CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Dear Colleagues, Please see below for new PhD positions https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/informatics-gta... Kind regards, Roy Crole. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. For what it's worth, we should point out the elephant in the room: "The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Nishan Canagarajah, wants to lay off all 8 of their pure mathematicians, including the only 2 women with permanent positions, and then rehire just 3 of these mathematicians — to do teaching, but not research. He and his flunkies claim: […] to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research in Pure Mathematics […]" (source: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/01/problems_at_the_university_of.h...) "The London Mathematical Society has been informed that the University of Leicester is consulting over a proposal to reduce the size of its Pure Mathematics Group to be teaching only, in order to “meet the rising market demand of artificial intelligence, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science”. The Society strongly opposes this proposal and believes it to be seriously flawed for the following reasons. ..." (source: https://www.lms.ac.uk/news-entry/09022021-1444/mathematics-university-leices...) And as a result: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11533/Global-boycott-of-University-of-Leicest... If someone can update us on the status of the various category theorists and allies it would be very useful. Thanks, David David Roberts Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 at 09:56, Crole, Roy L. (Dr.) <rlc3@leicester.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
Please see below for new PhD positions
https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/informatics-gta...
Kind regards,
Roy Crole.
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Though the part of the elephant we as category theorists see is the part of the U. Leicester administration's ill-conceived plans that affect mathematics, those plans are larger: the eight pure mathematicians are among 100 faculty (academic staff in British terms) being threatened with not lay-offs, but firing (compulsory redundancy in British terms), so that a call for all academicians to boycott U. Leicester until the plan is scrapped has been issued by the University and College Union (UCU): https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott [https://ucu.org.uk//media/11504/Boycott-Leicester/image/leicesterboycott_share_rev.png]<https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott> UCU - Support the Leicester boycott<https://www.ucu.org.uk/supportTheLeicesterBoycott> The University of Leicester threatened over 100 staff with compulsory redundancy. Managers refuse to share data on finances with campus trade unions. The long-running dispute has led to UCU implementing the ultimate sanction of being greylisted; UCU members have also begun a marking and assessment boycott.The sanction means UCU is asking its members, other trade unions, labour movement ... www.ucu.org.uk Best Thoughts, D.Y. ________________________________ From: David Roberts <droberts.65537@gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 8, 2021 7:34 PM To: categories@mta.ca <categories@mta.ca> Subject: categories: Re: PhD positions at Leicester, UK This email originated from outside of K-State. For what it's worth, we should point out the elephant in the room: "The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Nishan Canagarajah, wants to lay off all 8 of their pure mathematicians, including the only 2 women with permanent positions, and then rehire just 3 of these mathematicians — to do teaching, but not research. He and his flunkies claim: […] to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research in Pure Mathematics […]" (source: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/01/problems_at_the_university_of.h...) "The London Mathematical Society has been informed that the University of Leicester is consulting over a proposal to reduce the size of its Pure Mathematics Group to be teaching only, in order to “meet the rising market demand of artificial intelligence, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science”. The Society strongly opposes this proposal and believes it to be seriously flawed for the following reasons. ..." (source: https://www.lms.ac.uk/news-entry/09022021-1444/mathematics-university-leices...) And as a result: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11533/Global-boycott-of-University-of-Leicest... If someone can update us on the status of the various category theorists and allies it would be very useful. Thanks, David [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. One of the ironies … No, I’m being polite. One of the particular stupidities of the plans is that Leicester has always had close connections between CS and pure maths. Simona Paoli, one of the main category theorists in pure maths there, founded the Yorkshire and Midlands Category Theory Seminar, YaMCATS, which involved their CS department and now includes the School of CS at Birmingham. That’s an existing research strength of Leicester that has a role to play even in the envisaged “future research identity”, yet the plans are to kill it off. The VC, Prof. Nishan Canagarajah, is an engineer whose field is multimedia signal processing: so it seems clear that these plans are his baby. But his dreams are blinding him to the organic reality of the Leicester University that he is supposed to be leading. Steve Vickers.
On 10 Jun 2021, at 02:38, droberts.65537@gmail.com wrote:
For what it's worth, we should point out the elephant in the room:
"The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Nishan Canagarajah, wants to lay off all 8 of their pure mathematicians, including the only 2 women with permanent positions, and then rehire just 3 of these mathematicians — to do teaching, but not research. He and his flunkies claim: […] to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research in Pure Mathematics […]" (source: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/01/problems_at_the_university_of.h...)
"The London Mathematical Society has been informed that the University of Leicester is consulting over a proposal to reduce the size of its Pure Mathematics Group to be teaching only, in order to “meet the rising market demand of artificial intelligence, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science”. The Society strongly opposes this proposal and believes it to be seriously flawed for the following reasons. ..." (source: https://www.lms.ac.uk/news-entry/09022021-1444/mathematics-university-leices...)
And as a result: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11533/Global-boycott-of-University-of-Leicest...
If someone can update us on the status of the various category theorists and allies it would be very useful.
Thanks,
David
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. I'm sorry to spam the list on this issue, but I would only like to add that I am working in what they call "AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science" and my pure mathematics training serves me better than anything else may have served me. Best regards Phillip-Jan van Zyl ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Wednesday, June 9th, 2021 at 2:34 AM, David Roberts <droberts.65537@gmail.com> wrote:
For what it's worth, we should point out the elephant in the room:
"The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Nishan
Canagarajah, wants to lay off all 8 of their pure mathematicians,
including the only 2 women with permanent positions, and then rehire
just 3 of these mathematicians — to do teaching, but not research. He
and his flunkies claim:
[…] to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational
modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research
in Pure Mathematics […]"
(source: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2021/01/problems_at_the_university_of.h...)
"The London Mathematical Society has been informed that the University
of Leicester is consulting over a proposal to reduce the size of its
Pure Mathematics Group to be teaching only, in order to “meet the
rising market demand of artificial intelligence, computational
modelling, digitalisation and data science”. The Society strongly
opposes this proposal and believes it to be seriously flawed for the
following reasons. ..."
(source: https://www.lms.ac.uk/news-entry/09022021-1444/mathematics-university-leices...)
And as a result:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11533/Global-boycott-of-University-of-Leicest...
If someone can update us on the status of the various category
theorists and allies it would be very useful.
Thanks,
David
David Roberts
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. The company am Chief Scientist of was this week in the news: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2021/06/08/honeywell-quantum-solut... and I can confirm that most mathematicians in my personal team and in Ross Duncan’s team are not only pure, but need to have some category theory background, and the same is true for the physicists and computer scientists. In fact there is a cross-company reading courdse going on about string diagrams. I wrote those dudes making the decissions in Leicester about all of this, but they didn’t care. I think that it is not an isolated thing in Leicester, but much more widespread, and we are all guilty. We were too busy in our own corners while the university management structures were exploding and taking control. It’s not that we lost the fight, we didn’t even give them one, and now it is too late. I am mostly talking about what I witnessed in the UK having been a UK academic for twenty years, and that decay contributed big time to me recently leaving academia. In Oxford where I was it happenend a bit slower than in other places, but now parts of uni have gone rotten too there, and I experienced that the hard way.
On 10 Jun 2021, at 19:32, Phillip-Jan van Zyl <mikorym@protonmail.com> wrote:
I'm sorry to spam the list on this issue, but I would only like to add that I am working in what they call "AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science" and my pure mathematics training serves me better than anything else may have served me.
Best regards Phillip-Jan van Zyl
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
participants (6)
-
Bob Coecke -
Crole, Roy L. (Dr.) -
David Roberts -
David Yetter -
Phillip-Jan van Zyl -
Steve Vickers