Ministers considering more funding to protect important research sites, with China seen as a particular concern

MI5 has warned universities that hostile foreign states are targeting sensitive research, as ministers consider measures to bolster protections.

Vice-chancellors from 24 leading institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, were briefed on the threat by the domestic security service’s director general, Ken McCallum, and National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) chief, Felicity Oswald.

Suspects alleged to have posed as academics to access books and replace them with copies, says Europol

• Europe live – latest updates

Police have arrested nine Georgians suspected of running a sophisticated criminal operation stealing valuable antique books – including an original Alexander Pushkin manuscript – from national libraries across Europe.

Shelves of 19th-century Russian-language literature had been ransacked over two years across several countries and replaced by fakes, Europol, the EU police agency revealed on Thursday.

The pandemic showed that remote learning is effective. It’s absurd that universities are going back to processes that exclude us

• Rosie Anfilogoff is the winner of the 2024 Hugo Young Award (19-25 age category) recognising young talent in political opinion writing

My route to university was never going to be simple. While my friends were flicking through university brochures and choosing Ucas options, I was signing chemotherapy consent forms in the teenage cancer unit at Addenbrooke’s hospital and throwing up in its weirdly tropical island-themed bathrooms. Even before then, my severe chronic illness made attending traditional university unthinkable – until the pandemic happened.

In 2020, for the first time, it became possible to attend a brick-and-mortar university online. Universities became accessible – or at least, more accessible than they had ever been – practically overnight. Accommodations that disabled students had been requesting for years, such as lecture recordings and software that would allow them to take exams from home, were slotted into place so that students could learn remotely. Suddenly, friends at university were having the kind of experience that would have enabled me to join them. But since the “end” of the pandemic, online learning has withered away. and thousands of students have been left without sufficient access. By returning to the pre-pandemic state of affairs, universities are failing current and prospective disabled students like me.

Rosie Anfilogoff is a writer and journalist

Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?

It is a couple of days before Easter, and the students who have been holding a sit-in in the Professor Stuart Hall building in Goldsmiths, University of London are packing up. The large basement smells of duvets and camping mats and solidarity and liveliness, and deodorant sprayed on in a hurry under a T-shirt, and it smells like a place where people have slept, which 20 of them have done since 20 February, with crowds swelling to 100 for spontaneous lectures.

This isn’t a story about idiot idealists making futile gestures: Mark Peacock, a 28-year-old postgraduate student in the politics department, rattles through a number of concessions the senior management team at the university has made as a result of the action. Yet Danna MacRae, 24, studying for an MA in ecology, culture and society, says the occupation has been greater than the sum of its demands: “It’s about opening up the literal physical space but also the social space to expand political possibilities. So much becomes possible when you’re living together 24/7.” I read their banner as they’re furling it up: among other things, it calls for the university to protect students’ right to protest, expand scholarships for Palestinian students and divest from any company providing equipment to Israel.

Booker-winning author says course ‘shouldn’t be seen as dispensable’ as university seeks to cut 130 academic jobs

The Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has criticised the “amputation” of Black British literature and queer history courses at Goldsmiths University in London, as part of a cost-cutting programme in which 130 academic jobs are to go.

Evaristo, along with former students and writers, issued a plea to Goldsmiths to reconsider the removal of “pioneering” postgraduate courses after plans were announced to cut the jobs in 11 departments.

Project will analyse multitude of documents to uncover female Irish experiences from 1500 to 1700

Four centuries ago Dublin had an official city “scavenger” who was tasked with running sanitation teams to clear streets of human and animal waste. In return, the scavenger earned tolls from shopkeepers and traders.

It could have worked well except the contractor decided to cut costs and maximise profits by deploying just two carts rather than six. Dung piled up and the city stank. This upset everyone save the scavenger, who pocketed enough cash to set herself up as a moneylender. Her name was Catherine Strong.

Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy at the New School, condemned killings in Gaza carried out by the Israeli military

A leading US philosopher has been disinvited from taking up a prestigious professorship at the University of Cologne after signing a letter expressing solidarity with Palestinians and condemning the killings in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces.

Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research in New York, said she had been cancelled by the university, which has withdrawn its invitation to the Albertus Magnus Professorship 2024, a visiting position, which she had been awarded in 2022. The letter was written in November 2023 following the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas, prompting Israel’s attack on Gaza.

Gillian Keegan will also squeeze funding for programmes to widen access to higher education

Ministers will cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities next year, which sector leaders say will further damage the country’s cultural industries.

The cuts, outlined by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in guidance to the universities regulator , will also reduce funding for Uni-Connect, which runs programmes aimed at widening access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to £20m, a third of its 2020-21 budget.

Prof Des Freedman , Michael Bassey , John Sommer and Sally Bates respond to an article about the dire state of Britain’s higher education institutions

Gaby Hinsliff ( Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding, 29 March ) says “the story [of decline] starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017”.

However, this was the outcome, not the cause, of a crisis that began with the decision by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 to treble tuition fees and to build a “market” in UK higher education. Since then, policymakers and university managers have pursued a disastrous ideological project to turn higher education into a commodity rather than to treat it as a public good.