NEW! In Liverpool for Labour Conference... Starmer is concentrating on Reform but Labour shouldn't mistake their threat on the right, even in Leave voting heartlands. Our new analysis w/ @martamiori.bsky.social explains: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Ha! I recall being so inspired by this that I tried to imitate it (badly no doubt) for a piece of creative writing homework at primary school and being devastated when it got a C, losing any confidence in my ability to write. No wonder I eventually became an academic! 😂

In Thomas Guggeis’s debut with the Berlin Philharmoniker performing Also sprach Zarathustra, Tout un monde lointain… (with Maximilian Hornung), and Daphnis and Chloe Suite no. 2 the sound of the orchestra was utterly gorgeous and glorious, with a luster and voluptuousness as if from times past.

In this post @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social & I trace how the Starmer Government's repeatedly misconstrues its obligations under the Genocide Convention in #Gaza, hiding behind a Court judgement that is years away with a position that we call "legally illiterate" and "morally indefensible".

The educational effect on political attitudes and values has been overstated. As the paper below demonstrates, the education effect largely disappears when cohort differences, i.e. *age*, is take into account.

From @auralflaneur.bsky.social - what can Foucault's prison activism and Derrida's anti-Apartheid advocacy tell us about lived experience testimony in the fight to abolish modern day slavery? olrsupplement.com/2025/09/19/l...

Embodying the belief in justice, truth, and integrity with which I grew up

Misty watercolour memories… thinking a lot about my mum who was a huge fan and with whom I watched every film he was in many times over—laughing, swooning, crying, saluting, reciting all the lines, eating Galaxy Minstrels with tea. Who knows, maybe she gets a shot now at a romance (made) in heaven?!

My impression is that university and sector leadership is by and large aiming their comments at the Labour right. My fear is that they will fail to cut through to the extent they adopt the same framings. Unis might usefully focus their efforts on supporting popular education within communities.

"They are legitimising the extreme right by letting them dictate the terms of politics, and in so doing are paving the way for them ... This is appeasement pure and simple. It didn't stop fascism in the 1930s. And it will not work today."

Does David Lammy not understand the action-guiding ex ante function of international law? He should read this paper by @janinadill.bsky.social and @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social: www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/news/new-leg...

Grateful to @advancehe.bsky.social for the special thanks in their guidance on embedding freedom of speech and academic freedom in EDI, released last week to coincide with the UUK conference. It was, as always, a pleasure to offer my thoughts and exchange ideas with the ever-thoughtful David Bass.

Exeter and Leicester at the top of the list of universities (and regions) that would be harmed by the levy, together with the government's growth agenda, new report suggest. 1/2 With a sharing link for 3 non-subscribers: on.ft.com/45O7zly

These people refuse to accept that silence on something (e.g. structural inequalities) is itself an ideological position. It should be clear by now that “neutrality” is a bid to turn back the clock on emancipatory struggles and re-entrench reaction.

Indeed, isegoria! But note Wolff suggests we still need to have *words*—not e.g. fisticuffs or freezing out.

Our call for papers is out! And we have some exciting news: for our 10th anniversary conference we are going to @dublincityuni.bsky.social We are looking forward to your submissions! musicandphilosophy.ac.uk/call-for-pap...

Sometimes I wish I lived in the time of my mother’s youth. I love the popular music of the period and the fashion. And philosophers were much more outspoken and militant, unafraid to say things like this:

Lots of warm words about “listening” in the UK government’s Civil Society Covenant, but what exactly does listening require (if it isn’t only about “respecting “ but maybe also being “responsive”?)

Pondering what it would mean to translate these ideas into the sphere of academic freedom and free speech on campus: failure to ensure viewpoint diversity, even where it is misinformation, constitutes a harm to the student-consumer and economy as a whole. Sigh.

I only listen to The Rest is Politics occasionally but am listening to a few episodes for insight into formation of UK public opinion. I’m gobsmacked at the completely ignorant, confused discussion of the ICJ, Genocide Convention etc. It’s reprehensible that these people don’t educate themselves.

Important. Still, for third states to meet their obligations under the Genocide Convention in its ex ante function doesn’t require a crystallized view on dolus specialis (looking at Keir Starmer…). That’s why the Provisional Measures orders point to the risk of irreparable prejudice to the right.

Have they asked Sarkozy to borrow his Kärcher? 😡

VCs shouldn’t “bury their heads in the sand,” but “taking them seriously” doesn’t mean mainstreaming the far right. It means devising a strategy that shows people concretely the value of the vision of intellectual curiosity universities stand for and to which a minority Reform govn would be hostile.

FFS. Academic freedom?

UCLA Chair of Israel Studies now views the conditions of life inflicted as motivated by “instrumental intent”(@amnestyuk.bsky.social) or “predicate purpose” (@janinadill.bsky.social & @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social) i.e. group destruction as the means to an ultimate end—for him, forcible displacement.

I’ve been revisiting this fantastic lecture while working on a paper about why the law goes unheard (taking Derrida’s reading of Kafka via Heidegger as a way to think about IHL’s action-guiding function). Proud that someone with the courage to deliver this as her inaugural is a colleague at Oxford.

Much good sense in this and a vital re-directing of discourse, though I’d frame certain aspects differently and put pressure on the opposition between primary purposes and secondary effects. The capacity for thought will be essential to breaking the UK’s socio-economic impasses, incl. productivity.

Where we must not end up in the UK.

Full text and website of the University of Edinburgh Race Report. A challenging time to launch it, and right that they have done so.

In such a scenario, you’d want to look at whether one exercise of Article 10 rights falls within Art 17 and is hence not protected: does burning a banner rejecting hate thereby incite hatred? Even if it doesn’t, there’s the issue in the proportionality analysis of one exercise snuffing out another.

All I will say is that this hype is going to yield a huge amount of billable hours sorting out all the errors in the AI’s advice and its inability to make judgement calls tailored to aspects of client’s desires not reducible to rational calculation.

Very good piece, and the passage quoted in the second post in this thread underscores the needs for humanities and qualitative social science perspectives and methods to be thoroughly integrated into transdisciplinary approaches to what appear to be exclusively or largely scientific questions.

Perhaps why at a private fellows’ gathering at a German research institute, a showing of Gaza Sound Man was shut down within one minute for being a “provocation,” in favour of a “nuanced” discussion led by an Israeli without sight of starvation or sound of Palestinian voices—“the way we do things.”

Exactly! And now I’m quite annoyed at another US UP which dismissed my concerns about a clause entitling them to pass on a proportion of costs for legal review to be conducted at their discretion, even when I told them that it was scenarios like this that would threaten academic freedom in the US.

This is what assaults on academic freedom look like—not self-centred, unreflective bigots whining because people don’t want to have lunch with them.

The super-rich don't contribute their fair share because the UK taxes wages and salaries more heavily than it taxes wealth like capital gains, dividends, or property portfolios. This is a growing problem that Rachel Reeves needs to fix. Here's why & how🧵

Last week on Wonkhe: Randall Whittaker and Stephen Farrier urge resistance to limiting ideas about the relationship between creative education and the creative industries

Potentially some interesting things to be learned for influencing public attitudes towards HE in the UK, although with some caution since perceptions have generally been more positive and priorities are also affected by different policies.

I’m still gawping at the judicial anti-intellectualism of using a mythical term like “gender ideology.”

This is fascinating research - Attacking Reform on links to Trump and corporate interests reduces support for them. Whereas showing video of Labour going after small boats perhaps marginally increases support for Reform.

Penn is at it again. UK academia should stop looking across the pond with rose-tinted glasses at academic freedom protection.

“He hasn’t disappointed me in how disappointing he’s been.” That’s Steve Coogan on Keir Starmer. Starmer had certainly exceeded my expectations in this department, when I thought I had very demanding standards.

Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country. Join us. The time is now. Sign up here to stay updated: actionnetwork.org/forms/join-t...

But Article 10(2). There’s a growing body of case law on impersonal negative stereotyping infringing A8 rights.

Interesting article on what “listening” means closer to home.

Just so much academic freedom www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...

'Results reveal a decline in academic freedom and liberal democracy in major science-producing countries, coinciding with increased scientific output from nations with lower academic freedoms.' #AcademicFreedom #HigherEd www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Interesting how he has this thing about “noise” as that which shouldn’t be listened to.