Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[David Yetter <dyetter@ksu.edu>]

Though the part of the elephant we as category theorists see is the part of  the U. Leicester administration's ill-conceived plans that affect mathematics, those plans are larger:  the eight pure mathematicians are among 100 faculty (academic staff in British terms) being threatened with not lay-offs, but firing (compulsory redundancy in British terms), so that a call for all academicians to boycott U. Leicester until the plan is scrapped has been  issued by the University and College Union (UCU):  https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott
[https://ucu.org.uk//media/11504/Boycott-Leicester/image/leicesterboycott_share_rev.png]<https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott>
UCU - Support the Leicester boycott<https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott>
The University of Leicester threatened over 100 staff with compulsory redundancy. Managers refuse to share data on finances with campus trade unions. The long-running dispute has led to UCU implementing the ultimate sanction of being greylisted; UCU members have also begun a marking and assessment boycott.The sanction means UCU is asking its members, other trade unions, labour movement ...
www.ucu.org.uk
Best Thoughts,
D.Y.


________________________________
From: David Roberts <droberts.65537@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 8, 2021 7:34 PM
To: categories@mta.ca <categories@mta.ca>
Subject: categories: Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

This email originated from outside of K-State.


For what it's worth, we should point out the elephant in the room:

"The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Nishan
Canagarajah, wants to lay off all 8 of their pure mathematicians,
including the only 2 women with permanent positions, and then rehire
just 3 of these mathematicians — to do teaching, but not research. He
and his flunkies claim:
[…] to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational
modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research
in Pure Mathematics […]"
(source: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/01/problems_at_the_university_of.html)

"The London Mathematical Society has been informed that the University
of Leicester is consulting over a proposal to reduce the size of its
Pure Mathematics Group to be teaching only, in order to “meet the
rising market demand of artificial intelligence, computational
modelling, digitalisation and data science”. The Society strongly
opposes this proposal and believes it to be seriously flawed for the
following reasons. ..."
(source: https://www.lms.ac.uk/news-entry/09022021-1444/mathematics-university-leicester)

And as a result:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11533/Global-boycott-of-University-of-Leicester-begins-today

If someone can update us on the status of the various category
theorists and allies it would be very useful.

Thanks,

David


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