Ideas on how to prevent a department from being shut down. [Please stop upvoting. I don't want to get a gold badge out of this...]
[Too late... is there a way to give a medal back?]
Dear community,
the VU University Amsterdam, my employer, is planning to shut down its pure math section and fire four tenured faculty members, including me. This is a very drastic step for a department to take, and sadly, this kind of thing is becoming more and more common (Rochester, the Schrödinger institute, Bangor, Utrecht (CS) come to mind). I will explain about our particular situation a bit more later on. I apologize for abusing MO in this way, but I think this is an issue that we as the mathematically active community must try to stop or else many of our departments will soon be run solely on a business-oriented basis and pure research will give way to an industry of fundraising and revenue generation, eventually rendering our universities' work irrelevant for society.
In our case, we have tried fighting this with creating pressure on all decision-taking levels of our university from the department to the president by rallying for support from mathematicians both offline and online in the hope that a public outcry will make an impression. We have involved the union to represent us and try to stop or delay the firings. 
Question: what do you think are other good measures to fight something like that?
Apart from asking for your ideas, I would also like to ask you to consider supporting us in an online petition we have set up. If you do decide to support us, keep in mind that an anonymous signature isn't as helpful. Here is what is happening at our university (it's from the online petition):
As with most universities in the Netherlands, the VU University Amsterdam suffers from financial underfunding. All faculties and all departments at the VU are asked to take measures to deal with this problem. For the Department of Mathematics a committee of applied mathematicians has put forward a proposal to close the Geometry Section, which consists of six tenured positions and focuses on algebraic K theory, algebraic topology, and general/geometric topology. At the same time, some of the funds freed up by the abolition of the Geometry Section are to be used for the creation of two additional positions in the Analysis Section. This proposal has received the endorsement of the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences and of the Executive Board of the university. Two members of the Geometry Section will retire in the next two years and closure of the section will allow for termination of the other four tenured positions. Thus, the proposal's drastic measures will merely cut the total number of positions by two.

Of the four positions slated for termination, one is in general/geometric topology and has been held since 2001 by Jan Dijkstra. The other three people were appointed less than four years ago: Dietrich Notbohm, Rob de Jeu, and Tilman Bauer. This introduced algebraic K-theory and algebraic topology as new research subjects at the VU. In 2010, a research evaluation of all Dutch mathematics departments by an international committee took place. The committee welcomed these changes very much, stating that strong young people provided new impetus to the group in mainstream mathematics and offered promise for the future.

What are the consequences of the closure of the Geometry Section for the university? Algebra, algebraic topology, and general/geometric topology will vanish. Algebraic K-theory and general/geometric topology will cease to exist in the Netherlands, and only Utrecht will be left with research in algebraic topology. No pure mathematicians will be on the staff anymore. The university will give up central areas of mathematics and adopt a narrow research profile. The education of students offered at the VU will also become much narrower, which may lead to a drop in the yearly intake of students, and will certainly compromise the academic chances for VU graduates.
 A: I post this as an answer rather than a comment, so people can downvote: how do the originators of the petition propose the university, or the department, should pay to keep the Geometry Section? Through savings in other sections? In other less useful departments?  Through increased government support? Other means? It seems to me one cannot fairly decide A is worth funding at the expense of B, without any knowledge of who/what B is.
A: In my opinion the petition has a fair chance of success. Firing several tenured professors as part of policy-change in the academic direction of an academic unit is very damaging, to the fine department of mathematics at VU University Amsterdam and to the entire university. Of course, it is a great injustice to the scientists involved whose positions are threatened. It is reasonable to hope and even to suppose that some reconsideration  will take place on all the necessary levels. 
The decision will be especially harmful to the prospects of attracting excellent young researchers.  Y. Barnea mentioned in a comment above that the university web-page declares about tenured-track positions: "In the event of good performance, the tenure track offers a permanent employment contract, or 'tenure'." This declaration by the university  agrees with the international standards of tenure and academic freedom but is not in agreement with the recent move regarding the geometry group. We can hope that the VU University Amsterdam will prefer its own declared policy. I thus suggest to VU:  Correct and forget
We can hope and even expect that the decision will be reversed and that the massive support expressed by the petition will find listening ears. I do not support, however, Andre Henriques's approach of "name and shame."  We do have to remember that individuals are sovereign to make their decisions and even to make mistakes, and so are departments and universities. The academic community should tolerate and can accommodate mistakes by individuals, and it can accomodate even mistakes by institutions, especially very rare incidences of this kind. If the decision will stay I suppose that the excellent four people whose jobs are threatened will  find other good academic jobs that they deserve, and also that UV Amsterdam mathematics department will eventually move on. But it will be much better to the department, to the university and to the academic community, to move on with this issue settled in the correct and just way rather than otherwise. 
In my opinion, it is legitimate for people to have opinions, even strong ones, on relative merits of areas of mathematics, to express such opinions, to try to promote them or to try to translate them into academic policies. Such is the idea of basing a department solely on applied mathematics or, on the other side, building it around some specific area of pure mathematics. Not agreeing on such matters is in the heart of academics (and even more so in other areas of academia.)  In an academic environment where we are not suppose to agree, keeping the conventions regarding academic freedom and tenure is so much more important.
A: I have the suspicion that fighting a political/financial maneuver with a communtiy outcry will not be effective.  If not all good faith efforts have been made to fund the department, they should be explored and brought to the attention of the decision makers.  If it is more of a political battle, get some political heavyweights on your side.  You might also argue the revenue loss will be greater if the department is closed.  If you can't adjust your perspective to solve the basic problem that will affect you (be it political or financial), find someone with that perspective to help you solve it.
ADDED 2011.04.28:  As an example of out-of-the-box thinking, consider the following idea (it may be a bad idea, but consider it first): hold a bake-sale.  Talk to conference organizers to see what it would cost to hold a conference in your field there, and allow distributors and other vendors to participate.  If the conference fee were right, it might bring in enough cash.  And even if it doesn't work for your department, consider passing the idea along (for a small fee?) to be used by larger departments. END ADDED 2011.04.28
Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.04.27 
A: My advice.  Make a concerted effort to publicize the value of pure research, and also make a good faith effort to teach classes that are valued by the university and that generate revenue.  I.e. try to spend some time producing money which they always value, and try also to educate them to the value of what you love to do that they do not value.
I.e. the argument could be: if you cut us you will lose money as well as prestige.  Moreover in future when times are better and you try to resurrect this active group, it will cost you even more if you let it die now.
A few years back we hired some of our best people by convincing the administration that times of short funding are ideal for hiring people who are undervalued where they are.  I.e. we argued that in hard times there are wonderful talents who have been unable to find appropriate jobs, and that if we step up and make offers to them we can get terrific bargains. These people appreciate this show of confidence in them and tend to stay.
A: Many applied mathematicians (based on no empirical evidence, I'd guess a vast majority) feel that pure mathematics is absolutely necessary because they apply pure mathematics to the real world.  A university that is hostile to pure mathematics may thus find it difficult to maintain a strong status in the applied mathematics community.  So I suggest that you try to find some high profile applied mathematicians who will support your cause.  Hopefully some such people are reading MO these days...
A: Make sure that this issue becomes sufficiently notorious that it becomes known to anyone applying for the Analysis positions. If they are good enough to be able to choose among competing offers, then they will think about this, and realize that the axe could be on their head next time.
A: Another thing that might be helpful is if people who actually know the people involved in this decision, e.g. the head of the department, will write to them a private email expressing their disappointment from the decision. The same might be true if prominent mathematicians will do so.
I am not suggesting in any way to harass them, but to try to start a dialogue and to explain how bad this looks from the outside. People are more likely to listen to people they actually know.
A: I deleted my earlier answer, as, indeed, I wrote it after flipping with rage from the whole story. My apologies. (I know Dutch universities system quite well, as I worked there for over 10 years).
The story, however, smells so badly that it's really hard to keep silent about it.
E.g. try to explain the fact that there are several people in the Department (but outside of Geometry Group) that work... yes, in topology (symplectic topology, Floer homology, etc).
E.g. they published MR2461255 (2009k:53225), this is in 53D35 (Global theory of symplectic and contact manifolds). 
Well, you can argue it's not "pure" topology, but rather its applications to differential geometry---still IMHO close enough. 
Now the administration will terminate topologists from another group. I think the call to "save pure maths at VU" would not make too much sense, right? 
PS. It seems that the call to "reform the administrative system at VU to make it more transparent and fair" would be more at place.
Well, I signed the following petition, anyway:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-pure-mathematics-at-the-vu-university-amsterdam/sign.html
A: As an applied mathematician, I'm appalled at these measures to shut down vibrant mathematical research groups. The intellectual hubris required to predict which mathematical ideas will become relevant, and when, is breathtaking! Better to err on the side of supporting good mathematics, period. 
One suggestion is to get people within the country energized enough to send individual letters to politicians. This tends to get attention, and quickly - politicians care about angering constituents. You may consider drafting a sample letter which people can print, sign, and send. 
Another suggestion is to get international math societies (eg. SIAM, EMS, ESIAM, LMS, etc) to write to heads of granting agencies in the Netherlands, cc'ing the Dean and university administration. I suspect this carries less weight, though embarrassment is a useful tool to employ in such situations.
A: I wish I personally had something to suggest or offer, but I don't.  However, something kind of comparable was announced in Australia a couple years ago, and with the intervention of a lot of mathematicians from around the world, the plan was scaled back, at least temporarily.  Terry Tao was heavily involved:


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*http://terrytao.wordpress.com/support-usq-maths/

*http://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/petition-to-support-maths-statistics-and-computing-at-usq/

*http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/please-help-support-mathematics-at-the-university-of-southern-queensland/
Maybe some of the info in the above pages can be of some use to you.
A: First let me say that the attempts to destroy the tenure system are happening all over the world. A few years ago in the UK (before my time) many universities including mine closed Chemistry departments. At least in my university, as far as I know, no one was fired. Now, there is no tenure system in the UK anymore, but still it is pretty hard to fire people arbitrary. However, UK universities are using “reorganization” or closing units as a way to fire people. It is useful for them in two ways, legally it is hard to argue with it and also this way there is less solidarity amongst academics. This is because if they don’t touch your department, you might not care too much and you might be worried to raise your voice in the risk that your department will be asked to make cuts too.
The main way we can fight such actions is by uniting. A strong union can make a difference. This might be too late in the current case. But I believe this is the most efficient way to protect the tenure system, academic freedom and independence of research. If we won’t fight, no one else will. So even though academics tend to be very individualistic acting together is the only way to save the system from short sighted decisions.     
A: What about the effects on rankings?
I am speculating, but I would guess that laying off faculty would have a detrimental effect on rankings (for the remaining department or the university as a whole), or other external "quality measures".  Perhaps others know of some precedent for this - where other universities that have done this have seen rankings suffer.  This sort of concrete effect might make more of an impression on an administrator than philosophical arguments about the importance of pure mathematics.  
A: Petitions can carry more weight when they are part of a personalized effort including other forms of appeal, particularly:


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*Letters

*Phone calls


You could provide the community (here on MO, and on the AT list, and at SBS) the address and phone number of a key decision maker or administrative body in this process (or more than one).  If that person begins receiving letters and calls from faculty at numerous international universities, I suspect it would make a strong impression.  In particular it might make the number of signatures on the online petition more real and harder to ignore.  Also, getting even a few people in the Netherlands (pure mathematicians, applied mathematicians, physicists, and others) to go and visit the relevant administrators in person could be extremely effective.
Another approach:


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*Press


You can find a reporter at De Telegraaf to write and publish a story about the VU's threat to close down the pure mathematics section and on the international uproar over this threat.  If the decision makers see a public article exposing the ongoing damage to the international reputation of VU as a result of their proposal, it will become harder for them to argue that this action is in the best interest of the university and could prompt a rapid reconsideration.  Similarly you could have an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, either as a pure news story about the threat and the online response, or as a discussion piece about the state of the tenure system in the Netherlands.
Another source of support: 


*

*Alumni


You could contact alumni of the VU mathematics department and have them write letters to the administrators communicating both how important the department was in their lives and how disappointed and disgruntled they would be to see the department decimated.  If they are donors to the university, they could also indicate that the outcome of this decision will affect, in addition, their future contributions.
Another avenue to consider:


*

*Alternative funding options


You could bring forward alternative proposals to directly cover some of the budget gaps that are being `addressed' by the proposed measure.  These could involve temporary distributed pay cuts to existing faculty and staff, along with fundraising efforts, or perhaps corporate donations or partnerships and other less traditional means.  Even if some of the proposals are not appropriate in the end, an effort to contribute to the solution of the administration's funding problem might make them more receptive to revising their overall plan.
A: And here in the United States, the University of Nevada-Reno has announced that recent budget cuts will "significantly downsize" the department of Mathematics and Statistics, as well as many other programs and departments.  If I read the spreadsheet correctly, 11 math faculty members will be fired.  (The department currently has 20 regular faculty members, but employs many visiting lecturers as well -- it's not clear whether the reduction is drawn from the smaller or larger group.)
A: Unfortunately, such incidents like the one that is happening now at the VU don't get advertised enough (of course, right now, there is plenty of advertisement. But will that still be the case in 10 years?...). The people who lived through it will of course remember.
But will a newly hired faculty be aware of the shameful past of a given university?
I suggest:      Name and Shame.

Universities and math departments should learn that laying off tenured faculty is damaging to their reputation, and gets remembered for a long time. 
Let's do this in the comments to this question!
Please include the name of the university, the year when it happened, and the number of tenured faculty that got laid off.
Following David Speyer's suggestion, I created a new MO question on the subject.
(Also, following people's criticism about the wording and tone of this reply, I have tried to phrase the new question, in a tone that is as neutral as possible.)
A: The details that one can infer from the petition and the text attached to it don't look pretty. All in all, this looks not so much a desperate last resort measure as an attempt to "manage" science, based on the University management's understanding or views on what is and isn't good mathematics. I do not think I can offer much practical advice on top of the excellent suggestions, which I would like to second:


*

*Don't let them hush this up. Instead make sure the story widely known to the scientific community (to an extent I believe you've done this already) and the general public at large.

*See if there are any prominent applied mathematicians who would be prepared to send a letter to the University management and the NWO expressing their concern and stating that an attempt to handle the situation in this way has already damaged the VU's reputation and the damage will be far worse still if the intended measures are carried out, making it clear, if possible, that if the management sticks with those plans, then from some moment on, if someone is introduced to an analyst from Amsterdam, the reaction of quite a few people from both pure and applied (inadvertently, I'm sure) would be something like "you're an analyst from Amsterdam.. I see..".
However I would also like to make a possibly controversial point. I think one should refrain from promoting algebraic topology or another area of pure maths to the general public by saying "look, it is useful, because ...", and then mentioning an application or two. By doing so one subscribes to the idea that algebraic topology is there only to generate practical applications. And I think it is this idea that is the source of the problem.
A: I suggest consulting the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and by consulting I mean calling their offices and speaking to someone.  They have a lot of experience with universities attempting to fire tenured faculty, and are therefore familiar with strategies one might use against it.  Of course it would be better to find a similar organization in the Netherlands, but I don't know if there is one.  The AAUP might know some people in Holland to consult as well.  
A: Can only speak about the university sector in Australia, but will assume it is the same the world over - if it isn't, I am sure it is at least heading down the same path.
Academics can do three things to succeed.


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*Publish lots of papers in top level journals

*Bring in lots of research dollars

*Teach subjects which bring in lots of students
Academics are paid to do one/two or all three of these things. If they are doing these, the university (if they are smart) will be doing everything they can to keep them, and other universities will be interested in them. Academics which aren't bringing in money/publishing a lot/teaching important courses will be noticed and questions will be asked. 
University budgets are tight, and the removal of tenure is inevitable. That said, if you are valuable enough to the university and want tenure they will give it to you. 
It is too late to do anything now if academics haven't performed. If they have, then argue with the university about the value they are bringing (i.e. the above three points). 
