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      ‘Cultural and social vandalism’: mass redundancy plans at Goldsmiths attacked

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 19:24

    Union claims up to a quarter of all academic roles at financially pressed London institution face the axe

    Plans for mass redundancies at Goldsmiths, University of London, have been called a “horrifying act of cultural and social vandalism” and the “biggest assault on jobs at any UK university in recent years”.

    The job cuts, which are now subject to a consultation, are the latest in a series of redundancies at Goldsmiths and elsewhere in the higher education sector, as universities struggle with financial pressures.

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      The week in TV: Manhunt; Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax; The Dry; Is University Really Worth It? – review

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 March - 09:30

    Abraham Lincoln’s killer flees justice in a ponderous drama; four mothers fight back in a chilling sex crime hoax doc. Plus, the welcome return of Irish comedy drama The Dry, and degrees get the third degree

    Manhunt Apple TV+
    Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax (Channel 4) | channel4.com
    The Dry ITVX
    Is University Really Worth It? (BBC Two) | iPlayer

    I’m always ready to be educated by television, but should it feel like actual homework? Monica Beletsky’s new seven-part Apple TV+ drama, Manhunt , sounded compelling. Based on James L Swanson’s book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer , it opens with the 1865 assassination of US president Abraham Lincoln. At Ford’s theatre in Washington, actor John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) shot Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) in the head, jumped on to the stage (breaking his leg), then escaped with help from Confederate sympathisers.

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      Overseas students ‘undermining’ UK higher education, warns Cleverly

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 12 March - 13:30

    Home secretary calls for visa review over concern that courses are being used as shortcut to gain work permits

    The home secretary, James Cleverly, has said international students may be “undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system” by using university courses as a cheap way of getting work visas.

    In a letter to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Cleverly asked the body to investigate whether the graduate visa entitlement – allowing international students to work for two or three years after graduating – was failing to attract “the brightest and the best” to the UK.

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      Is University Really Worth It? review – not when students are left starving

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 11 March - 22:00 · 1 minute

    This bleak, eye-opening film finds mass strikes, gobsmacking whistleblower lecturers and med students forced to survive on food rations of £10 a week. Higher education is failing so many

    The comedian Geoff Norcott has a dilemma: should he be saving money so his son, “Little Geoff”, can go to university when the time comes, or should he buy a new car now? The conceit may be thin, and you can see the payoff coming, but Is University Really Worth It? is far more interesting than this flimsy framework. Norcott used to be a secondary school teacher, and he explains that in his time, he bought into the New Labour “education, education, education” doctrine wholesale, encouraging countless students to apply to university. Now, amid budget cuts, strike action, punitive fees and the growing corporatisation of learning, he wonders if he would say the same today.

    In order to find out whether a degree for Little Geoff would be “a good investment” – and such corporate, fiscal language is part of the problem, it soon becomes apparent – Norcott visits universities around the UK, all of which highlight one of the many issues students and institutions are facing. He spends time in Brighton and goes on a protest with University of Sussex students, who are marching against campus closures and staff redundancies. You can see his discomfort. He cringes and squirms, admitting that he is not really a protest guy.

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      DHS Using Hamas to Expand Its Reach on College Campuses

      news.movim.eu / TheIntercept · Sunday, 10 March - 17:03 · 5 minutes

    The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up its efforts to penetrate college campuses under the guise of fighting “foreign malign influence,” according to documents and memos obtained by The Intercept. The push comes at the same time that the DHS is quietly undertaking an effort to influence university curricula in an attempt to fight what it calls disinformation.

    In December, the department’s Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council, or HSAPC, sent a report to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas outlining a plan to combat college campus unrest stemming from Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. DHS has used this advisory body — a sympathetic cohort of academics, consultants, and contractors — to gain support for homeland security objectives and recruit on college campuses.

    In one of the recommendations offered in the December 11 report, the Council writes that DHS should “Instruct [its internal office for state and local law enforcement] to work externally with the [International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators] and [National Association of School Resource Officers] to ask Congress to address laws prohibiting DHS from providing certain resources, such as training and information, to private universities and schools. Current limitations serve as a barrier to yielding maximum optimum results.”

    Legal scholars interviewed by The Intercept are uncertain what specific laws the advisory panel is referring to. The DHS maintains multiple outreach efforts and cooperation programs with public and private universities, particularly with regard to foreign students, and it shares information, even sensitive law enforcement information, with campus police forces. Cooperation with regard to speech and political leanings of students and faculty, nevertheless, is far murkier.

    The DHS-funded HSAPC originated in 2012 to bring together higher education and K-12 administrators, local law enforcement officials, and private sector CEOs to open a dialogue between the new department and the American education system. The Council meets on a quarterly basis, with additional meetings scheduled at the discretion of the DHS secretary. The current chair is Elisa Beard, CEO of Teach for America. Other council members include Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District; Farnam Jahanian, president of Carnegie Mellon University; Michael H. Schill, president of Northwestern University; Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

    In its December report, the Council recommends that DHS “Immediately address gaps and disconnects in information sharing and clarify DHS resources available to campuses, recognizing the volatile, escalating, and sometimes urgent campus conditions during this Middle East conflict.”

    DHS’s focus on campus protests has President Joe Biden’s blessing, according to the White House. At the end of October, administration officials said they were taking action to combat antisemitism on college campuses, assigning dozens of “cybersecurity and protective security experts at DHS to engage with schools.”

    In response to the White House’s efforts, the Council recommended that Mayorkas “immediately designate an individual to serve as Campus Safety Coordinator and grant them sufficient authority to lead DHS efforts to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia.” That appointment has not yet occurred.

    The Council’s December report says that expansion of homeland security’s effort will “Build a trusting environment that encourages reporting of antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents, threats, and violence.” Through a “partnership approach” promoting collaboration with “federal agencies, campus administrators, law enforcement, and Fusion Centers,” the Council says it hopes that DHS will “establish this culture in lockstep with school officials in communities.” While the Council’s report highlights the critical importance of protecting free speech on campus, it also notes that “Many community members do not understand that free speech comes with limitations, such as threats to physical safety, as well as time, place, and manner restrictions.”

    The recent DHS push for greater impact on campuses wouldn’t be the first time the post-9/11 agency has taken action as a result of anti-war protests. In 2006, an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit revealed that DHS was monitoring anti-war student groups at multiple California college and feeding that information to the Department of Defense. According to documents the ACLU obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the intelligence collected on student groups was intended “to alert commanders and staff to potential terrorist activity or apprise them of other force protection issues.”

    Mayorkas wrote on November 14 last year that a DHS academic partnership will develop solutions to thwart not only foreign government theft of national security funded and related research on college campuses but also to actively combat the introduction of “ideas and perspectives” by foreign governments that the government deems opposing U.S. interests.

    “Colleges and universities may also be seen as a forum to promote the malign actors’ ideologies or to suppress opposing worldviews,” Mayorkas said, adding that “DHS reporting has illuminated the evolving risk of foreign malign influence in higher education institutions.” He says that foreign governments and nonstate actors such as nongovernmental organizations are engaged in “funding research and academic programs, both overt and undisclosed, that promote their own favorable views or outcomes.”

    The three tasks assigned by Mayorkas are:

    • “Guidelines and best practices for higher education institutions to reduce the risk of and counter foreign malign influence.”
    • “Consideration of a public-private partnership to enhance collaboration and information sharing on foreign malign influence.”
    • “An assessment of how the U.S. Government can enhance its internal operations and posture to effectively coordinate and address foreign malign influence-related national security risks posed to higher education institutions.”

    The threat left unspoken in Mayorkas’s memo echoes one spoken out loud by then Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft in the months after 9/11 , when the first traces of the government’s desire to forge a once unimaginable expansion into public life in America rose to the surface.

    “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,” Ashcroft told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to … enemies and pause to … friends.”

    The post DHS Using Hamas to Expand Its Reach on College Campuses appeared first on The Intercept .

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      Oxbridge must help pupils from state schools succeed, college head says

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 16:00

    Helen Mountfield, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, hopes to raise £100m to help improve outcomes

    Oxbridge colleges need to actively help their state school-educated pupils succeed, rather than hope a “magical sorting hat” will uncover their talent, according to the head of an Oxford college who is looking to raise £100m to do just that.

    Helen Mountfield, the principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, said her college was able to recruit 93% of its undergraduates from UK state schools and see them flourish because of the extra effort it put in.

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      High shower pressure can help people save water, study suggests

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 14:33

    Researchers in Surrey say visible timers can also reduce water usage after installing sensors in 290 showers

    Swapping a feeble dribble for a powerful blast might seem like an environmental indulgence when it comes to taking a shower, but researchers say it might actually save water.

    Water consumption has become a key area of environmental concern given shortages of the resource, as well as the carbon footprint associated with its collection, treatment, supply and – in the case of most showers – heating.

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      Tory levelling up has been a scam. Here are three things Labour can do to make it actually mean something | John Harris

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 7 March - 06:00 · 1 minute

    Keir Starmer’s party should make councils sustainable, bring local transport into public control – and build new universities

    • Our writers and experts name the pledges Labour must include in its manifesto

    Of all the promises made by Conservative politicians over the past 14 years, the pledge to convincingly reduce the UK’s regional inequalities has turned out to be the most empty. George Osborne came up with the idea of the “ northern powerhouse ”. Theresa May talked about somehow getting “our great cities firing on all cylinders to rebalance our economy”. Boris Johnson enthusiastically inflated the same ideas with his trademark brand of hot air, and tantalisingly floated them over the kind of post-industrial places that switched from Labour to the Tories in 2019. But beyond a few promising spurts of devolution to metro mayors and tiny pots of regeneration funding , hardly anything changed. That so many councils are now facing bankruptcy compounds the sense that the “levelling up” drive was something close to a scam.

    This does not, of course, invalidate the basic idea. The UK – and England in particular – remains absurdly centralised and riven by a yawning economic gap between London and the south-east, and just about everywhere else. If a new government is going to create a new kind of country, this is where a lot of its focus should fall. My advice to them is as follows:

    John Harris is a Guardian columnist

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      UK science minister apologises and pays damages after academic’s libel action

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 5 March - 20:07

    Michelle Donelan had accused two members of Research England’s advisory group of ‘sharing extremist views’ in letter to UKRI

    Michelle Donelan, the science minister, has apologised and paid damages after accusing two academics of “sharing extremist views” and one of them of supporting Hamas.

    In a statement posted on X , the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology said she had deleted a tweet and letter published last year, and accepted what she termed a “clarification” from one of the academics, Prof Kate Sang at Heriot-Watt university in Edinburgh.

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