Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

Excellent article but stark reminder that for all the perceptions of universities as ivory towers for elites, they are actually vital hubs in towns n cities supporting local businesses and providing key services as well as education….

This five year old is still in jail

"These court victories tell us that … we have a right to say that Charlie Kirk said some disgusting things, and just because we’re faculty members doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to say those things.” – Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

Coates is always worth reading. apple.news/AEP72W5oLQW6...

‘I didn’t know how to shoot’: how African men have been tricked into fighting for Russia

400 jobs at risk. A campus set to close. This film explains what’s happening at the University of Essex and why staff, students and the local community are organising to stop it. 📍 Southend rally | 5 February

#AcademicFreedom | @cnn.com has published its coverage of the #UsamaGhanem case at KCL, including comments from Lewis Turner, BRISMES co-vice president and chair of BRISMES CAF, on academic freedom and #freedomofexpression. Worth a read 👇 edition.cnn.com/2026/01/23/e... #HigherEducation

Imagine debasing yourself by saying dumb shit like this

Monday and the start of a second week of being prevented from working by my employer, the University of Sheffield. Management has decided that massive damage to staff morale, student experience and the university’s reputation is worth it in a futile attempt to break the union. Shame on them.

Mother Jones and other outlets fought to unseal documents that show that the Trump administration targeted students for Pro-Palestinian speech. We won.

The same people who said that the mass murder of children in schools was a sad but necessary price to enable citizens to bear arms and oppose tyranny are now saying that if you carry a gun it’s your fault if you’re murdered.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

There is video circulating on social media of a group of ICE agents beating a man near 26th and Nicollet in south Minneapolis, then one of the ICE agents shoots the man while he's on the ground numerous times. A witness can be heard yelling that the victim is dead.

Essential read on the move of a wide segment of AI-training data annotation out of South-South into the wealthy countries. The industry is exploiting job market precarity & paying advanced degree holders (well!) to eliminate the jobs they would otherwise have held. share.google/pbfnMi1nnaR4...

Will student loans be the next mis-selling scandal? ft.trib.al/9SMGRC7 | opinion

"Everybody - wake up! It's the #BigGardenBirdwatch!" Will you be taking part today? 👀🌳

I suppose the current US administration's vaccine stance shouldn't be so surprising. Vaccines sit awkwardly with their worldview: they rely on collective action, trust in institutions, expertise, and shared responsibility. Accepting an individual inconvenience, for shared benefit.

Amazing sob story: "ChatGPT deleted all the work I hadn't done" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This guy went to work today, put a mask on, kidnapped a 5 year old child, and then used him as bait so both he and his father could be sent behind bars

There is going to come a time in your life when you are chatting with a guy, at a barbecue or something, a new coworker maybe, a dad at school drop off, and he tells you he used to be in ICE. You’re going to need to spit on that guy

And yet universities are facing financial doom. What a great system.

Liam is one of four Columbia Heights, MN school district students who have been taken by ICE in the last two weeks, the school district said. Liam's teacher: “He is so kind and loving, and his classmates miss him. He ... just brightens the room. All I want is for him to be back here and safe.”

> reform to labour 0% another sir keir masterclass

News | Joe Hill to take up helm at Yorkshire Sculpture Park Meanwhile, Sally Tallant is named as new director of London’s Hayward Gallery

Ridiculous.

We are #hiring! PUP seeks a motivated, detail-oriented individual to support three acquisition editors as an Editorial Assistant (US, Remote or Hybrid). Applications will be accepted through Thursday, January 29th. Learn more about this role and apply here: buff.ly/3yqOphh

From the @equatormag.bsky.social mission statement and damn, was that ever proven 100% correct in short order.

A little while ago, info was circulating on here about (I think) a remote/online fellowship opportunity for independent/precarious scholars, that would provide useful things like an email address and access to digital resources. Can anyone remember the details? It might have been based in Canada..?

“You can’t cut one in ten staff without damaging students and teaching.” 85% of University of Essex staff have voted for strike action over plans to cut 400 jobs and close the Southend campus. Show your support and solidarity as they prepare to fight back. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1432...

‘I could not stay silent’: Palestinian prisoner tells of sexual abuse in Israeli jail

Historic Win: Staff at the Metropolitan Museum of Art voted overwhelmingly to unionize with UAW, with about 76% voting in favor after years of organizing. https://seiu.co/4qw2qq3

Sincerely believing that you are “a great, sophisticated nation, one of the world’s longest-standing republics” might be something to do with it

Again, you will find out a lot about what these people find unacceptable by looking at the things they are absolutely fine with.

In any other context, requiring a high-productivity sector to offshore the production of its highest value-added exports would be seen as the economic illiteracy it so obviously is... www.ft.com/content/a23c...

Panopticon (complimentary)

When Nottingham's overseas campuses are cited as evidence without any reference to Nottingham's UK campus woes, you know you have a half-baked, politically convenient policy in the oven. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Well that’s me locked out. No pay for the foreseeable future, all because I refuse to reschedule lost teaching, for which I have already lost pay as part of the strike. Please donate to support @sheffielducu.bsky.social members like me at www.gofundme.com/f/heubvb-sup...

When “Operation Raise the Colours” started attaching flags to lampposts, you couldn’t analyse it in the media without the reply, “it’s just people innocently expressing national pride”. Now the same people are travelling to France to intimidate refugees. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Available through open access, read "Our Blackface Sounds Familiar: Historical Imitations of Blackness in Poland" by Łukasz Zaremba, Maciej Duklewski in the latest #SlavicReview as part of the Critical Forum: Blackness in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Societies.

Billionaire wealth jumps to highest ever at $18.3 trillion, up 16% in 2025, up 81% since 2020 Half the world lives in poverty. Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than normal people. Richest 56 Britons hold more wealth than 27m. Concentration of wealth is a danger.

“I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace” & “but we had boats landing there, also” reminded me that “The baby king (a usually masculine despot) licenses a departure from reality and, in particular, a denial of our own badness.” (Mignon Nixon, ‘Crazy’) direct.mit.edu/octo/article...

mad king moment from the PBS Newshour correspondent

BREAM: Is the FBI investigating the ICE agent who shot Renee Good? BLANCHE: What happened has been reviewed by millions of Americans bc it was recorded. We investigate when it's appropriate. That is not the case here. We are not going to bow to pressure. So no, we are not investigating.

Child mortality crisis continues in Gaza, with more than 100 killed since ceasefire

what the hell is this revisionist nonsense? This *did not happen*—except in the minds of the far-right. You're buying their bad faith bullshit. MAGA called for and now is building a white ethnostate b/c *they are white nationalists*. That's what they do. FFS

Read "Promises of Blackness in the State Socialist Public Sphere in Poland" by Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ and Margaret Ohia-Nowak as part of the #SlavicReview Critical Forum: Blackness in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Societies. Out now!

They have a Bari Weiss bust at the free speech university 😭

A lot of people in this article are shocked at Bari Weiss' university turning out to be what it always, obviously, was. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

The piece tries, yet again, to imply that Dempsey’s appalling politics on Ukraine and Russia are somehow tied to the RMT’s effectiveness in defending its members. That claim doesn’t stand up to even basic scrutiny. We’ve broken this down in a thread here 👇 twitter-thread.com/t/2012110504...