What is the Academic Boycott?
The academic boycott is a call from the union to its members, other trade unions, labour movement organisations and the international academic community to support staff membership at Goldsmiths in the following ways:
- Refuse to speak at or organise academic or other conferences and events (with Goldsmiths or involving Goldsmiths) which do not directly contribute to core teaching duties on accredited programmes
- Refuse to participate in new non-research based partnership enterprises with Goldsmiths
- Refuse to write for any academic journal which is edited at or produced by Goldsmiths
- Refuse to accept new contracts as external examiners for taught courses relocating events due to take place at Goldsmiths to other venues.
- UCU also urges all external speakers invited to participate in events at Goldsmiths to refuse to collaborate with the institution in solidarity with staff fighting to save jobs and defend the future of the university.
Is an academic boycott a strike? How are they different?
Academic boycott is a strategy of industrial action taken by the union designed to sanction the university and draw attention to the disastrous choices and actions that the Senior Management Team (SMT) have taken to make up to 46 staff redundant (for more information on GUCU strike action last term and the reasons for the strike see here). An academic boycott primarily affects events organised by the university and its research partnerships, and asks for solidarity from the global academic community to boycott the institution until management agrees to negotiate towards the union’s demands.
How will it affect students?
The academic boycott does not target any core teaching that is important for students. Both Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (GCCA) gallery and the Students’ Union are exempt from this boycott, so all events will carry on as usual and you are encouraged to attend. Academics and speakers visiting Goldsmiths, whose work or presence is part of the core content of a course are also not required to engage in the boycott so that teaching can be carried out as normal. Many of Goldsmiths’ courses are designed to accommodate regular guest lecturers and practitioners and so these activities are specifically not included in this action to reduce disruption to students and learning activities.
Events held by goldsmiths outside of regular teaching, including guest lecturers, talks and similar events may be affected by the boycott, because we are asking external speakers to refuse to collaborate with the institution in solidarity with staff fighting to save jobs.
How can students support the boycott?
Students can support the boycott in a number of ways and with different levels of engagement:
- Join a student organising group that is involved in resisting the restructure on campus. Students showed incredible solidarity and put a lot of work into supporting the strikes last term. To get involved with organising around the academic boycott you can join this student lead and focussed organising group here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HJBtmurwWbzCvUVBfZcJA4
- The staff union also runs twice monthly student-staff pods. The student-staff pods are conceptualised as non-hierarchical (horizontal) groups comprising academic staff, students and professional services staff. The rationale for the departmental student-staff pods is to build solidarity at a decentralised, departmental level. The pods operate alongside the activities of the student-lead Goldsmiths Community Solidarity (GCS) group. Our next meeting is Thursday the 20th of January at 2pm and will focus on strategies and organising around the academic boycott. The details for the zoom are here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87219422992.
- Write to the Senior Management Team in support of the academic boycott and ask them to agree to the staff union’s demands. GUCU developed a complaint/open letter template that students can use to email the Senior Management Team (SMT) about the restructure and can be adapted for supporting the academic boycott. This can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xOQgjt4lsnLQle_da6JBBrHIDoRHNnFOrmeloPIDikg/edit