The material on this blog was originally posted on Charles Antaki's departmental web-pages on Loughborough University's site.
It was removed on the instructions of Loughborough University management.
Correspondents have asked for the reasons.
I was able to have a wide-ranging discussion with the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities about his instructions to remove the page (and, subsequently, the link to this blog). Should it be of interest, I reproduce below my e-mail to the Dean, in which I outline my understanding of what was said.
The Dean has not yet favoured me with confirmation of this account of what he said (some two weeks after this message was sent to him), so please treat my version of what he said as merely that.
I will of course post any errors or misunderstandings if and when these are communicated to me.
Dear [Loughborough University Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities] Thank you for the chance to discuss the matter collegially in a phone conversation today. In a sense, the issue is closed, and we can all resume our normal business; indeed, before our discussion, I had followed your instruction, and had removed all traces of the Surrey protest site and its contents from lboro.ac.uk pages, and there remains no casus belli. But I was grateful for the friendly exchange we had about the reasons for the University's instructions, and I would like to record my understanding of our conversation here. I was heartened to hear that you felt that it is in principle be wrong to muzzle protest, and that the idea of the criticising another University's practices - leaving aside whether one agreed with the criticism - is not in itself unacceptable. It was reassuring to find that we had common ground. You were, however, very clear that criticism of another University's employment practices is not acceptable in certain circumstances. One of these is when the criticism is issued by a member of staff using Lboro facilities - in this case, of course, a Lboro website. The reason for that, you explained, is that the criticism may then be construed as in some way representing this University's view, even in the most tangential way. You were good enough to explain that there is no further reason; that this itself is reason enough. You observed that we need not explore the reasons why it would be bad or wrong for Lboro to be associated with criticism of another University. As I say, I'm grateful for the exchange of views, and I hope that I was able to articulate my own position - that I am of course keen to spare Lboro University embarrassment, and am happy to co-operate with an instruction from the Dean, representing the University authorities. We did, however agree to disagree with the very last point of the debate: whether or not there is a need to explain why it is that criticising another University's employment practices is something inappropriate for Lboro to be associated with, even tangentially. I hope I have captured the essence of our discussion? I'm aware that many people will be asking me to explain the appearance and disappearance of the offending pages, and I'm concerned to give a fair account. Charles |
