Richard Carr
@Richard_Carr
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Associate Professor of Public Policy and Strategy @angliaruskin . My views only.
Joined June 2011
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I've seen the idea of lecturers communicating via WhatsApp to students been touted a few times by university higher ups now and I just cannot stress enough what a bad idea I think this is.
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Academics: "As a last resort, and I'm sorry it's come to this, I will fulfil the terms of my contract."
VCs: "Oh well this is absolutely outrageous."
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People don’t follow politics. This is basically a glowing review.
Keir Starmer’s turn for the BBC word cloud treatment - a mixed bag but “don’t know”, “nothing” and “not sure” indicate there’s more work for Labour to do.
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Heads up: I've secured money for a fully funded* PhD on the Labour Party's relationship with Ireland from Wilson to Blair. To be advertised in the New Year for Sept 2023 start. Candidate can very much shape what element of that broad canvas they wish to focus on. More to come.
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3. Stop introducing new platforms as a thing. Make students use one (email!) rather than making me chase them round twenty. This is just efficient.
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I know “behind a lectern” and “holding a baby” are a bit passé, but “fielding at gully” just feels too niche for a leadership contest.
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2. It's a social platform. I'm not their friend. That's it.
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1. Stop blurring the boundaries. I want to use Whatsapp to message my mates mocking Dan Hodges or whatever. Or some in joke. Not announcing a change in seminar room.
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I hurt my ribs a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t come in. Between vomiting and chugging pain killers I had to log in to four bloody things to send the same thing informing students. This is a stupid set-up.
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Honestly as a bloke with a secure(ish, it’s academia 2022) position I will get a tenth of the additional workload women/precarious employees get from this *roll out a billion platforms* misstep.
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There are many facets of this - but universities desire to look beyond email for *no discernible reason* is fascinating. Someone should journal article it, and its causes.
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This is literally the government’s signature policy
.
@michaelgove
tells the
@NatConTalk
conference that "the Left polarises" people "into 'woke' and 'unwoke'". "Conservatives don't do that."
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Some of this must be Covid *do something!!* initiative panic. To some degree understandable - but roll it back NOW.
But it’s also just a product of bureaucratic jobs needing to be justified by looking busy, and launching/constantly reviewing stuff - however needless - to do that
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Political historians: “hmm well actually we don’t approve of counterfactuals. They are unhelpful and a bit beneath us.”
Economic historians: “you move this number over here and boom Hitler - Adolf bloody Hitler - lands on the moon in 1942. Case closed.”
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In a decade the number of UEA staff earning more than £100k has doubled. I don't know, and it's possible I'm wrong, but I'd hazard that zero academic/frontline admin staff earn over £100k. So what are these absolutely vital new jobs?
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@jordanbpeterson
Can’t wait for the next book.
“Rule one: consume food and beverages through a mask even when outside for some reason.”
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I have three email systems. Before we even get to Teams messages and future WhatsApp type massively inappropriate extra platforms. How is no one seeing that and thinking this is nuts?
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The important thing with REF 2028 is we hold a lot of meetings to discuss it and appoint 12 people with intersecting responsibilities for it to each produce a set of slightly different forms, can’t stress this enough
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Anyway, must dash, about to TopDesk a message to Canvas which may or may not forward onto my email.
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Structurally - what actually is the issue here? Are a load of different people being sold a bunch of different magic beans (all independently impressed by “and it’s got a messaging service built in!”)? As I say, please someone journal article this, I’d be fascinated.
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I think JFK was reflecting on UK HE when he said that “paperwork for new initiatives has a thousand fathers, but the case to roll shit that hasn’t worked back is an orphan.”
There’s a lot of this - initiative X rolled out, [results irrelevant], case closed! Onto the next rodeo.
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@ref2029
@Economy_NI
@HEFCW
@ResEngland
@ScotFundCouncil
Feedback: this is dumb, will lead to hundreds of thousands of pounds universities don't really have being transferred to private publishers for some reason, and won't achieve anything that mandating a free public facing blog or two outlining said output's content/impacts wouldn't
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@PrfAndrwRssll
20 years ago he didn't even have a BA and the New Elite were just some indie band he thought hadn't gotten enough hype
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Still, 2022-2023 on the old Linkedin.
If Truss goes before January 3rd, she will have the shortest tenure of any Prime Minister in British history.
That... feels pretty plausible, doesn't it?
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How far are we following this “you gotta go where the students *are* mentality?
Me, back in Fez nightclub 15 years later like Foreman on his comeback trail, trying to grab 10 minutes with Dan on the merits of Stanley Baldwin before he gets another pitcher in?
Just. Do. Email.
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@HowardDLeigh
I'm afraid the stipend will be well below the taxpayer funded £332 for clocking into the Lords each day but all applications are very welcome.
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Every university meeting:
- recap emails you’ve just received
- describe a task you’ve all done before as if it’s new
- coffee
- someone in a non-teaching post comes in to tell you about their job
- “best practice”
- discuss the mechanics/theory of a thing you’d rather just *do*
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@hoffman_noa
@MrHarryCole
“Red tape, red lights, fuck it - the Red Arrows too - just rip everything up without consequence. I am a great conservative”
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@thetimes
My success rate at FOI requests is genuinely pathetic but this is is a new winner. Well done all.
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Malcolm Macdonald absolutely winging his first few weeks as Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1935
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@SimonClarkeMP
@trussliz
I guess if this the planned answer to literally any question then even the current PM can get it over the line.
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@NeilDotObrien
It's a nuts paper that should never have been published for all the obvious reasons. 100%. But on the non-STEM thing
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Whilst Charlotte bungs woke or snowflake or whatever into the AHRC project search function, worth noting that it receives comparatively naff all compared to the sciences.
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I mean so far we’ve given £220m to the Government of Rwanda for…nothing. Kagame hasn’t even delivered one JSTOR article.
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That does feel the smallest of strikes. Like if in 2011-12 Carlos Tevez had dutifully turned up for all training and matches, but "absolutely draw the line at signing any matchday programmes - cannot stress this enough."
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@drkierachapman
Ok, but can this tweet be a 30 sec video, which accords to the 12 values descriptors of the uni synergy tsar (dept of open days must sign off), uploaded to our new software FastTweet (which completely mirrors Twitter but we’ve bought it for some reason), and won’t work on canvas?
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I know VC salary is a nice easy win - and they are outrageous - but there's a lower tier of absolute Graeberian bullshit jobs for executive pay that needs looking at by UCU/any future government, really.
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This statement defends history against the government. Great.
But the Hunger Games system of removing student number caps - and, crucially, Russell Group/others going full pig in trough - has also directly caused the problems it outlines. And there's really nothing on this.
The Royal Historical Society has today issued a statement on recent closures to UK History departments
@histassoc
@ihr_history
@history_uk
@IHRHistoryLab
@socialhistsoc
@EcHistSoc
@PastPresentSoc
@timeshighered
#twitterstorians
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@Peston
Relatively wealthy. A Waitrose shopper. All the channels showing the football. Loves a farmers market. This sort of thing.
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Fascinating piece this
#OnThisDay
1961: Panorama asked whether Irish immigrants should be freely admitted into Britain when Commonwealth citizens were being restricted.
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There’s a far more serious (basically predatory male) lecturer blurring of boundaries issue - but on the vanilla side of this is also less formal channels encourages less formal comms, and I (or more often female colleagues) shouldn’t have to lose time on high school level drama.
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Beyond Grimes there’s something really specific about political e-influencers of left and right who - around the age of 24-28 - want the gravitas of a world savvy adult coupled with the ability to essentially claim they are child when things go south.
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This is very good.
A spin off I've seen at some Post-92s/1994ers is the "running a masters degree with < 10 students on it doesn't make £ sense."
I can see a student exp case, but cost wise the lecturers are being paid the same anyway and the rooms are available? What gives?
The University and the Cost Allocation Death Spiral...
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VC salaries are a bit of a blunt instrument, but cap such offices at twice the salary of the Prime Minister - so £320k or so - and you’d bring this into play.
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So 52 of his colleagues’ jobs are on the line and Matt Goodwin has tweeted 4 successive times about the gender wars.
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@lrbobrien
100%. If it was Tik Tok I might think *ok, they don’t really know what it is* (tho, they should). But WhatsApp: nope, they know. Teams has given a slight taste of this and it hasn’t been ideal. Plus THEY ALL HAVE EMAIL. On the same phone as this other stuff. There’s no hack, here
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Well this is just incredibly poignant. Mary Macarthur's letter to her daughter Nancy (then four) - to be opened on her fourteenth birthday. Macarthur had lost her husband, the Labour MP Will Anderson, to Spanish flu the previous February, and had incurable ovarian cancer.
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Surely the AHRC are tempted to let a “Was Churchill Woke?” project through next time. The free advertising pays for itself.
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Academic rigour (i.e. the mark I, a student, feel I deserve) or your money back!
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It’s just a sector simultaneously cash poor but where there is shitloads swimming around in odd/unproductive places
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I mean there’s the £40m of direct public money there; but the real win is in the saving hundreds of millions of bureaucratic busywork costs in playing a pointless game. This really is one of those where you can spend less and get more. And this is just one example.
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Real *woah, now this shit could be serious* energy from The Times here
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Actual footage from inside that restaurant
One of the more amusing aspects of last night's debate w
@DAaronovitch
&
@arusbridger
is they all went for dinner afterwards and didn't even bother to invite me, despite me giving up my time for free to help make Prospect Magazine money! Classic New Elite
@prospect_uk
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Tony Blair (mother from Donegal) delivered the Good Friday Agreement. What more could he do?
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It’s in a book I edited but this isn’t a self serving thing -
@redhistorian
’s essay on “Tory Rebels and Tory Democracy - The Ulster Crisis, 1900–14” should be required reading on modern day populism/absolute lack of respect for parliament. Re-read it the other day: great stuff.
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Archives at British Library. King of Falafel. Interview with ex-Minister for next book. Made pre-4pm train.
This is what elite performance looks like.
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@Samfr
It’s just an upgrade on the pretence that Lord Frost’s columns mean anything.
But yeah, it’s weird, like if Frank Lampard started writing pieces about how to win at Football Manager.
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Great day for the British commentariat - not even faking a quick google before just wading the heck in on cases of serious sexual assault
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I’ve not really covered the “this being a product of unis shrinking mental health/student support provision” angle. Again, this is an area which will screw female staff over far more than me. But it’s still not my job to deal w/some of the stuff less formalised comms encourages.
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@DrSarahLKenny
“NATIONAL LOCKDOWN NOW!”
“Ok, but just checking - we’re including the two million mostly young adults who are really, really mobile, risk happy, and can’t avoid the freshers flu most years?”
“Well, no, obviously not them.”
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Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin bicker on twitter like an old married couple. It makes for great content/insight, but I just wonder how they wrote a book together...
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Fury-Joshua is off? Don't worry about it. Carr-Portillo is on. 6.30 this evening, BBC 2.
Great British Railway Journeys. Childhood of Charlie Chaplin. Maybe some Nazis. I don't know what bits they'll show but it's all gold.
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I've lectured history at
@angliaruskin
for less than five years. But in that time I've taught people now educating others at museums and schools, helping others through jobs at political parties and trade unions, and earning money for others/themselves in countless fields.
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Supervised by yours truly. I need to write the formal advert and it needs to work its way through the bureaucratic channels that these things do but happy to take questions via email ofc.
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So - and we know that these won't be split evenly - but even if they were, like 3 funded arts and humanities PhDs per uni?
The UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council
@ahrcpress
is to cut the number of PhD students it funds by a quarter, from 425 to 300 a year
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Really, this a proxy for the bits of the job I like - research, teaching, helping students develop their skills - being ever shrunken as the lecturing role becomes a jumped up e-wellness hub. Cut to a shot of my British Library card expiring as I WhatsApp a link to a yoga class.
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This is so, so bad. As the private sector has gone more flexible, more working from home etc universities have increasingly adopted a control everything from on high approach that is just maddening. One of the main benefits of this job (and a cost free one to the uni!) is eroding
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@ayeshahazarika
Cut the guy some slack, he has to perform every medical procedure at the hospital, whether he’s been trained in it or not
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Personal news:
A bit late, but the reshuffle has snared one more.
From 1 August I'll be adjusting that twitter bio.
Really great stuff.
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“Low value”? Sorry, who does the government think is providing more additionality? Oxbridge college giving mostly honed already 18 year olds three years to develop a bit (this is still a good thing), or the wider potential unlocking that Post-92s often do?
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@PhilipLeftwich
The irony is I was two official university mindfulness hashtags away from closing that deal.
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@Sweetburlingame
See also all away days, recruitment agencies for executive hires, external consultancy spend...
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@aveek18
Right? I mean how is this appropriate on a number of levels? Really interested in the thought process behind this
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“To be clear: not all the invisible labour at universities is time well spent. Just as there are bullshit jobs, to borrow David Graeber’s phrase, there are ample bullshit tasks within…unis. Bureaucracy in academia is still booming, and some rigorous decluttering is necessary”
Recognition of academia’s “invisible labour” is long overdue: academic citizenship must become a key part of our job descriptions, on par with teaching, research and management, say
@Radboud_Uni
’s Shari Boodts and
@fleurjongepier
#THECampus
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It’s possible women wanting access to an abortion, African Americans fearful of the US justice system, and really anyone interested in at least containing a global pandemic have views.
Who cares?
Both candidates are going to be defending corporatism, free market capitalism, imperialism, marketisation of essential services and attacking universal healthcare tonight - Biden has decades of experience doing this.. let’s hope he doesn’t plagiarise Kinnock again..
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In advance of someone “students are all heroes who would NEVER do this” the below, most absolutely wouldn’t, but none, really?
There’s a far more serious (basically predatory male) lecturer blurring of boundaries issue - but on the vanilla side of this is also less formal channels encourages less formal comms, and I (or more often female colleagues) shouldn’t have to lose time on high school level drama.
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RB will do this thing where he pretends not to know about
@backburgon
, calls it a likely parody etc. Already playing 5 dimensional chess on the opposition.
Cracking
@RidgeOnSunday
lineup tomorrow
✅
@michaelgove
✅
@RichardBurgon
✅
@IBlackfordSNP
✅
@EdwardJDavey
✅
@CarolineFlintMP
✅
@IainMcNicol
⏰ 8.30am
#Ridge
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Going to need to dust off those "students were not the only people who lived through the pandemic" tweets given the discourse surrounding the strike.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the problem is a lack of time. Not a lack of awareness of some life/job hack that would magically solve everything.
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