Standing room only

What do you stand for? Who are you? How can you know that—and operate from that position of power? bell hooks There are times that it’s hard to know what to say. Things seem to ask for a response, even just a raised hand to say “Here”. But how to start with this world? This week I discovered that the place where I work has a new brand tagline, and this is it: Stands For Purpose (It’s not that bad. My daughter’s primary school…

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“Wider lessons”

There’s weeping. And then there’s anger.* For a year, Richard Hall and I have been tracking the ways in which higher education has become an anxiety machine, fumbling our way through this together using the metaphors of cycling, hamster wheels, technologies of pressure, instruments of shame. We’re not alone in thinking any of this. (See especially Melonie Fullick’s sustained critique of productivity from the perspective of mental health, the worm at the heart of academia’s vanity culture.) The rankings instruments that…

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