Dear Colleagues,
I would like yo 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/>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
Université Montpellier 2, cc 65
Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution (ISEM, UMR 5554)
Place Eugène Bataillon
34095 Montpellier cedex 05
Tel. 33 (0)4 67 14 37 50
Fax 33 (0)4 67 14 36 22
Portable 33 (0)6 86 43 19 45
