The governing body of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) will today decide whether to risk industrial action by going ahead with plans to cut library services and staff.
University bosses will convene at 3.30pm today to discuss the plans to make two specialist librarians redundant - a move that lecturers fear will damage research into Japan, China and Korea. Eighteen academics have resigned from their posts at the school, though not their jobs, in protest at the moves, and the Association of University Teachers (AUT) has sent out ballots for strike action.
The two members were asked to leave on September 30, without completing their three-month notice. The redundancies have already attracted criticism from around the world with leading researchers and key funders of the specialist areas condemning the move.
Members of the school's governing body will be met by student and staff protesters from Soas and other University of London colleges outside the school today, in a lobby to oppose the action.
Graham Dyer, the chairman of the AUT at Soas, said the union was challenging the way in which the restructuring of the department took place, claiming that the university broke its own procedures by not consulting staff.
"I've never seen academics spitting angry like this. We're going to win a ballot for concerted strike action, we can do just about anything with that from random to extended strike action," he said.
The 18 academics that had resigned posts were all in administrative roles in the Chinese, and Japanese/Korean departments, he said. "There are no heads of departments, chairs of research centres and there are no postgraduate tutors in those subjects; basically they are defunct organisationally. In the library there has been no adequate provision for Chinese - they have one clerical staff - and none at all for Korean/Japanese.
"It's been devastating for the university's reputation. We've received letters of support from around the world and from colleagues in the UK."
The letters include one from 84 leading researchers in the disciplines, critiquing the decision and another from the Japan Foundation, the Japanese government's grant-making body for Japanese cultural programme abroad, expressing concern.
Stephen McEnally, the director of programmes at the Japan Foundation said that they had funded programmes including specific grants to purchase rare and expensive titles for the library collaborating with one of the threatened librarians. "The Japan Foundation was perturbed that it had given considerable funding to Soas and felt it was really an indication that the collection was going to be downgraded," he said.
"We wouldn't cut off funding, that would be counterproductive, but when competition for grant funds are fierce, Soas isn't sending the right signals to us that they are serious about the subject."
A spokeswoman for the university said that they would not be commenting until the result of the meeting was known as the decision on the redundancies was "under discussion".
