LATEST – UCU calls for an international comprehensive academic boycott of London Metropolitan University

UCU Statement

Boycott!

Sign the pledge

Add your name to the pledge (Google Form)

How you can support the boycott

Members are asked to support the academic boycott in any way that they can. This may include not doing the following at London Met:

applying for any advertised jobs
speaking at or organising academic or other conferences
giving guest lectures
accepting positions as visiting professors or researchers
writing for any academic journal which is edited at or produced by the institution in question
accepting new contracts as external examiners for taught courses
collaborating on new research projects.

NB: UCU members employed by LMU itself must not participate in the academic boycott in order to protect their contractual position.

Please note that the above advice will not ordinarily preclude members from supporting the boycott with regard to such things as refusing to apply for, or accept an external examiner’s contract, choosing not to provide a visiting lecture at LMU, choosing a research partner and so on since these are generally matters of individual academic autonomy. Members in any doubt about their contractual position should seek the union’s advice before acting.

For the avoidance of doubt, where any of the above activities forms part of your existing contractual duties or where you are otherwise unsure about this you should only refrain from doing them after your head of department (or line manager) has given you prior permission to do so. UCU is not asking or encouraging academics to act in breach of their contracts of employment.

If you have any queries please contact Matt Waddup at mwaddup@ucu.org.uk

What you can do to support London Met UCU

Even if you do not currently engage in any of these activities, we ask you to make a public commitment to boycott in advance, and ask your colleagues to do likewise.

Further, we ask you to write to London Met’s Vice Chancellor and Chair of Governors to pledge your support for our campaign:-

Vice Chancellor: John Raftery j.raftery@londonmet.ac.uk
Chair of Governors: Mark Anderson m.anderson@londonmet.ac.uk

Finally, we ask you to do your utmost to publicise the boycott and the issues at stake.

Letter – Resist the privatisation of HE – we pledge our solidarity to London Met UCU

An abridged version of this letter appeared in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday 6 August 2016.

We the undersigned, commit ourselves to a campaign of solidarity and support for the UCU branch at London Metropolitan University (LMU), in their battle for the future of the university.

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