This is simply wonderful news for the Migration Museum and its ongoing project to create the UK's first permanent museum exploring migration to and from the UK. The new Museum will be in the City of London, but is already working with collaborators outside London and outside England. 1/3

The Wolfson Foundation commits £600,000 to the UK’s ‘Missing Museum’

The Migration Museum is delighted to announce that The Wolfson Foundation has become a Founding Partner of the UK’s first permanent museum dedicated to exploring how the movement of people to and from...

migrationmuseum.org

One thing you can absolutely guarantee in life. When Labour ministers talk about difficult choices, it's never the rich and powerful that will be taking a hit.

A barrister represents his clients in court. Clients who are political dissidents. He now faces criminal prosecution for doing so. Not Turkey. Not Egypt. Not Russia. England. Astonishing, deeply disturbing, and part of a long slide towards authoritarianism. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Palestine Action barrister’s prosecution criticised as ‘chilling’

CBA chair says contempt charge over closing speech by Rajiv Menon KC has left lawyers fearful of doing their job

theguardian.com

Great to see the Guardian champion the SHAPE (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences) subjects, but this piece gives impression that they are expensive, whereas many are 'cheap to teach' subjects subsidising more expensive subjects, mainly in STEM and medicine. The crisis demands better understanding.

The Guardian view on humanities cuts in universities: academic departments are more than cost centres | Editorial

Editorial: Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

theguardian.com

"Shabana Mahmood staying as Home Secretary to presumably continue her appalling record of performative cruelty towards migrants and refugees is a warning sign that Burnham has not learnt the lessons from Starmer's failure," says Zack Polanski

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

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

Ten years ago today the whole country and its future were sacrificed on the altar of Boris Johnson’s ego, David Cameron’s stupidity and Nigel Farage’s prejudice. A decade thrown away and a nation left angrier and poorer. Thanks, you absoute pricks.

Whilst the media commemorates 10 years since Brexit, it’s worth recalling that one of the principal causes of Brexit was the abject failure of the media to call out the lies and the liars.

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

'A less than five-minutes-long Teams call with no opportunity to respond is how staff at the University of Dundee heard that their jobs, the courses that they teach and their livelihoods might be at risk. I ask members to think about that for a moment.' (Maggie Chapman (North East Scotland) 1/5

The Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament examines what the Scottish Government is doing, makes new laws on devolved matters and debates the issues of the day.

parliament.scot

I hope we're going to see many charges for incitement to racial hatred, incitement to violence and incitement to riot, all of which have been happening blatantly and prolifically on social media. Or will two-tier policing in the UK, favouring the right and the far right, prevail yet again?

Elon Musk is very busy attempting to incite violence in the UK. It's his response the the government's initiative designed to ban pornography on the mobile devices of children... pornography of which he is the principal supplier.

"Already the cancer of Reform has spread - deep into the Tory Party, which now refers to 'anti-racism' as a 'dangerous ideology'. What society, worth the name, considers anti-racism to be something to condemn, for pity’s sake?" via The Herald

A reminder of what Nigel Farage said following the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.

A disgrace. "The Court implies that individuals with profound cognitive disabilities cannot be "deprived" of liberty because their condition limits their ability to experience it—a view that devalues their fundamental rights"

Katy Montgomerie 🦗@katymontgomerie.com · 2mo ago

The UK Supreme Court has now decided to strip disabled people of their human rights too "This judgement sets us back decades and removes safeguards that history shows us are vital for disabled people." Horrific www.mind.org.uk/news-campaig...

The Fire Brigades Union has made a statement on the proposed EHRC Code of Practice on Services. Our message is clear. Equality matters, solidarity is essential, and we will continue to fight for both.

Surprise surprise

The Internet Ethics program--Markkula Center for Applied Ethics@iethics.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"Researchers have used top Generative #AI models to grade hundreds of undergraduate essays and found that AI only matched human-awarded degree classification around half the time, with AI often failing to assess the best and worst submissions accurately": www.cam.ac.uk/stories/ai-u... #ethics #tech

TransActual will continue to fight for equal access to public life for all trans people, and will publish our full thoughts on the new Code once we have had the time to properly scrutinise it – something that the Government seems keen to avoid. #TransRights #EHRC

The EHRC’s own Equality Impact Assessment admits this guidance is likely to have NEGATIVE impacts on trans people. That matters. Because the Supreme Court itself said its interpretation of the Equality Act would not disadvantage trans people... #transrights #equalityact #ehrc #lgbtq #humanrights

'What appears as declining demand is more accurately understood as the result of uneven access to language learning across the school system.'

Modern languages has a future – and it’s all about access

Contraction of modern languages provision is often painted as a response to falling demand. For Ana de Medeiros and Marcela Cazzoli, if you look across the whole education system then HE starts to loo...

wonkhe.com

There's an exceptionalist belief that the UK's immune to the worst political extremes. In reality, we were lucky not to get a fascist government in the 1930s. Now that the world's richest man supports our most extreme political party, we need more than luck. We need to get the money out of politics.

New article alert: "Solutions and Solidarity in the Advice Centres of the Democratic Women’s League of Germany, 1971-1990", thanks to @germanhistsoc.bsky.social for the support with editing the article in its early stages, much appreciated! academic.oup.com/gh/advance-a...

Solutions and Solidarity in the Advice Centres of the Democratic Women’s League of Germany, 1971–1990*

Abstract. This article explores the grassroots practices of the Democratic Women’s League of Germany (Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands, DFD) in the p

academic.oup.com

AI 'empires': 'Under the guise of a civilizing mission to "benefit all of humanity”, they use large-scale AI development as cover to consolidate resources, destroy ecosystems, centralize information, hollow out institutions, and gain paramount economic and political power.

Karen Hao@karenhao.bsky.social · 3mo ago

On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org

Really positive article in Guardian today about our poetry collection by Gaza poets Let’s Throw War Away and Folding a River by Tawona and myself Written under collapsing ceilings, typed on phones: the poetry bringing Palestine to the world | Global development @uofgnews.bsky.social

Reform UK back candidate who called abortion 'cowardly act of murder'

Reform UK defend candidate who called abortion 'cowardly act of murder'

Reform UK have defended a by-election candidate who called abortion a “cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby” and suggested that women…

thenational.scot

While all eyes are on Farage, we're overlooking something even worse: the building of the very tight and truly vile operation that is Restore Britain. This excellent essay/report by Simon Pearson should wake us up to the threat - and to what exactly it is. simonpearson1.substack.com/p/tory-30

“Tory 3.0”

The British far right has spent fifty years failing to find a leader who looks like he could run the country. Last Thursday, it did. This is Tory 3.0.

simonpearson1.substack.com

Every single member of the History Department at Uni of Nottingham is at risk of redundancy. Every single one of us.

Annual Hobsbawm Memorial Lecture, 18 June 2026, 18:00-21:00 at Birkbeck: Toby Green, 'History at the 'End of History': Inequality and Discourse in the Age of Reimperialism'. #Skystorians

*laughs in archivist* It always amuses me at how little historical material is actually not only digitized but also made available online compared to what lay people think.