This alarming development was circulated today by the President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Isabelle Olivieri:
I would like you bring to your attention the following situation. Because of reorganization in some Dutch Universities and money cutting in research, several colleagues from Leiden University will be fired by the end of the year if we do not react. They might be fired anyway, but I think that we should at least do our best for this not to happen.
The following evolutionary biologists will be fired or will not be able to continue their research: Jacques van Alphen (Marie Curie professor of Excellence), Tom Van Dooren, Frietson Galis (president of the European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology), Sacha Gultyaev, Patsy Haccou (Executive vice-president of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology), Ken Kraaijeveld, Femmie Kraaijeveld, Hans Metz (retired, but still very active), Rino Zandee.
People in Leiden have just set up a petition, which you will find here: http://evodevo.eu/petition/
I strongly encourage you to sign this petition, which will be sent to every person in the Netherland government who might be able to do something.
I think it is quite incredible that Darwins’year will see an entire and excellent department of evolutionary ecology close down and leave people without a job (even those with a “permanent” job!) because of budget restrictions. As written in the petition, although evolutionary biology will be heavily cut, molecular biology will be spared. This is part of an alarming national trend. Unfortunately, with growing creationism in Europe, and budget cuttings elsewhere (including, alas! France) I am afraid the Dutch trend will soon become international.
Please react ASAP !
Isabelle Olivieri
President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2007-2009
This is from the “Mario’s Entangled Bank” blog ( http://pineda-krch.com ) of Mario Pineda-Krch, a theoretical biologist at the University of Alberta.
