if faculty don’t control curriculum, it’s not actually a university. it’s just expensive high school for adults

Just a reminder that immigrants inside Delaney Hall are on their ninth day of a hunger and labor strike in protest of inhumane conditions and this was Governor Sherrill’s response last night:

'A mapping exercise of 16 Asian countries...has thrown new light on Asia-Pacific higher education. Together, the 16 nations have about one-third more higher education institutions than Europe and North Africa combined, and enrol more than three times as many students.' 1/3

There is a lot being written about the stylistic tells of AI writing (em-dashes, etc.) but this paper looks at AI narrative tells instead. Fascinating differences between AI & human narrative, and asking AI to write in different styles doesn't do much to change it arxiv.org/abs/2604.03136

Today staff in the School of Creative Arts, including the Humanities department, were called to a redundancy consultation meeting. We were informed that 23 posts were to go by August this year, with further redundancies as the Humanities programmes are taught out over 2 years.

I am not remotely a lawyer, but I think if you agree to review a manuscript for a press and then feed that manuscript into AI without the permission of the author, the author should be allowed to sue you into poverty.

'In a counterproposal to the university’s cost-saving plans...the UCU branch at Nottingham said that job losses on the scale suggested...could set the research-intensive, Russell Group institution on an “irreversible transition” towards becoming a teaching-led university.' 1/3

It's great that there is a publicly-funded platform for open access in Europe, but it'll take a lot to get people to actually submit to it. Alongside the UK joining, it would be good to hear how our research cultures might shift to encourage researchers to publish there.

Fascinating interview, not least on the long and multilingual manuscript tradition of the Ethiopian city of Harar. I was there in January and it was such a thrill to see early modern and modern manuscripts on so many topics in Arabic, Harari, Amharic and others.

'Birmingham City University has blamed low demand after deciding to close its master’s course in black studies just a year after it launched.' Yet another example of commitment (sic) to racial equality in higher education. Shocking after a 1-year trial. 1/3

✨Funded placement opportunity✨with @nationaltrust.org.uk and @britishlibrary.bsky.social! We're looking for a PhD student to work on the National Trust Sound Archive of oral history interviews. 3 months FT or 6 months PT from September. For more info, see www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/r...

Guide | Cataloguing distressing collections 🗃️ Hannah Nagle shares her experiences developing a mental health first aid kit #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek #MHAW #MHAW2026

Granted "unlimited access" to "identifiable patient information". Is this what they mean by flogging "growth"? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

ok oral history folks -- have we heard of theirstory.io? Has API, qual coding, indexing ... all the things people ask for in an oral history platform. And looks like faculty could use?

Very pleased to share a new policy brief by CAISA: Governing AI-generated content: Labelling for transparency when AI is the norm. This was a genuine privilege to be part of the team of 9 leading European scholars caisa.dk/forskning/t... 🧵 1/10

Some worrying figures here www.thetimes.com/article/d758...

University management spent £80 million on new building that wasn't needed (presently for sale at £14 million) and now decide 600 staff should go to 'save' £50 million. This is the math currently shaping future of UK HE. Staff paying the price for mismanagement. Govt looking the other way

Great work from @foxglovelegal.bsky.social — UK government sheepishly forced to increase estimated carbon emissions from data centre usage by... 100 times www.ft.com/content/0c8b...

“The integration of AI across digital platforms and devices has largely taken place without users’ consent. Universities have participated in this coercive project…by contracting with tech companies to embed AI into learning management systems, or by encouraging its use in the name of “AI literacy”

The short can be viewed directly at the LoC website www.loc.gov/item/2026125...

This newly (re-)discovered 1897 Méliès film sits delightfully at the intersection of film history and the history of robots/automatons 🎥🤖

She was granted withholding of removal from India *decades* ago, and had been living and working legally (including for the U.S. government!) ever since. But with third country removals now a real option, TSA shared her data with ICE and they arrested her at the airport on her way to a job.

French woman, 86, held by ICE after moving to US to marry 1950s sweetheart | France | The Guardian www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

26 years old from South Sudan. He has been in the US since age 13, when he was recruited to the country for basketball. Now being discarded as if he was human refuse. Shame on Syracuse for not intervening. www.syracuse.com/news/2026/04...

Orbán’s 16-year run of stripping university autonomy is over. Magyar’s win could unlock €6.3B in frozen EU research funds, but reversing laws is just the start. Rebuilding the lost social capital and international trust will likely take years of actual work.

🚨 Join us next week for a conversation with the amazing @zoeleblanc.bsky.social. Have you been wondering how we can pair big DH datasets, translation and AI? She has a great example of that mix 🍲 🗓️ Wednesday, April 22nd at 12PM EDT Register at tinyurl.com/dla-leblanc #DigitalHumanities

Important issues. Link to original article: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

We have a number of funded PhD opportunities available, including CoSS PhD Scholarships and funding with our global partners, The University of Sydney Business School and The University of the West Indies. You can find all the opportunities below: www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/soc...

👏Congratulations to USSP's Mark Stephens and colleagues on the launch of the UK Housing Review 2026, a long-standing collaboration between @cihhousing.bsky.social and @glasgow.ac.uk. Explore and download the review 👉 www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/ukhr26/index...

I think what makes it very unfortunate is this: LLM-AI is simultaneously: 1. Generating far more bugs and technical vulnerabilities due to rush to use them without thinking about long-term costs (not new problem but supercharged) 2. Immensely effective at *finding* bugs

'In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents – but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate.' 'Once students got their offers, they were passed on to the visa team, and finally delivered to universities as a fully wrapped, fee-paying package.'

'The number of English language and literature academics fell by 8 per cent to 4,680 – among the largest decrease of all disciplines. And the number employed in modern languages dropped 7 per cent to 4,890. This is 17 per cent below peak levels in 2015-16.' 1/3

#FossilFriday: Mary Anning's hand-drawn copy of a plate of ichthyosaur and other teeth copied from WD Conybeare's 1822 paper, Additional Notices on Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus. #MaryAnning

“AI doesn’t write good code” Skill issue, literally. Claude is a language machine that outputs code as a byproduct, like we are. Just like us, it needs training and tools to teach it what good code looks like. One-shot working code should be treated like a rough draft, and ruthlessly edited.

Special Collections at the NLS and your manuscripts arrived. Happiness is .....

Voices of Dead Languages: Jan Bičovský on bringing #ancient #languages back to life english.radio.cz/voices-dead-... #langsky

'The surging number of redundancies in UK higher education could undermine entire research fields as networks of collaborators disappear, according to an academic whose project fell through when a colleague’s job at another institution was put at risk.' 1/2

Job opening here at ITHAKA's JSTOR: Digital Collections Curator, Reveal Digital, focusing on important cultural, social, and political histories, especially those that have been dispersed, under-described, or difficult to access at scale. Full job description: www.ithaka.org/job/46724530...

Just a reminder to Arts, Humanities & Social Science postdocs with 10 years of the PhD that membership in the British Academy's Early Career Researcher Network is free and available across the UK. Independent researchers welcome; if employed at an, you do not need to be in a research position. 1/2

My first reaction to this story was "doesn't Grammarly have any lawyers?" and then I saw the statement from the CEO that the lawsuit is "without merit" (LOL) and realized that maybe their legal strategy is to ask an LLM to (badly) impersonate a real lawyer without that lawyer's consent.