University professor cancelled by students sets up a 'faculty for common sense' at rival institution to fight wokeness

Leaving a well-paid tenured position is a bit edgy but I understand his position. I did the same, resigning from the Univerity of NSW in 1983 at age 39. I just did not feel at ease being among Marxists. They were civil to me but I regarded them as charlatans

An eminent professor cancelled by students at a top London university is launching a war on woke by founding a 'faculty for common sense' at a rival institution.

Professor Eric Kaufmann, 53, formerly head of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London is creating a Centre for Heterodox Social Science as a beacon of academic free speech at the University of Buckingham.

He hopes it will become a globally recognised centre for research into today's culture wars, examining woke attitudes to controversial subjects such as trans rights and critical race theory.

Professor Kaufmann's first course, 'Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology,' will be launched in January. A Masters degree will follow in September 2024. Both are the first of their kind in the world.

The move follows what he believes to be a five year campaign to oust him from Birkbeck for his right-leaning views on ethnicity, national identity, left wing ideology and religion. He quit at the end of August following a 20-year-career.

The professor says: 'I was cancelled by 1,000 cuts. Academia should be about the advancement of knowledge but you're not allowed to advance theories which go against the progressive narrative. If you have a different viewpoint, you're in the crosshairs.

'The climate at British universities has worsened because morally absolutist, often younger, illiberal progressives are using pressure, public reputational attacks and social media to limit academic freedom.

'It's a target rich environment. The woke left can make your life hell and they know it. You worry about saying the wrong thing in class so you make it vanilla. You worry about getting your research grant so you self censor.

'You've got to be in line with the orthodoxy, you can't deviate from dogma. It's an Orwellian threat to the enlightenment - free speech, equal treatment, due process, objective scientific truth.

'I believe this new woke ideology threatens the foundations of our civilisation. Every parent in the UK - and around the world - should be concerned at how far it has penetrated into our universities, schools and elite institutions.'

Today Professor Kaufmann, who is half Jewish, a quarter Chinese and a quarter Costa Rican, reveals details of how he was labelled a white supremacist and a racist apologist for holding views which he defines as 'liberal conservative'.

He has faced:

Social media pile ons, on Twitter, now X, organised by hostile students

An open letter to the Master of Birkbeck denouncing him and calling for him to be fired 'for his defence of white identity politics and his countless attacks against Black Lives Matter and other activists and scholars of colour on social media'

Denunciations from a junior colleague who resigned because of the 'impact on Birkbeck staff and students of being in such close proximity to his [Professor Kaufmann's] far right followers' dragging him into an embarrassing media storm

A number of hostile student course evaluations and letters, which he believes were a coordinated attack, resulting in three damaging internal inquiries

Being avoided by some of his colleagues who were desperate to avoid being cancelled by association

Today he's no longer part of Birkbeck's politics department which is housed in the Bloomsbury Group study rooms once graced by TS Eliot, George Bernard Shaw and John Maynard Keynes. Instead he's sitting in a smart London bar telling his story in the soft Canadian accent of his native country.

He says: 'I'm the kind of academic who doesn't want to see Roald Dahl's writing bowdlerised, traditional things renamed and statues taken down. I don't want conversations about immigration or homelessness and the causes of it simply shut down. But if that's you in 2023 - then you're radio active.'

As a conservative thinker he jokes that, at the start of his UK career back in the nineties he was 'in the closet'. 'I was careful to keep things at an abstract enough level, nothing too controversial. I ascended the university ladder. It went smoothly. It is a left wing environment - the jokes were all about the Tory party - so youinternalise the fact that conversation is not as free as it should be, but you adapt.

'However by 2022 when I was nailing my colours to the mast, becoming associated with conservatism, the academic freedom bill and the anti-woke movement, there's no question that I was a scalp.'

The academic freedom bill to which the professor is referring became law in May this year, aimed at protecting dissenting voices in Britain's higher education sector.

It included the appointment of a free speech and academic freedom champion to the board of the Office for Students; strengthened the right to free speech in universities and extended it to students' unions; and created a new complaints scheme for breaches, such as when a guest speaker is 'no-platformed' by opponents at a campus event.

Professor Kauffman co-authored the 2021 think tank report which was the source for several of its key proposals. 'yes, that bill which the University and College Union hate, and which radical students hate …' he shrugs.

Despite the protections offered by the new law, he decided he could not continue teaching at Birkbeck, relinquishing what he amiably agrees was a 'fireproof job for life, a tenured professorship, gold plated with a nice pension.'

From today his new - and far more precarious - academic home will be at the University of Buckingham, one of Britain's few not for profit private universities which is currently flying up the country's good university guides. It is the UK's top ranked university for freedom of expression, according to this year's National Student Survey

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12582107/University-professor-cancelled-students-sets-faculty-common-sense-rival-institution-fight-wokeness.html

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UK: Mobile phones are to be banned in schools

Mobiles are to be banned from classrooms, the Education Secretary will announce on Monday.

Gillian Keegan will order schools to outlaw smartphones during lessons, and also in breaks, in a bid to end disruption and make it easier for pupils to focus.

A government source said new guidance would be issued to schools across England requiring them to take action.

'Gillian believes that mobile phones pose a serious challenge in terms of distraction, disruptive behaviour, and bullying,' the insider said. 'It is one of the biggest issues that children and teachers have to grapple with so she will set out a way forward to empower teachers to ban mobiles from classrooms.'

Some schools already ban the use of mobiles, with pupils required to hand in their phones each morning – or face the punishment of a detention if they are caught using them.

But many others still permit their use, particularly during breaks, despite growing evidence of the damage they cause.

The announcement will be made on Monday at the Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester,

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12582161/Mobile-phones-banned-schools-education-secretary-Gillian-Keegan-set-announce-dramatic-intervention-relief-millions-parents-teachers.html

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UK: Former Education Secretary Michael Gove said some state schools are more like “teen crèches”.

After 13 years of Tory rule, the Cabinet minister admitted many pupils are being failed by the school system.

“Show me what those who really have money and influence do,” he told a fringe event at the Conservative conference. “Do they send their kids to, essentially, a teen crèche or do they send them to highly academic institutions with competitive team sports?”

Mr Gove said he believed that state schools should provide a more rigorous education. He gave the example of one academy that provides extracurricular activities like “putting on a play in ancient Greek or Latin”.

He highlighted how Jade Goody had chosen to send her children to private school, saying that “to her enormous credit” she used “celebrity in order to fashion a better life for herself”. “What did she do with her money? What was the first thing she chose to do? It was to send her children to independent schools. Now, she shouldn't have had to do that because the state school should have been good enough,” he said.

“But the whole point was she wanted the very, very best education for her children… She knew the type of education that was best, not private, but education that was academically rigorous. Education, where the subjects that are being taught would give her sons the chance - if they wanted - to go to the best universities.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-education-secretary-michael-gove-31078189

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