"28. Higher-education teaching personnel have the right to teach without any interference, subject to accepted professional principles including professional responsibility and intellectual rigour with regard to standards and methods of teaching." unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/…

BOSTON ATM

Following recent posts about my attempts to secure prosecutions for those failing to register the controlling interest in land, I am pleased to see that the Ferret has published an important analysis of the Register of Controlled Persons in Land. 1/7

Russian oligarchs, billion­aires, foreign governments, international royalty, and banking giants are among those behind nearly 1000 offshore entities that are illegally flouting the land control registry, The Ferret can reveal

The Ferret’s 2024 investigation: over half of rural payment applicants broke the rules. Top 30 offenders got £26m. Estates registered in Jersey, Luxembourg, BVI. Billionaires, lords, Tory donors. Public money. Offshore structures. No community accountability. Now look at Scotland’s data centre pipeline. Public water. Public grid. Public planning system. Sites to be sold to unnamed future owners. No community benefit test. No binding conditions. No cumulative assessment. No right of appeal for communities. Community Land Scotland called the subsidy pattern “extractive, monopoly ownership.” The phrase fits the data centre pipeline too. Same structure. Different industry. Same democratic deficit.

🧵 Scottish Water is publicly owned. That matters and most people don’t know what it actually means, or what rights it gives communities facing hyperscale data centre applications. Let’s be precise. 1/

Background to Cambridge Whistleblowing Tribunal This describes a sequence of events after Prof Wyn Evans tried to help a distressed colleague Wyn Evans claims there is no effective protection for whistleblowers at Cambridge University 21percent.org/?p=3806

I know it's really hard for folks at UK universities taking industrial action right now, illegal 100% deductions, etc., but I've seen solid evidence that it is working. Hold the line, if you can.

Recently came across this striking poem by Shawn Smucker, called "Please Use AI." The first stanza is in the photo and here is the full text: shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/…

How a £1-an-acre trick is quietly handing Britain's industrial commons to AI companies, and why nobody has connected the dots until now. My new essay on the Anthropic/Teesside data centre deal, the Paris AI Summit walkout, and why the UK's "free zones" programme is quietly sabotaging any future return to the EU. Please subscribe, and support my research. open.substack.com/pub/europe… 1/8

Tethered caps on plastic bottles for us. Energy guzzling AI data centres for them.

the way that you translate academic research to “people” is by making public higher ed free, not by writing pop science articles

Introducing the Scottish-American travel dictionary 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We’ve put together this guide to keep the Tartan Army out of trouble in the States. Read carefully to avoid confusing the locals, deeply offending the country, or being interrogated by Homeland Security over a sandwich.

🚨 NEW: The University of Nottingham has suffered a "serious" data breach affecting its campuses in the UK, China and Malaysia Students' personal and financial information are now up for sale on the dark web

Staff made redundant suffer. Students suffer. All to cover up dodgy real estate deals for incompetents on six-figure salaries. 'Uni marking boycott could render my hard work worthless' - BBC News share.google/N6g8O5AK0xA3bCO…

the scale of the cuts at nottingham: of course music, languages, and american studies are just gone, but they are also chopping biosciences and the medical school in half

1/3) 🧵I am co-editor of the University of Georgia Press book series Race in the Atlantic World, along with historians Toby Green and Brooke Newman. We are welcoming proposals of academic monographs and edited volumes. Here are the series great titles!

Big new Policy Exchange report on English Higher Education out by @IGMansfield, Natasha Feldman, and Ben Sweetman. Authors don't put it like this, but they essentially call for gutting the 2017 Higher Education Act. Naturally, I welcome this. A quick thread on some aspects.

Considering the huge drive by the UK government, devolved governments and local councils to ram through hundreds of data centres that consume enormous amounts of energy and water…the question that has to be asked is this: Is the net zero agenda that is being enforced on the public in many different ways really about conserving energy for the data centres rather than to hit climate change targets?

For only one year of my >30 years as an academic did my pay go up more than inflation! Pay scales were supressed, compressed and differentials eroded. Take a look at my colleague Robyn Orfitelli explaining salary issues a few years back youtube.com/watch?v=SInMwv5m…

Tragic news today: the eminent historian Gordon S. Wood was struck and killed while walking in the Shaw's plaza in East Providence, his family confirms to me. No comment from Brown yet Wood was just featured in Ken Burns' American Revolution documentary wpri.com/news/local-news/pro…