BSP Podcast - Episode 159 - Book Discussion | Laura Jane Nanni – The Porosity of the Self: Husserl's Philosophy of Self and Personhood (2024) Nanni presents on her recent monograph in conversation with Associate Professor Timothy Mooney. www.thebsp.org.uk/2026/01/07/b...

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

This just goes to show how vacuous all those concerns about preserving the status of the Western canon were. Plato is basically the main white-bust-statue guy, but it turns out he's too woke for universities if you actually read him

In terms of how we respond to this: unintentional carelessness is a far bigger problem - and a more difficult one to deal with - than calculated dishonesty or misconduct.

Really happy to announce that the BSP Podcast, which I edit, is back with three episodes a week of recordings of our conferences. First, we have Susi Ferrarello discussing her book, 'Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood'. Available on your favourite podcast app and also the ones you hate.

For example: authors being misquoted (though not in a way that immediately jumps out as obvious) and bibliographic details being recorded incorrectly. These inaccuracies are reproduced because of people using chatbots to find references and not double checking the outputs. Long term result: unclear

My highly contingent and partial take on Gen AI in Higher Education is this: the biggest problem with Gen AI isn't brazen cheating or dishonesty. It's the normalisation of seemingly minor things being incorrect: call it a 'close enough' mentality.

Well done to @cardiffucu.bsky.social. This is huge progress from where things were not long ago.

Some really (and qualifiedly) good news from Cardiff UCU @cardiffucu.bsky.social : No redundancies next year, no downgrading of professional services staff. And all without the need for disruptive industrial action, which nobody at all wants. nation.cymru/news/cardiff...

Borrowed with love from Mastodon:

fellow precarious academics: let's recognise our achievements this year. We are doing a lot of research and in many cases this is without any institutional funding or support.

Owen I believe the British need to bring these English speaking regions back into the fold. Doubtless our fellow English Speakers will welcome us as liberators.

It’s a shame that this is what most “socialist” discourse looks like in the UK. No grounding in reality, no attempt to engage with expert discourse, just lazy contrarianism to drum up clicks.

I picked the wrong day to unblock Owen Jones

#UCU members: some of you might remember there was a Branch Delegate Meeting on 4th Dec (or you might have attended it!). Quick round up from us @ucucommons.org on what was reported by branches is here: ucucommons.org/branch-deleg...

The dialectic caused by LLM outputs having to make contact with reality might actually calm things down a bit. It should going only take the embarrassment from one email from the subject librarian to make you realise that Copilot et al aren’t what they’re made out to be.

Initial thoughts on a HE car-crash: first proper post on my Substack. Part 1 of a million, probably, where I get very annoyed about bad decisions taken by UCU.

So there’s a tonne of Heidegger books available to read with Kobo Plus, which I find really amusing as he’d have hated that.

We found these claims annoying for different reasons, ranging from them being technically inaccurate to politically dubious. So we got our heads together and wrote a paper that weaves together history of ideas, AI research and critical discourse studies as applied to political claims.

Update on my trying to use Claude Code to implement some research code. On the plus side: It generates a lot of code. Quite a lot. Some of it works some of the time. On the minus side: I've not yet figured out how to keep it from going into the weeds of error.

Can’t believe it’s our fifth one of these already! Do have a read #UKHE #UCU

As I argued at the time, HEC should not have called a formal ballot when it did. Our @ucucommons.org statement on this predictable (and predicted) failure is out now. It is well past time for UCU’s elected reps to get serious about confronting the crises in UKHE: ucucommons.org/industrial-b...

The Telegraph is accusing a history of making a documentary about the British Empire that focuses, erm, on the British Empire.

It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals. Please share widely.

This is a phenomenal effort from staff and reps given the turnout for the indicative ballot – to improve on that by nearly 10% is amazing. But as HEC we need to do some serious reflecting. The proportion of Yes and No votes are also revealing (70/30) #UCU #UKHE /1 www.ucu.org.uk/article/1427...

I'm very happy to have been invited to be a keynote speaker at this conference. Unfortunately, the cats won't be presenting with me. However, please do consider submitting a paper to the CfP. #philosophy #phenomenology

I like that last sentence. That should be inscribed on the cover page of every module handbook. And I speak as a relative advocate for incorporating AI into teaching and learning!

Exciting news! We have transitioned off Substack and Wordpress and onto Ghost for both our website and newsletter. We're delighted to be on an open platform for our newsletter, which comes out every other Wednesday. You can check out our shiny new site via the same URL: ucucommons.org

Thoughtful post by Matt on AI and the democratization of skill. I’d add there is a tension between techne as mastery of the world and techne as self-mastery. Both can tend toward either virtue or vice, but AI seems likely to undercut the latter.

I've blogged on idea that #AI 'democratises' various skills, such as illustration and writing. I think that misses the point of learning a skill entirely. It's the learning of the skill that enriches and frees us, not us being able to offload it to a machine: blog.matthewbarnard.phd/democratisat...

We have a shiny new handle! 😍

‘Risk exiting the market’ what a way to package the complete collapse of higher education

‘A horror film a bit like Cocaine Bear where scientists engineer a Great Dane with the brain and temperament of a sausage dog’

Extremely upset that a throw-away XKCD joke somehow became the organizing principle for the Internet.

The opening paragraph is wild. Aside from the fact that all people should just be able to use spaces appropriate to their gender, how lacking in thought do you have to be to present this as if only trans people will be challenged because...how could that even work?? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Happy World Philosophy Day! I hope your philosophy basket gets filled with lots of philosophies from the.. philosophy cryptid? Or however you celebrate, I guess.

If you want to be able to attract students, offer high quality courses. If you want to have high quality courses, give your staff the time to be experts prepare their course materials. Don’t force them to rely on shortcuts, like GenAI. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

#openaccess Neuerscheinung: Sammelband zu Gernot Böhmes Philosophie, herausgegeben von @rebeccaboehme.bsky.social u.a. In meinem Beitrag verteidige ich den Begriff der #Natur mithilfe der #Ökophänomenologie gegen Positionen, die behaupten im #Anthropozän wäre Natur an ihr Ende gekommen. #philsky

32 colleges hit the turnout threshold. 90% backed strike action. Our ballots have already won pay deals at 17 colleges now others must follow. College teachers are still paid £9,000 less than school teachers. This isn’t sustainable. Pay parity now. feweek.co.uk/ucu-ballot-r...

In response to our industrial action, the university proposed a resolution that removed the threat of compulsory redundancies for the next year and introduced a negotiation process over course closures. And at our branch meeting, we accepted this offer.

This isn’t “efficiency” it’s an ideological shift towards a Little England university system. Nottingham is set to become the only Russell Group university with no modern languages or music degrees. 48 courses on the line. We’re fighting it. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

This is really tone deaf, and reminds me of Gillian Keegan complaining that no one thanked her for doing a good job during the RAC scandal. Yes, this is a time of 'fiscal challenge', but you can't just tell people who are being made redundant that they didn't think of a better solution. 1/

New on our Substack: newsletter #4, which includes a link to our report of #UCU NEC on 7 November. Also feat. @matthewbarnard.phd @drgillhistory.bsky.social @hagenilda.bsky.social @matildaf.bsky.social @bparsia.bsky.social @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social ucucommons.substack.com/p/ucu-common...

A transphobe said to me the other day in a workshop I was running ‘you know there are people who disagree with you!’. Lady, as if you people don’t spend every waking hour of every day talking about this because you lack hobbies and purpose, lol.

So, if GenAI fails it's everyone's fault for not using it now?

Dons #UCU HEC member hat. UK academics on teaching-focused/teaching-only contracts: how, if at all, does your employer support you in doing research? Are there any good local policies on this I should be aware of? My DMs are open and confidentiality assured. #UKHE #academicsky

I genuinely think there is a case that anyone using an AI product of this kind should face a short prison sentence. It's vandalism, just like painting on a wall or smashing a bus stop.

Martin Tyler voice: “LABOUROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”