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Lots of stuff on academic freedom today - more precisely lack thereof - but this part of the govt letter was always implied in the powers granted to OfS.
Remember being told by *sensible* academics few years back that govt would *never* use such powers.
Of course they would. /1 https://twitter.com/mike_rat/status/1359041333349011456
Remember being told by *sensible* academics few years back that govt would *never* use such powers.
Of course they would. /1 https://twitter.com/mike_rat/status/1359041333349011456
The reality is the institutional base of what approximated to a democratic society in Britain is collapsing. It couldn't survive the twin logics of neoliberalism and neoationalism.
You could only prevent that through the changing the narrative and through political wins /2
You could only prevent that through the changing the narrative and through political wins /2
Yet we still see figures in HE saying we need to avoid the culture war, not rise to it etc.
But the war is here. And they are winning it.
Yesterday we were balloted on rejecting the UCEA offer, something ostensibly separate from this /3
But the war is here. And they are winning it.
Yesterday we were balloted on rejecting the UCEA offer, something ostensibly separate from this /3
But it isn't. Everything is connected.
We were made such an appalling offer because we are seen as politically weak by employers and unwilling to fight for ourselves.
/4
We were made such an appalling offer because we are seen as politically weak by employers and unwilling to fight for ourselves.
/4
If HE is to survive in the UK as anything other than a techno-nationalist venture in a managed democracy then its workforce will have to fight for it. And it won't be one dispute. It'll be many.
Keir Starmer isn't coming to save you. /5
Keir Starmer isn't coming to save you. /5
We can't simply assert that we're professionals & should be treated better, which is a classist, bourgeois conceit anyway.
We're workers. And if we believe in the work we do then we must take enormous risks in order to protect it, both for our own jobs & society as a whole. /6
We're workers. And if we believe in the work we do then we must take enormous risks in order to protect it, both for our own jobs & society as a whole. /6
You are getting two more right-wing news channels, the Daily Mail is capitalising 'Woke', the govt is sending letters telling the OfS to stop universities awarding degrees and to platform ideas that are toxic, & the party of opposition is uninterested in opposing any of this. /7
There is going to be no snap-back to some social democratic idyll.
We need to make higher education ungovernable, and ally with workers across sectors to do the same in theirs out of a common interest in the preservation of elements of democratic life that do exist.
/8
We need to make higher education ungovernable, and ally with workers across sectors to do the same in theirs out of a common interest in the preservation of elements of democratic life that do exist.
/8
That's only a counsel of despair if people lack the faith in themselves & their colleagues to actually do anything.
Otherwise it's a counsel of hope.
Let's fight this shit - in every meeting, in every dispute, let's reach out to our fellow workers across sectors. We must.
Otherwise it's a counsel of hope.
Let's fight this shit - in every meeting, in every dispute, let's reach out to our fellow workers across sectors. We must.
