Words by Professor Leo McCann and Professor Simon Sweeney, University of York The sudden availability and widespread usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) have had a significant impact on university life, provoking much discussion and reflection. Many academics are turning to scholarly work on AI in their attempts to make...Read More

Words by G.R Evans, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology, University of Cambridge and author of discussions of university governance and Histories of Oxford and Cambridge.   How is knowledge best divided for the purpose of systematically acquiring more of it bit by bit? Should such a discrete ‘body of knowledge’ be recognised as a ‘subject’ or...Read More

The ill-conceived attempt to marketise universities has been a major contributor to the current difficulties in our universities. Whatever your view of the ideology it is difficult to argue that it has been a success and the problems were foreseeable (see for example ‘English Universities in Crisis’, Frank, Gowar, Naef, Bristol University Press, 2019). Without...Read More

Since the Labour party were elected in early July to form the UK Government, I have been eagerly awaiting announcements of plans to try and fix the crisis facing British universities. Having spent the last five years researching a PhD thesis at the University of Essex which examined the relationship between political narratives of social...Read More

Words by Christopher Cunningham. Note from the author: Ideas discussed in this blog post represent a digest from my forthcoming book, which has the working title: The Neoliberal Meritocracy of Higher Education in England: Questioning a University’s Purpose through a Study of Widening Participation.    Abstract In analysing the relationship between social mobility and widening...Read More

Although specific to Oxford, this blog highlights the sort of changes that are being made in university governance across the UK that reduce the role of academics. Readers aware of other examples are warmly invited to contact us and contribute to the CDBU blog. According to Statute III of the University of Oxford, Convocation consists...Read More

The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) was established at Oxford in 2012 by Sir Keith Thomas. He worked tirelessly to recruit famous names from culture and science, law and the media, as well as academe, and set up an organisational infrastructure in double quick time. Government was instituting radical plans for HE...Read More

Words by David Feldman.  The war in Gaza reverberates globally.  One consequence is renewed controversy over when criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights becomes antisemitic. This debate has been crystallized by two definitions of antisemitism: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Both definitions agree...Read More

Words by Susan Bruce with Kelli Rudolph.  Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, generally so illuminating on the multiple topics they discuss in their podcast The Rest is Politics, were less informative than they usually are in their 13 December discussion of the US House Education and Workforce committee hearing of 5/12/2023 wherein the Presidents of...Read More