The American University of Malta has been hit by a lawsuit from five of its former lecturers, who are accusing it of unfair dismissal and of running a shoddy business which rendered it impossible to recruit enough students.

The five lecturers – Dawn Adrienne Saliba, Stephen Robert Wassell, Leonid Simon Tevlin, Mark Neal and Marlen Harrison – were unceremoniously sacked via email at the start of the year, all within their six-month probationary periods. 

In their judicial protest, the academics accused the Sadeen Group of luring them to Malta with the promise of high salaries and attractive benefits so as to boost the AUM’s chances of accreditation. 

“The AUM made verbal and written promises to us which led us to believe that our contract was for a minimum of three years, and most of us left our previous employment in our home countries to move to Malta,” they said. “Some of us even sold our own residences and moved our families and possessions to Malta. Right before the end of our six-month probationary period, the AUM unceremoniously notified us that our employment contracts were being terminated without providing any just cause or explanation, except that the six month probation period contemplated in the local law was being resorted to in our regard without any regret towards us.”

How Sadeen had planned the AUM to look like

This, the academics argued, constituted an abuse of the law regulating probationary periods, which is intended to allow employers to get rid of staff who prove unfit for the job during the first six months of the job. None of them had received any verbal or written warning of misconduct during their time at AUM. 

They pinned the AUM’s failure to attract a significant number of students on mismanagement by Sadeen and the Board of Directors, most notably how they had  fired several administrators and forced academics to double up for them. 

“We strongly believe that [AUM] had failed to invest or did not have the intention to invest in adequate human resources or did not make sufficient funds available, to be able to attract and recruit foreign students resulting in the fact that the AUM could not survive with the number of lecturers and administrative staff by far exceeding the number of students recruited,” the lecturers said. 

Is there any way back for the American University of Malta? 

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]