Forwarding the following – hot on the heels of impending doom for some major philosophers at KCL: c/o various Medieval listserves.
Many will already know this, but just in case there are some who don’t yet. The endowed chair in Palaeography at King’s College, London is in danger of being cut…in fact the current chair holder David Ganz has already been informed he will be without a position at the beginning of the term in Sept. This chair dedicated to palaeography is Britain’s only such chair; in fact I know of no other such chair or position in the world solely dedicated to palaeography and related issues. The hue and cry has gone up and should. Scholars the world over, even those not directly involved in early medieval palaeography ought to be dismayed at this development–especially as it comes on the heals of a job announcement for 3 people to work on “text-related” humanities computing initiatives at KCL. Ok, granted those 3 positions are one year contracts, but nonetheless…nor am I against the growth of humanities computing…quite the opposite: I’m all for it. I’m just noting that it is odd to be announcing cuts, I believe I saw something about 21 faculty positions, while announcing new vacancies elsewhere–especially where those cuts are getting rid of an endowed chair that is at least unique in Britain, in the field of medieval studies, and even the world.

Many are trying to save the chair by writing emails and letters and I hope that we all can agree to do this. People on Facebook are facilitating a letter writer campaign. Addresses are:

The Principal
King’s College
principal@kcl.ac.uk

copied to: Professor Jan Palmowski
Head of the School of Arts and Humanities
King’s College
jan.palmowski@kcl.ac.uk

The Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=303202385890&ref=share

Please write and/or share this information with others via any means possible.

For those not on EMF-list, I commented yesterday that colleagues in Biblical Studies have faced this and world wide writing campaigns have in a couple of instances saved the positions and chairs at other universities.
Perhaps such a campaign in this instance may have a similar result.

[Ed.: Here are the scandalous job advertisements (c/o jobs.ac.uk, yesterday):

• http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AAP311/project-research-associate-analyst/
• http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AAP318/project-research-associates-analysts-2-posts]