The students of Newcastle are asking you to help us challenge injustice within our university. Newcastle University has taken the decision to terminate eight teaching contracts, making teaching staff unemployed - depriving us of their knowledge and teaching.

We call upon you as Vice-Chancellor to act to unequivocally and fully renew the contracts of affected staff.

These dismissals are very austere, representing a 16% cutback within the politics department. We are asking you to sign this petition to help reinstate these unfairly dismissed lecturers.

A major issue across the U.K is the employment of lecturers on temporary and zero-hour contacts, which allows universities to not renew contracts with very little notice, rendering employment very precarious. This reflects the casualisation of education across the country, and how it can be an incredibly difficult environment for academics. Redundancy will have a massive impact upon staff, who are now in a very uncomfortable and unfortunate position, having to look for work (likely involving a relocation) at a highly unusual and very precarious time. This reflects the instability and subsequent casualisation of the contracts many of lecturers are employed on, a major aspect of the motivation of recent industrial action.

The redundancies will disrupt the education of many students. Professor William Maloney, Head of the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, told The Newcastle Tab that “students will not be negatively impacted by these changes.” However, we don’t see how the university can sack approximately 1/6th of a departments staff and it not having a negative effect on students. Students are already facing severe uncertainty due to the current circumstances, and these redundancies represent the ever-falling value of our tuition fees.

Another issue is that the university has terminated these contracts incredibly subtly without emailing politics students, which feels very underhanded and doesn’t feel as if students are being included in these decisions. 

Importantly however, the majority of these lecturers are also international in the face of the global inequality movement 

The affected lecturers are:
Ben Coulson
Adrienne de Ruiter
Chris Wheeler
Harris Dousemetzis
Lucrezia Canzutti
Neil Russel
Sorana Jude
Tom Caygill

Please sign and share this petition, in solidarity with those who provide our education, and giving students and our community the tools necessary to achieve and prosper.

Endorsed by:
Newcastle University Labour Society
Newcastle Marxist Society
Newcastle University Stand Up To Racism Society