🇵🇱⚖️I promised a banger on the rule-of-law crisis in Poland, so... here it is. A group of PiS MPs have lodged a case with the Constitutional Tribunal, asking it to find the rules of electing the judges of the same Tribunal, introduced in 2016 by a PiS majority, to be unconstitutional. 1/

If research excellence is linked to research specialisation, why don't more specialist universities routinely outcompete more generalist ones in global league tables? And should UK HEIs intent to climb the rankings think twice before mothballing their Arts & Humanities? Asking for a friend. 1/5

As UCL marks its 2026 Bicentenary, we invite colleagues, students, alumni and history enthusiasts to a special roundtable on Commemorations, Memory, and the Many Pasts 💬 📅 05 March 2026 ⏰ 18:00–20:30 📍 All welcome 👉 Book your free place: shorturl.at/3pDEC 👈

Happy birthday, UCL.

Uncharacteristically mild wording from Ian but unerringly accurate as always.

V interesting. Asked about its selfhood/narrative/neurons Claude foregrounds simulation; wonders if "there’s no thinking happening beneath or beyond the narrative patterns, just increasingly sophisticated reproduction of narrative form." Recognizes it has no metacognitive access. And:

Sharing a Victor Hugo shaped entry on our European Literary Map of London. www.europeanliterarylondon.org/feature/3902...

GuMi, heute starten wir etwas später, weil ich heute Morgen dem @deutschlandfunk.de.web.brid.gy ein Interview zu #VirginiaWoolf und ihrer Rolle in der literarischen #Moderne gegeben habe.

People in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland see the ECHR’s positive impact on security co-operation and their day-to-day lives as far outweighing its impact on their country’s ability to deport illegal migrants👇 🔗 yougov.co.uk/internationa... via @yougov.co.uk

Like finding a long-lost friend - the @europeanlitlondon.bsky.social European Literary Map of London popping up at the @uclalumni.bsky.social event in Brussels during our @ucl-global.bsky.social trip. Thanks to the UK Mission lending it to us again!

I’m an Ambassador for this brilliant charity, Bookbanks, giving away books with food parcels at food banks. There are two part-time jobs going for Regional Leads in London and East Anglia. Link below. Please share far and wide :)

For the FES, I wrote a short brief about how mainstream party strategies have fueled far-right success. They move toward more anti-immigration positions to win voters back. This does not work, but shifts public opinion to the right. Parties then react to shifts in public opinion. A vicious cycle.

Thank you to Elif Shafak and those who joined us last night in person and online for The National Humanities Lecture. Drawing on literature, history and her own experience as a writer and storyteller, Shafak made an impassioned case for the humanities. Watch here www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... 1/3

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

Aldo Novarese, diagram accompanying his article, “Eurostile, a Synthetic Expression of Our Times” in Pagina, International Magazine of Graphic Design, No. 4, January 1964.⁠ ⁠ #LetterformArchive #AldoNovarese #Eurostile #TypeDesign #Architecture #InformationDesign #ModernArchitecture #HoHoHo

Much looking forward to welcoming the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, at UCL Laws @laws.ucl.ac.uk He will give the Institute for Human Rights Annual Lecture on the topic: 'Big Tech: A Human Rights Perspective'. Join us on 18 March at 1.45pm. www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/...

In Russia, politics became a stage: tricksters wield power, spectacle, and reality itself. From Zhirinovsky to Prigozhin, nothing is off-limits. Read the full blog by Prof Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University on the UCL Europe Blog. ucleuropeblog.com/2026/02/03/t...

US academics and writers, like my late colleague Lev Loseff, used to explain Aesopian language to USians. Now they have to resort to it—two syllabi, linguistic doublespeak—this is everyday life in an authoritarian regime www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/u...

An extraordinary opportunity, and so heartening to see this support from UCL-SSEES for fragile yet extremely valuable fields of scholarship!

“Könige kennen keine Ironie.” (Mann, Der Zauberberg)

We've launched our new migration masters @uclgeography.bsky.social – Migration, Politics and Society Full of creative and critical approaches, and taught by really good people. Please pass on to students who might be interested! www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...

Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition. TL:DR ‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.’ www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

The @nytimes.com coverage of France's Grok investigation casts it as part of a conflict between U.S. & European speech rules. That's true only if you buy Elon's version. This is a case about CSAM and NCII. Those are crimes in France, and crimes in the U.S. There's no transatlantic divide here. 1/

Today is the 104th anniversary of the publication of #Ulysses. Here is a link to an essay I published in @postopinions.bsky.social to mark the novel’s centenary in 2022. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022...

„Bitte einmal zum absoluten Geist!“

"'Ich bin Germanist', sagte er, 'kein Gangster.'" Julia Bähr: Hustle

Hot off the press - a letter from the Exec Chair of @ukri.org explaining his plans and in particular the financial position of STFC. It notes curiosity driven research is protected and will make up around half of UKRI spend over the coming period www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

If Orban loses the election in Hungary on April 12th to Peter Magyar it’s going to be massive for Europe and the entire democratic world. Orban largely created the populist-right formula for autocratic takeover of a democracy which was copied by MAGA’s Project 2025. 1/12

Vital case of University of Sussex vs Office for Students is in the High Court this week. The results will matter for all of us given the OfS's overreach and directions of travel.

Hear, hear.

'Step inside the British Library: here is paradise.' (Yes. Might have acknowledged more acutely the impact of the hacking & the conditions leading to the pay dispute. But: yes.) www.ft.com/content/6c05...

29 January 1912 | A Pole, Mieczysław Kościelniak, was born in Kalisz. A painter. In #Auschwitz from 2 May 1941. No. 15261 He was evacuated to Mautausen. He survived. He passed away on 5 March 1993.

Masterclass on Interest Representation & Lobbying in EU Digital Policymaking 💻 Via a simulated ‘Digital Simplification Package,’ students role-played tech firms, industry & civil society to negotiate EU rules. @ucleisps.bsky.social #EUpolitics #DigitalPolicy #EUGovernance #InterestGroups

Lost & Found is travelling to Düsseldorf next week! Discover the full programme: www.ucl.ac.uk/european-ins...

"Top UK universities increase their reliance on China for overseas recruitment: Data shows that two in five overseas [NB OVERSEAS] students at Russell Group institutions last year were from China" (though that figure hides considerable variation!) www.ft.com/content/9db6...

Int'l student numbers at UK universities down 6% last year - master's numbers down 10%. Some massive drops in overseas headcount, eg, Beds (-51%), Swansea, Northampton (-44%). Also Sheffield (-26%), Cardiff, Leeds (-22%) www.timeshighereducation.com/news/masters... via @patrickjack.bsky.social

“It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.” (Margaret Atwood). Arguably a contention universities might wish to test via systematic research before handing education over to bots.

"One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one’s countrymen say. 'I can’t believe what you say,' the song goes, 'because I see what you do' [...]”

Simone Weil commenting in the early 1940s on Thucydides’ “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” alongside its complement, “each human being always commands when he has the power to do so”:

Wonderful. Link to the issue here: www.diacriticsjournal.com/portfolio/52...

Putin pioneered this. No opposition is legitimate. Regular, decent, “ordinary” people cannot possibly be against us because only we represent “the real people.” Tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

Getting a grip and sorting out HEI financing would help to reduce institutions' desperate scramble for students. Focus on the core problem, wicked though it is, and the secondary and tertiary problems will shrink.

On instant classics we’re starting a four part moni series on Helen of Troy”villain, victim and double agent” (yes double agent) podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i...

Es sind meist die falschen Züge pünktlich.

🧵 Nina Weller leitet mit diesem Beitrag eine kleine Blogserie über das Leben und Schreiben im Berliner Exil ein, die aus einer Veranstaltung am @zfl-berlin.bsky.social hervorgegangen ist. valuepast.hypotheses.org/5744 via @dehypotheses.bsky.social

Beautiful thread.

The British Academy’s Global (Dis)Order programme couldn’t be more timely. Link here: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/g...?

“It is true that we are all brothers, but I am the big brother, and you are the little brother, and I am entitled to a more substantial portion.” Heinrich Heine in remarks about Louis Blanc.

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/...