I watched a student nearly drop out due to unmedicated ADHD, and then return following diagnosis and medication. She completed a fantastic, award-winning dissertation on her return - one of the best I have supervised at Plymouth. She always had the ability, just needed her ADHD under control.

Atrios@eschatonblog.com · 23h ago

I don’t know a lot about ADHD but i do know a young guy who struggled a lot and might not have finished university who got diagnosed and treated, then did extremely well, and now makes a boatload of money at a good job I thought "getting people into work" was labour's whole thing

In other words, a 10 percent contraction in one of Britain’s most successful exports. If it were steel or fish or other infinitely less profitable sectors, people would be having a meltdown.

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · 2d ago

Visa applications to study in the UK fell by 10.3 per cent for the key recruitment month of September, new Home Office figures show. @jgro-the.bsky.social reports #highered #visas #internationalstudents #edusky https://ow.ly/3LSs50ZVPAE

Am obvious security liability is the shrinkage of UK university teaching capacity and uptake of Chinese language and associated area studies expertise. The mooted new research security fund needs to address that (and not just re China) rather than only fixating on compliance.

UK universities comb records for China links after MI5 warning

Security agency’s alert highlights rising compliance pressures in sensitive research areas

ft.com

Once again, digital archives are just so very fragile, although this example is particularly idiotic (start-up went bust, taking Heritage England's online archive access with it, all over DRM). I remain convinced that the digital age is making paper archives more important, not less.

Tim Daw@timdaw.bsky.social · 2w ago

Historic England vanishing archive - details of why it is broken : www.sarsen.org/2026/09/hist...

I belatedly compiled some of my notes on China's Ethnic Unity Law here. www.chinalawtranslate.com/a-few-notes-...

A few notes on the Ethnic Unity Law

This is not an overview of the Ethnic Unity Law, because Articles, like that by NPC Observer, have already done an admirable job of explaining how the law

chinalawtranslate.com

Latest, on China's settler colonialism in Tibet journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

This is true of many places - higher education is not only a cultural good, it is a massive driver of economies in otherwise left behind places that politicians and journalists rarely visit. What will happen if/when the financial crisis in HE leads to closures?

Brynley Heaven@brynleyheaven.bsky.social · 3w ago

All true (via @lordbonkers.bsky.social)

I was deep in a start-of-semester migraine when the Edinburgh news came out, but I read with trepidation to discover whether my own undergraduate degree (Chinese and History) was among those cut. Its not - but my sense of sadness at this slashing of choice remains.

21 Group@21group.bsky.social · 3w ago

Edinburgh University adds another entry to the imaginative lexicon universities use to say, “We’re cutting” "We are refreshing our programme to consolidate our offering for future students and make their degree pathways easier to navigate" www.heraldscotland.com/news/2656140...

“Rather than ending its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and bringing justice for hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs whose lives have been destroyed, the Chinese government persists in its atrocities and silences critical voices, even abroad.”

China: Decade of Impunity for Crimes Against Uyghurs

The Chinese government’s decade-long severe repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims amounting to crimes against humanity, deserves a stronger response from the international community.

hrw.org

'A Russell Group university will no longer use ubiquitous anti-cheating tools provided by Turnitin because of concerns that the company might use students’ work to train artificial intelligence.' Maybe time for UK universities to develop and commercialise their own tools?

Southampton dumps Turnitin over use of students’ work to train AI

Academic integrity giant denies accusations as university declines to renew contract in favour of ‘other options’

timeshighereducation.com

A Shanghai bookstore was shut down by the Chinese state in 2018. Six years later, it reopened in Washington, D.C. Yangyang Cheng spent months reporting the full, complicated story of Jifeng —

A World out of Words | ChinaFile

The opening of a bookstore rarely makes international headlines. But when JF Books, known in Chinese as “Jifeng” (seasonal winds), opened its doors in Washington, D.C. on September 1, 2024, the news was covered around the world, from The Washington Post and The Economist, to Der Spiegel in Germany and The Straits Times in Singapore. The stories spoke of repression and rebirth:

chinafile.com

I am hiring a Research Associate to join my team at Scholars at Risk: apply.interfolio.com/191007. Great way to get started in international human rights work, particularly if you have an interest in academic freedom

'A prolonged fall in the number of international students applying to study in the UK means “the wheels are rapidly falling off” the student loan-funded higher education system in England, sector experts have warned.' The world's 2nd best university system being killed by malign neglect. 1/3

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

‘Wheels rapidly falling off university funding system’. “No sign of awareness” at Treasury as international recruitment decline worsens financial outlook, experts warn. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...

does anyone know of any work that’s been done on career trajectories of (UK humanities) academics who have been made redundant? eg information about how many go into school teaching, early retirement, independent research? appreciate this is complex, sensitive and much data is too recent

New in @ForeignAffairs: @tendor and I argue that China’s new ethnic-unity law does not abolish minority autonomy on paper. It does something more insidious: it gives statutory force to assimilation while hollowing autonomy out in practice. www.foreignaffairs.com/china/next-p...?

The Next Phase of China’s Minority Crackdown

Forced assimilation is now the law.

foreignaffairs.com

Congratulations to the government on saving 2700 jobs by nationalising British Steel. Now, about the 18,000 university jobs lost in the last 18 months, with more coming…

Just a heads up! @khoreo.bsky.social is 5 days from the end of their kickstarter and the mag hasn't funded. L pointed out last month that if we want nice things, we have to communicate that via dollars. Let's retain this important magazine! khōréō Year 6 www.kickstarter.com/projects/kho...

khōréō: Year 6

Help us sustain and grow an award-winning magazine of speculative fiction and migration!

kickstarter.com

If I were the King of Universities (which, heaven forbid), I would place this finding at the exact centre of every single policy decision from teaching to research to estates to capital investment. At every level in every process, the question would be: are we as humane as education demands we be?

Your morning Must-Read thread, history of the 1st national-level report on AI, in 1973. Remains utterly applicable and just as devastating today.

#UKHE! You know how we're told that 'students want less choice' against what we know to be reality & against pedagogical & disciplinary needs? Finally found the Nous report that supposedly backs that up, & it's based on a survey that asks about the *choice of major* nousgroup.com/assets/docs/...

First they came for the languages. In the hope that no one would have the words to say what was happening. 1/9🧵

University of Aberdeen's plans to cut modern language degrees were 'rushed' - review

The University of Aberdeen says it accepts there were "missteps" in its process in 2023.

bbc.co.uk

from Chapter 27 of Jin Ping Mei: "There are in this world three sorts of people who fear the heat, and three who do not."

The Heat

Critical support for Comrade The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling

burninghou.se

As ever, @davidstroup.bsky.social says things more eloquently than I do. This is a great thread, but I would reiterate that this law simply institutionalises much that was already happening - the removal of non-Chinese education, the criminalisation of everyday ethnic and religious behaviours.

David Stroup@davidstroup.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🧵: This new law, in keeping with previous ones lines the HK National Security Law, asserts that the PRC can extraterritorialize its jurisdiction over speech and actions related to its national unity. Essentially it’s stating that it can police how people abroad speak about ethnic policy. /1

🧵: This new law, in keeping with previous ones lines the HK National Security Law, asserts that the PRC can extraterritorialize its jurisdiction over speech and actions related to its national unity. Essentially it’s stating that it can police how people abroad speak about ethnic policy. /1

Eli Friedman@elifriedman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This law is a real nightmare, creates a legal grounding for the state's assimilationist colonial campaigns

This petition needs as many signatories as the Exeter one. Please sign and share — don’t let Hertfordshire managers get away with this just because a Russell Group one took the spotlight. #UKHE

Joanna Bourke@joannabourke.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Shocking news about redundancies in the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, despite their exceptional research activities. I have signed the petition against these actions: it would be great if you would as well: c.org/kDQynZV7J4 @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @bisa-bkk.bsky.social

Today I am feeling incandescent rage at the way successive governments have absolutely failed higher education in this country and are basically wilfully refusing to do anything about it even though universities are huge employers and economic drivers of so many cities across the country.

PODCAST "A Hundred Years of CCP Borderlands Policies": How the notions of borderlands, nation-building, and ethnic policies have been intertwined throughout 100 years of #CCP existence with @rollandnadege.bsky.social, @bennoweiner.bsky.social, Robert Barnett, @jleibold.bsky.social: bit.ly/3QzsUdL

'It is hard to overstate the role that higher education needs to play. Three-quarters of people working in the creative industries have degrees, and the jobs the audits suggest will be in greatest demand – software developers, designers, advertising executives, architects – are highly skilled.'

If the UK’s universities wither, so will its creative industries

By neglecting to adequately fund university teaching, the UK government is undermining its own growth ambitions for the creative sector, say Goldsmiths’ interim vice-chancellor David Oswell and, separ...

timeshighereducation.com

The Cheese and the Worms is triumphant as a pioneering book in microhistory and narrative history, but I have also especially loved it for Ginsburg’s willingness to remind us that history is _weird._

Michael Lobel@mlobelart.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Sad to learn of passing of eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg; his "The Cheese and the Worms" is one of the books that had the most impact on me as a grad student, as the writing is lively & builds insight from small, carefully observed details of the historical record en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Che...