Politics, politeness and PR 1

Nothing illustrates more the insidious damage being done to higher education through the colonisation of university processes by a rampant managerialism than the University of Nottingham's communications director Jonathan Ray's "corporate-speak" reply to Neal Curtis ("PR chief rounds on 'self-important' academics", 5 June).

It is clear that self-selected "professionalism" trumps the serious moral and ethical issues raised by Rizwaan Sabir's arrest - not least of which is why the university allowed itself to act as a secondary arm of the security services and in so doing contributed to this Government's sponsored racialisation of people of Muslim faith.

Perhaps this is why Nottingham requires the services of the flimflam industry to persuade others of its high educational reputation, which would probably be best secured through the reallocation of resources away from this proliferation of highly paid "education-is-a-business" votaries to frontline lecturing jobs.

Neville Adams, Croydon.