Anatomy of an appeal

Readers of this publication queued up to help transfer stranded international PhD students from London Metropolitan University. Ehsan Masood was bowled over by their generosity.

I knew something was up when I opened my email inbox on 20 September. Most mornings I’ll have maybe 10 new messages. That day there were 20 and an hour later 25 messages, each starting with a subject line containing the words: London Met.

The emails were responding to an appeal launched in the previous day’s Research Fortnight asking readers to help transfer stranded international PhD students from London Metropolitan University. Within 48 hours, 25 universities had answered the call. As I write, that list is up to 33, and the number of departments is double that. My inbox continues to ping with messages worded to the effect: “Dear Editor, we would like to confirm that we would be willing to consider taking a London Met PhD student.”