After being dismissed ‘on grounds of redundancy’, Babis Magoulas and I took Queen Mary University of London at independent Employment Tribunals. Judge Foxwell heard the two cases and dismissed both. We then appealed, but only my appeal was upheld. I wrote 3 posts (here) criticising the Judgments in Magoulas v QMUL that, in my view, failed to serve justice. For a summary see “academic position, age discrimination and social justice“. I won’t rehearse again all arguments, but I was reminded today only of this one. In a piece where I claim that generating large surpluses at public Universities is wrong, I also suggested the Law should become clearer in demanding that Employers effecting dismissals should first demonstrate that their whole institution is in need of cost-cutting, since in the case of Babis, Queen Mary was operating on a surplus of £9-17M, claiming that its Medical School was £2M in deficit that justified the compulsory redundancies. I mention the above, because the new Head of School in my former department (who replaced this one) announced that the new Principal (who replaced this one) has made it clear he wants to increase the present £30M surplus to £50M…
The toxic environment has spread to many UK universities. Such spreading does not make it right. Colleagues need to organise, resist and revolt.
fanismissirlis 
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/22/bath-university-staff-vote-for-senior-leaders-to-resign-amid-governance-row
https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/adonis-takes-a-scalp/
A welcome development in my former School
Albeit, somewhat ironic that a Lecturer in Cell Biology would be given to a Drosophila researcher, after all the arguing against such a selection being appropriate in front of Judge Foxwell…
Click to access Professor_F_Missirlis_v_Queen_Mary_University_of_London_32029372012_Reasons.pdf
News from the ongoing #USSstrike bring a new twist to the story. Queen Mary University of London has subsidiary companies. Some appear to be in severe financial trouble. Should it be then that the healthy operating University should make savings (to the extent of clearly becoming unhealthy) in order to save these entities? The College offers a useful example of what marketisation of higher education means. Those at the top becoming wealthy favour it; why should the country as a whole?
Two books have discussed the events that took place in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London in 2012. One of them is freely available online: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-7598-3