A prominent priority of former ACU Vice-Chancellor Greg Craven AO (2008-2021) was to establish and strengthen serious study of the humanities at ACU, on the premise that these disciplines are central to the historic Catholic intellectual tradition that serves as the university’s most distinctive feature in the wider tertiary education sector. Key initiatives in this domain included the creation of three institutes dedicated to research in the humanities, building upon the existing strengths in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy and the National School of Arts. Those institutes were the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (founded 2014), the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy (2019), and the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (2020). The creation of these institutes represented one of the most significant and exciting institutional investments in the humanities in the Australian academy in recent decades and succeeded in catapulting ACU’s rankings in the related disciplines, both domestically and internationally.

Upon Professor Craven’s retirement in 2021, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, who came to ACU from Monash in 2018 as Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education, became his successor as ACU’s fifth VC. Almost immediately Professor Skrbis began attempting to dismantle the research strategy of his predecessor. His attempts to do so were slow moving and small scale until late 2022 when he appointed a new Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Professor Abid Khan (also from Monash). The key inflection point in this agenda was the release of a draft change plan on 12 September 2023, which proposes cutting 32 full-time equivalent academic positions, of which 29 are in humanities disciplines, mostly in the three aforementioned institutes (one of which is being completely shuttered), along with a sizeable number of staff in the Faculty of Education and Arts. An executive summary of the change plan in plain language is below.

The draft change plan can be interpreted in no other manner than as a direct assault on the humanities at ACU, which as recently as two years ago were ‘core’ to the university’s Catholic identity. Moreover, the change plan itself acknowledges that it will result in ‘impact on ACU’s research rankings.’ We are calling upon our colleagues across the globe to register their protest at this anti-intellectual and inhumane proposal. Many of the affected staff members were enticed to move to Australia from abroad; many gave up secure employment elsewhere to come; and many came with dependents in tow. Some only arrived last year. And yet now they are being shown the door. But it is not only personal lives that will be destroyed if the draft change plan is enacted. The damage that is already being done to the university’s reputation in the eyes of scholars and prospective students will take years to overcome.

The university administration claims that it is facing a major budget crisis, further details of which may be found here. Important questions about this claim remain unanswered, but even if this is the case, the current financial problems are unrelated to the research institutes. Rather, Professor Skrbis is using the present crisis as a pretext for implementing the changes he has long planned for the research staff hired under his predecessor. In an act of particular cruelty, those staff whose jobs are affected are largely among those who arrived into the research institutes most recently, presumably because the severance payouts for such staff would be less expensive. That is, there is no coherent academic rationale for the combination of positions slated for elimination. No one in leadership in any of the affected organizational units were consulted prior to the release of the draft change plan, nor is there any evidence that the administration seriously considered any of the feedback provided by staff during the consultation period over the month of August (a legal requirement according to ACU’s Enterprise Bargaining Agreement).

In fact, the first two years of Professor Skrbis’s tenure have seen no less than three reviews of the university’s research portfolio. The first two were the VC 2021 Annual Priority Working Group (Research) and the Functional Review of Research Institutes in 2022, the latter an independent external review led by a senior administrator from a Group of Eight university. Both reviews recommended maintaining the current successful research strategy and leveraging existing strengths to meet the current challenges facing the higher ed sector. However, in 2023 Professor Khan commissioned a Thematic Review of Research and Research Training led by an administrator at Monash, which was filled with misleading and false statistics. Even though this has been pointed out to Professor Khan, the shift in research strategy and assault on the humanities institutes evident in the change plan is based upon the conclusions of the deeply flawed Thematic Review.

The architects of the draft change plan are Professor Skrbis (Zlatko.Skrbis@acu.edu.au), Professor Khan (Abid.Khan@acu.edu.au), Deputy Provost Chris Lonsdale (chris.lonsdale@acu.edu.au), and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Phil Parker (Phil.Parker@acu.edu.au), none of whom have expertise in the humanities. If you would like to support humanities at ACU, please contact these individuals to register your concern and sign the present petition to call on the university administration to reconsider this ill-advised plan. The period of consultation on the draft change plan closes on 26 September, at which point the full list of signatures will be sent to the four aforementioned administrators along with the ACU Senate.

Thank you for your support.

 

Executive Summary of Change Plan

Current Structure

Australian Catholic University has six research institutes, employing the following number of staff (numbers are FTE = Full-Time Equivalent, with fractions reflecting part-time staff):

• Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research (established 2014), 38.2 FTE
• Institute for Positive Psychology & Education (established 2014), 15.7 FTE
• Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education (established 2014), 15.6 FTE
• Institute for Religion & Critical Inquiry (established 2014), 26 FTE
  • The IRCI comprises three research clusters: Biblical & Early Christian Studies, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, and Religion & Theology.
• Dianoia Institute of Philosophy (established 2019), 14 FTE
• Institute of Humanities & Social Sciences (established 2020), 23.3 FTE

These institutes currently report to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Enterprise.

Proposed Restructuring

The proposed change plan will do the following:

• Reorganize the Institutes to report to the Deans of the university Faculties:
  • MMIHR: Faculty of Health Sciences
  • IPPE, ILSTE, IHSS: Faculty of Education & Arts
  • IRCI: Faculty of Theology & Philosophy
• Disestablish the IRCI’s Medieval & Early Modern Studies (MEMS) research program
• Disestablish the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy

Job Losses

This restructuring enables the university to make redundant academic staff in these institutes who are on continuing (permanent) contracts, as well as some staff on the general faculties in the same fields. Proposed redundancies include:

• 13 positions in the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy reduced to 4 positions in the IRCI
  • Up to 11 staff (those currently in Australia) eligible for the 4 positions
  • There is 1 academic staff who has not yet commenced whose status has not been clarified, and 1 additional professional staff position (Dianoia Institute manager) to be cut
• 23 history positions across IHSS, MEMS, and FEA reduced to 10 positions in IHSS:
  • 6 positions in the IRCI’s Medieval & Early Modern Studies research program
  • 8 positions in IHSS
  • 9 positions in the Faculty of Education & Arts
  • Up to 19.6 staff (those currently in Australia) eligible for the 10 positions
• 5 political science positions, 3 in IHSS and 2 in FEA, reduced to 2 positions in IHSS
• 5 positions within the Biblical & Early Christian Studies (BECS) and Religion & Theology (R&T) programs in the IRCI reduced to 3 positions
• 2 theology positions in the Faculty of Theology & Philosophy
• 1 position in ILSTE
• 2 positions in MMIHR

Except for the new BECS/R&T positions, the levels for the new positions have not been announced, leading to uncertainty about how many affected staff will be eligible for them.

Summary

The proposed changes would lead to the following reductions in academic staff:

• 9 philosophy positions
• 13 history positions
• 3 political science positions
• 4 biblical studies/religion/theology positions
• 1 education position
• 2 health positions

This is a reduction of 32 academic positions in total, 29 (91%) of them in the humanities.

The three humanities institutes (IRCI, IHSS, Dianoia) currently house 63.3 academic positions. Under the plan, 35 of these would be made redundant, along with an additional 11 humanities positions in the FEA, for a total of 46 humanities positions. 19 new positions in the institutes would be established, leading to a reduction from 63.3 positions to 47.3 positions—a 25% reduction in the size of the humanities institutes, even after incorporating disestablished FEA positions. 55% of the humanities institutes’ staff would either lose their jobs or have to reapply for a more limited number of positions.