Tag Archives: Academia

In Scotland school pupils and their parents put enough pressure on the SNP to reverse policy on exams marks. The precedent meant that it was already inevitable that the British Government felt the need to cave into such demands too.  Grades have been inflated for the past thirty years and …

The Policy Exchange has just produced a report called Academic freedom in the UK. The report shows that UK Universities have indeed been subverted by the political “Left” – Labour and LibDems. The discrimination against Conservative voters is so extreme that emergency action is necessary. The findings of this report …

My joy at opening this week’s AAAS magazine “Science” was slightly blunted by the four pages of Chinese Government advertising that were followed by a long editorial article on how the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) should be given NIH funds.  The article did not mention that due to the …

I wrote my dissertation prior to the Internet. Maybe that’s the dividing line. I studied people like Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. I went to my tutor’s college rarely, sometimes not for months. It was assumed that I could read everything in the original language. It just isn’t possible to understand a …

There was a time not so very long ago when academic study was free from politics. Universities may have been full of political activity, students went on demonstrations complaining about Margaret Thatcher, but the subjects everyone studied were mainly free from politics. I wonder sometimes if I am part of …

Champions of intersectional identity politics in academia, culture and government have accrued near-hegemonic societal power for themselves by exploiting both the real and imagined oppression of certain groups on whose behalf they boldly presume to speak Last month, I wrote a short reflection on who is and is not effectively marginalized …

The reader will excuse my manners, for it is not often that I am disappointed to the point of disgust, but when it does happen, it tends to rear its head in three distinct stages: first anger, then sneer and finally, despair. Having put off a response for long enough, …

What is an intellectual? It is a pressing question. Many people claim to be such a thing, but it is quite certain that none can agree what gives that thing its essence. To look for a dictionary definition is superficial and inadequate. Anyone can conduct a discourse on any topic, and …

It is only through writing that I can really know what I think. My views develop and change. The fundamentals don’t normally change a great deal, but the details do. My method is not scholarly. I find most academic writing to be desperately dull and pointless. I rarely now write …

The Brexit vote was about returning power to the British people. Remoaners can spin and cry and complain but polls confirm the British people understood what they were voting for: restoring sovereignty. It was a great victory for all of us who campaigned for Brexit and we here at the …

British schools and universities represent an oppressive and highly unsafe space for young students who believe in free speech or hold pro-Brexit beliefs If you think that you have been made to feel uncomfortable for holding eurosceptic, pro-Brexit beliefs, spare a thought for those young Brexiteers trapped firmly behind enemy …

The dream of a federal Europe is not dead, or even resting. European political union is a long game – watch closely on a day to day basis and you will notice nothing moving. Only when viewed at a distance of years and decades does the direction of travel become crystal …