1. 100 Years of Mein Kampf is a programme that John Kampfner has just made for BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002fj5g

Here’s (part of) the blurb, to help you decide if you want to listen. I thought it was good.

A century has passed since the publication of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s notorious book. Part-autobiography, part-political manifesto, few today have read it – and even fewer admit to doing so. Yet its ideas, expressed in often meandering and barely coherent prose, laid out the groundwork for the most destructive ideology of the 20th century. John Kampfner, whose Jewish father fled Czechoslovakia in 1939, sets out to explore the book’s origins, its impact and its disturbing echoes in today’s world. From its early slump to the sale of 12 million copies, Mein Kampf came to be seen as more than just a book – it was a symbol, a Nazi devotional object. After the war, and the horrors of the Holocaust, prosecutors at Nuremberg cited the book as the “blueprint of Nazi aggression”. Victorious Allied forces tried to suppress it, while wrestling with how to do so without mirroring the censorship of the very regime they had defeated.

2. You must judge for yourself if this piece by Timothy Snyder on his Thinking About blog is OTT, Concentration Camp Labor https://snyder.substack.com/p/concentration-camp-labor

With the passage of Trump’s death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States. Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor. We know this and have no excuse not to act.

3. A thoughtful piece by Kyuseok Kim from IES Abroad (which is a much bigger organisation than I’d realised) on the SRHE (Society for Research into Higher Education)  blog on international branch campuses and English-medium instruction, Branch campuses and the mirage of demand https://srheblog.com/2025/07/04/branch-campuses-and-the-mirage-of-demand/

US institutions often assume that English-medium instruction (EMI) automatically confers competitive advantage in Asia. At IGC, all programs are delivered entirely in English, and faculty are predominantly international; 188 of the 304 faculty members across the five campuses are foreign nationals. On paper, this aligns with global academic norms and affirms a commitment to international standards. However, EMI can paradoxically limit access. While affluent Korean students may see EMI as an elite advantage, students from Vietnam, China, and Indonesia often seek local cultural immersion, language acquisition, and regional relevance. For many Chinese students in particular, one of the draws of studying in Korea is precisely to learn Korean and gain access to Korean labour markets. EMI-only models thus alienate both local integration seekers and English-language learners.

4. Student use of AI is a decidedly grey area, at least at the Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, it would seem, according to this article from The Straits Times, Panel with AI experts to review appeal of NTU student penalised for academic misconduct https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/panel-with-ai-experts-to-review-appeal-of-ntu-student-penalised-for-academic-misconduct

5. And, finally, a piece from The Spectator by Sam Leith which tells the true story behind a worldwide non-fiction (sic) best-seller, There’s one thing readers enjoy more than a story like ‘The Salt Path’ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/theres-one-thing-readers-enjoy-more-than-a-story-like-the-salt-path/ (Let me know if you can’t access it, please.)