1. Edinburgh University’s Review of Race and History has just been published https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/race-review

The publication of the University’s Race Review is a significant moment in this ancient institution’s willingness and determination to learn from and repair its past, as well as its present, in order to shape its future. An academically-led examination of the University’s historic links to slavery and racism, it is thought to be one of the most ambitious, wide-ranging and sustained consultations of its kind and is the result of more than four years of dedicated research, community engagement and collaboration. It has brought to light important, confronting and often uncomfortable accounts of our historical ties to slavery and colonialism, the legacy of racist teachings and ideologies, and current challenges we face around race and inclusion. The University has set out a series of immediate reparatory actions and long-term commitments, recognising that sustained and meaningful change requires time, transparency and ongoing engagement with our whole community.

PDF of the review, entitled Decolonised Transformations: Confronting The University Of Edinburgh’s History And Legacies Of Enslavement And Colonialism here https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/race-review/read-the-review and attached.

Here’s The Guardian article on the review https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/27/edinburgh-university-outsized-role-creating-racist-scientific-theories-inquiry

The University of Edinburgh, one of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious educational institutions, played an “outsized” role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery, a landmark inquiry into its history has found. (…) Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students were Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh’s status as a global institution.

I wonder how well most UK universities do against that last criterion?

[file x 1]

2. Another one from The Guardian, by Alex Holder, ‘There’s an arrogance to the way they move around the city’: is it time for digital nomads like me to leave Lisbon? Like so many others, I moved from London to Portugal’s capital for the sun, lifestyle – and the tax break. But as tensions rise with struggling locals, many of us are beginning to wonder whether we’re doing more harm than good … https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/27/lisbon-portugal-digital-nomads-foreign-remote-workers-integration

No tax at all is an extraordinary – and unnecessary? – concession.

3. Thanks to Rob Gibson for this, Dialogue for Social Cohesion from UNESCO. Slide show version here https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000393249.locale=en and PDF attached.

The Dialogue for Social Cohesion brief—developed in collaboration with the Berghof Foundation and Search for Common Ground—bridges theory and practice to explore the horizontal (community-to-community) and vertical (citizen-to-state) dimensions of social cohesion and highlights how inclusive dialogue can support both. Case studies from Afghanistan, Germany, Somalia, and South Sudan illustrate how dialogue—whether through theatre, education, local governance, or environmental peacebuilding—can cultivate mutual understanding and trust, bridge identity-based divides, and restore, step by step, the social fabric in fractured societies.

The first in what will be a four-part series was Dialogue for Prevention https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000394493 PDF of that below as well.

4. The Rainbows We Cannot See is Elif Shafak’s latest post on her blog Unmapped Storylands https://elifshafak.substack.com/p/the-rainbows-we-cannot-see

As a writer who commutes between languages I have always been intrigued by the works of linguists. It is an incredible profession, but more than a profession, it is surely a passion. Linguist Michael Krauss reminds us that his discipline will go down in history “as the only science that presided obliviously over the disappearance of 90 percent of the field to which it is dedicated.”

5. And, finally, in memoriam Tom Lehrer, who died on Saturday at the grand old age of 97, one of his best known songs, National Brotherhood Week, which opens this concert of his from Oslo in 1967 https://youtu.be/a1IiVF6Ehw8 Listen to the rest of the concert, too!