🧵: Books by historians I constantly recommend in policy meetings / professional contexts. In no order, to be added to when I remember: 1. The Seventies, by @michellearrow.bsky.social . Stuff can change, and it's possible to believe in things and plan for the future. unsw.press/books/the-se...

This is exciting - the 2025 Lilith is nearly out!

International students accuse Australia of treating them like ATMs after fees for one visa double without warning

Where are law peak bodies and academic associations? Why aren’t they speaking up against the impact of this dreadful policy on their profession?

Come work with us! jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/lecture...

TIL, via Josh Widdecombe's new podcast, Museum of Popular Culture, that the Spice Girls' 1996 interview with The Spectator (where Geri Halliwell claimed 'Thatcher was the first Spice Girl') was conducted by popular historian of Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore. archive.spectator.co.uk/article/14th...

Eliminating gender studies courses helps to ensure that universities and other institutions will continue to protect men who benefit from the abuse of women and girls, either directly or through their connections to those who exploit girls and women for profit. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"wars can be lost before they are even declared if defenders surrender strategic terrain without a struggle. For universities, that terrain is the ultimate high ground: human intelligence itself. If we do not fight for it now, those who come after us will face an even more unequal struggle."

I don't know anyone in the sector who is not horrifically burnt out and depressed. Exec are probably fine, though

Meanjin's back!

the people who want you to believe that generative AI can paint like Picasso tend to gloss over the fact that Picasso didn’t have hundreds of Picassos to learn from. He had to make something new, which a model trained on old art is definitionally incapable of doing.

the police presence at Town Hall is unfuckingbelievable. They are deep inside the station, stopping and searching people at the top of the stairs from the platform. Absolutely off the charts I have never seen anything like it and I have protested for over 40 years.

I have many, many favourite Kudelka cartoons but this, from 2011, is possibly one of the best Aus pol cartoons ever drawn.

There’s some cosmic bingo tea towel out there that has a square for ‘too young, too funny, too decent’.

“We’re heading into, within the next five years, a real reduction in the capacities to sustain a creative and cultural workforce … There will be an enormous decline in the amount of creative and artistic activity in Australia.”

Why would the press gallery agree to this? Now that the cat’s out of the bag, could someone explain?

Such a lovely tribute to Graeme. As Andrew notes, we need his calm, clear advocacy for the humanities now more than ever:

This song is 7 1/2 years old now. youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY?...

Please share. 💔

There’s a whole Honours thesis to be written about this one:

And this definitely deserves its place in the top 25

COLDEST 100: 2026 EDITION 42. Centrelink Hold Music (2025) Brekky Boy #coldest100 #hottest100 youtu.be/TtXmkwRS9vY

Also outstanding:

This is outstanding:

And one more thing. Students. If you have a professor who is, for some reason, outsourcing their own job to ChatGPT....drop the class. If they tell you to "ask ChatGPT" for sources, drop the class. Because they apparently don't know their own discipline well enough to teach it.

Rich private schools are gouging parents with huge fee increases while also pocketing millions a year in govt money – yet 98% of public schools don’t get their minimum funding. Should Labor be pouring billions a year into the private system while public schools are underfunded?

Powerful statement from Louise Adler and a huge loss to see her go from AWW.

📣Postdoc in creative writing 📣 careers.jcu.edu.au/jobs/postdoc...

‘It’s financial stupidity to enter the humanities in any of our universities, and the current federal government has done nothing to abate that.’ Great piece by Ben Quilty on our undervaluing of the arts in Australia: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

BREAKING: 3 members of the Adelaide Festival Board have resigned after it refused to reverse its decision to rescind Dr Abdel-Fattah's invitation. No statement has been issued but their names have been quietly removed from the website. Four people are now responsible for the ongoing crisis.

The Adelaide Writers Festival now wrecked by the Adelaide Festival Board, half of which was appointed late last year: a marketing executive; a former politician; a local councillor/real estate agent; an airport manager; a lawyer; a media consultant; and a banker. Another public arts takeover fiasco.

Where’s Tony Burke? It’s times like these you realise that arts ministers have no interest in defending the arts, and that govts are willing to burn millions of $ for political reasons. Adelaide’s board has just squandered millions of $ and months of work and countless opportunities for writers…

Bendigo Writers Festival, Meanjin, now Adelaide Writers … powerful vested interests would rather destroy the cultural institutions they are supposedly responsible for than allow certain voices to be heard

Denis Muller on the Adelaide shitshow theconversation.com/as-authors-a...

Imagine if the board of a major arts org issued a statement saying they would respect and defend the programming decisions of their staff? Unlikely to happen, but it would be an invigorating and much needed win for artistic and curatorial freedom.

That they’re coming after the judges reflects their belief that they now completely own the public square. This is late-stage McCarthyism.

My statement regarding my decision to withdraw from this year’s Adelaide Writers Festival.

As we approach the end of 2025, historians @michellearrow.bsky.social and @zorasimic.bsky.social reflect on Anne Summers’ 1975 book, Damned Whores and God’s Police, fifty years later. Read more here ⬇️ www.auswhn.com.au/blog/anne-su...

Looks like we've become complacent since the gun restrictions of the 1990s - time for even more stringent rules. The worst gun violence in Australia in 30 years...

It's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.

THIS 👇

And putting Whitlam in a longer context - short essays on all the PMs since Whitlam here: theconversation.com/how-did-the-...

It’s that time of year when too much Whitlam is barely enough! Here’s my addition to the fray: theconversation.com/extraordinar...

I watched six hours of Australian history on TV so you don’t have to (though I think you should!) www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-a...

Free event 📣The right to enquire? A Symposium on #academicfreedom. 📅 Tues 25 Nov 📍 University of Melbourne Tickets: bit.ly/4qg5Q0y Speakers include Prof @michellearrow.bsky.social, Prof @joelobianco.bsky.social, Prof @adriennestone.bsky.social, Prof Frank Bongiorno, Prof Peter Greste & more.

Diane Keaton in her Manhattan apartment with Buster, an Abyssinian, photographed by Jill Krementz in 1977

Never have I so badly needed Daniel Craig to say these words