One of the most disgusting aspects of this putsch, spearheaded by the University of Leicester's senior management, in the timing, and we don't just mean timing redundancies to hit in the middle of a pandemic. Rather, they waited until the first day of term to ensure that all ...

of the online teaching resources for students, that we had spent the Christmas vacation working on, were locked into place before dropping the bombshell three weeks ago. Rather more invidiously there's the timing in relation to the deadline for the Research Exercise Framework ...

which is March 2021. Although I and my colleagues will be well on our way to redundancy by then, the University of Leicester will profit, in our case, from our acknowledged 4* research to the tune of millions, and there is nothing we can do about that. When this argument was ...

put to the person directly responsible for our sacking, when it was pointed out that this might be legal (just about), but not decent, they smiled coldly. This being the same person who had written to me at the beginning of the academic year, telling me the sudden abandonment

of an impact study I had worked on with a prominent cultural institution in Dublin, for five years, 'reassuring' me (though no reassurance had been asked for, suspicious in itself) that 'this decision will not have any detrimental effect on your career' ....

and that 'the valuable work you have done will feed into the environment statement', which is 'equivalent to 30.7 outputs'. It seems this is 'key because a 4* environment statement will return £1.2m more' than 'a 3* environment statement'. Now the University of Leicester has

... my proven, 4* research, they can fire me for short-term gain, to stanch the gaping would of hidden debt for just one more financial year, and there is nothing I can do about it.

In the current UK system 4* research is defined as
'Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour'. I'm not the only one being fired with 4* research, which Leicester retains for financial purposes.

Even my election to learned societies during the period covered is worth money to them ... after they have sacked me for no clear academic or financial reason (having stated previously that the cause of axing 1000+ years of English literature and language is not financial).

What is driving this decision then?