Naomi Waltham-Smith
@auralflaneur
Followers
4,197
Following
4,251
Media
1,245
Statuses
22,084
Professor @OxMusicFaculty & Tutor @MertonCollege | views mine, likes/RTs not | Politics of listening, music theory, sound studies, philosophy, academic freedom
Oxford | London | Paris
Joined July 2016
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
#ใจซ่อนรักEP1
• 540437 Tweets
LINGORM TSOU EP1
• 504978 Tweets
$WATER
• 231587 Tweets
Mission of Sant Rampal Ji
• 228467 Tweets
Kasie
• 160834 Tweets
#INDvsAUS
• 123830 Tweets
Tapper
• 119831 Tweets
ドリームジャーニー
• 98669 Tweets
Kohli
• 76739 Tweets
ヒロアカ
• 67853 Tweets
Diniz
• 54746 Tweets
Joselu
• 53568 Tweets
デュランダル
• 53021 Tweets
ブエナビスタ
• 51776 Tweets
Wade
• 51361 Tweets
カルストンライトオ
• 41154 Tweets
Starc
• 37837 Tweets
Cuca
• 33042 Tweets
#Rohit
• 31183 Tweets
ドリジャ
• 30959 Tweets
Nosferatu
• 28674 Tweets
الزمالك
• 27917 Tweets
DANCERACHA ATE TEASERS
• 25728 Tweets
Robert Eggers
• 23678 Tweets
Dobbs
• 23283 Tweets
#DontForgetGaza
• 19766 Tweets
三瓶先生
• 16623 Tweets
Aussies
• 15997 Tweets
Travis Head
• 15572 Tweets
Bumrah
• 14420 Tweets
Jamie Lee Curtis
• 14093 Tweets
Dube
• 13910 Tweets
Lindsay Lohan
• 13275 Tweets
Hardik
• 11982 Tweets
Axar
• 11892 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
With heartfelt thanks to you,
@eringraffzivin
, and to
@voicesbend
,
@michaelgallope
, and
@DanieLorenzini
for your brilliant, generous, and thought-provoking reactions to the book.
The latest WIT Book Forum features
@auralflaneur
's Shattering Biopolitics, with contributions by
@voicesbend
@michaelgallope
and
@DanieLorenzini
. Check it out!
0
3
14
0
0
14
Maybe I’m old-fashioned but students aren’t actually best placed to tell, at least not at the time, what constitutes a good education. They shouldn’t be treated as consumers because good pedagogy isn’t necessarily an object of desire. It should surprise, unsettle, stretch.
25
140
1K
Solidarity with
@RLong_Bailey
who has more integrity and socialist principles than the leadership could even imagine. The mask of unity has been exposed. I’m in
@Keir_Starmer
’s constituency and a lifelong Labour voter. I will not vote for him, I will not campaign for him.
51
357
977
I chatted with
@jeremycorbyn
waiting for the train in Coventry coming home from work a couple of years ago. Besides offering me a biscuit, he wanted to know all about my students and out of care for their thriving. Staff are taking action for their learning conditions too.
We are so grateful for the support of MPs who are queueing up to condemn attacks on university staff
Thank you,
@jeremycorbyn
#uucRISING
16
415
1K
30
318
929
MSM are championing working-class “high-achievers” who’ve narrowly missed out on places at Oxbridge because an A* was downgraded to an A. I feel bitterly for those students. But I’m no less angry on behalf of the student whose predicted BBC was downgraded to DEE.
10
107
635
@rosaluxemburgs
@Dr_Rave
And she’s no friend of women if she won’t stand up for women of colour against the racist institution that has perpetuated centuries of violence against them
1
29
564
UK universities looking at US institutions like Cornell moving to to Covid alert status yellow on day 2 of the semester and blithely thinking they can manage f2f classes with minimal protective measures (eg no masks). I thought these were institutions of advanced *learning.* 🤷🏼♀️
12
101
567
.
@AaronBastani
has suggested that, alongside job support, the government could start offering free university courses to people unable to work during the pandemic. What do people think?
87
70
532
What’s happening in Oxford right now are scenes that no VC should want to see broadcast on TV or social media. This didn’t have to happen. Protest happens when people aren’t heard. Universities need robust democratic cultures to be response-able to reasonable critical questions.
25
125
425
@_proletaricat_
Is she complaining about being “cancelled” when she’s simply off-brand for a radical leftwing publisher?
2
2
302
After
@zarahsultana
’s thank you rally in Coventry, look who was chatting away with me while we waited for the delayed train! I behaved as my mother did as a teenager when she met John Lennon 🥰
9
55
303
This weekend I went to Paris and received good news that I got a fellowship that will give me a year to write free from admin and away from this nationalist little island. ♥️
29
2
281
Official promotion letter received—full professor by 40! Huge gratitude to everyone who has supported and encouraged me along the way, especially my mum and all the fierce women. ✊🏾
43
3
279
To uni students (in personal capacity): you’re angry at what’s happening. I would be too if all this had happened to me 20 years ago as I was about to go up. I’m cross on your behalf. I don’t want to be in this mess any more than you do bc I enjoy teaching & engaging with you 1/
4
91
278
Yours dropped pretty quickly
Brilliant to be out campaigning today.
Government guidance in England lets parties talk to voters on the doorstep again.
And on Thursday 6th May we have one of the biggest set of elections in our history.
So join us to help Labour win.
Remember your mask!
1K
259
2K
13
28
255
Some news: from 1 September I’m moving to Oxford as Professor of Music
@OxMusicFaculty
within
@OxHumanities
and Tutorial Fellow
@MertonCollege
. I’m looking forward to working with amazing colleagues and students! Those who live or work in Oxford, give me a shout.🧵
44
3
230
If you are an external examiner and have resigned in protest at UUK’s intransigence and in support of the actions of
@ucu
, hats off to you and thank you for your solidarity. We want to see more of this and to put public pressure on VCs.
0
45
192
I put in hundreds of hours on the doorstep in multiple constituencies in 2019. I’ve remained a member, but Labour under Starmer doesn’t even make me eager to lift a pen right now.
13
39
180
I assumed a rejection when I hadn’t heard anything yesterday but am thrilled to learn that I’ve won a BA/Leverhulme Small Grant for a 2-year project on “Listening, Democracy, and Nationalism: Unheard Echoes in the Archives of Recent French Philosophy” i.e.
@IMECArchives
&
@laBnF
.
26
4
142
Judith Butler in the 2021 Holberg Debate: “It’s a way of not listening. Call it identity politics and then you don’t have to listen because you’ve got your category already, you’ve put it in that category, you don’t have to listen to what folks are saying.”
1
30
125
Just heard I got the seed funding for a project on “Listening, Democracy, Deconstruction: From Nationalist Myths to Typographies of Resistance” as a prelude to a planned bigger project on listening, democracy, authoritarian neoliberalism, & contemporary crises of representation.
9
9
112
@MichaelKitson
My deepest condolences. I applaud your courage in speaking out about this. As an academic also, I’m so angry on your behalf and all the students & families who are enduring cruel circumstances that should never have happened & could have been avoided. I’m so sorry for your loss.
0
4
107
@Battlemuch4WW
@philbc3
@Keir_Starmer
Local councillor candidate is awful. There’s got to be better than Sadiq. And this don’t-let-a-Tory-in message is the last resort of a party with no ideas for younger generations, sorry. The Labour right didn’t follow that when Corbyn was leader.
12
11
100
But let’s be clear. It’s not the nduja or the artisanal that means he’s not working class. It’s the fact he owns the means of production.
2
16
90
Currently on the biggest organising call in political history with
@ClareHymer
,
@AyoCaesar
and
@jeremycorbyn
! The power of this movement is the people!
@PeoplesMomentum
1
10
94
I’m sorry if this sounds old-fashioned, but learning is meant to be challenging. Summaries of difficult authors, binge-worthy box sets of lectures, anything to avoid unsettling habits of quick satisfaction—when did universities become casinos?
2
8
92
The minister herself said on Sky News that she was not claiming there had been a breach of the criminal law so why are you perpetuating a claim that an academic’s expression was supportive of a proscribed organization, thereby jeopardizing their professional standing?
Yesterday, UKRI responded to a letter from Secretary of State, Michelle Donelan. Now we are publishing that response and the Terms of Reference for the review we are setting up.
194
55
103
2
38
89
So the manuscript for book number 4 was sent off this morning— in time for me to have a fun final weekend in London before moving house on Monday. It feels good, but I’m also absolutely exhausted!
8
4
93
Fantastic piece from Judith Butler linking the anti-gender ideology movement to authoritarian nationalisms—something I was grasping at when trying to explain why the UK govt’s defence of Stock was a piece with its defence of colonialism and not merely because of a “culture war.”
4
12
88
Maybe my favourite April fool
Vice-chancellors across UK HE are donating one year of their salary (£50m in total) into an emergency fund to support precarious and casualised university staff. What an incredible gesture; thank you
@UniversitiesUK
and
@viviennestern
10
24
137
1
20
89
The main UK research funding body, which is meant to be independent, is taking orders from ministers and in the process underlining the reputations of academics by repeating allegations that not even the minister stands by. Utterly shameful infringement of academic freedom.
2
26
85
Reading stuff on “change management” in HE for a bit of a laugh, and this in a guide from Deloitte ticked that box: “One university, for example, brought together the heads of central administrative units, where line authority was strong and not affected by academic governance…”
8
20
82
If unis are asking staff to declare participation in the MAB as a conflict of interest at committees, thereby disclosing their TU membership in an open forum in front of other colleagues and treating them differently as a result, that imo has a chilling effect. My question is:
5
17
81
@jessicaelgot
@steamedhamms
And we are to believe that wasn’t with Starmer’s blessing? We’re not stupid.
3
3
77
The fetishisation of the classroom is quite damaging. Learning doesn’t only or even mainly happen there. Universities should have been thinking about alternative educational ecologies. Soundwalks in the great outdoors, anyone?
3
10
77
Four stills from a film you believe is a masterpiece, no title
33
6
74
In both sound studies and French philosophy, there have been riveting analyses of how colonized subjects are effectively silenced by being forced to conform to certain ways of speaking—parlure as colonialist oppression and exappropriation. A few readings:
3
7
75
I am delighted that in January I shall take up a position as Associate Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (
@CIMethods
) at the University of Warwick (
@warwickuni
). I very much look forward to joining such an engaged and imaginative group of scholars!
6
0
74
The liberal media are happy to take up the causes of the marginalised when they can craft a narrative of deservingness that reinforces capitalist ideology & modes of subjectivation. But labour under no delusions: this does nothing to challenge the underlying class domination.
5
14
70
The student experience, if there’s such a thing, ought to resemble the mysterious birthday gift Michael Douglas’s character gets in The Game (without the kidnap, drugs or guns).
5
6
70
For the umpteenth time, UNIVERSITIES NEVER CLOSED.
1
13
71
This government is restricting your right to protest and creating an environment where you can be fired for working on poststructuralism, while wailing about cancel culture.
0
18
67
It’s been a bit of a lousy, exhausting week so hearing that students nominated me for a teaching award made me a bit weepy. I’d repeatedly encouraged them to nominate teaching fellows & GTAs, and every teacher deserves an award for persevering through this year’s nightmare.
6
0
70
The quality of debate from some Starmer stans—and this one is an ex-headteacher—is really depressing. It makes RLB’s point beautifully that we need grassroots political education.
@auralflaneur
Rubbish - The Tory Party are terrified of Kier Starmer and praying for a RLB cult continuation leader
Kier is a more effective and comprehensive socialist than your dog whistle cult ever have been and never will be
The leadership debate is not about socialism but stupidity
9
0
0
5
7
61
British public: I’m getting mildly tired of other people, mainly men, consistently expecting me to walk in the road, disappear into a hedge, or vanish into a puff of smoke for their convenience. Pavements are the commons.
6
3
68
@DanielKatz6
@nehashah_
I found this very odd when I heard it because colonial history isn’t on the curriculum. I could only assume she really meant to was taught from the perspective of the coloniser, but it was odd.
6
2
63
The problem isn’t online learning per se but a marketised system that sees education as a service, students as consumers, quality as something to be assessed by metrics, and value as PMC employability. What’s demoralising for all is how exploitation has intensified during COVID.
2
19
68
So *now* people think the British establishment is racist?
2
2
69
@dbessner
@racatiwood
But don’t they need to be able to tussle with the feelings of frustration etc. in order to learn how to become a scholar? That was the best part of my education. Plus learning how to develop their own readings to critique the summaries they’ll read elsewhere.
8
2
64
Surprised, flattered & humbled that workers
@warwickuni
voted for me to represent them on the University Senate. I look forward to representing the interests of the most marginalised & exploited workers & students and to ensuring management decisions receive proper scrutiny.
9
3
68
1/ The worrying thing about Nandy, Starmer and everyone else in those dreadful loc gov hustings yesterday who want to eliminate factions, unite in defending councils etc. is that it aims to destroy *politics* & thus ends up making common purpose with Johnsonian anti-politics.
2
21
56
Absolutely shocking & disgraceful attempt to pressure
@ukri
into infringing academic freedom of expression. She concedes she doesn’t think the expression was unlawful, but the repeated statement that promotion of terrorism is prohibited is calculated to curb by association.
Alarming. Watch from about 9 minutes in.
@michelledonelan
is clear that no laws were broken yet makes a strong recommendation that an academic be sacked from the
@UKRI_News
EDI committee for questioning the government’s position and actions.
3
25
56
1
27
62
@kIopptimistic
As a
@Cambridge_Uni
alum from a working-class background, I’d like to see the university do better than let down those who already had the odds stacked against them. Unis should be pressuring them government & deciding on places only once they’ve had to u-turn.
2
3
65
Are we really back to this again?
Education is a public good, so should be free. That’s the argument, not this consumerist denigration of teaching quality. Is the left serious about tackling marketisation and abolishing fees or does it want to reinforce reactionary common sense?
Charging £9,250 tuition fees for university by zoom or microsoft teams is daylight robbery
2K
7K
47K
5
12
62
This government wants to criminalize the sound of dissent. But as Prem observes, “making noise and being heard are fundamental to any protest.” This exposes the hypocrisy of their alleged commitment to freedom of speech.
Protest and dissent have been the mother/father of so many of our rights and help to renew society. The UK's authoritarian govt is rushing through legislation to criminalize them and send protesters to prison.
Stand up for our hard-won social rights.
6
149
197
1
21
60
Solidarity with all comrades starting to teach on campus at Warwick this week. I’m teaching online 3 days this week, then come to campus next, but I’m desperately thinking of everyone, especially teaching fellows & graduate teaching assistants, who are being put at greatest risk.
3
9
59
@ParkerCiccone
@RLong_Bailey
@Keir_Starmer
This is misleading to equate their positions,
@ParkerCiccone
, because Keir’s pledge is restricted to repealing the 2016 Act whereas Becky is talking about overturning the anti-union laws untouched by New Labour as well.
0
12
53
In three weeks, I’m giving my Oxford inaugural lecture
@OxMusicFaculty
, in which I shall seek to sound out the augurs for the future of the university via questions of aurality. It’s not a hybrid event, but DM me for a link to tune in virtually.
2
11
60
357 emails today. It has to stop or I will simply come to a stop.
6
4
58
VCs in the UK should take note. This is what a well-grounded, full-throated defense of academic freedom looks like, recognizing individual and collective rights to determine how to teach and autonomy of collegial governance free from interference from state actors.
I wish we saw this more often. The president of Princeton has responded with a resounding defense of academic freedom, after a Congressman called for the University to intervene in a prof's choice of reading materials for a course. 👇 /1
24
534
2K
3
25
59
“Appeared to me” and “headline quoted in the tweet”—still utterly disingenuous. She knows how Twitter works and presumably how, like, reading works. Completely unfit to be anywhere near education.
My statement on recent correspondence relating to Research England’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Expert Advisory Group.
2K
192
180
1
16
59
So I want to say: I share your frustration and disappointment. I want better for you. But that means we have to work together to change the education system in this country radically. 7/7
0
5
58
Why is this being framed as workers, rather than employers, flouting the rules?
Two-thirds of UK’s furloughed workers continued job in Covid-19 lockdown
12
24
39
3
16
53
Assa Traoré
@laveritepradama
: One cannot talk about ecology without talking about police violence
@Verdragon_
@Reporterre
2
15
55
For a moment, I was worried that the imperialist global North would be on its best behaviour or at least eager to conceal the worst of its conduct for a month to try to get the ICJ off its collective backs. But no, the brazenness and faith in impunity is breathtaking.
4
6
54
To the student who, in response to the survey question about what the university could do better to improve their experience, wrote, “Stop firing casual staff”
0
4
55
For reasons that remain private, this week has been hell. I am extraordinarily grateful to the friends, comrades, and colleagues close by and across the ocean whose incredible support, kindness, and patience is keeping me from the depths of despair. Together we are stronger ♥️
12
0
50
It didn’t have to come to this. When successive governments imposed marketisation on unis & uni management acquiesced, it put them between a rock & a hard place this year. You’re a crucial source of revenue, so without a bailout, they had to promise the on-campus experience 2/
1
6
52
Matters of academic practice and academic freedom require *academic* judgement. That’s because knowledge of literature, state of the field, and disciplinary norms have a bearing. When will journalists, billionaire donors, and the OfS stop imagining they have expertise they don’t?
4
11
52
Burnout isn’t a personal problem to be avoided. It’s a structural one arising from a capitalist social relation that has insinuated its way into every corner of social reproduction & leisure. Which is why I’ll be productively busy in the archive while ignoring email this week.
0
8
48
The new year is already a whirlwind of admin (thanks to DfE), but somehow amid it all I’m going to have two books coming out in 2021:
1/ Shattering Biopolitics: Militant Listening and the Sound of Life in
@FordhamPress
’s Commonalities series—details here:
2
9
53
So there’s probably going to be a national lockdown but university staff and students are expected to be in classrooms and travelling to campus in some cases quite some distance? Unis have moved online in France for obvious reasons.
5
12
50
Delighted and humbled that next year I will sit on
@warwickuni
Council, having been appointed as Chair of the Academic Freedom Review Committee—a non-trivial role in the current climate! Big thanks to outgoing Secretary
@sharontuersley
for her encouragement and guidance!
5
4
50
I’m going to be tweeting from the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill oral evidence today. The witnesses lined up for this morning are Kathleen Stock, Arif Ahmed, Trevor Phillips, and Nigel Bigar.
7
13
50
Would universities please stop referring to student actions as “incursions,” as if they were military, colonial or terrorist violence, when there are very real incursions going on and are the subject of these protests? It’s deeply offensive and distressing.
1
11
49
A little festivity to mark the arrival of Shattering Biopolitics and the sunshine
2
0
48
@DrAndrewHenley
@wesstreeting
But when university staff do research that highlights those issues and even suggests political-economic solutions to the quagmire Blairism sunk us into, they’re accused of being too “woke.” And I don’t see the current Labour frontbench doing much to correct that narrative.
1
1
47
Can anyone explain to me why the intellectual, critical, horizon-expanding possibilities of a university education should only be for those who want to be part of the PMC? To become part of the managerial class, you actually need not to think too much.
Six in 10 graduates must get professional jobs, universities told
Latest stage of English plan to tackle ‘poor quality’ via absolute baselines for student outcomes brings threat of punishment for institutions that fall short
6
3
8
8
15
49
When CVs increasingly bear the traces and scars of marketisation and deepening inequality, academia is missing diamonds because it’s too busy looking for a mirror.
0
7
47
Uni VCs make a profound mistake if they think that driving a wedge between staff & students is going to help get through this crisis. Rank-and-file staff are on the frontline & building a rapport will be more critical this year than ever. Staff interests are student interests!
0
13
46
Exactly
Personally, I’d like to see
@ExtinctionR
take on the banks. Fossil fuel extraction relies on Barclays, RBS and the rest for funding. XR have proved they can get thousands of people on the streets and reclaim public space. Now it’s time to take on the City.
44
196
2K
4
5
43
University isn’t only or even mainly about preparing for a job. Reducing young people’s lives to this is criminal and it’s only evidence of the deep penetration of neoliberal subjectivation that this many internalize this way of thinking.
"Most graduates would have preferred apprenticeships to university"
1
1
3
1
8
46
It’s not an algorithmic lottery. It’s class warfare.
1
11
45
From where I’m standing, universities are doing a much better job at protecting free speech and academic enquiry than this government or the supposedly independent bodies following its cue. A thread highlighting some examples: 1/
1
10
45
Suspend funding for essential humanitarian aid over allegations against a tiny minority of workers, but keep up the bombing, shooting, and arms sales. I’m horrendously ashamed to have a British passport on days like this.
1
15
42
You can now read a sample chapter (the first) of my new book, Shattering Biopolitics: Militant Listening and Sound of Life—a book for these times in which authoritarian governments seek to silence what lies outside the Western colonial logos.
1
3
46
Really honoured and grateful to the students who nominated me for this award. They and the teaching fellow on my module are real stars.
Dr Naomi Waltham-Smith
@auralflaneur
, Associate Professor in CIM, has received the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2020/21 in recognition of how her practice has made a real difference to student learning this year.
0
0
13
4
0
46
@steamedhamms
The headteacher summoned our teacher into the corridor, they started shrieking, then came back in and announced that there would be no more school that day because Thatcher had resigned and we should join the street parties.
2
2
44
& get you paying for accommodation. That’s the business model, instead of the idea that education is a common good that should be free to all. So deciding to move online & reduce fees was never an option. But with the gov failing to get test & trace operational & rates of 3/
2
2
45
It’s a complete embarrassment when the Shadow Education Secretary can’t bring herself to support educators and blames the public for government failings.
3
14
42
Four-year career development fellowship working with me
@MertonCollege
in historical musicology—experience of working with musics or archives in the global South, Indigenous lands, or the Black diaspora desirable.
Deadline: 26 February 2025
2
37
44