Free Speech and the University · Matthew J. Barnard Matthew J. Barnard

Free speech is being demanded of universities. I think there’s a misunderstanding of education at the heart of these concerns, and focus on academic freedom would be more helpful. Blog post:
#highereducation

matthewbarnard.phd/posts/2026-0...

Black cat with her elbow on a tatami mat

Black and white cat, tummy up

#caturday #catsofbluesky

Bloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I very rarely do petitions, but please sign this one. Reverse the visa brake on Study Visas for citizens of Myanmar.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

The US military has 22 sites in the UK.

Every day long range US bombers are taking off here to drop bombs on Iran.

This is a rogue state carrying out war crimes, and threatening more.

The UK Government must grow a spine - and stop our bases being used for this war.

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

A devastating read. Some of the personal stories behind the Conservative and Labour government's haphazard pivots between encouraging universities to attract international students and making Britain a less appealing place for them.

www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

Another war crime by Israel and the USA. An important place for free, independent philosophy of science in Iran destroyed by criminal bombing. #philsci

Cf. Samuel Butler’s comment on the Carlyles:
“it was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another, and so make two people miserable and not four”

Black and white cat, lying on his right side

Black cat, lying on her left side

Quiet night in.

America not being a signatory to a number of treaties does not mean that international law does not exist. The US is conducting clear war crimes, and boasting about it. They should be treated as a pariah state. They definitely shouldn't be getting a Royal visit.

Management consultants are ruining UK universities Relentless off-the-peg commercial rewiring has undermined British higher education

This critique is accurate but misses the main point - as so many accounts of politics do: the ideological context. These consultants are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. They are only so powerful because neoliberal ideology has captured our universities. 1/2

Earned settlement: retrospective change is wrong but prospective change is even worse Changing the rules for migrants already here is wrong and unfair but only affects a finite group of people. Extending default settlement to 10 years or more for everyone is a social policy disaster.

"The UK spent 75 years building something genuinely worth having: a track record of successful integration. And now a Labour government plans to blow it all up."

@colinyeo.bsky.social on the permanent damage of the "earned settlement" proposals

wewantedworkers.substack.com/p/earned-set...

b/w ID photo of Wong Kim Ark, young American of Chinese descent. He is looking straight into the camera.

The vital importance of immigrants to a democracy is not just as sources of cheap labor, population replenishment, or as conveyors of culture, capital, & skills (‘good immigrants’), but because immigrants fight for–and model for everyone–the right to have rights.

Thank you, Wong Kim Ark. 6/6

Shouldn't universities the world over be condemning US/Israeli attacks on a university in Iran, or will they generally be silent like they were on Gaza? #IranWar #AcademicChatter

Then couth

The language in this X post is horrendous.
Other than the obvious cruel nature of such rhetoric, student visa ‘crackdown’ is an act of self-destruction. The UK higher education sector is suffering because of this mindless mimicking of Reform.

The UK Covid Inquiry has laid bare the avoidable horror of the second Covid wave It is becoming ever clearer both how devastating the second wave of winter 2020/21 was, and how much of that devastation could have been avoided.

I wrote about the findings from the inquiry about the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, and the mistakes of the first year.

I hope it makes you angry - it should make us all angry.

open.substack.com/pub/christin...

Double-take detail in this interview with Edith Heard, head of the Crick

Her French husband decided against getting a spouse visa because of the UK's "intrusive" immigration rules

If that's happening with one of the UK's most senior scientists, how many others are being put off completely?

Good HE is really simple: quality time spent with subject experts who know and care about their students. My university and many others are deliberately abandoning this truth in favour of financial and organisational efficiency.

i do really enjoy that on the absolutely most granular level nobody knows how teaching and learning actually happens. you just expose your mind to the material several times, ideally from several different angles, and eventually a miracle occurs.

Who knows whether this about the war in the Middle East or UK higher education policy?

Keir Starmer and David Lammy are taking an extraordinarily dangerous gamble with our individual liberty This week, MPs will vote on the second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. Don’t let the anodyne name fool you – this is one of the most revolutionary pieces of legislation in our…

NEW BLOGPOST: Keir Starmer and David Lammy are taking an extraordinarily dangerous gamble with our individual liberty

For any MP unsure of how to vote on the government’s proposals to restrict trial by jury.

Tea, rain and not making a fuss

A Danish lesson for Labour on how to stop migrants and start winning Like the home secretary, I visited recently to learn how the centre-left is riding high and reclaiming the asylum debate from the populist right

Denmark has *far* worse outcomes - economic, social and integration - than the UK.

Just a fantasyland for those who want an excuse for their own xenophobia and/or are incapable of doing the hard work of confronting the UK's real problems.

www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

Rich alludes here to the wisdom of the judges at the Nuremburg trial: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

Excellent article but stark reminder that for all the perceptions of universities as ivory towers for elites, they are actually vital hubs in towns n cities supporting local businesses and providing key services as well as education….

I suppose the easy thing to say is that we don’t see them _as_ binary. More interesting: I suppose in some cases we see both stars - where the light from both combined is responsible for the percept; conversely, when one star is very faint, we only see the bright one. Physics >> semantics

Le Guin wrote an essay about it, ‘From Elfland to Poughkeepsie’ where she quotes Eddison, Tolkien and Kenneth Morris.

s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/...

Britain’s deprived areas need attention for their own sak... Numerous studies warn about pockets of deep poverty, but little is done by sitting governments until they feel under threat

“Much of the commentary reads as if improving high streets is not a good in itself, a measure important in enhancing people’s lives, but is primarily a means of undermining the Reform vote or staunching Labour’s decline.” My @theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Cutting staff at a neighbouring Uni is bad for the whole coastal South East. Aside from London, what industries or large employers are there? Visit a seaside town in the winter?
How is this 'levelling up'?
14,000 jobs in HE lost last year. Where is the government support?
#AcademicSky