I've felt really uncomfortable seeing a lot of the sneering about a young Black Professor going through hell right now. Mob mentality is in full view. And, as a recent recruit to HE, I don't get the criticisms of his publication record. Surely other forms of scholarly activity can stand in lieu ...

As thousands of research academics are made redundant the whole system of free/cheap peer review will collapse.

My monograph “Only a Scratch”: British Military Surgery and the Romance of Pain, 1750–1914" has gone into production with Cambridge University Press. It looks at the cult of heroic fortitude in surgery and at the related racial theories about what sort of person could "take it."

“Cease normalising the AI hype and the lies which are prevalent in the technology industry's framing of these technologies.” 1/

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 2d ago

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia It's been a year & people tell me they've changed their mind, feel safer now to sign, etc. So I'm sharing it again for them. We're almost at 2k & anybody from anywhere can add their names. openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Never been more important to know about the Trojan horse! The ostensible gift being the gift of diversity in this case, and self-loathing racism being what's really concealed inside...

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · yesterday

Kemi Badenoch certainly seems to be advancing with her agenda to turn the Conservatives into Reform.

I hear this, most of my collabs are oriented towards the latter...

Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA@arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 2d ago

Good question. I sometimes wonder if law is still a good idea. I'd focus on healthcare.

I often wonder what effect stumbling across his columns among my parents' discarded sunday papers had on me in childhood. Whether I'd be less of a c*nt if I'd just cleaned my football boots on them instead of reading them.

Marcus 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧@marcusjdl.bsky.social · 2d ago

Rod Liddle is dead.

Lord Sewell’s unqualified paean to Quaker businesses like Cadbury’s, as capitalism that fights injustice, isolates Britain from its colonies. While it improved worker conditions at home, Cadbury’s used enslaved workers on is cocoa plantations on São Tomé. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Let’s rekindle capitalism with a conscience

Britain’s pioneering Quaker businesses showed that success and social good can work together

thetimes.com

Downplay a book or movie: Inadvisable country for old men Ladz in da 'burbs

Marco Almada@marcoalmada.com · 2d ago

Downplay a book or movie Special Military Operation and Peace In the Mood for Affection The Day The Earth Slightly Slowed Da Enuff Dakka

Political discourse is doomed. Show crossings are down, and you legitimate the idea that migrants are bad. Concede they're up, and you add fuel to the fire. The real fight is against racism and xenophobia, which parliamentarians are too invested in to lead.

Liam Thorp@liamthorp.bsky.social · 2d ago

Andy Burnham correctly points out in an interview that small boat crossings are massively down this year compared with last. The comments in the post are filled with people suggesting he is lying about this very clear, data-evidenced fact. It’s almost as though they don’t want it to he true…

I have often lamented being driven out of academia for having those same feelings and understandings and unwillingness to be silent. But the more I've heard from my friends still in academia, the more i think i dodged a bullet; cuz first-hand witnessing the putrification of all i love would crush me

Watched k pop demon hunters with my 9yo earlier, miles preferred it to the odyssey tbh...

The PM killed an untold number of people during a pandemic and burnt £850 million and he was depicted in state media as our benevolent saviour, I think that drove me mad and I never recovered, the state literally convinced people to willingly be culled en masse by an infectious disease

If you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...

Several UK universities nearly ran out of cash last year, says report

Almost a quarter of higher education institutions were left with less than 70 days of cash to cover costs

ft.com

“Of a sample of more than a million accounts on X, 64% could be bots, a finding that requires no stretch of the imagination, given the sheer inanity of interactions on the site.” www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

How Bots Took Over Our Lives

During the 2016 election, much of the country was introduced to the concept of internet bots for the first time. Now, just a decade later, it feels like they’re everywhere.

newyorker.com

Application numbers are up, both for school leavers and mature students. STEM and Social Sciences numbers are especially strong.

What to expect for results day and Clearing 2026: early clues and insights in UCAS data - HEPI

Join HEPI for an ‘In Conversation’ webinar ahead of the 2026 admissions round on 11:00-12:00, 11th August 2026, featuring Dr Jo Saxton CBE, Chief Executive of UCAS. In discussion with Nick Hillman OBE...

hepi.ac.uk

Kudos to Liverpool for actually running a 2-phase proof-of-concept pilot of Copilot rather than rushing to universal roll out. That universities that pride themselves on their research status have adopted a roll out first, test maybe later approach is telling. (And that Copilot is opted for, ditto).

Caution urged over blanket roll-out of AI to staff and students

Several universities have committed to giving everyone access to latest technology, but expert says a more nuanced approach is needed

timeshighereducation.com

Why's it controversial to say people don't want dead ends after going to uni? Is there a lobby of people supporting dead ends or something?

Tom Richmond@tom-richmond.com · 6d ago

In my latest podcast, Professor Diana Beech told me that she doesn't think Andy Burnham is 'anti university', but universities may still need to reconsider where they fit into the new Prime Minister's plans. Listen to the full episode here: insideyoured.com

Solidarity Jason. I heard you on the Surviving Society podcast and was so impressed with your contribitions. You'll come through this, with a crowd of supporters behind you ✊️

Sneha Krishnan@snehakrishnan.bsky.social · last wk.

Jason is the youngest Black professor in Cambridge’s history. Rightwing newspapers are trying to smear him with fake accusations of plagiarism. We can't let them. Stand up to their hate and division by adding your name. goodlawproject.org/s/3ec4c0

Imo virtually all British kids should be encouraged to plan to spend at least some portion of life beyond their hometown, possibly far beyond it. This has the advantage of being both good on the merits and realistic.I feel there was a quiet consensus on this that we lost somewhere in the 2010s.

Ellery Weil@ellerygillian.bsky.social · last wk.

I mean, I don’t disagree with this take, but once again: it seems like a general hostility to the idea of people moving is also an enormous problem! Gearing education around “local economies“ only makes sense if you can’t imagine people wanting to live somewhere besides their hometown!

NOLAN: help, help, NOBODY is criticising my films FILM BUFFS: 🤔 ODYSSEY BUFFS: 🤓

Kaarel Kressa@kaarelkressa.bsky.social · last wk.

je suis almost nobody

Don't get me wrong this is a good decision. But so often domestic judgments that warn foreign governments sit very uncomfortably with the *absence* of judgments warning our own government in similar terms, not least on questions of surveillance technologies.

HJA Civil Liberties@hjacivillibs.bsky.social · last wk.

The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Bahrain, which has been claiming state immunity against a lawsuit filed by two political activists who allege their computers were infected with FinSpy by agents acting on behalf of the Bahraini government www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Graduation today. For three-quarters of the department it will be the last one before redundancy, so a chance to say goodbye to each other as well as the students.

subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz355bs

So, what happens if I'm a parent and I know that my kid needs highly paid teachers, a library full of books with diverse characters, trans-inclusive bathrooms and extracurriculars, and a curriculum unpacking topics like systemic racism, colonial oppression, economic inequality, and climate change?

This is an established trope - look at all the Vietnam War movies which feature no named Vietnamese characters and are centred entirely on the American invaders’ noble suffering.

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · last wk.

7. The film centers Odysseus's guilt over his war crimes, but never shows us the POV of his victims, and instead glorifies the perpetrator for feeling bad about himself. I found this unsatisfying ethically and worse, imaginatively, because Damon's character is given only one mood (Troubled).

I wrote about the Nolan Odyssey for the LRB. I'll summarize some of my main points below, in case you don't feel like reading all that. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

lrb.co.uk

you’re all showing your arses in the quotes and replies. Nice to know your anti-racism doesn’t extend to people whose music you like. Bet some of you still make excuses for Eric Clapton “because he loves Black music”. Pathetic

It's so fascinating seeing this. He's making explicit what was implicit in society, and found it's way to the shitter Gallagher brother's tantrum about Jay Z headlining Glasto. This runs deep, and is about much more than just music, or that has-been twat out the smiths.

Marcus 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧@marcusjdl.bsky.social · 2w ago

My beef with Morrissey runs all the way back to 1986 when he said this about Black artists. Nineteen Eighty Six, while the Smiths were still active. It’s not a “later phenomenon” don’t try and lie to me www.standard.co.uk/culture/musi...