politics
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Don’t go west
Maren and I had booked a trip to New York in May as our wedding present to ourselves. Neither of us have ever been there and we had a fun itinerary lined up. Last week we cancelled it. We were going to meet up with friends, and missing out on this is the part that hits the hardest. The reasons for cancelling are muddled but contain elements of the economic boycott, safety concerns and ethical considerations. On the economic side, this seems like a practical step in response to Trump’s trashing of trade agreements. Safety wise, although planes seem to be crashing with increased regularity, and the current border control…
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It goes darker still
There are times when being proved right is the worst thing you can imagine… In the run up to the US election I had lots of conversations with my daughter, who studied US politics. She thought Harris would win based on proper rational analysis. I thought Trump would win based on a nasty feeling. My rationale was this – the US hasn’t gone deep enough into the crap yet for there to be a consensus that Trumpism is a bad thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, it really should have come to that conclusion, but when you see that even the Jan 6th insurrection is not sufficient to stop Trump…
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Universities need to leave X
[Update: I don’t think I made it clear enough that I’m talking about the official comms channels of universities here, not individual academics. They should have left X ages ago.] I’m not the first person to advocate this, but the timing and the case for it now seems even stronger. UK universities (but all HEIs really), need to get off X/Twitter as an official platform now. I have a lot of respect for colleagues in Comms, and they are balancing many different factors. It’s easy for people like me to say it, but much more difficult to undertake as an institutional policy. I get it, but now is the time.…
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The Misery of narrative
I’ve been re-reading Stephen King’s Misery recently. For those of you who don’t know the story, it features a writer, Paul Sheldon, who after a car accident finds himself in the isolated house of his “number 1 fan” Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is psychotic, and becomes enraged when she reads the latest of his Misery historical romance books, in which he has killed off the main character. She tortures him and forces him to write a new Misery novel, just for her. It is foremost a great horror novel, but it also acts as an obvious allegory for the relationship between writer and their audience and their own work. From a…
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Rise up, Vice Chancellors, rise up!
(Not aimed at any person in senior management in particular, just the sector in general) Like many of you I was tired, angry and infuriated by the recent Government announced crackdown on poor quality degrees. This was widely, and correctly, interpreted as an attack on arts and humanities. which typically don’t perform as well on the criteria of employment in ‘professional’ jobs. Creatives are often self-employed, take time to establish a reputation, and so on. Also, it’s part of the ‘war on woke‘ because those subjects are all wokey-lefty, dribble, dribble. One saving grace of this Government however, is that rather like a sloth performing brain surgery, they combine extremely…
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The form of shame
As the latest Brexit crises (it is not just one single crisis, but a series of crises now) unfolded this week, each more worrying, bizarre and removed from rationality than the previous one, I’ve noticed one overriding emotion emerging in myself. From the sludgy mix of anger, depression, puzzlement, hysteria, the one that emerged like a taste of celery overriding everything else was shame. I have never felt so ashamed to be British. I appreciate that nationality is a social, even imaginary construct, and I have never held romantic notions about Britain’s past. But I am, in my way, quite “British” in character – reserved, emotionally crippled, polite, fond of…
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Gatherer calories and invisible artefacts – labour in OEP
I’m reading Angela Saini’s excellent Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong at the moment, which examines the range of ways science has misrepresented, simplified and ignored women. There’s a lot to dig into, and she writes clearly and knowledgeably, so I’d recommend it. While acknowledging I am writing about areas outside of my expertise, this reading, combined with some other conversations has sparked some thoughts that may be of interest. One of the chapters in Saini’s book looks at how anthropology had elevated the role of the hunter in hunter-gatherer societies, until a feminist movement in the 80s and 90s caused a reappraisal of much of the literature in the…
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The mathematics of cruelty
Warning: this is a naive politics post, best avoided by those who really know their stuff. I expect someone has written all of this much better than I have and it’s been dismissed already. But, hey, it’s my blog. A while ago I read Laurence Rees’s comprehensive The Holocaust: A New History. It is not a cliche or an invocation of Godwin’s Law any longer to say that the direct parallels to today’s climate in the US, UK, much of Europe, Australia, Russia and elsewhere are glaringly obvious. Particularly in the rise of nazism and their route to power within a democratic framework. We always used to ask that question…
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Oh, so that’s what that meant
Because the internet, and particularly the web and social media, are so pervasive now we have a tendency to overlook how recent it all is, and how rapid the change and associated social adjustments have been. If the founding of the pre-web can be seen as the gestation of the internet’s role in society, then since the 90s we’ve been going through its childhood. This was a time filled with optimism, charm, naïveté, and rapid development. We’re now in the teenage years – it can be dark, moody, but also positive, engaging and realistic. It is a stage where it seeks meaning and its role in the world (and by…
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When this is all over, we still have to clear up
Let’s be optimistic (remember optimism?) and assume that US and UK politics will return to some sense of normality within the next five years, and, you know, actual competent politicians will run the country. Only then will we really see the damage of the current period. For a start, I worry about the mental health of people having to endure this period. Waking up to a new piece of insanity and attack on humanity every morning is wearing. Being perpetually angry, frightened, vulnerable, confused is just exhausting. When we’re in it you keep going, but like looking after young children or going through a painful divorce, it’s only afterwards you…
