Search results for tag #universities
The crisis in the UK's universities includes attrition by management on its key resource & asset, the staff.
Bethan Evans suggests while staff with 'energy limiting conditions' are most effected by these problems, all staff suffer are impacted by:
an Intensified & unmanageable workload;
materialising overwork in campus spaces;
a culture of overwork & exclusion;
'survival of the fittest'; and
hypercompetition.
Academic staff are burning out
https://isrf.org/blog/the-exhaustion-economy-seven-illustrations-of-life-at-uk-universities
Will Andy Burnham's Manchesterism rescue the university sector?
I have called before for more (and better shaped) civic engagement from universities & certainly Manchesterism may force the pace to some extent;
however, unless university managers & academics really engage with local communities on an equal footing (not in a paternalistic manner) the hope that Manchesterism is the sector's saving, may well be frustrated.
This will go poorly for The Jews™ 🫠
"#Australian #universities will be required to adopt definitions on #antisemitism, #Islamophobia and #racism towards #Aboriginal and #TorresStraitIslander people from next year, under a legally enforceable standard designed to stamp out #discrimination on #campuses.
Details of the #antiracism standard will be published on Monday as #university bosses, #students and #academics prepare to appear at the royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion.
A separate set of governance principles will also become enforceable standards, including an obligation on public universities to publish vice-chancellor salaries, spending on consultants and the outcome of board meetings.
The introduction of a formal anti-racism standard was part of the antisemitism plan that the federal government published after the #Bondimassacre, and a recommendation from the #HumanRightsCommission’s landmark report on racism at #Australia’s universities."
I'm going to say this again (in light of another university advising staff they are at risk of redundancy);
if the exposure of a growing number of the workforce of any other sector was reaching the level of universities, the media & politicians would be all over it, demanding action and the 'saving' of jobs.
With the university sector; not so much.... the Q. is how have we become a country that seems to care so little for a major socially & economically vital sector?
😰
"EXCLUSIVE
Billions flow between EU institutions and Israel, despite Gaza genocide
EU departments and some universities, including in Spain, are spending on Israeli companies that sell military gear, tech and other goods"
#gaza #genocide #EU #europe #israel #universities #spain #StateWatch
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By Federica Marsi
Published On 2 Jul 20262 Jul 2026
Milan, Italy – Public institutions in European Union countries are signing profitable contracts with Israeli companies despite Israel’s long track record of war crimes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, data collected by Statewatch and revealed by Al Jazeera shows.
The figures show Spain, among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, agreed to 14 contracts worth almost 227 million euros ($257m) between January 2022 and July 2025, the period covered by the data set. The majority of that sum – 207 million euros ($235m) – stems from an April 2024 contract between the Spanish Defence Ministry and Rafael for “aerial combat systems”. Spanish police forces also purchased bulletproof vests from Israeli company Marom Dolphin.
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Overall the data shows that public institutions in EU member states signed 194 contracts worth nearly 2.7 billion euros ($3.1bn) with Israeli companies. The real value is likely to be higher, as publicly available EU files report a fraction of the contracts and list some with improbably low-value contracts below one euro.
The number of contracts grew after Israel launched its war on Gaza. In the first 21 months, between January 2022 and October 2023, the data set shows 82 deals worth over 1.2 billion euros ($1.36bn). More than half of them – 112 contracts worth 1.6 billion euros ($1.8bn) – were signed in the following 21 months, between October 2023 and July 2025.
The business-as-usual attitude adopted by the EU stands in contrast with ongoing trials against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violating the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip. In 2024, the ICJ found a “real and imminent risk” of irreparable harm to Palestinians and ruled that all states should neither assist nor facilitate Israel’s continued unlawful presence in the occupied territories.
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Yussef Al Tamimi, an assistant professor at the Department of Legal Studies at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria, told Al Jazeera that the EU’s permissive approach towards Israel was “legally untenable”.
The ICJ “set out unambiguous obligations for all states to take measures that eliminate, alleviate and rectify the illegal occupation of Palestine,” Al Tamimi said, noting the court issued an opinion that is “binding on all EU member states by virtue of these agreements and as a matter of customary international law”.
The vast majority of contracts in the 42-month period were for advanced technologies and other goods that require precision engineering, extensive technical expertise and specialised manufacturing facilities, including weapons systems and computer chips.
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Aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Israeli military companies Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Troya Tech Defence Ltd were among the 10 top contractors in the period considered by the data set.
Top 10 categories
Data compiled by Statewatch shows that public institutions in EU member states have hundreds of contracts with Israeli companies across several industries.
Overseas education project for women and girls axed by UK after two years https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jul/04/overseas-education-project-for-women-and-girls-axed-by-uk-after-two-years #GlobalDevelopment #GlobalEducation #WomensRightsAndGenderEquality #Education #YvetteCooper #Politics #ForeignPolicy #ForeignCommonwealthAndDevelopmentOffice #UkNews #Universities #HigherEducation #SouthSudan #DemocraticRepublicOfTheCongo #ChildMarriage #Africa #Wo...
This week Just Peace Advocates will be releasing a report on Canadian university complicity.
Canadian universities are, and always have been, part of Canada’s settler colonial project. Therefore, Canadian university complicity in Israel’s Crimes — should come as no surprise.
#Canada #IsraelWarCrimes #Palestine #Universities #Colonialism
tr.ee/subJPA
""The federal government intends to work with AI providers to help Canadian post-secondary students access AI agents from trusted providers." 🤦🏼♂️
The American Association of University Professors (#AAUP) and American Federation of Teachers (#AFT) just released a joint "Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education."
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2026/Higher_Ed_Vision_and_Policy_Platform_326.pdf
Also see the summary by their two presidents.
https://www.highereddive.com/news/higher-education-must-be-rebuilt-to-restore-public-trust-heres-how/821031/
The blueprint calls for "transforming" higher ed, and the summary calls for "rebuilding" and "overhauling" it.
My take is that the blueprint conservatively restates ideals for higher ed long and widely held by academics themselves -- like me. Insofar as there's an argument here for transforming, rebuilding, and overhauling, it looks like this: The ideals need no revision. In fact, don't touch them. We've fallen short of living up to them, mostly through defunding and cost-shifting to students and their families.
I deeply wish to see us restore slashed funding, relieve student debt, and create fair pay and job security for professors. That might even deserve to be called transforming, rebuilding, and overhauling.
But is it enough to restore public trust? Is it true that the ideals need no revision? Do we need little or no transformation beyond economic transformation to respond to recent trends and current politics? Some of the harmful economic decisions (about tuition and pay) were forced by external circumstances, and some were not. But beyond those that were not, does the academy itself bear any responsibility for the current loss of trust?
Over the last week, the Trump administration has cancelled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University and $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University.Columbia made an attempt to pre-emptively please this administration, and they were still made to suffer. That's how this works. Laying low and/or cooperating does not help:So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change. Harvard must stand up, speak out, and lead a public defense of our freedom to speak and study freely.
Not only is silence in the face of mounting authoritarianism morally objectionable, but, as the Columbia case suggests, it’s not working. Columbia’s leadership made repeated concessions to right-wing critics, only to be the first to come under attack.From https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/3/14/enos-levitsky-harvard-columbia-trump/ (be aware: the title evokes the Holocaust, which in this context is not great).
#USPol #Universities #Columbia #authoritarianism #HigherEducation #education #maine
The university has an obligation to interrogate the proposition that a world in which AI is widely used is desirable or inevitable. We don’t need to cheer for a vision of tomorrow in which scientists feel comfortable with not personally reading the articles their peers have written and students are not expected to gain insight through wrestling with complex concepts: a world in which creative and knowledge work is delegated to a mindless algorithm.From: https://uniavisen.dk/en/cut-the-ai-bullshit-ucph/
#LLM #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #GPT #Gemini #Claude #academics #universities #education
What, exactly, are universities like Columbia actually for in the US in 2024? They are making it very difficult to believe that they are for students. If not the students, who and what are they for, then?
#Columbia #US #Universities #HigherEd #FreeSpeech #FreeAssembly