Madam, - May we add our voices to that of the National Women's Council of Ireland (February 26th) and express dismay at plans to close the women's studies centre at NUI Galway?
This flagship centre has an enviable national reputation and a burgeoning international one. It has been a model not only in that it formed an important bridge between academia and the community but also because, as the work of those involved with the Galway centre has demonstrated, this two-way process constantly feeds fresh dynamics into academic research.
How ironic it is that the decision to absorb the work of women's studies into the department of political science and sociology, and risk the loss of that dynamic, has been made at a moment when both interdisciplinarity and university connections with the community are being promoted.
Further questions must be asked about why, although all disciplines in the arts faculty are being restructured, only women's studies is losing its status as a discrete academic unit. Galway's Irish studies and film studies centres are not being similarly absorbed but will continue to exist as units in their own right and in their own buildings in the new configuration of schools and colleges.
The matter of greatest concern, however, may be that decisions on the centre's future were made without consulting those who know most about its work: its staff.
Such unjust and undemocratic practice within the university sector should not go unquestioned. - Yours, etc,
Dr BREDA GRAY, University of Limerick, Dr MYRTLE HILL, Queen's University Belfast, Dr SANDRA McAVOY, University College Cork, Dr KATHERINE O'DONNELL, University College Dublin, Dr MARYANN VALIULIS, Trinity College Dublin.