Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[David Roberts]

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



David Roberts
Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts
Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com

On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 at 09:56, Crole, Roy L. (Dr.) <rlc3@leicester.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Please see below for new PhD positions
>
> https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/informatics-gta-2021
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Roy Crole.
>

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Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[David Yetter]

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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Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[Steve Vickers]

One of the ironies … No, I’m being polite. One of the particular stupidities of the plans is that Leicester has always had close connections between CS and pure maths. Simona Paoli, one of the main category theorists in pure maths there, founded the Yorkshire and Midlands Category Theory  Seminar, YaMCATS, which involved their CS department and now includes the School of CS at Birmingham.

That’s an existing research strength of Leicester that has a role to  play even in the envisaged “future research identity”, yet the plans are to kill it off.

The VC, Prof. Nishan Canagarajah, is an engineer whose field is multimedia signal processing: so it seems clear that these plans are his baby. But his dreams are blinding him to the organic reality of the Leicester University that he is supposed to be leading.

Steve Vickers.

> On 10 Jun 2021, at 02:38, droberts.65537@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 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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Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[Phillip-Jan van Zyl]

I'm sorry to spam the list on this issue, but I would only like to add that  I am working in what they call "AI, computational
modelling, digitalisation and data science" and my pure mathematics training serves me better than anything else may have served me.

Best regards
Phillip-Jan van Zyl

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Wednesday, June 9th, 2021 at 2:34 AM, David Roberts <droberts.65537@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
> David Roberts
>
> Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts
>
> Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com
>

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Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[Bob Coecke]

The company am Chief Scientist of was this week in the news:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2021/06/08/honeywell-quantum-solutions-and-cambridge-quantum-computing-merge-and-plan-to-go-public-by-end-of-year/
and I can confirm that most mathematicians in my personal team and in Ross Duncan’s team are not only pure, but need to have some category theory background, and the same is true for the physicists and computer scientists.  In fact there is a cross-company reading courdse going on about string diagrams.  

I wrote those dudes making the decissions in Leicester about all of this, but they didn’t care.  I think that it is not an isolated thing in Leicester, but much more widespread, and we are all guilty.  We were too busy in our own corners while the university management structures were exploding and taking control.  It’s not that we lost the fight, we didn’t even give them one, and now it is too late.  I am mostly talking about what I witnessed in the UK having been a UK academic for twenty years, and that decay contributed big time to me recently leaving academia.  In Oxford where I was it happenend a bit slower than in other places, but now parts of uni have gone rotten too there, and I experienced that the hard way.

> On 10 Jun 2021, at 19:32, Phillip-Jan van Zyl <mikorym@protonmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm sorry to spam the list on this issue, but I would only like to add that  I am working in what they call "AI, computational
> modelling, digitalisation and data science" and my pure mathematics training serves me better than anything else may have served me.
> 
> Best regards
> Phillip-Jan van Zyl
> 

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Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[David Yetter]

As the saying goes Americans and the British are two peoples united by the Atlantic Ocean and divided by a common language.  Simona Paoli wrote to me privately to clarify that in British usage "compulsory redundancy" is not firing, which in British usage applies only to dismissal for cause.

Over on my side of the pond "fired" is ambiguous, including both dismissal for cause and the analogue of British compulsory redundancy, while "laid off" (the term used in David Roberts's post) at least sometimes implies the possibility of being recalled to the same job.  Differences in language and employment law make things hard to communicate precisely, but I wanted to make clear that the circumstances were more dire than what Americans might read in hearing of "lay-offs".

I really wish our budget circumstances at K-State were better so I could advocate hiring mathematicians from U. Leicester with some hope of success.  Anyone on this list whose university is bucking the global trend and actually able to hire new faculty (academic staff) despite the pandemic should be  advocating doing just that.

Best Thoughts,
David Yetter



________________________________
From: simona.paoli@virgilio.it <simona.paoli@virgilio.it>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2021 2:36 PM
To: David Yetter <dyetter@ksu.edu>
Subject: Re: categories: Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK

This email originated from outside of K-State.


Dear David,

   being made compulsory redundant and being fired are completely different things in the UK from the point of you of the employment law and chances of  finding another job. Although both means losing one's job, being fired (technically called 'dismissal') in the UK is the result of underperformance or having done something wrong from the part of the employee. Not so in the case of compulsory redundancy. In a country like the UK where there is no tenure this difference is very important.
Of course we all agree that what the University of Leicester has done is crazy, sickening and immoral-- those of us affected have had our lifes turned  upside down.

I appreciate you wrote your email to help, but I would also like to ask you  not to tell people that we have been fired, but rather that we have lost our jobs, for the reasons above. But the crucial thing for those of us who are lost our job is to remain scientifically active while making job applications to find academic jobs somewhere else, which is what we all want to do.

Any support from the category theory community to keep us connected is extremely valuable and appreciated. I remain emplou
yed at Leicester until 10 August 2021, but people can always reach me at this personal email.

Best wishes,
Simona.




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PhD positions at Leicester, UK

[Crole, Roy L. (Dr.)]

Dear Colleagues,

Please see below for new PhD positions

https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/informatics-gta-2021

Kind regards,

Roy Crole.



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