Notices by Pauline von Hellermann (pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green), page 5

#AcademicVenting oh God

#AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/21/hologram-lecturers-thrill-students-at-trailblazing-uk-university?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#AcademicVenting we have now all received invitations to atend our “Stage 1 Individual Consultations”. Lovely to be encouraged by the corporate booking system they used to “grab a meeting”. Grab a reduncancy meeting, yeah!

#AcademicVenting just out of a college wide “Transformation” meeting due to our ongoing disasterous financial situation. SMT need to take much more responsibility for their epic failures, but of course the larger context really is terrible. 40% of UK HE institutions are in decifit, and it won’t get better; nationwide 24/25 UCAS applications down 11%.

I am so so so SOOO incredibly angry how the Tories with their crappy values and policies have really destroyed UK universities, in so many ways

#AcademicVenting What makes all this all the more sad is that we really do love Goldsmiths. Just these last two weeks, I have had truly wonderful seminar discussions. Goldsmiths students and colleagues really are amazing; depite all our problems there is so much #AcademicJoy , too. It’s just 💔 that all this is in peril.

#AcademicVenting Now have to share this brilliant article - well, have only read the abstract so far, but: count me in! Here’s to #AdministrativeAbolition!

“we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group”

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/917791

#AcademicVenting this is not venting, just crying. Things are bad enough at Goldsmiths but Kent announcing it is closing 9 humanities and social science departments - including #Philosophy and #Anthropology , and focusing instead on business and law as areas of growth, is just 💔💔💔

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/nine-courses-could-be-phased-out-at-university-facing-fina-301103/

#AcademicVenting #Anthropology #Kent

Here is a petition you can sign and share to try and save the anthropology department. Please do.

I really do think that anthropology has so much to offer for navigating our way out of the polycrisis. The world needs so much more anthroplogy, not less.

https://www.change.org/p/save-anthropology-at-the-university-of-kent

#AcademicVenting Our financial crisis has, of course, resulted in a huge proliferation of work as we are all scrambling to try and salvage things. Hours of emergency meetings on top of all the usual stuff.

Meanwhile also been scrambling this week to support PhD funding applications; up all night revising proposals and writing Statements for two who will now compete against each other. This is the process. And now heard that redundancies will be announced next week.

#AcademicVenting But I also got an email that the staff #Wellbeing had reopened. There is now a special room where we can go talk. That will make us feel better! That will fix things!

The Neoliberal University

#AcademicVenting

Yesterday we were informed we will have 130 FT redundancies. More with part time staff included. We are 644 so potentially a quarter of us. From 11 departments, including #anthropology.

We don’t know yet who. I don’t know how these decisions are made (it’s related to which programmes or modules will be closed). I feel completely sick the whole time. Far beyond venting, just existential fear.

#Polycrisis #TheCrumble #Goldsmiths #Academia

#AcademicVenting It occurs to me that some of you might not know Goldsmiths - my university, now being decimated ⬆️.

So I want to tell you about #Goldsmiths. It is a unique, brilliant, important university. We combine arts, humanities and social sciences, producing amazing critical research, politics, practice.

I have the best colleagues and the best, best students. The fact that all this is being destroyed now is just 💔💔💔. Not just existential fear, much more.#UCU @ucu

#AcademicVenting. Today the opposite of venting. Taught the MA Applied Anthropology and Community (see this 🧵for more info) and then we recorded testimonies to use for publicity- something the students initiated & organised . All I can say is: ❤️❤️❤️. Our students are amazing and it is a privilege to teach them and learn from them. And our MA is amazing, too! A unique, necessary programme providing both critical thinking and professional practice training.

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112014389646215007

#AcademicVenting Queen Mary @ucu are keeping a tally on UK universities currently reducing staff. As they put it: it’s all shrinking.

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

#AcademicVenting. Today a different perspective - a much needed critical, honest assessment of the key strategy that UK universities have been adopting to stay afloat: the mass recruitment of international students from China.

No wonder the author had to stay anonymous: it is virtually a taboo to say any of this, but good that someone has done so.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/uk-universities-are-self-harming-exploiting-chinese-students

#AcademicVenting No doubt the lovely - avatared- person above calling me an enabler & a coward for saying in the first toot of this 🧵 people might be afraid to really say what is going on will not be impressed that this book is anonymous!

#AcademicVenting Swansea is the latest university to announce major cuts. I think this brings it to 50 or more UK institutions.

This really is a major crisis. Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at non-elite universities are crumbling. The last few months of Tories and their disastrous anti-woke, anti-thought agenda is destroying the whole sector, all critical thinking. And many 100s of us out of jobs, all scrambling for the laar few positions. It is really bad!!

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/news-opinion/swansea-university-announces-redundancies-cost-28941830

#ClimateDiary Wildfire smoke may be worse for brain health than other air pollution, dementia research finds

“The study found the odds of a new dementia diagnosis increased about 21% for every 1 microgram increase in the concentration of wildfire particles.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/wildfire-smoke-may-be-worse-for-brain-health-than-other-air-pollution-dementia-research-finds

Says it all, really

@aral @thejuicemedia very good, as always. Thank you. I am honestly really scared about all this

Every day, more horrors, more dead, more war crimes; “red lines” a distant memory whilst #Gaza continues to be systematically destroyed. Yet waning coverage and outrage. It really is, as Glazer warned us during his “Zone of Interest” Oscar speech, that genocide is now ambient background.

I wonder how much the casualty figures stalling at 35,000 or so for months now (due to health and counting systems being destroyed) has contributed to people forgetting about it.

https://aje.io/ey50er