WOW: Women of the World

Women of the World Festival Conference
11 – 13 March
WOW – Women of the World launches its first year with speakers from across five continents. It brings together amazing stories of triumph, action, challenge and enterprise from girls of 14 to women of 80. Musicians, lawyers, scientists, members of the clergy, journalists, politicians, community activists, gardeners, school girls and cocoa growers share ideas for change. Women’s organisations of every persuasion are represented in a great weekend of fierce debate and fantastic fun. Plus market activities, speed mentoring and networking opportunities. Speakers include Shami Chakrabarti, Marin Alsop, Helena Kennedy QC, Kay Mellor, Caroline Lucas MP, Kate Mosse, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Kat Banyard, Juliet Stevenson, Bianca Jagger, Barb Jungr, Rosie Boycott, Allison Pearson, Frances Osborne and Dr Precious Lunga.

Find out more about the festival and how you can take part here.

UNLV proposing to close Philosophy, Women’s Studies, Women’s Research Institute

Horrendous news from Leiter.

March 8, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

Now that President Smatresk has released UNLV’s proposed list of budget cuts in academic programs, I write to discuss the proposed cuts to the College of Liberal Arts. It with great and deep sadness that I write to you about what program eliminations may occur in our College to cope with the reduced funding to NSHE provided in the Governor’s budget.

First, please recall that we were mandated to propose “vertical cuts” so as not to impact each and all of our programs. The administration instructed the deans to submit budget cutting proposals to achieve a target figure arrived at by computing an individual college’s percentage of all State funding going to UNLV’s academic side. The CLA budget cut target was $3,772,706. After careful review of all matrices, hard and soft, and after review of the various suggestions CLA faculty forwarded to the College, we arrived at a list of programs or departments to reach our budget reduction target. The sum total for such draconian measures in our initial proposal was $3,768,384, or $4,322 below our prescribed target figure. That minor difference was deemed acceptable at the time of submission.

In the narrative, however, that accompanied our spread sheets for this proposal, I emphasized just how important each of the programs or departments in our proposal is to the College’s mission, also emphasizing the horrific effects of such terminations on FTE production, still central to the funding formula, and emphasizing just how inexpensively the College of Liberal Arts produces FTE. The results, which we were notified of this morning, were that the administration will include less than half of the possible CLA cuts in our proposal on the list that will be forwarded to the Regents later this week. In sum, we are told that we are now being considered for a $1,636,628 total reduction in CLA budgets, or 43% of the initial target. That speaks to the centrality of the College of Liberal Arts to the mission of the University.

I have today already notified the affected departments and programs, Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada. I’m horrified to write that such cuts, if implemented, will result in the loss of seventeen positions, which loss includes ten tenured or tenure-track lines, four vacant faculty lines, and three classified staff lines. This situation is certainly tragic, but not so devastating as cuts resulting from the initially mandated target would have been, the loss of approximately 35 positions or lines.

Two things to keep in mind as we move further down this path: 1) UNR is going through the same procedures, with its targeted programs and departments to be presented to the Regents at their meeting later this week; 2) there still exists the very real possibility that our overall strategy may be successful — that is, these proposed cuts are so devastating, System-wide, that they may make more effective and convincing the efforts of our friends in the Legislature to modify the Governor’s proposed budget cuts for Higher Education. Especially, then, for the sake of the University as a whole, and for the sake of our colleagues in Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and WRIN, we all, I’m absolutely certain, will do everything we can to enable that amelioration of this despicable budget proposal as it currently exists.

Christopher C. Hudgins, Dean
College of Liberal Arts
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4505 Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89154 5001
phone: (702) 895 3401 fax: (702) 895 4097
chris.hudgins@unlv.edu

Please write to Dean Hudgins.

“it is the philosophy, not just the policies, that we need to challenge”

Does the UK’s coalition government have some unsettling problem with women? Are they just hopelessly ignorant about the unequal conditions women face, and the role government support plays in ameliorating those conditions? Can anyone explain to a hopeless lefty like myself, how cutting financial support in the form of (e.g.) childcare tax-credit is supposed to make women MORE independent? I cannot get the logic to work here, which is perhaps why this Guardian article insists it’s the underlying philosophy that’s the problem. Then again, it seems a bit generous to suppose there’s ever anything as coherent as an ‘underlying philosophy’ with this government, especially given the muddle and murk of the ‘Big Society’. What do you think?