On 4 November 2010 14:11, David Wells <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,
The following is the text of a letter I have just received in response to mine.
Regrettably, this is less encouraging than the response of the University of
Toronto to protests about its cuts.
It would be interesting to know if others have had the same, or a similar, reply.
Best wishes
David Wells





Faculty of Arts
Office of the Dean




Faculty of Arts, 3-5 Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1TB
Telephone:      +44 (0)117 33 17349
Fax:            +44 (0)117 33 17469
e-mail:         [log in to unmask]
web-address:    http://www.bris.ac.uk/


Thursday 4th November 2010

Dear Professor Wells

Thank you for your email of 30 October.

We are all aware of the significant challenges our sector faces and Bristol is not
immune.  The University needs to make savings both in academic and support
staff costs and these are shared across the Institution.

In terms of the Arts Faculty, reduction of posts is happening in all three Schools,
mostly through routine retirements and voluntary severance or early retirements.
Across this we are, of course, ensuring we take a strategic view to ensure future
viability of programmes and the University is absolutely committed to the long-
term future of the School and all of its subjects.  This is a very important point to
make when one sees other universities reducing their modern languages
programmes by up to half.

The proposal is to disinvest from the Medieval/Early Modern research
component in German. This would align with our research strengths which focus
on the later periods.  As an academic and as Dean of the Faculty, these are
proposals that I find personally hard but unfortunately necessary.

I would like to thank you for your email and the spirit in which it was sent.
These are very challenging times for our sector and all of us, I am sure, would
wish that these difficult and unpalatable proposals did not need to be made.

Yours sincerely


Charles Martindale

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