"Climate change is believed to have played a role in such hot spells as this" FFS BBCNews Belief has nothing to do with it. This is hard, scientific, fact When will you get this right? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

They are not doing it lightly.

How many vice-chancellors are announcing the need to cut their own pay packets?

Keeping this for my next appraisal/redundancy selection. Thanks, Your Popeness.

This is evil collective punishment.

to paraphrase Homer Simpson, 38% *so far*

The "repetition compulsion": "But unlike other sectors that learn from past mistakes—and sometimes even hold those who make disastrous decisions accountable—senior management teams in UK universities respond by introducing yet another round of restructuring." #UKHE isrf.org/blog/dispatc...

How does the Department for Education keep getting away with these non-statements? You clearly did not take any action that meaningfully improved the situation in the #UKHE sector, as 79% of said sector is making voluntary redundancies. Can journalists please push back? www.ft.com/content/ded7...

The very same vice-chancellors will be congratulating each other and telling themselves that taking ‘difficult decisions’ like this is what makes them worth their £350k salaries.

'Vice-chancellors have said they may need to cut hardship support for impoverished students and reduce outreach activities aimed at disadvantaged groups if the dire funding struggles at universities continue.' Great look. Read the room (sic) messaging calculated to alienate public support. 1/2

Shorter: there are no jobs and pay and conditions are getting worse

If I’m not evolved enough to understand it, then why did they have to steal my writing to train it?

Shocking news from Turkey. President Erdoğan closes Istanbul Bilgi University overnight. www.turkishminute.com/2026/05/22/e...

Happy birthday to Bob Dylan (with a cover version he liked). www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4...

How do fixed-term academics experience academic freedom in light of their working conditions? New article by Suzanne Couloigner, Victor A. Perez Moraga, Ian G. Jones and Filippos Maraziotis. #AcademicFreedom #HigherEd journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

John Schofield of York University on the value of archaeology - it’s not just about the past. theconversation.com/six-reasons-...

I recently made an FOI request to UK universities. What an experience it's been! The wider work relating from it will be shared in due course, but would anyone be interested in either me writing a paper or hosting an event exploring the diverse process of engagement and reactions from HEIs to FOIs?

"In this new version of collegiality, the professional academic becomes a manager of metrics, not moral purpose. Professionalism is thus emptied of its collegial content". On managed collegiality - great blogpost by Roy Suddaby. #HigherEd #BusinessSchool globalfocusmagazine.com/managerial-p...

any academics paying for kagi.com? I tried it for like 20 min and it's obvious that its standard search is far better than Google's, while also being better than free alternatives (qwant, duckduckgo etc) & ad-less I wonder if its 'academic lens' produces better results to Google Scholar?

"Conduct of HR department is deeply concerning ... The lack of transparency, deliberate witholding of information with intention to mislead ... lack of any meaningful investigation into what happened" (Recent Employment Tribunal) Could be any University, but it's Nottingham

European academics are opting to miss an annual US gathering for business scholars over visa fears and opposition to president’s research policies, prompting @aomconnect.bsky.social to move event in future years https://ow.ly/XxFI50Z2LqN

Nothing promotes individual liberty quite like a state-mandated indoctrination.

Ach wie, die Leute wählen trotzdem noch AfD, obwohl im Bundeskanzleramt nicht mehr gegendert wird?

Der israelische Hardliner Itamar Ben-Gvir stellte festgenommene Gaza-Aktivisten zur Schau und verhöhnte sie. Frankreich zieht nun Konsequenzen, erklärt den Minister zur unerwünschten Person – und ruft zu EU-Sanktionen gegen ihn auf.

'The Russell Group university is looking to shed more than 600 roles – with 2,700 staff at risk – as part of a “transformation plan” that its leaders have said is necessary to prevent it “running out of money”.' 1/2

"I'm really angry that this scifi writer whose work was stolen to train a probability machine that depletes water tables and raises electricity prices and is accelerating the transfer of wealth and capital toward men who actively hate other humans doesn't like 'AI," what a lack of vision they have"

disregard | verb | to pay no attention to : treat as unworthy of regard or notice

Stephen Colbert closed out the final episode of The Late Show with an emotional performance of “Hello, Goodbye” alongside Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney symbolically switched off the studio lights one last time to the Ed Sullivan Theater. 🥹🥺

If there is an Academic Social Contract that makes the university something beyond a training center, it must surely be that the university can turn a clear mirror on society. Authoritarians demand that the mirror only show what they want to see.

"Whatever happened to due modesty? ... Can’t universities be good, or must they adopt positions of unearned braggadocio, each outdoing the other in macho postures of inflated and ever tumescent swellings of ‘excellence’?" (Thomas Docherty (2015): Universities at War) That's over, isn't it?

Wie hieß nochmal das Album von Supertramp? Ach ja: "Crisis? What Crisis?"

lmao

𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 – 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆. 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗞𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗮𝘂𝗲𝗿 - 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙄𝙙𝙚𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙢: 𝙁𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙁𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙤𝙧𝙮 Routledge. 304 pp. Reviewed by: 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗻 𝗕. 𝗚𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗿, The University of Melbourne, Australia 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0170...

"When manufactured budget cuts result in the elimination of gender and ethnic studies, academia dies. ... When professors are forced to overcomply with state regulations and university policies in fear of being prosecuted, academia dies. But we will not let it die quietly". #AcademicFreedom

"The secrecy & force of the changes are akin to the massive disappearances of immigrants that are happening in our streets & to the history of forced disappearances of people around the world who are hunted & targeted for their knowledge & beliefs." — Mariela Nuñez-Janes, VP, UNT AAUP

Die ehemalige Berliner TU-Präsidentin Geraldine Rauch likte einen Post, der ihr Antisemitismusvorwürfe einbrachte. Sie sollte eine Geldbuße zahlen. Nun endete der Fall anders als gedacht.

current mood at my uni as we stare down the barrel of a ‘professional services restructure’ that could have only been dreamed up by someone who has no idea what a university actually does

"Der Austausch macht deutlich: Weimers Firma und Weimers Behörde stimmten ihre Antworten ab. Zudem hat der Sprecher des Kulturstaatsministers Informationen an ein privates Unternehmen weitergeleitet."

🔥 SPRINGSTEEN: "I’m here to support Stephen Colbert, the first guy who lost his show because a president can't take a joke - and the Ellisons feel they need to kiss his ass… small-minded people with no idea what freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about." 🇺🇸

The BBC report on Colbert's last show is Peak BBC. 'Some questioned whether the decision to axe his show may have been due to political pressure' before going into the CBS denial. 'Some questioned'.

My new blog for the Social History Society on the loss of adult education centres in universities, with particular focus on history and the closure of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at York. 🗃️

Good night and good luck

Very sad to be on #UCUstrike action today at #NottinghamUni. A university only functions through goodwill, and academic staff are not the enemies that UEB seem determined to think they are. Since Future Nottingham 1 gutted administrative staff, academic staff have increasingly picked up their 1/?

Nur ein kleiner Vorgeschmack, weil die Angriffe nicht aufhören. Das ist es auch egal, das das mit der Neutralität natürlich auch immer sehr flexibel ausgelegt, etwa wenn ein Funktionär Wahlkampf für die AfD macht und dann kritisiert wird (wann und wo anders so geschehen).

I suspect that within a year or two MPs will increasingly hear from A level students and parents finding that degree courses they want to take have vanished. Those who banked on being able to stay home for cost reasons, especially those living in areas with only one local uni, will be badly hit.

Das ist der Moment, mehr Philosophielehrstühle zu fordern Leute

Jetzt sind die Deutschen nicht nur faul, sondern auch noch dumm

On #InternationalAcademicFreedomDay, the @EU_Commission reaffirmed their support for #academicfreedom as a cornerstone of democracy and demonstrated their commitment to policies that safeguard academic freedom. Read the statement: ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Reach for the book: it is a weapon.