We invite you to read Khaled El Mahmoud's interview with Janan Abdu, a distinguished attorney, researcher, and human rights defender, in which she shed light on Palestinian prisoners.
voelkerrechtsblog.org/the-plight-o...
This week over 400 members of the University community met at a joint union meeting to consider the motion below.
97% voted that they had no confidence in VC Frances Bowen and her leadership team.
Staff demand accountability.
www.ucu.essex.ac.uk/2026/04/17/v...
It’s been a year since the UK Supreme Court disrupted the lives of trans folk and placed them all in an even more precarious legal position. The @goodlawproject.org has an online form you can use to ask your local MP to ensure the new Code of Practice does not enable transphobic exclusion. Act now.
"If people did learn from history, history would be very different... If one blames the Jew for not having been ennobled by oppression, one is not indicting the single figure of the Jew but the entire human race... I know that my own oppression did not ennoble me." - James Baldwin
Yesterday MPs and the council leader met with over 50 staff and students at Essex Southend.
The verdict? "A huge lack of engagement" from university management.
800 students. 400 jobs. This is the face of the Higher Education crisis.
flyer about What's going on in module cuts at queen mary showing that they would plan to cut 295 modules across to the school of the arts. What students can do: talk with tutors, lecturers, and professors. Demand a stop to the violnet actions and join upcoming school-wide meetings with staff and students
The cuts. They cuts are never-ending. And they're cutting away what it means to be a university.
Screenshots of article link.
We are very pleased to announce one of the winners of the Feminist Legal Studies Editors' Prize 2025 is Ariël Decoster for her article, 'Men in/and Law: Developing "Critical Legal Studies of Men and Masculinities."'
You can read the article online for free here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Elon Musk responding “Precisely” to an image asking why people aren’t protesting Epstein, saying “Because the people who pay for protests would be the ones getting protested."
Antisemitism is structurally necessary for Elon Musk’s right-wing populist politics, because he wants to brand himself as a populist insurgent against the “elites,” but as the world’s wealthiest person, he needs a definition of elite not rooted in actual material wealth.
The Hungarian government, cited as direct ideological inspiration by the Trump admin, allowed neo-Nazis to march in SS uniforms last weekend - but banned a Holocaust survivor from giving a speech warning about fascism in response. www.errc.org/news/budapes...
'When it opened, the campus housed a GP surgery and a new dental clinic offering free treatment to local people. This was followed later by the forum – a library and art gallery shared by the university and local people.' 1/2
Thrilled to have received the updated paperback edition of *Human Shields*, including a new Preface and Epilogue about the use of human shields during the genocide in Gaza.
400 jobs at risk. A campus set to close.
This film explains what’s happening at the University of Essex and why staff, students and the local community are organising to stop it.
📍 Southend rally | 5 February
The University of Sheffield has stopped paying staff.
Not for striking but for refusing to work unpaid to make up for strike days they were already docked for.
This is punishment, not negotiation. And it’s completely reckless.
www.ucu.org.uk/article/1438...
Matt Walsh calling international law 'fake and gay' is concerning, hilarious and more interesting than he realises at the same time.
Letter from the University and College Union (UCU), dated 8 January 2026, from general secretary Dr Jo Grady to the UK foreign secretary. The letter condemns Israeli military attacks on Palestinian education, including a raid on Birzeit University, calls these actions “scholasticide,” and urges the UK government to hold Israel to account through diplomatic, military and economic sanctions.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military invaded Birzeit University, attacking students with live ammunition.
Israel's scholasticide is a core part of its attempt to obliterate the collective life of the Palestinian people.
We have written to Yvette Cooper urging the British government to take action.
One of the core purposes of right-wing media is to rewrite your memory and reprogram your moral response to an event you saw with your own eyes. George Floyd died of a heart attack. Jan 6 was a peaceful picnic. This process has already begun
**LAUNCH OF THE NEW CENTRE FOR THE CRITIQUE OF LAW AND SOCIETY**
Join us to celebrate our new research centre (CCLAS) and hear from thinkers in law and the humanities, examining both (legal) critique and the Critic.
Full program and registration here:
tinyurl.com/stateofcritique
Countdown to Chișinău: The Risk of Politicising the ECHR over Migration | by Andrew Forde and Alice Donald
In yet more devastating news, the VC has confirmed her plans to cut 80% of academic staff from Essex Pathways, our foundation year department. This would effectively close down all our existing foundation year programmes through the back door.
But it's not a done deal yet. Please share urgently.
“The hero of Bondi Beach shot twice in his attempt to disarm one of the killers has been revealed. Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, was named by family as the man who wrestled one of the gunmen to the ground before aiming it back at the attacker forcing him to retreat.”
An absolute legend of a human.
What are the main points to emerge from the Sandie Peggie hearing? A brief expert blog from a specialist KC... goodlaw.social/5o6l
You'd never know it from these headlines that she lost all her claims on the actual substance of the case, claiming that trans people must be banned from bathrooms.
PODCAST: Uncovering the inner workings of an AI genocide
+972's Yuval Abraham takes us inside his groundbreaking investigations into the Gaza war and the legal and moral challenges he faces when reporting.
www.972mag.com/podcast-unco...
One of our branch co-presidents, Jordan Osserman, talking on BBC Essex this morning about the devastating cuts to our University, and what needs to be done about them. Please share.
We had yet more shocking news this morning - stay tuned.
THE STATE OF CRITIQUE
Join us to celebrate the launch of the new Centre for the Critique of Law and Society (formerly Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context)
tinyurl.com/stateofcritique
1/ Thread: Why did states, like the U.S., that materially supported Israel’s genocide simultaneously impose targeted sanctions on ‘extremist settlers’ in the West Bank? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
None of these tests have diagnostic significance, and their scientific validity has long been discarded. All they do is cause distress and give gatekeepers something to back arbitrary decisions.
I wondered what was a "good" level of distress: which body parts was I expected to hate? How much?
