"Faculty are frontline workers in the cultivation of a democratic citizenry. Their collective-bargaining needs to make academic freedom a nonnegotiable part of any contract, the first principle on which all the other clauses rest." (Joan W. Scott) #AcademicFreedom direct.mit.edu/daed/article...

NEW from me today: ICYMI it earlier, I've written for @arguablymag.bsky.social about the quiet crisis destroying almost everything important about universities, and why no-one's talking about it. Take a look: www.arguably.uk/p/the-quiet-...

The future of AI is being decided right now. Billionaires want bigger profits. The rest of us want a fair future. I just signed this to show our leaders where I stand. Can you take 60 seconds to add your name too? actionnetwork.org/forms/ai-sho...

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...

Reading this as one of my many tasks today. Very downcast to see all those universities founded in the 1960s to foster the whole person, communities of hope and the conditions of freedom... ripped apart and trashed just a couple of generations later. For no good reason.

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/...

Historians slam ‘marketisation and neglect’ of higher education. Royal Historical Society issues stinging rebuke of English model amid escalating cuts. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

In just months, Zohran Mamdani has shown what politics looks like when leaders actually try governing for ordinary people instead of donors and cable news panels. Affordable housing, childcare, transit, workers’ dignity and immigrant protection are not “radical” ideas.

"Shared governance is not a slogan or a problem to be solved. It is the mechanism by which universities protect academic freedom and intellectual integrity.. Faculty authority over curriculum, standards & scholarly judgment is not optional; it is foundational." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

🚨 CDBU FUNDING APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN! 🚨 #funding #projectfunding #researchfunding #CDBUresearch

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.

Nothing about universities or higher education at all. The managed decline continues. www.gov.uk/government/s...

"focusing on resistance as emotion work can enrich our understanding of resistance and thereby better prepare those resisting for its trials and tribulations" New ethnographic study about resistance as emotion work during academic industrial action. #HigherEd journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

"Universities are public institutions whose value lies in the breadth and independence of thought they sustain." A Public Statement in Support of the Management and Marketing Group, Essex Business School Please consider sharing and/or supporting the statement. sites.google.com/view/mmpubli...

Hegseth makes clear he's still refusing to spending congressionally allocated funds to support Ukraine

Outsourcing often comes at the expense of our services and the workers who keep them going. If you want public services to work for people, not just profit, sign the Record of Support for Labour’s insourcing pledge. www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/of...

💡 Findings from a research project have been published as written evidence in the House of Lords Public Services Committee Inquiry 'The role of ambulance services in supporting accident & emergency departments'. committees.parliamen... Leo McCann, Ian Kirkpatrick, Shuyi Liu, Tina Kowalski

#happystarwarsday #MaytheFourth

I'm in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today looking at why so many unis are in financial trouble and what the government needs to do to save HE. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

I don’t want NYC to become a museum. It should be a living, breathing testament to the working people of our city.

I wrote about why we should keep reading and writing www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

This paper is now available to read open access. Very timely given the tragically high level of global conflict and militarism. Comments and feedback on my paper are very welcome.

Like… We cannot go ahead and have the World Cup now like nothing is going on. Regardless of what does or doesn’t happen tonight. Countries should simply refuse to send teams. The rest of the world cannot treat us as a remotely normal country after this

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as the leader of the free world. That's why I have cosponsored H. Res. 939 Articles of Impeachment to remove him from office.

I checked and the post is real.

'He worked 10-hour shifts at minimum wage. “By that time, my ego had died, so I had accepted: OK, we can do this,” he told me.' A distressing read. #HigherEd #UKHE www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

Isn’t it weird how “AI literacy” being pushed on students isn’t about learning how it works, the cost of how it works, learning to spot disinformation, media and tech literacy. But instead is just “employers will like it if you get it to write your emails :)”

My article, “Donald Trump's profane threats against Iran display the unhinged language of war,” has been published on The Conversation. Here's the link: theconversation.com/donald-trump...

“In a sane world, Americans wouldn’t have elevated an arrogantly ill-informed and reckless man to make the gravest possible decisions for our nation. Nor would the U.S. Senate…confirm men and women deeply ill-equipped to perform their duties.” www.americaamerica.news/p/how-much-d...

This is a great talk. I learnt a lot about AI from reading's Wooldridge fantastic little book about it, which I drawn upon here: cdbu.org.uk/genai-an-ena...

Thanks for reposting! I'd be very interested in any comments from colleagues in education and elsewhere.

This is truly disgraceful and very, very alarming.

Did I hear this correctly? Did he just say that every day "the Department of War lets the drummer get wicked" over Iran? Did this unbelievable dork just quote Public Fucking Enemy in defense of their war on Iran?

A fascinating read about one particular war crime, but it also explains what’s going on in universities and companies everywhere; the automation of decision-making that removes judgment and worker-autonomy in the name of efficiency and management tyranny. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

The BBC’s job is to “inform, educate, and entertain”? Let’s talk about the middle word. What follows is the story of what we found in an FOI request (per the Observer) about the Corporation killing off plans to launch an online catalogue and failing to deliver ‘learning for people of all ages’. 🧵

“GenAI systems throw out ‘best guess mashups’, generating articles that bear some similarity to the work that academics publish, but are simply unreal. Meanwhile, the real publications written by actual people very much do exist, and have never been easier to find”

@warren.senate.gov @markey.senate.gov

It's a beautiful day! Let's go and see what's out there. #cats #springtime

Has anyone written a review of the restructuring going on across UK HE? Trying to understand what is common across institutions: large, team-taught courses, centralised workload models, limited to no research time, promotion directly tied to grant income. How many consultancy firms are pushing this?

As we note in 'Shaping for Mediocrity': "Framing resistance in terms of negative emotions ... undermines the validity of any critique and denies the legitimacy of any alternative vision for the university. Everyone must move on – to the stages of acceptance and integration." #HigherEd

Video Assistant Referees have been a total failure. If you dislike VAR as much as me (and every football fan I've come across), please have your say in this FSA survey! Someone might listen one day, you never know. #VAR thefsa.org.uk/news/var-sur...

Staff at Sheffield Hallam University joined an ‘All staff’ call & were told the university must save £26.6m by August after disastrous London property venture Blameworthy Vice Chancellor Chris Husbands has since moved into consultancy/advisory roles in HE www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/sheffield-ha...

The consultancy Nous takes hundreds of thousands of pounds from universities, leaves the exact same path of destruction everywhere, and keeps trying to avoid transparent contracts. We’re urgently need control over consultancy spent in #UKHE, @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social

A stark reminder of the bureaucratic logic of work & how we're all just so much productive efficiency ... until we're not. Nice to know that he was good on his time-keeping though. Presumably until he was dead. From an LNWR employment record, 1920s.

www.timeshighereducation.com/uk-universit... Times Higher has not always been a friend of universities given the league tables, rankings, etc. But it might be worth completing this survey to help publicise the widespread redundancies and terrible standards of management and leadership in UK HE.

www.newscientist.com/article/2516... GenAI is a study buddy. A cutting-edge employability tool.

Very interesting blog from Cliff Bacon of University of Salford. Summarises and builds on the ethnographic work he did for his PhD. bscpolicingnetwork.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/u...

New blog post: How I'm teaching about Generative AI. catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

"When we ask what is at stake if academic freedom is not protected, the answer is not only vital knowledge and democracy itself. The untruthful language marking universities as we know them, might be a precursor to the demise of academia itself." Distressing but important piece by Susanne Taüber.

Now published! Universities Degraded, by @beccaeharrison.bsky.social & me, reveals the scale of job losses in UK universities, exposes employer practices & shares testimonies of those made redundant & their colleagues. Warning: some of the content is distressing. zenodo.org/records/1563...