BY JOAN W. SCOTT
Gender studies is under siege in many places and not just by authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary, and Brazil. Some universities looking to gain control over relatively autonomous programs are replacing feminist stalwarts with their own directors, whom they count on to adhere to corporate strategies of fund-raising and “outreach.” In other places, administrators are counting on replaceable faculty to lead and develop programs until their contracts expire, replacing them with either cheaper labor or permanent staff already on the payroll.
This seems to be the case at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where a particularly egregious exploitation of a faculty member now leads to her “redundancy” (as non-renewal of contract, or firing, is called there). Since 2016, Alison Duncan Kerr has built a formidable Institute for Gender Studies at St. Andrews in line with that university’s proclaimed commitment to “diversity.” One of few women in her home department of philosophy, she has introduced gender courses there; she has developed a popular MA program (which has yielded tuition money far in excess of her own salary); created an interdisciplinary, cross-campus network of faculty; and reached out to other Scottish campuses to coordinate shared invitations to outside speakers and seminars. When she was hired, the then-Master (the administrator in charge of hiring academic posts) intimated that her efforts to help fulfill the “diversity” goals of the university would bring her consideration for a permanent position, one she would have had anyway after serving in her post for five years. Instead, she has been notified that when her contract expires this year, she will be without a job.
Her faculty colleagues and students have mounted a campaign to defend her, arguing that the university’s designated replacements for her (as director, a management specialist with no training or research in the field of gender studies, and to teach the MA courses a faculty member with no research background in feminist/gender philosophy) are not qualified to do her jobs. There is now an international petition urging the university to reconsider its decision, and a web site that details all of the aspects of this troubling case. https://standwithalison.org
It’s worth going to the website to get more information and, if you are inclined when you’ve read the materials, to sign the open letter that is circulating.
Open letter
1st February 2021
Open letter to the University of St Andrews on the redundancy of Dr. Alison Duncan Kerr.
Dear Decision Makers,
The University of St Andrews is a world-class university, topping UK league tables and boasting elite alumni. Several departments, including the Philosophy Department, have been awarded the prestigious Athena SWAN award, which “encourages and recognises employers’ commitment to advancing the careers of women in research and higher education.” Diversity is “at the heart of the University’s Strategic Plan 2018-2023”, which states an ambition “to be a beacon of inclusivity.”
Since 2017, philosopher Dr. Alison Duncan Kerr has been key to realising this ambition. She was contracted to establish the St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies (StAIGS) in 2018 and launch a complementary Gender Studies MLitt, a taught postgraduate programme, in 2020. Beyond her contractual obligations, Alison successfully ran StAIGS for two and a half years. In doing so, she created the University’s largest intellectual interdisciplinary network, with over 100 affiliated researchers from 18 different schools. In addition to launching the MLitt, Alison has taught, designed, and developed the entire curriculum, and has also been responsible for marking, assessments and advising. The current cohort of 10 MLitt students is projected by the admissions team to double in 2021.
Alison has laboured far beyond the University’s official requirements. Her dedication was born from passion but sustained by the reasonable expectation that after three years of such exceptional service her position would, in line with the University’s employment policy, become permanent. Moreover making her position permanent would also help to address the problem of gender equality within the Philosophy Department, where currently only 4 out of 19 permanent faculty members are women and the only junior female faculty are on temporary contracts.
Yet instead Alison is to be made redundant in June 2021. This does not enable her to see the academic year through with her MLitt cohort, let alone be fairly acknowledged for the impact she has had on the University’s equalities agenda. Her tasks are to be distributed to other members of the Philosophy Department, none of whom has gender as a central research interest. Since 2010, Alison has taught the Philosophy of Gender and has published articles, given scholarly presentations, and supervised postgraduate students on the topic. The future of the institute and its MLitt programme is seriously threatened by the redundancy of Alison’s role.
We call upon the University to apply the same vision which achieved Athena SWAN awards to Alison’s case. Indeed, the action plan her School submitted for its award contains the objective of “fair treatment of fixed-term staff which allows for career progression, especially standard contracts”. Making Alison redundant directly contradicts this objective. But there is an alternative path.
We call upon the University to:
- Stand by its own equalities agenda
- Honour the commitment to the Athena SWAN charter
- Honour the commitment to the School’s Athena SWAN action plan
- Stop taking advantage of the hard work of early career academics in insecure contracts
Dr Kerr’s experience is indicative of the multiple barriers faced in academia due to sexism, racism, ageism, ableism and homophobia etc. which are the domain of StAIGS and the study of gender at St Andrews. She has fulfilled her contract in an outstanding fashion and University policy and regulations state that having spent more than three years on her contract it must become permanent. By failing to fulfill its own policies the University risks the reputation of the MLitt Gender, the StAIGS programme, and the University as a whole.
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As usual, these partisan screeds do not tell me enough to adequately evaluate this situation, especially since the Scottish criteria for permanent appointment are, pardon my language, “foreign” to me.
For example, if the usual standards for excellence in teaching and research are part of the expectations and Prof. Kerr has not met those criteria, then all her valuable and meaningful service may be moot. Many American profs that I know of were roped into administrative positions that prevented or at least impaired them from fulfilling high tenure standards for scholarship and/or pedagogy. At many institutions, fundraising and program-building only count toward one’s contribution to service, which may count as only 10-20% toward one’s tenure-ability. Since I see no reference to Prof. Kerr’s excellence in research and teaching — other than “Alison has taught the Philosophy of Gender and has published articles, given scholarly presentations, and supervised postgraduate students on the topic” — I am in no position to know whether her activities in those regards were good, bad, or indifferent. Probably they were, but one cannot be certain without much more information.
So, I’d be more than willing to support Prof. Kerr, provided that more information is forthcoming about her overall accomplishments, particularly as they pertain to the University of St. Andrew’s stated criteria for permanent appointment — and any other pertinent factors. (As a personal example, at the beginning of my academic career, I was hired on a one-year line and was expecting to be reappointed for the following year. The college experienced some financial difficulties and decided to reassign a tenured faculty member from a completely different department to teach the classes I had expected to teach. Since that individual had NO experience or expertise in the subject matter, I was hired over the summer to give him a crash course in my discipline!)
Joan Scott’s petty hyperbole of a dime-a-dozen “gender ‘scholar'” is really quite laughable and ironic considering she is one of the stalwart vicim-blamers, defenders of an actual attack of sexual violence and harassment by sexual predator and extortionist, Avital Ronnell.