UCU Jo Grady on R4

[Terranean]

Around 0718. Did anyone hear her? It was really awful imho. Not even state how important Freedom of Speech is but saying there is no need of a law (lobbyist working for one). Sound like her understanding of Prevent was a half baked. And said ppl that are de platfomed have privileged jobs like Amber Rud deplatformed at Oxford about the Windrush scandal, after a long off the topic runt about universities contracts and management there.

Ducked the questions on a clear DARVO style.

Might try to listen. She’s absolutely awful though. I am an academic and she’s the reason I left the UCU. Many others have left too.

Did she mention that when someone put up posters of the definition of women on a campus, the police have been called?

I expect not...

Just listened and all I can say is God, she’s thick. She really really is.

Her Amber Rudd argument was preposterous. That was not a good interview.

Also the muddle over Prevent and then randomly bringing in the Uni of Leicester redundancies. I think she used to teach there. Seriously, she’s so awful. The union leadership committee is full of her mates and they are running it into the ground. Luckily for her, Covid has obscured the huge fiasco that was the strikes in 2019-20 that actually left members worse off with respect to their pensions than before.
She has ‘liked’ tweets calling academics hideous slurs for the crime of being gender critical. She used to use TERF blocker before she ran for GS of UCU and she fully approves of no-platforming.

I am not going to raise my blood pressure listening to her. She is as thick as mince and behaves like a teenager.

I heard it over my first cuppa. I couldn't work out what she thought or where she was going from! 2/10 for communication skills.

Irritating to have virtually every interviewee hustled and cut off for lack of time this morning!

I just listened. While I agree that she's thick as mince and doesn't seem to understand Prevent or its origins, I agreed with some of what she said. I think there will be a chilling effect in that so many university managers are spineless risk-averse cowards. One of the measures introduced via Prevent has been the institution of very high-level management groups overseeing 'controversial' events - in most universities there's a group which has to give permission for any such event to go ahead. In the current climate, anyone in the student union proposing to invite a gender-critical speaker would need to go through their university's Prevent management group (they're called different things in different universities) and if the proposed measures become law I think it'll be even less likely for spineless management to agree the event in the first place. Grady has a point there.

She also has a very good point that the marketisation of universities is a major threat to academic freedom. Academics on temporary contracts, which virtually all younger academics are now, are highly unlikely to pursue topics or positions that are unpopular. If you're an aspiring academic in the social sciences, for instance, you're much better advised to buy into the postmodern woo-woo and write about how sex is discursively produced blah blah blah than to research, teach and write about the consequences of denying single-sex provision to women in rape crisis shelters. The first will get you a permanent contract, funding and promotion, the second would get you ostracised and booted out as soon as your fixed-term contract ends. Maybe that's not quite the example Grady had in mind, but her point is sound.

Where she emphatically doesn't have a point is her either/or thinking. Employment conditions and the profit motive are one threat to academic freedom. The censorious behaviour of some students and academics and the failure of managers to stand up to them are another threat. There can be more than one threat at a time, as most adults can understand. It's a pity that UCU is led by someone who fails to grasp something so basic.

@Pota2 yeah! I left academia recently and was glad her reign was not my worry any longer. Some colleagues were so worry they running the union to bankruptcy with the use of money for conferences and half-baked strike strategies.
@NewlyGranny was also concerned about the cutting speakers off too, specially the Palestinian witness who was so desperate to say his piece. I’m so crossed about this latest ferocious attack on a cattled-in population.
@SirTiffikate I also thought the point about punishment being a detriment to invite speakers was a good point, but all the other stuff was off topic.
To talk about how research is impacted by facilitating the university agenda, the cases of Raquel Rosario , Johnny Best and James Caspian comes to mind, not that she would ever think of mention them or Selina Todd etc

I think she responded with a 🔥 emoji when Selina Todd was no-platformed...

Oh God, was that Grady? I heard the interview but didn't catch who it was and assumed it was a student/NUS spokesperson. It was dreadful but I thought it was someone young, daft, and inexperienced. How embarrassing.

I heard it and it was embarrassing. Jo Grady approves of no-platforming on University campuses, so she probably wasn't the best person to ask!

She was on 5Live earlier too. Came across very badly.

she's one to talk about the chilling effect. Rocking round twitter blocking UCU colleagues and screaming TERF at them. Numpty.

@Pota2

I think she responded with a 🔥 emoji when Selina Todd was no-platformed...

Absolutely disgraceful.

I heard it and was embarrassed for her. She seemed to have no grasp of the subject. I would be horrified if she was supposed to be representing my interests in any workplace, she must get made mincemeat of in negotiations.

@WhereAreWeNow
“it was someone young, daft, and inexperienced. How embarrassing“
That could be her. Not sure how much experience she had when she took the post. It seems a lot of these organisations are overtaken by the young and inexperienced, which is fine but discarding the experienced people as old and wrong is not fine.

She's right about one thing: university management absolutely is the gravest threat to the sector! But I agree with the pp who said that bringing that up was a classic DARVO tactic. That interview was risible - she clearly has no idea what she's doing. I'm still a member of UCU because I believe in a unionised workforce, but the direction she's taking it in is appalling.