clear majority of NYU's estimated 1800-plus bargaining unit, then delivered it to an NLRB officer. The union's majority was certified by the American Arbitration Association last week.

With the move, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC/UAW 2110) hopes to become the first union of its kind at a private university since graduate employees were stripped of federal labor law protections by Bush appointees to the NLRB in 2004. The ruling held that these employees' relationship with their employer was "primarily educational."

That decision was condemned by the UN's International Labor Organization as a violation of the internationally recognized right to organize. Dissenting board members called it "woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality."

Late on Monday 26 April, staff in Philosophy at Middlesex University in London were informed that the University executive are to close all Philosophy programmes: undergraduate, postgraduate and MPhil/PhD.

Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject at Middlesex University, with 65% of its research activity judged 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' in the UK government's recent Research Assessment Exercise. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world. Its MA programmes in Philosophy have grown in recent years to become the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009. Middlesex offers one of only a handful of programmes left in the UK that provides both research-driven and inclusive post-graduate teaching aimed at a wide range of students, specialist and non-specialist. It is also one of relatively few such programmes that remains financially viable, currently contributing close to half of its total income to the University's central administration.