Statement from the Philosophy team, University of Dundee
Philosophy at Dundee will continue. Three joint honours degrees — Art and Philosophy, English and Philosophy, and Philosophy and Psychology — will carry on recruiting, and our plans to develop proposals for new undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Philosophy and AI have been approved, with support on record from Professor Luciano Floridi (Yale) and Professor Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh). Neither of those things were on the table in June when the proposal to suspend all named philosophy degrees was first announced.
The ground shifted because of you. Nearly 6,000 people have signed, including academics at 450 universities in 51 countries, from Harvard to Tokyo, Sydney to Stellenbosch. A small programme with a large international reach has bucked the trend of closures across the arts and humanities, demonstrating the power of collective mobilisation and the ongoing relevance of creative critical thinking.
The picture is not all good. The University still intends to suspend single honours Philosophy and multiple joint honours degrees, including Philosophy and Politics, Philosophy and International Relations, Philosophy and Film and History and Philosophy, without providing evidence of any clear financial rationale or assessment of the risks. Moreover, Philosophy staff remain in a redundancy pool. That sits within a plan to cut 154 posts, taking the total workforce reduction past 1,000 since the University’s financial crisis began.
We want to thank the people who made the difference. Professor Luciano Floridi (Yale), Professor Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh), Professor Jack Reynolds (Deakin) and Dr Katrina Mitcheson (UWE) wrote personally to the University’s senior management in support of the programme. The British Philosophical Association, the American Philosophical Association, the Australasian Association of Philosophy, the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, the British Society for Phenomenology, the Society for European Philosophy and the Society for Women in Philosophy UK each put their name behind us. We are particularly grateful to Professor Simon Kirchin, Professor Fiona Macpherson and Professor Helen Beebee of the British Philosophical Association, and to Professor Jack Lyons of the Scots Philosophical Association.
We are grateful too to former colleagues, among them Phil Braham and the late Professor Nicholas Davey, who co-established the Art and Philosophy degree with Duncan of Jordanstone almost twenty-five years ago.
Our largest debt is to our students, past and present. John Suchet, who read Philosophy here from 1963 to 1967, and Pamela Butchart, an MA Philosophy graduate, spoke up at the very beginning, when the campaign had nothing but a petition and an argument. Their early support mattered more than they will know. And to everyone in Dundee who signed: this is a programme embedded in its city and answerable to it, and that endorsement is not something we take lightly.
Our thanks also to The Courier, The Herald, The Scotsman, Times Higher Education, The Irish Times and the Daily Nous for covering the story, and to everyone involved in This is what you'll lose, the Art and Philosophy exhibition against the cuts at Generator Projects — itself an argument for what our joint degree with Duncan of Jordanstone makes possible.
We now want to build on this. The case for philosophy in the context of AI is already on the public record: Scotland's AI Strategy 2026–2031 names Amanda Askell, who graduated in Philosophy from Dundee, as one of only five AI Pioneers, describing her as “influencing how advanced AI systems behave worldwide.”
The world now knows where we are. We look forward to welcoming the students who come next.
The Courier discusses the future of philosophy at Dundee here:
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/5566845/dundee-university-philosophy-disability/