(The request below is for a statement of support either for the relevance and quality of the teaching and the degrees offered, and/or for the research? These should be addressed to Vice Chancellor Prof Adam Habib and the Dean of the Commerce, Law and Management Prof Nqosa Mahao, and copied to Seeraj Mohamed. The relevant emails are: [email protected] [email protected] and [email protected]) From: Nicolas Pons-Vignon Sent: 05 November 2013 11:26 AM Sorry for cross-posting – please circulate widely & strategically Dear friends and colleagues It is unfortunately CSID’s turn to come under ideological attack for having set up and run very successful ‘heterodox’ economics degrees at Wits University, South Africa. I encourage you to read the message below by my colleague Lotta and would be grateful if you could write a message of support, should you disagree with the suggestion by our Head of School, Prof Judy Backhouse, that we represent a ‘fringe ideological position’. [at the bottom of this message I paste a paragraph which lays bare the University’s perspective on our programme, and heterodox economics more generally] The situation is in flux and we could still offer our degrees next year; this will in part hinge on the support we receive, since the University is unlikely to change its mind unless it is flooded by messages contesting the proposed decision to shut down our courses, or replace them with mainstream alternatives. Ironically, we have more applicants, after only 3 years of existence, than any other postgrad qualification our School… maybe I should add that our Masters is a core member of the new heterodox EPOG (Economic Policies in the Age of Globalization – epog.eu) Masters programme, which would be adversely affected if we closed down. I attach information on our courses, as well as a letter by Prof. Ben Fine, our closest collaborator and supporter. In solidarity Nicolas From: Lotta Takala-Greenish Sent: 04 November 2013 01:58 PM To: Khan Firoz Dr. SPL; Nicolas Pons-Vignon; Rex Mckenzie; Sajida Durwan; Susan Newman; bill freund (william.m.freund@gmail); Ben Fine; simonjonroberts@gmail; Basani Baloyi; Samantha Ashman; Ashman, Samantha; Paul Jourdan; Seeraj Mohamed; Bridget Kenny; Aly Karam; Nimrod Zalk Subject: The future of CSID is at risk - your support would be welcome CSID as a teaching and research unit is facing a high risk of being closed down by the University of Witwatersrand. Dear colleagues and friends of CSID, You may be aware that CSID has been experiencing difficulties in negotiating sufficient teaching and research support and resources with the University of WITS, in particular with the School of Economics. The situation has taken a dive downwards and we are now facing a very high risk of closure of all of CSID or at best the termination of all of the Development Theory and Policy degrees effective from Jan 2014. Our future operations in teaching and research are compromised by the cost cutting and rationalisation that WITS University is in the middle of implementing. We have been told that it is very likely that CSID will not be allowed to run the Development Theory and Policy Masters and Honours degrees in 2014, and that it may even be necessary to shut down the research operations of CSID as well. Though CSID have continuously flagged the issues of insufficient support and academic resources, the risk of shutdown was only communicated to us at CSID last Tuesday 29th October. We were hoping for an open and objective discussion as well as swift resolution of these matters. None of this seems forthcoming so we have decided to turn to our partners and allies for their help in highlighting the importance and relevance of CSID ,and in particular, the importance of the Development Theory and Policy degrees. Though we are told this is about finances and rationalisation, we also see this as an attack on heterodox economics. CSID is a small group of non-tenured, short-term project funded researchers/lecturers that has been able to develop arguably high quality teaching and research with minimal or no institutional support from the School of Economics. The teaching was set up through a seed fund from the South African Department of Trade and Industry with assurances that the University and in particular the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences and the School of Economics would support and help develop these further. This was also the basis for entering into the international Erasmus Mundus-funded Economic Policies in the Age of Globalisation Programme. Now these agreements are being questioned or disregarded in some circles and a proposal has been put forward that heterodox economics need not exist as a separate entity, and if such courses need to be offered, then they can be electives within the core mainstream economics degrees offered by the School of Economics (and possibly taught by the tenured mainstream economists at SEBS seeing as jobs at CSID are also at risk). We at CSID are deeply concerned with these developments and have been voicing our dissent through the relevant university channels. This not only comes across as the squashing of a small and budding heterodox economics group within a large and dominant orthodox economics department. This also poses a serious risk to the reputation of WITS and the relations CSID has with various teaching and research partners (the EPOG member universities in particular University of Paris 13, Berlin School of Economics, University of Torino, Kingston University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Seoul National University, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, but also the dti, Economic Development Department, Trade and Industrial Policy Strategy and other South African partners). We at CSID feel shocked and saddened by these potential institutional implications as well as the implications for the past, present and future students. We are now seeking written statements of support for the teaching (and where relevant research) from our partners, stakeholders, allies etc. Will you please help by writing us a statement of support either for the relevance and quality of the teaching and the degrees offered, and/or for the research? These should be addressed to Vice Chancellor Prof Adam Habib and the Dean of the Commerce, Law and Management Prof Nqosa Mahao, and copied to Seeraj Mohamed. The relevant emails are below. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] The information presented here is drawn from a series of meetings attended by Seeraj Mohamed, CSID Director (and some myself) last week as well as from a report from the Head of Economics, Prof Judy Backhouse who is behind the two solutions of CSID shutdown or CSID degree shutdown. As far as we know, the decision has not yet been finalised. The next few days are likely to be critical, your swift support may help support our case. Please feel free to forward this email to others who may be interested and willing to support. Kind regards, Lotta Senior Researcher, Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID) School of Economic and Business Sciences (SEBS), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg T: +27 (0)11 717 8075 ; F: +27 (0)86 765 5081 [email protected] Excerpt from ‘Way forward’ document by the Head of the Wits School of Economic & Business Sciences: The ideological battle being fought over the postgraduate programmes is very interesting from the perspective of how knowledge develops. On the one hand, CSID may be right and theirs may well be the mainstream economics of the future. In that case, if Wits has championed their work we will be hailed as visionaries. On the other hand, they may be wrong and it may all fade into insignificance. In such a case we may be laughed at for investing in a fringe ideological position. In the absence of a strong, established economist that wants to stand up for this particular brand of heterodoxy, I think Wits ought to take a conservative position and stick to doing mainstream economics, but allow for elective courses that expose students to these debates with sufficient engagement by all parties to allow for the emergence of new curricula. *** BEN FINE: Hope all is well although I am very disturbed and disappointed to be drafting this letter. You may know that I have been involved in promoting research, training and policymaking for South Africa for over thirty years, having been invited to be involved by the ANC in this whilst it was still in exile. My activity has been spread across all three of these activities but my strongest commitment has always been to capacity building so that South Africans would be capable of developing their own programmes and skilled personnel (and render my own role redundant). As far as I am concerned, the programmes and activities around CSID have been exemplary in this respect, despite difficulties of staffing without capacity to make permanent contracts. As a result, I have put the maximum of my own available energies into supporting its endeavours, not least in teaching myself, advising on and constructing programmes, steering individuals towards playing a role within CSID, and networking on its behalf across government, funders and more broadly. I only wish I could have done more but my presence has been severely constrained by personal circumstances (care for a special needs child that allows me usually to be away from the UK for at most a week at a time). You will also appreciate that I am in a position to judge the wider role played by CSID beyond the University, being not only unique in its concentration of heterodox (I would say realistically-grounded) economists but also for its influence on policy debates and source of alternatives to a wide variety of organisations including Government where, as you will again know, there is a special relationship with the DTI in particular. I do appreciate that you are experiencing severe financial constraints and that cut, slash and amalgamate may appear as the only viable option. But I have been associated with Wits also for as long as I have been working on South Africa, and my assessment is that the problems around economics training will not be resolved by squeezing CSID. Indeed, they will be rendered worse. I am more than happy to make this case in greater detail but staff in CSID are more than capable of arguing this for themselves. My final remark, though, would be the irony of these developments occurring just as the CSID programmes are maturing and its profile in the outside world is at a peak. Take care and thanks for your attention -- To view previous posts, create a Google account with your current email and log in using gmail to access the archives. https://accounts.google/newaccount?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups [email protected] group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at groups.google/a/fahamu.org/group/debate-list/.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 05:32:57 +0000
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