'“It’s a sad reflection on the sector as a whole when the Russell Group is unwilling to present a robust defence of UK higher education in response to a shoddy political hatchet job,” said Andrew McRae, a former dean of postgraduate research at the University of Exeter.' Well said. 1/3

I think Mayor Zohran was a step ahead of Trump and his friends who wanted him to fail.

When James Dolan cancels the watch party outside MSG, we bring the watch party to you. Thanks to the @nba.com, Knicks Game 4 is now playing on dozens of LinkNYC screens across our city. LGK.

Be warned by @gsoh31.bsky.social "elites tend to accommodate themselves to power. Some university chiefs have apparently been meeting with Nigel Farage’s lieutenants, and more will no doubt follow."

Grief, sadness, anger - I’m currently experiencing ain’t eh things Glen O’Hara describes, as my department find waits to find out who of us will be sacked (60%) and who retained. isrf.org/blog/what-do...

'In 2007, before the global financial crisis, Britain was at its postimperial zenith. Median household income had just surpassed that of Germany. A pound was worth more than $2, and London was arguably displacing New York as the center of international banking'. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

No wonder the entrenched bureaucracy hates him to much. He's showing America that things REALLY can get better when you work on behalf of everyone, not for the Epstein class.

A truly disgusting speech that disgraces the sacrifice made by the Allied soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat fascism.

A little more context to JD Vance's revolting comments on immigration. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/o...

A man was shot dead surrounded by witnesses in Skidmore, Missouri, but no one was ever prosecuted. Now that act of vigilante justice has inspired the play “Kenrex.”

A VC said to me in about 2010. At the beginning of computerisation we would get programmers in to automate our processes. Then we bought software and changed processes to fit. To continue the story, now we get consultants to provide services that never quite work so we have to continue to pay them.

Just as UK HE is closing Philosophy departments. Clearly UK VCs' augury failed to anticipate these 'job-ready graduates'. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Obviously, the extreme right has no difficulty understanding this within the frameworks of "woke mind virus" and "race traitors". They just want different, more explicitly racist, white people back in charge.

As of this morning, @thenewschool.bsky.social is de facto replacing its History department with a “Center for the American Experience,” which is funded by private and undisclosed donors. The New School has been New Colleged, and there’s no GOP to blame here. Our anti-fascist identity is over.

"In higher education, anxiety manifests simultaneously as paralysis and hyperactivity in response to the acceleration of production, and from this contradiction a refined form of academic anxiety emerges as an energised compulsion to meet impossible demands.“ (Hall/Bowles) doi.org/10.14288/wor...

We used to talk about the University as an "anxiety machine", producing intolerable working conditions (slowness, for example, was a response), but it's really become a "grief machine" and I'm not sure we know what to do with the pain and loss yet.

Higgins criticised the government’s prioritising of economic interests over moral convictions and international law www.thejournal.ie/michael-d-hi...

This HEPI report is also a devastating, if unintentional, indictment of a sea of "HE-related" commentariat and consultancy types, who have latched on to a clearly ailing education sector, gotten paid at its expense, and then refused to decouple. Now that the host is dying, they finally speak.

I bet we've all met a 'loyal loser'. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w...

'In the past ten or fifteen years even cash-strapped universities seem to have found the resources to build shiny new monuments to ancillary services while cutting back on the defining activities of teaching and research.' Stefan Collini on UK higher education. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is like watching a car engine sputtering as it tries to start, except it's the brain of a man who could end humanity with one order. The wires just aren't connected anymore.

A university that does not understand the value of physical libraries staffed with real librarians is a university that does not understand how knowledge is kept.

DHS will require every green card applicant to leave the country before applying, even if they qualify for a green card or leaving would disqualify them. The agency has already cut green card approvals in half over the past year. Remember: it was never about legal immigration.

University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university

Location of UK data centres. United Kingdom Data Centers - 530 Facilities share.google/aHnSuRgMI0Vp...

Hertfordshire's History programme had an ace 2nd-year work placement programme, which apparently was dismantled from above because it was complex. Now of course the programme itself is being dismantled from above. The market logic escapes me.

If we are looking at a future of summer internships for students, then offer international opportunities to students willing to study a world language.

Jeff Bezos went on TV to whine about Zohran Mamdani to stop demonizing billionaires. The very next day Mayor Mamdani responded by forcing Amazon to pay $9M in fines accrued by Amazon delivery trucks for illegally idling. This is what happens when we elect a mayor for the people—not the corporations

Trans people have been around your whole life. You’ve been sharing bathrooms with them your whole life. They’ve been in your communities your whole life. They’ve even been playing sport your whole life. And you didn’t care *at all* till a few years ago when every right wing org decided you should

Trump's shady IRS immunity deal is outright robbery from the American people. Billions of dollars that Trump and his family have pocketed — from foreign governments, billionaires, and corporate supplicants — are now untraceable, unaccounted for, and likely hidden for good. Corruption on steroids.

"When everything exists primarily for someone else’s gain—even your child’s Saturday-afternoon game—it breeds emptiness and resentment." Frankly, this is the payback for decades of US semi-professionalisation of children's sport. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Knowledge under siege: Charting a future for universities Our Schools/Our Selves, Winter/Spring 2026 www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

Killing off Chinese and Japanese Studies? Never going to need them, right?

My colleagues in East Asian Studies at Sheffield produce world class research and so many of the UK’s leading experts in Asian Studies have gotten MAs or PhDs there. This is an incredibly shortsighted choice that will diminish this country’s knowledge exchange with a vital region of the globe.

US has just given up on the rule of law, hasn't it? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/u...

The one good thing about my T&L course was that I ended up reading chunks of the "research" behind what we were being told, and discovering how shoddy much of it was: full of vast breezy generalisations and huge logical leaps. I didn't become popular with the course leaders.

I blame, among other factors, all those awful teaching 'n' learning slideshow talks that slapped up Bloom's Taxonomy and blathered about how any teacher who didn't skip straight to "create" was letting down their students.

This. You feel there's a conspiracy to discourage even critical pedagogues from teaching necessary basics which underpin creativity and knowledge creation.

My campus just had to make across-the-board 7% budget cuts (after making cuts last year as well) yet UMS found $1.39 million for a 2-year contract with OpenAI.

Chinese newspaper cartoon (Today... 😂 )

Many of you keep asking how you can see the film that captures my final semester of teaching, The Last Class. Well now you can, because it's available to rent. Learn more here: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/take-my-classroom-to-your-home

Hegseth is asking for a record $1.5 trillion defense budget. Roughly half of defense spending goes to private contractors that routinely price-gouge the government. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has failed EIGHT straight audits. The military industrial complex is cheering right now.

This is Higher Education now. The dumbest thing I have ever seen. Hey, taxpayers! You paid for most of this! It's all being thrown into a burning dumpster! *Slow handclap of all slow handclaps*.

All the philosophy students who pursued their passion made a wise decision. Learning how to think is a always a good investment. Psychology grads are not doing too badly on the job market either.

To be honest, this brings back a lot of memories. It is another attack on scholarship questioning the orthodoxy within business schools, this time on scholars who, for example, initiated the Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience. Please consider sharing and signing.

New in PN: The assault on higher ed goes deeper than you think "This is bigger than budget cuts. It’s not just a continuation of things like longtime GOP efforts to cut Pell Grants. It’s a wide-ranging assault designed to drastically limit access to higher ed for all but the rich & well-connected."

I admire the hell out of these Texas Tech students, who held a funeral for academic freedom: pen.org/texas-tech-a...

‘Yes, they practice medieval governance models, ruthlessly repress women, suppress trades union activity, hoard enormous amounts of money and exploit their population but we think Cambridge can learn more from us’ said the Saudi government spokesman.