Later back at my desk than promised, as re-entry into UK atmosphere took longer than anticipated!

1. A trenchant piece from University World News by Katy Sian, Decolonisation means no longer being silent on Palestine https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20250903102212352

(…) in adopting the language of decolonisation while refusing to confront its political demands, universities turn critique into a form of institutional self-validation. The very discourse meant to challenge power is reworked into evidence of the university’s progressive credentials. The sharp limits of this dynamic are revealed when universities are confronted with Palestine. If decolonisation is to mean the dismantling of colonial structures in both their historical and contemporary forms, then the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians represents one of the most urgent contemporary sites of struggle.

2. Donald Trump gave a typically trenchant speech to the UN earlier today, having made a statement on paracetamol and the MMR vaccine yesterday with which few doctors agree. Americans have 400 days to save their democracy said Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian last Tuesday https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/16/us-americans-republic-midterm-elections-democrats

I return to Europe from the US with a clear conclusion: American democrats (lowercase d) have 400 days to start saving US democracy. If next autumn’s midterm elections produce a Congress that begins to constrain Donald Trump there will then be a further 700 days to prepare the peaceful transfer of executive power that alone will secure the future of this republic. Operation Save US Democracy, stages 1 and 2.

Hysterical hyperbole? I would love to think so. But during seven weeks in the US this summer, I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality of President Trump’s assault on what had seemed settled norms of US democracy and by the desperate weakness of resistance to that assault. There’s a growing body of international evidence to suggest that once a liberal democracy has been eroded, it’s very difficult to restore it. Destruction is so much easier than construction.

3. Are we losing our civil liberties? is the title of a recent Prospect podcast with Conor Gearty, the Professor of Human Rights Law at the LSE who died surprisingly early last week, dealing with among other subjects the UK government’s recent banning of Palestine Action https://open.spotify.com/episode/27xXOihobhafuNpfFNhoL8

Here’s his obituary in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/sep/18/conor-gearty-obituary – no obituary in The Daily Telegraph, less sympathetic to Gearty’s views, as yet – and here’s his entertaining (and serious in intent) 2014 Sir David Williams lecture at Cambridge University, ‘Not in the Public Interest’  https://youtu.be/erVF82f9vMM

4. Two pieces from The Guardian on the changing landscape in Higher Education:

The first, on a film, The Shadow Scholars, about the essay-writing industry in Kenya and the talented young people that work in it, Inside the world of Kenya’s ‘shadow scholars’ paid to write essays for UK students https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/14/kenya-shadow-scholars-paid-to-write-essays-for-uk-students

There is a secret industry that generates billions of dollars a year. Its workers are bright, industrious and completely anonymous. Their job is writing essays to order for students – in the UK and elsewhere – to help them get good degrees. These are “shadow scholars”, highly educated Kenyans who earn a living by working for essay mills. They are contracted to ghostwrite essays, PhD dissertations and other academic papers for students across the world, who pay a fee then pass off the work as their own.

Here’s a SKY News item on the film https://youtu.be/x3ZTkPT69ng

The second, a letter by two professors from York University, Leo McCann & Simon Sweeney How AI is undermining learning and teaching in universities https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/16/how-ai-is-undermining-learning-and-teaching-in-universities

In many degree programmes, Large Language Models have little to no practical value. Their use sabotages and degrades students’ learning and undermines critical analysis and creativity. If we are to make better sense of the impact of AI on work, education and everyday life, we need to be more sceptical and less celebratory.

5. And finally, with acknowledgement to OLDaily, a piece from Open Culture, A 107-Year-Old Irish Farmer Reflects on the Changes He’s Seen During His Life (1965) https://www.openculture.com/2025/09/a-107-year-old-irish-farmer-reflects-on-the-changes-hes-seen-during-his-life-1965.html

Born in Ireland in 1858, Michael Fitzpatrick was interviewed on television 107 years later in 1965. That device (the television) was well on its way to saturating Western society at the time, as the automobile already had, while mankind was taking to the skies in jetliners and even to the stars in rocket ships. The contrast between the world into which Fitzpatrick was born and the one in which he eventually found himself is made starker by his being a son of the land. A lifelong farmer, he can honestly reply, when asked to name the biggest change he’s seen, “Machinery.”

There’s subtitles on the interview just in case you need them!