Universities

Free speech on campus and beyond

We are living in a time when freedom of expression is being curtailed on many different fronts. On February 14 in Copenhagen, a meeting debating blasphemy and the right to offend was cut short by a gunman apparently determined to execute Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist known for his cartoons of Muhammad. The gunman managed to kill a 55 year old audience member and followed this by killing a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue the following day. Is this going to be the inevitable consequence of doing things considered blasphemous by some fanatics? Will the political and cultural...

Universities should be open for democratic debate

Universities are increasingly becoming depoliticised zones, where political debate, campaigning and promotion of views are policed, controlled and pushed out. When recently distributing posters for Workers' Liberty's socialist feminist conference All the Rage at London universities, I was repeatedly stopped from putting up posters, told posters must be approved by the university or the Students Union, unable to find poster boards not behind locked plastic casing or unable to gain entry to university premises. The blockages come not from political concern over the content of the event, or a...

£450k? No way!

Over the past month, a wave of actions have sprung up on university campuses across the UK, highlighting the pay gap between the highest and lowest paid staff on each campus. Groups of students worked out how many days into the year the highest paid (the vice chancellor) would earn the entire annual wage of the lowest paid worker, and organised protests and mock-parties to “celebrate” on that day. In Birmingham, David Eastwood's pay exceeds an annual sum of £450,000, taking only thirteen days to earn what the lowest paid worker does in a year, on top of which the university also pays for his...

University bans conference under pressure from far right

The cancellation by Birkbeck University management of room bookings for a 13 December conference on "Institutional Islamophobia" should be condemned. Following the bans on the Socialist Workers Party by Goldsmiths Students' Union and Edinburgh University Students' Association, and the attempt to ban the SWP in University of Sussex SU, this is yet another blow to freedom of speech and organisation on campuses. It is particularly alarming because Birkbeck management acted after threats from far-right racist groups Britain First and Casuals United that they would disrupt the event. The conference...

Student solidarity with Qatari workers

Working conditions in Qatar, in particular for migrant workers, are at an appalling level. Conditions have been recently compared by the International Trade Union Confederation to “modern day slavery”. University College London (UCL) is, along with several other European and North American universities, one of the many educational institutions to have a campus in Doha’s “Education City”. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) has been heavily critical of UCL’s refusal to do anything to ensure that the rights of the workers there, many of whom are migrants from South Asian countries such as...

University pension ballot: vote Yes/Yes!

Staff in most pre-92 universities are being balloted for action over massive cuts to their pensions in the Universities’ Superannuation Scheme (USS). The cuts will see some workers lose over 25% of their income in retirement. The proposals will end the final salary scheme which was closed to new members and shift everyone onto the poor career average scheme (on terms inferior to TPS, the scheme that covers post-92 universities and school teachers). Worse still, for the first time a proportion of the pension will have a “defined contribution” basis. That means the risk is shifted onto...

USA: 370 million student debt-years

The UK is heading towards a US-style education system. This article by Con Karavias, adapted from the Red Flag , the newspaper of Socialist Alternative in Australia, explains. Currently, 12 million US citizens borrow money annually to continue studying for their degree. The total number of those paying off student loans is 37 million. It will take each of them an average of 10 years to do it. It’ll take a lot of them far longer. In the US, the vast majority of people are deprived of anything resembling a worthwhile education. The “diverse array of institutions” in the US is two-tiered. At the...

Survey: education, diary of a tubeworker & labour news

Student debt explodes: HE, FE (Daisy Forest, Ed Whitby) Out Proud and Organising (Daisy Forest) Diary of a tubeworker: Phew, what a sell out! Troops used against firefighters dispute (Chris Jones) The rail sell out Strike against casual labour Defeated council plans library closure To download PDF click here

Nazis organising in universities

Warwick Anti-Racism Society, supported by Warwick University UCU, organised a demonstration on 12 June, in protest against the rising presence of far-right extremists on their campus. Over 200 students and trade union activists attended to oppose National Action, a group who want to “ethnically cleanse the UK of Jews and non-whites”. They are targeting universities because, according to their strategy pack, if they cannot tap into this market then they cannot succeed at all. It is estimated that there are only 60 members nationally, but have caused enough trouble to gain national press...

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