Emma Kennedy

Text reads: I am humbled and excited to be elected the next UCU Vice-President for Higher Education. Now is a devastatingly difficult and challenging time for our sectors and so many workers in post-16 education, but as a union we cannot succumb to despair. We have the skills, knowledge and capacity to help chart a way out of this mess and restore higher and further education. That you have put your trust in me to help do that is a huge honour and responsibility. I do not take this lightly. Thank you to the many thousands of members who voted for me and also to those who did not – we need to build better engagement in our union and part of that is voting, no matter who you voted for. I promised in my election materials to work hard to bring our union together and that is what I will do.

Text reads: Thank you to the other HE candidates Sean and Steve, both committed trade unionists. I know they will continue to fight for members and the future of Higher Education and I look forward to doing that alongside them. Congratulations to those elected to the National Executive Committee and commiserations to those who missed out this time. Your willingness to put yourself forward for election is hugely valued and I know you all will continue to contribute in other ways. So what next? Until the end of May, I’ll be tying up some loose ends and taking some time off to visit family and friends back in Australia. I will take up my role after UCU’s annual Congress at the end of May, this year in Harrogate.

Text reads: For the following three years, I will be lead negotiator for pay and conditions and for USS pensions across UK Higher Education, working with our team of elected negotiators and officials. I will also chair UCU’s Higher Education Committee and HE sector conferences, serve on other national committees and represent you in various forums. In 2029-30 I will become UCU’s President after the excellent Suzi Toole, who has also been elected as Vice-President for Further Education and will spend two years leading on further education matters before becoming President. She will take over from Dyfrig Jones, who succeeds early to the Presidential role for a two-year term this May, due to the casual vacancy that arose last year, replacing Maria Chondrogianni. Maria stays on as immediate past president, rounding out the presidential team. I want to again acknowledge David Hunter who stepped down as President-Elect last year for health reasons and continue to wish him and his family all the best.

A picture of two smiling people (Suzi Toole and Mark Pendleton) wearing UCU beanies. Text reads: That’s a lot of work, and a lot of moving parts, but at the heart of it will be my commitment to build a better union, alongside members and branches, and through that transform our sectors. I am ready and I know from the responses to this election that many of you are too. I’m looking forward to getting to work, together with you all.

UCU’s elections concluded this week and I am honoured to have been elected as the next Vice-President for Higher Education, to become President in 2029-30.

Thank you for all the support.

A short statement about the election and what’s to come after I take up the role in May.

- the government’s mixed public messaging on AI & copyright is hindering licensing
- the government should make a clear public statement that AI companies operating in the UK need to license their training data (which is the law)

4/5

They say:

- the government must not weaken copyright law, and should instead strengthen licensing, transparency & enforcement
- the government should stop prioritising large multinational tech firms

3/5

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

Big money has bought British politics

75% of Reform’s money has come from three rich white men

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/75-of-refo...

I feel like David Graeber really captured something about lefty academia because the concept of “bullshit job” is very resonant and has a lot of intuitive appeal but his exploration of it is totally hamstrung by the fact that he’s never left campus and is very vague on the mechanics of actual work

A screenshot of Google's AI Overview answer to the question "is haggis an animal". It says "Yes, the haggis is a small, furry mammal native to Scotland" and goes on to give the typical "asymmetrical legs" details.

The Scottish have won the AI Wars.

Only 3% back government's AI copyright proposal in major setback for ministers | LBC The majority of over 10,000 respondents to a UK consultation on AI and copyright have overwhelmingly shown their disapproval of the government proposal

97% of respondents to the government consultation rejected this www.lbc.co.uk/article/gove...

Text on an academic article about "Moving Things: Moving Cartloads of Treasures from Venice to Ethiopia, ca. 1400" pasted into Grammarly in a Browser. It offers to invoke the digital ghosts of David Abulafia, Barry Flood and Chris Wickham to give me "expert feedback".

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT?

As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc.

It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece???

What?

Text of poem - Pact. This is my child; that is yours. Let peace be between them when they grow up. They are far off now; let it not be through war they are brought near. Their languages are different. Let them both learn it is peace in the hand is the translation of peace in the mind.

Pact - RS Thomas

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus...

The least human thing you can do I read a story just now about a man in Chicago who saved a baby after its carriage had been blown into the harbor by heavy gusts of wind. Lio Cundiff – who is a trans man not that it should matter her...

Expecting us – with good reason based on history – to all thank them for their service. Fuck your service and fuck you.

Saving a life is brave. Being instructed to kill and saying no I will not do that is brave. But killing like this? It is the least human thing you can do.

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

Every time I go out on a run I experience overt misogyny. Which, given that happens less than once a week, is kind of impressive. Today it was some teenage boys *barking* at me because they felt I hadn't moved out of the way of their bikes (on the pavement) fast enough.

<Emily Maitlis voice> Global online outrage? She was a _sex offender_!

oh man i risk being the biggest bluesky stereotype but

ALT TEXT IS FOR ACCESSIBILITY. if you want to also include humour, sure (i do). but if the alt doesn’t actually describe what is in the image you are defeating the point

Huge news we finally have a wholly worthy target for EVERYONE to be mad at bsky.app/profile/kern...

Are you interested in Shakespeare, streaming and accessibility? Tamar Knott, one of the wonderful research students I supervise is working on the accessibility of streamed performances of Shakespeare and is running a survey. Your help is very much appreciated york.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Worth noting his objection to no fault divorce. I worked a bit on the campaign for that, and one of the striking things with the scholarship was the evidence that demonstrated allowing it led to a drop in suicides of married women.

Michael Phelps, famously, is basically a 2 metre tall human shark. Professional weightlifters eat 8,000 calories a day just to avoid passing out from hunger. Beautiful weirdos! Praised precisely because their bodies do not sit on the plateau of the bell curve!

But women's bodies are policed more.

For women, one of the very difficult things about the Epstein emails is having all our worst professional suspicions confirmed.

You wonder in darker moments if men say this kind of awful stuff about us (individually, and as a class) to each other, and here it is all confirmed in writing.

At least 70% of things I read about people doing with "AI" assistants like "Open Claw" are basically things people have been doing with deterministic, secure tools like Home Assistant for years.

Oh you can tell your bot to dim the lights via WhatsApp chat? Welcome to 2015!

Dear Colleagues & Peers, My name is Deanna Zarrillo (she/they), and I am a PhD candidate at Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics. I am conducting dissertation research on the experiences of trans and gender diverse authors who have changed their name on academic publications and perspectives around digital identity more broadly. This work is aimed at assessing the community impact of post-publication name change policies from major publishers and enhancing policy around author privacy in the publication process. As part of this work, I am recruiting eligible participants for a survey on this topic. If you are an academic and have changed your name in the past, whether on publications or not, please consider responding to this survey! As publishing policies evolve, your experiences can help shape more inclusive practices for current and future scholars. You’re eligible if you: You are an academic student or faculty member (current or previous) with a history of publications in academic journals You are transgender, gender diverse, or otherwise self-identify outside of the gender binary. You have changed your name and have used, or have considered using, a post-publication name change policy or have changed your name on a publication in another way. Are fluent in English. What to Expect: This survey includes questions about your experiences with post-publication name changes and utilizing publisher policies. Your participation in this survey is voluntary. You may refuse to take part in the research or to exit the survey at any time. Partial responses will not be retained. Should you volunteer as an interviewee*, further consent information will be provided via email prior to the scheduled interview in addition to a verbal consent agreement at the beginning of the interview. Your responses will provide vital information to help assess current policies, identify barriers and challenges, explore impact, develop recommendations for improvem…

please RT! if you've ever contacted a journal or publisher to have your name changed on a publication, a friend and colleague of mine wants to hear about your experience! drexel.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

#phdchat #academicchatter

The final #ucu VP hustings question asks whether we need a national campaign to defend the sector.

Of course we do, but it can’t be just tacked onto a pay dispute as HEC voted to do last year, despite the evidence it wouldn’t work.

Focus, strategy, creativity and unity. That’s what’s needed.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

I’d like to apologise for my university’s craven actions, failing to defend staff and throwing the rest of the UK university sector under the bus on this issue.

UCL had the resources others do not have to fight this properly in court.

That phrase 'ambient AI listening' is straight out of a dystopian novel. Good grief.

Every year of UCU elections, I point out the voter turnout rate. Every year, it is like 12-14% of all eligible members who vote.
Every year, I see people talk about how out of touch and frankly bonkers the decisions of the national union exec is.
Every year, I explain that these are all connected.

cover slide showing rod canion next to a compaq pc. talk is called "The Man Who Beat IBM"

Last chance to book tickets (in person or online) for my CCS lecture tomorrow on Compaq!

I'll cover their rise to be IBM's biggest rival, and the extraordinary story of the industry rebellion they led to prevent IBM taking over the PC industry.

www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/202...

Setting The Agenda for Change in Higher Education: Lessons from Australia A discussion paper by Mark Pendleton (UK-elected HE) Preface UCU Commons has long argued for more deliberation and discussion in our union, rather than simple polarised debate. In that spirit, this...

Last year I wrote a paper on some successes our Australia sibling, the NTEU, has been having in bringing attention to governance failures.

The UK also needs an inquiry into university governance, rising corporate influence and the erosion of staff/student voice.

ucucommons.org/setting-the-...

Today’s clip addresses a question on excessive workloads, a problem for #ucu members from further ed to universities.

This intersects with health & safety, pay, casualisation, etc.

We can and should come at it from all these angles but ultimately need proper jobs. That’s the #1 priority.