Thread by @raphavisses

If you care about any of the following:
#Fairness and #Integrity
#Honesty in #HigherEd
#Liverpool and #Wellbeing
Can you please RT?
👇

It pains me to have to tweet the following about the University where I have spent 18 largely happy years. I am still an honorary professor there and I want it to remain an honour.

What is happening at the University of Liverpool is not normal and it threatens not just the 47 academics who are threatened with the sack. What is at stake is even bigger. I explain why below. Please RT to ask management to reconsider.

Both teaching and research missions of universities require high integrity and respect for truth, in fact, more than respect, yearning for truth. The current campaign to sack the 47 is based on Trumpian lies ; Trumpian because of their dimension and their cruelty.

The 1st lie is that the sack of the 47 is to improve health in Liverpool. There is zero evidence that it wld do that & large amount of evidence that it would do the opposite by threatening research infrastructures & projects, including some funded by local biomedical charities.

That first lie is particularly pernicious and cruel because the implication is that those opposing the sack don’t share that very noble aim ; in fact, it casts the colleagues defending their jobs and livelihoods as selfish.

The 2nd lie is that those job cuts are the natural consequence of a project of consultation involving the community at large : the EPVC now says “Changes [i.e the sack of 47 academics] are coming as part of a plan known as "Project SHAPE." liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool…

That project wld be best renamed as “Project DECEPTION”. The same EPVC, in response to concerns abt job cuts in 2018:

“I can’t say it enough, this [Project Shape]” is not driven by budget.”

“This is not about shedding jobs, colleagues or staff”

and in 2019:

"This has never ever been about the money”

The third lie is about those principles which, according to the EPVC in 2019, underpin project SHAPE, “equality, transparency, honesty, equality [sic], trust”.

The truth is that it is hard to imagine a more unfair, opaque, dishonest and dispiriting process than the one currently happening. Colleagues who were recommended for promotions just months ago receive completely unexpected threats of dismissal with zero warning.

In many instances it is clear that their own line managers had no idea that this was coming to them.

Please join me in respectfully asking the University of Liverpool to reconsider.

@RebeccaMJourno @LiamThorpECHO @tommartincrone @CllrKennedy @Liverpoolshell @LouiseEllman @tomcardwell1

EPVC at faculty forums in 2018 and 2019