The University of Brighton is in crisis, with degrees and modules withdrawn at the last minute, seminars and lectures cancelled through indefinite strike action, continued staff resignations, student occupations, a private security presence on campus, and last year’s “graduates” still awaiting their final marks and degree classifications.

The reason for this massive disruption is a set of decisions by the Vice Chancellor Professor Debra Humphris and her team since Spring 2023. These include:

• Putting 400 academic staff ‘at risk’ of redundancy in May 
• 80 members of staff leaving the university through ‘voluntary’ redundancies
• 22 members of staff being forced to leave through compulsory redundancies, due to take place on 20 October 
• A consequent 10% slashing of the academic staff base and worsening of student-staff ratio
• 100% deduction of lecturers’ pay for participation in the nationwide UCU Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) from May through to September, making UoB the most punitive deductor of all institutions
• Closing degrees at both BA and MA level
• Closing seven of UoB’s hugely respected Centres of Research Excellence
• Closing its city centre art gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA)
• Taking legal action against students occupying university buildings
• Threatening the lecturers’ union UCU with an injunction for picketing
• Threatening UCU branch officers with disciplinary action for their organising of pickets.

These, and many similar, actions have had, and will continue to have, catastrophic consequences for the University. They have demoralised many staff, eviscerated goodwill, and created a climate of fear and mistrust in which colleagues are scared to express their views or exercise their legal right to take industrial action. 

Many lecturers not affected by the redundancies have resigned since July. The remaining staff and students are left fearful for the future of UoB as an institution capable of providing a worthwhile education to its students, of contributing to the production of knowledge, and of serving the local community. The University faces the ignominy of having been boycotted by the national union for its actions. Its reputation, nationally and abroad, is in jeopardy.

We, the undersigned, therefore take the unusual step of appealing directly to the Board of Governors. We are current and former staff members, students, alumni, academics from other institutions, and concerned members of the public. We believe that the University of Brighton has been a place of excellence and can be so again, but that this requires urgent action to stop the spiral of decline that its current management has set it upon.

This will require the following, at a minimum:

1. Rescinding the redundancies of the 22 threatened academic staff members. These colleagues are not ‘redundant’; they are outstanding teachers and researchers whose loss would entail further damage to the University’s teaching and research provision. There can be no financial case for their dismissal, since, with 80 ‘voluntary’ redundancies and countless additional resignations over the summer, the University has already actually exceeded the ‘savings target’, it announced in May, of 80-97 academic job losses.

2. That the Vice Chancellor, Professor Humphris, is asked to step down. In June, 94% of staff and students voted “no confidence” in the VC in an open poll. At the University of Leeds, Vice Chancellor and President Professor Simone Buitendijk has announced that she is resigning with almost immediate effect, after motions of ‘no confidence’ in her were passed in June and July by all three of the campus unions. This is in response to a picture that is uncannily similar to that at Brighton, of student occupations, drastic deterioration of industrial relations, strikes by staff unions, and punitive deductions in relation to marking and assessment boycotts. The situation at Brighton is comparable – or indeed worse – than that at Leeds, and yet, incredibly, the VC refuses to resign. 

3. The restoration of democratic processes within the University. It is necessary that a new senior management team take seriously the need to listen to the voices of staff and students, and implement processes for meaningful consultation and for participation in decision-making bodies. This should begin with an investigation into what has gone so wrong this year and how this can be prevented from ever happening again.

Only a change of management and a change of direction can halt the downward spiral and restore the University of Brighton to the position of respect that it has formerly, rightfully, enjoyed. 

Yours sincerely,
The Undersigned