"In the lawsuit, Hinds said that on April 7, 2023, barely one week after former Metropolitan Transit System employee Grecia Figueroa accused Fletcher of sexually assaulting her, the UC San Diego lecturer went to UC San Diego's Office of Student Disability Services to inform them that one of her students went to Hinds with a report that Fletcher had sexually harassed her...
Less than two hours later on the same day, April 7, Hinds said a different UC San Diego administrator sent her an email requesting the name of the student who reported the harassment, as well as confirmation that it was Fletcher who allegedly harassed her."
Office of the National Cyber Director told RSA Conference attendees the White House is developing legal clauses that shift software liability away from customers and more onto manufacturers.
"Another proposal on the table would be SHARED LIABILITY BETWEEN OPEN-SOURCE MAINTAINERS AND FOR-PROFIT FIRMS who integrate those open tools into their products, he added."
A concise and well-written article, 'The End of Civic Compassion: On education in a fascist America' by Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University as published by The New Republic. As one who worked in higher education for 32 years before retiring almost four years ago, I noticed that faculty members seemed more circumspect in their words and actions in the latter part of my career. I think that came in response to gradually more oversight or what some might call meddling in higher education by state lawmakers. I am about halfway through a dystopian novel, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It is an unpleasant read that some have compared to Orwell's 1984. It feels more prescient to me than 1984 did when I read it in high school 50 years ago. Is that because I am more politically aware or "woke" today, or are we much closer to the edge of a precipice than we were back then?
I’m probably starting an argument by replying to a faculty listserv thread about “good” uses of #AI with estimates of the environmental costs of AI usage:
Having a single 10-50 question text conversation uses about as much energy as charging a smartphone [1]
Generating a single image uses about 500 mL freshwater [2]
ROI isn't the only value of a university education, but it's nice to see CSU Northridge among the institutions highlighted here for serving low-income students at a cost that's quickly recouped by the increased earning power they have after graduation
“…For students and faculty exercising their right to academic freedom including the freedom to protest? Or for those who require a militarized system of surveillance and policing in order to feel “comfortable” in maintaining a status quo that has continued for far too long?”
"With no universities left in Gaza, student protests bring hope"
"Student protests worldwide are resonating with Palestinians, who face the destruction of all universities in Gaza. Palestinian university presidents signed an open letter saying the protests serve as a “beacon of hope”.
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
Clearly we can think of universities as platforms, where many actors plays roles of producers and consumers, users and customers.
I’m wary of nostalgia about the role universities have played in the past, and of idealized models.
But I think we may be in the middle stage - the university platform in many countries seems to have been transformed into worker-production systems where, absurdly, the proto-workers go into debt to gain credentials that allow them access to labour markets.
The business customers here are employers and lenders, who gain access to a pool of people who are financially precarious from whom to extract both labour and loan repayments.
I’m not sure universities (or many businesses, for that matter) actually reach the final stage of enshittification. Though maybe the pressure to cut costs and generate operating revenue (from tuition, often from exorbitant fees charged to international students, but also via commercialization of research) is an example of moving into the third stage?
"With no universities left in Gaza, student protests bring hope"
"Student protests worldwide are resonating with Palestinians, who face the destruction of all universities in Gaza. Palestinian university presidents signed an open letter saying the protests serve as a “beacon of hope”.
My team are seeking an Alternative Formats Manager to pioneer the provision of accessible materials to our students. Based at Information Services -- but working across a number of University teams -- you will help to coordinate and establish our new #AlternativeFormats Service. Exciting stuff!
Feel free to message or reply with any informal job enquiries!
The president of #Barnard College lost a faculty-wide vote of no confidence on Tuesday, as criticism mounts over the school’s response to a pro- #Palestine 🇵🇸 encampment
It is the first no confidence vote against a president in the college’s history.
A grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will further the work of the Open Source Program Office (#OSPO) at UC Santa Cruz (@ucsc) work with UC partners at Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego to promote #OpenSource research, teaching, and public service.
How the only tenure-track Black faculty member at Texas A&M University’s School of Nursing was targeted for harassment by white anti-DEI conservatives which led to her decision to leave.
"By the government’s own estimates, the creative industries contribute around £126 billion to the UK economy. That’s more than the car industry, for instance, or aerospace, oil and gas."
"Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack"
The scale of forced redundancies in English Higher Education is currently unbelievable, & it's mostly arts, humanities & critical social sciences affected.
"President Biden announced a student loan plan Monday that would help millions of Americans have their debt forgiven in his latest attempt to provide relief to borrowers."
The Hill reports: "The plans would give relief to 25 million borrowers who owe more money than they did at the start of repayment because of the interest rate on federal student loans."
“We aim to create a free, #OpenSource tool that will empower everyday users of social media to increase the diversity of information and posts in their social media feed,”
Bryan Boots, Ph.D.
Henry W. Bloch
School of Management
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities#AcademicChatter#neoliberalism
Accountability isn’t ever for them. It’s that old approach to crises from “Yes, Prime Minister”:
Bernard Woolley : What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Then we follow the four-stage strategy.
Bernard Woolley : What's that?
Sir Richard Wharton : Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.
Sir Richard Wharton : In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Sir Richard Wharton : In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.