Universities will be the last bastion of gender ideology and the denial of women's rights

The "customer is king" aspect is definitely part of the problem. I was an undergraduate in the 1990s, and the attitude then was very much that the university revolved around the academics and you were being given an opportunity to learn from them. Returning more than a decade later as a postgraduate, institutions were very much centring students more as consumers.

But I also think there is is an aspect relating to the mentality of academia. There has long been a notion that academics represent an intellectual pinnacle in our society, yet the growing access to information in the modern world means that one can seek mental cultivation from one's sofa in the evening via the Internet. My thought is that, as knowledge becomes more accessible, academics have sought out ways to set themselves further apart from people outside academia. So, one takes on opinions, particularly unpopular opinions which are accepted as progressive, as these then become indicators of intellectual sensibilities which are portrayed as lacking in the broader population.

(I agree that the AI discussion would very quickly divert from the substance of this thread, and of this board, but that quote by the Pro VC at Greenwich is very revealing. It certainly is saying the quiet part out loud. And it also has a certain contempt for the students at the institution: "Yes, they will cheat with AI, yes, we don't want to ask them to do anything difficult." I feel it has a strand of the intellectual snobbery in it which I think is ingrained in the "progressive" attitudes behind, for instance, Stonewall affiliation.)

Why I am not surprised to see the University of Greenwich there? Their recent past features a lot of pandering to the lowest common denominator (which is probably a contributor to why they are languishing at place 119 out of 123 in the Guardian's British university ratings).

Not too long ago I came across the an article at the Higher Education Policy Institute on AI, and a senior figure at the University of Greenwich was arguing that: "If you can get generative AI to produce a summary or an abstract, then why are we asking students to do that?" I mean, maybe because it is educational? You learn to create summaries not because they are necessarily interesting in themselves, but you're teaching a valuable thinking skill. But Greenwich doesn't seem to get the need to teach thinking skills, which is maybe why they think it is a good idea to become a Stonewall Trailblazer.

(I know the quote seems unlikely, so, if anyone wants to see it in black-and-white, the link is below:

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/06/18/using-ai-to-think-with-students-not-for-them/ )

Yes, agree with SnoopyPyjamas. Some institutions will be slower than others to turn the ship around. My institution was relieved to quietly lose the rainbow variants and multi-gender toilets. The students were over it a while ago, because they could see the difference between the impossible anime trans and the reality of sweet autistic kids with purple hair and balding, middle-aged males squeezed into dresses.

I used to think this, but I don't anymore. Universities are on the ropes. They need money. All Gen Z / Alpha / Beta have to do is make it clear they're not on board with this schtick, and a lot of it will quietly disappear.

Gender woo woo is mainstream now - it's the voice of authority - and younger generations always want to kick back against that. These generations have been brainwashed almost from the cradle, but we're already seeing pushback from them, and I think it'll only continue. I have hope.

Apologies the version I linked to had been translated and well, from French. There should be a translate button.

Definitely in French.

So she’s currently feeling lonely and questioning whether there is something wrong with her, because any attempt to smile and nod in one friendship group means she’s accused of being oblivious to all the support that’s needed and not doing her share.

If she were one of my personal tutees and talked to me about this, I would gently suggest that her friends are manipulative, to the point of emotional abuse. I would advise her that no friendship should be so emotionally enmeshed, with punishment meted out if a friend doesn't comply. I'd be sending her to Wellbeing to talk to someone about boundaries, and finding new friends.

I had a difficult experience of dealing with this sort of enmeshment between undergrads years ago (it wasn't about traaaaanz) where one very mentally ill young person used extreme emotional blackmail on a flatmate: "If you go to your lecture, I will kill myself" sort of stuff. We had to work with the friend to reassure her that this was not a situation that was her responsibility to manage, poor lass.

Yes, Ipve seen that happen in quite a few student groups. Just as a bit of strategy - does she also socialise outside of that group? At university it can be very tempting to get sucked in to one intense group but it's worth pursuing several different interests and being (lightly) part of more than one group.

I do think Universities etc will be the last hold outs

https://x.com/brivael/status/2064797283280207877?s=46

(This is translated, not in French)

But it's more than just gender ideology, other things will come in as that goes out. I hope it's all for the better, I think it is on balance, but we will have to see and it's going to take a while

Anything other than full-throated support and centering lead to social ostracism in one friendship group. It’s easier to just avoid the issue in some of the others, and I strongly encourage that.

So she’s currently feeling lonely and questioning whether there is something wrong with her, because any attempt to smile and nod in one friendship group means she’s accused of being oblivious to all the support that’s needed and not doing her share. It’s almost like support for vulnerable peers and each other is a shared special interest in that group, and they all bond over hours of discussion of it. They all have various diagnoses.

It’s no wonder dd feels unable to be anything other than endlessly kind and agree with them.

Could she gently and without fanfare just withdraw from all that drama? A teen equivalent of the MN "Smile and nod" ?

Basically, Arts Council England has rewritten their central policy document to taker the focus back to excellence.

I was having dinner with some arts production bods the other day, and they applauded this.

I have a dd going to university next year. She recently tested the waters by asking a close friend, who had just said how awful JKR was, if she’d read her essay. The answer was recoil - no, how could anyone ready something so awful.

Dd is very clear that she will ruin her university experience, lose any friends she has made and be socially ostracised if she even mildly questions gender ideology. She feels that having a mum who does so is risky, and sees it as a weird thing that goes against my usual liberal views.

She has a lot of trans peers (all teenage girls) who require constant reassurance (for them) and outrage (about things like single sex sport at school). She spends a lot of time supporting them. They see gender critical views as a personal attack, and they tend also to be autistic and / or depressed and /or with an active eating disorder. So they are not able to be proportionate or reasoned about any of this, and there are a lot of threats of self harm and suicide. It’s no wonder dd feels unable to be anything other than endlessly kind and agree with them.

Universities MUST change as it is them that train teachers. Some are extremely captured. Text books have been written that they all use that centres trans stuff in eyfs.

so you’ve a huge cohort of teachers who really do think the trans stuff is real and how to include it in the curriculum

I agree.

FITA are doing a great job though and working to force change

tbe ACE recently re wrote something significant and it was very different as a result.

It will be on Denise Fahmy’s Twitter (sorry, shouldn’t really be mn right now!)

I've been looking for the source. which I cant find, but I heard quite a long discussion on the radio about how more and more young people are now doubting the value of universities. Partly cost, partly not seen as that linked to gaining work.

It didn't cover that much about how much if at all students gained or even enjoyed being at university.

Thanks to Blair's not thought through concept of the country would be improved if everyone went to university, whatever value it had in the past has been undermined by courses needing to be income generating.

Typical of Blair just to see being a Graduate as some sort of status symbol, indicating being "better" educated, with out thinking about the actual process and content.

The thing that strikes me though is that the gender stuff is only thf most obvious symptom of the problems with universities.

I'm also in the midst of having kids at the age they are deciding what to do. One attended for a year but found it so out of touch though she enjoyed the reading. She's been working the last year and a bit and is now planning on taking a diploma which she can turn into a degree with only two years at the university. The fact that the college that gives the diploma is much more practically focused is a big part of the appeal for her. Not so much because she doesn't see value in thf abstract, as the people seem much less insufferable.

Under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA), universities are required not only to take reasonably practicable steps to secure lawful speech and academic freedom, but also to maintain a code of practice governing matters relating to freedom of speech. Among other things, that code must set out procedures governing events, meetings and other activities.

One curiosity of Oxford’s code, however, is the degree of discretion it appears to place in the hands of the Proctors. Despite stating that no member of the University may “disrupt or obstruct any of the teaching or study or research… of its members, or its officers, employees and agents, including by obstructing the lawful exercise of freedom of speech by any of those persons”, it then adds that it “shall not be a disciplinary breach to engage in protests permitted by the Proctors”.

Given the remarkably limited guidance accompanying this exception, a great deal appears to turn on the judgment of the Proctors themselves.

What, then, did Oxford’s Proctors allow — and perhaps more pertinently, what should they have allowed?

Fortunately, the Office for Students already provides a framework for answering that latter question. In Regulatory Advice 24 (RA24), the regulator sets out how universities should comply with their free speech duties under HEFSA. While recognising that peaceful protest is itself a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech, the guidance also makes clear that “protest must not shut down debate”, and that it is unlikely to be reasonably practicable for a university to permit, without restriction, protest that disrupts speaker events through the “heckler’s veto”.

The fact that during the first lecture Foran was called a “bigot” and a “transphobe” may well constitute lawful, albeit unpleasant speech. But the protester’s subsequent request for audience members to join him in walking out, delivered from the front of the lecture hall, was not so much a criticism of Foran’s ideas as an attempt to persuade attendees to withdraw their participation from the event itself.

Foran’s subsequent warning to the Proctors that he would not continue the series if the same thing happened again should at least have alerted them to the possibility that future protests might not be confined to the expression of disagreement, but could seek to interfere with the talks themselves.

In such circumstances, RA24 expects universities to have processes for the timely assessment of risks to controversial events, with the purpose of putting in place steps that allow those events to go ahead, securing not just the right to protest, but the rights of students and others to hear an academic speak.

So were protests up to and including a “die-in” authorised by the Proctors, and if so on what terms? If they authorised protest outside the venue, subject to conditions preventing obstruction or interruption, Oxford surely needs to explain what steps it took to ensure those conditions were respected, given that disruption nevertheless occurred. But if they took — or were contemplating taking — the unusual decision to authorise protest inside the venue during the lecture, including a proposed “die-in”, by activists who had already urged attendees not to platform the speaker, that would be much harder to justify, since the risk of obstruction, intimidation of attendees, delay and interference with the audience’s ability to hear the speaker was clear and foreseeable.

From a much longer detailed article by former member FSU and now Communications Officer for the Committee for Academic Freedom

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-screaming-spires/

If you're really interested, have a look at a few places, and maybe see if there any seminars or research events in your area which are open to interested members of the public - you'd be surprised how accessible a lot of university research seminars can be.

Or have a wander around the buildings of the department you're interested in - again, during office hours, universities can be pretty open - not completely, but enough to read noticeboards etc to get a flavour.

Or have a look at the websites of academic staff in the area you want to research, and see what they say, what they've published. You can get a pretty good idea about their interests/opinions/beliefs from their publications.

I suppose what I'm saying is that while there are off-putting institutional headlines, individual academic staff are different. And the combination of the Forstater, Phoenix and FWS cases means that we are not as vulnerable as I was about a decade ago when I, in company with several others, faced disciplinary action.

when I think about the policies I would have to agree to, the pronouns I would have to use for fellow students, the verbal mismanagement of words as I speak so as not to "make other students unsafe," the groups and societies I might get kicked out of, and the daily arguments with tutors and supervisor who will likely be twenty years younger than me and thoroughly indoctrinated (or at least keeping their heads down). And would they be impartial in their assessments of my work?

I think this is a very catastrophising way of thinking about it. As I said upthread (or was it another thread), I am in a woke department at a woke university, but I suspect that many of my female students are at base, pretty terfy, if they thought about it. They are "kind" to the male students among the who think they are women, but they treat them like pets/gay male friends.

I think if you got past their initial "Oh they are vulnerable and brave" responses to male trans-identified students, you might find that your conversations are heartening.

And as for interacting with tutors, again, we're always interested in rational, logical arguments. If you're doing an MPhil/PhD (you generally start with the MPHil in the humanities at any rate) you'll mainly interact with your first & second supervisors, plus other postgrads. They will be a mix of domestic and overseas students - and most overseas students are too focussed on getting by and getting through to dabble in TRA luxury beliefs.

Hmm not sure. That's post election and whatever government we get I think will be a car crash for unis for a variety of reasons.