This is for your information and I thought of sharing with you.
Ronnie Rogers
----- Forwarded by Ronnie Rogers/I.S./Amnesty International on 13/08/01
16:21 -----
Louise Haysey
<[log in to unmask] To: Richard Schofield <[log in to unmask]>,
k> Sir Roger Tomkys <[log in to unmask]>,
Gerd Nonneman
03/08/01 12:30 <[log in to unmask]>, Anoush
Ehteshami <[log in to unmask]>,
Carole Hillenbrand
<[log in to unmask]>, Ian Netton
<[log in to unmask]>, bruce stanley
<[log in to unmask]>, Ali Ansari
<[log in to unmask]>, Cigdem Balim
<[log in to unmask]>, ghada karmi
<[log in to unmask]>, Greg
Shapland <[log in to unmask]>,
jorgen nielsen <[log in to unmask]>,
paul starkey <[log in to unmask]>,
haifa jawad <[log in to unmask]>, Ronald
Rogers <[log in to unmask]>, Noel Brehony
<[log in to unmask]>, derek hopwood
<[log in to unmask]>, yasir
suleiman <[log in to unmask]>, eberhard
kienle <[log in to unmask]>, rosemary hollis
<[log in to unmask]>
cc:
Subject: Message from Noel
Dear All
Noel has asked me to forward a message to you all from Julia Bray in St
Andrews. He has asked me to forward also the following two comments:
a) Gerd nonneman comments that this is a truly appalling situation, and
to my mind absolutely deserves BRISMES action. One of the arguments to
be added is that St Andrews has some exceptionally highly rated
individuals (Bray & Hinnebusch in particular) in Middle Eastern studies,
and that a viable language teaching element is enormously valuable to
maintain the University's overall reputation in Middle Eastern studies.
Julia's (and James's) argument that their teaching of Arabic simply is
not viable without proper language teaching assistance, is of course a
clincher too.
b) Professor Yasir Suleiman (who was previously at St Andrews) is
suggesting a meeting at Durham in late August to consider a response. He
has also some comments on the facts that would need to be taken into
account in any Brismes action.
If any council member has any comments or suggestions please send them
to me (and please let me know if you would be prepared to attend a
meeting at Durham or elsewhere if necessary). My aim is to write/act in
early to mid September.
Noel
([log in to unmask])
This is the text of Dr Bray's message:
Dear Dr Brehony,
It was good to meet you at BRISMES last week. Here's an outline of the
situation of Arabic at St Andrews, as promised. I apologise for its
length.
The Department of Arabic and Middle East Studies (chairman since 1999:
Dr Richard Kimber) is small, and apart from some biblical Hebrew taught
in the School of Divinity, Arabic is the University's only Middle
Eastern or Oriental language. Since 1996, when I came to the department
as the Senior Lecturer and chairman, it has been part of the large
School of History. It consists of two full-time lecturers, Dr Kimber and
myself, and of a half-time lecturer, Ms Catherine Cobham. Our full-time
language assistant, Mr Taj Kandoura, who had been with us since 1997,
was dismissed in May with effect from the end of June, without prior
consultation or notice. Nevertheless, we've been told that we must
deliver the same Arabic degrees as before. This is impossible. Because
of the university's degree structures, we no longer have an Integrated
Year/Period Abroad. The students therefore depend greatly on sustained
contact with a native speaker. As St Andrews is remote, there is no
local pool of qualified native speakers on which to draw even for
hourly-paid assistance.
We have made repeated representations - fully documented - to the Head
of School and to the Principal; but these have been ignored, as have our
suggestions for a rational and responsible use of our resources. Our
External Examiner, Dr James Montgomery (Cambridge), wrote in his
examiner's report that he would resign as external if our language
teaching were depleted in this way. The Dean circulated the report to
the Head of School and the Principal, but we've had no reaction from
them. I've also told the Secretary of the University, Mr David Corner,
what the implications are of our losing our language assistant; again,
no response. The current Head of the School of History is Dr John
Hudson, a European mediaeval historian; the Principal is Dr Brian Lang,
who came to us from the British Library last year. Both can be contacted
at:
College Gate
North Street
St Andrews
Fife KY16 9AL
(Principal's telephone: 01334 46 2545
Principal's secretary: 01334 46 2549
fax: 01334 46 2554)
as can David Corner.
There are, surprisingly, no institutional channels for ordinary members
of the University to communicate with senior management, and there is no
standard mechanism of response. This makes it difficult to pursue our
representations. The points that we've tried to convey, on several
occasions, by sending letters are, roughly, these:
(1) Arabic Degrees: linguistic component. Whether the degrees are full
or joint, the benchmarks now require students to develop a reasonable
level of practical competence in Modern Standard Arabic. This calls for
a dedicated and preferably mother-tongue language teacher. Especially
during the two sub-Honours years, the teaching is necessarily intensive
compared to that in many other Arts subjects.
(2) Arabic Degrees: academic content. Arabic graduates are expected to
have received a grounding in crucial areas of thought, history and
culture. Yet if, without a language assistant, we are required to teach
the same degrees as before in terms of language contact hours, the
academic content will shrink. It is already restricted, because the
chairman of the department has been actively encouraged over the past
three years to teach outside the Department and to reduce his
contribution to departmental teaching, on the grounds that this brings
in more FTEs and so by knock-on makes our degrees more financially
viable.
(3) Value of Arabic degrees in the St Andrews degree portfolio. St
Andrews is a 1st division university; its School of History has some of
the leading history departments in the country; and the only other
Scottish university where Arabic is still taught is Edinburgh. It is
obvious that Arabic degrees, which add to the national pool of expertise
(whether UK or Scottish) should be viewed as an asset - and perhaps as a
public responsibility. In a university of the reputation of St Andrews,
and in a School of which it is particularly proud, we should not be
expected to deliver substandard degrees.
(4) Value of our degrees as delivered over the past 5 years. Over this
period, our degrees have had to adapt to a new, as it were free-market
modular system and to making up the ground lost after previous staff
losses. They are modestly conceived, with minimal contact hours and
strategic coverage, but they are delivered effectively. Students are
satisfied with them, and although they are competing with graduates from
generally much better-resourced departments, they have had a
surprisingly high success rate in getting FO and FO-related jobs or in
going on to further degrees at excellent universities. A high proportion
of our recent graduates have started careers in Arabic/Middle East
affairs. (They seem to be more drawn to public service-type jobs than
ones in trade and industry.) So these are efficient and worthwhile
degrees; and the number of graduates, and of Arabic students that we
teach overall (including those that don't choose to go on to Honours),
is comparable to that in Arabic departments with far more staff and much
more intensive teaching. All the above - about benchmarks, content,
comparisons of staff and student/graduate numbers and so on - has fallen
on deaf ears. We haven't been able to convince our management that
there's nothing subjective about the criteria we've outlined to them,
and that our degrees won't pass external audit if they're lacking in
these basics. One would have at least expected them to consult expert
opinion from outside, and we've urged them to; but there's been no
response.
Actually the handling of this - which management say is dictated by
financial considerations plus the publicity factor of the wish not to be
seen actually to close a department while Prince William is at St
Andrews - seems to me to be much more the result of internal politics
over "small" subjects which don't fit the standard mould, and even of
deliberate mismanagement. The last Principal, Struther Arnott, tried to
reflate the department by appointing me to a post in the Department and
Professor Ray Hinnebusch to one in International Relations and giving us
a full-time language assistant; but during the interregnum since he
retired, deflation not reflation seems to have been higher management's
aim. Hence Dr Kimber has been actively encouraged to teach outside his
home department rather than in it; hence our RAE was handled
shambolically, with a view, it seems to me, to concealing the existence
of the department rather than trying to strengthen its reputation and
research base (and its postgraduate/research funding earning potential,
an obviously major resource in small-subject departments): no-one in the
department was encouraged or given advice on how to prepare for the RAE
- consequently two members of the department didn't submit; only with
great difficulty did I manage to get permission to submit myself, and my
submission was put in as part of the Mediaeval History entry, with all
our department's non-publication research activities omitted. And though
Professor Ray Hinnebusch and Professor Hugh Kennedy's submissions were
vired to panel 46 for assessment (so Yasir Suleiman tells me), they were
entered under their home departments of International Relations and
Mediaeval History respectively. Hence the fact that St Andrews has quite
considerable research resources and achievements in Middle Eastern
subjects will not be reflected in the results of the RAE. Similarly,
departmental teaching resources have actually been wasted: if everyone
in Arabic & Middle East Studies had been expected to do their share of
departmental teaching, our degrees would not only still contain the
Qur'an taught in Arabic - which, bizarrely, has been dropped - but
everyone, with proper planning, would also have been able to do some
teaching outside the department in areas which attract larger student
numbers. We could have established a reputation for offering a varied
range of Islamic/Middle East history options as part of the still very
eurocentric History degrees, which could have been a useful feather in
the School of History's cap. Though we've asked for planning meetings to
discuss how to do this effectively, nothing has come of it.
What is even more worrying, as regards the future of the department (and
my own) is that I've not only had to put a disproportionate amount of my
time into language teaching to make up for the teaching which has been
taken away from the department, but I will, it seems, be expected to do
still more language teaching in the coming year and for the foreseeable
future? As I'm not a dedicated language assistant but, essentially a
specialist in medieval Arabic literature and social/cultural history,
all that this will achieve (if I agree to it) is to scrape our degrees -
which will be substandard - along for the next few years. I'm afraid
that the underlying plan is then to declare them unsatisfactory as not
meeting external benchmarks for the language component and probably for
range of coverage, and scrap the department.
I'd be most grateful for any support that BRISMES can give. I don't know
how profound the summer lull will be in management circles; but we
reconvene for teaching in mid-September, and I dare say managers and
administrators will be at their desks by the beginning of September if
not before.
I'm now (or rather by midweek) going off to Oxford to catch up on
research commitments. I may well not be able to access my e-mail here
because of a big IT services relocation; but my address is:
3 Skein Close
Little Oxford
Carington
Oxford OX 7XQ
and my (mobile) phone number is 07 977 902 398.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Julia Bray
From: Dr. Julia Bray, Senior Lecturer in Arabic, Dept. of Arabic &
Middle
East Studies, St. Andrews University, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL
Direct tel. (01334) 46 3083; Deptal. Secretary's e-mail and tel.:
[log in to unmask] (01334) 46 3632
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