Prof Prachi Srivastava

Right there with you... terrifying for me as well.

First it's contract, then tenure, the promotion, then chair, then...

Tenure is no longer protection and the threats to academic freedom loom large.

In case you were wondering about the state of free idea exchange in academia, this is where we are.

I appreciate colleagues reaching out. But I wish they'd say it publicly, especially if untenured. That's the only way to change this insanity where experts are afraid to speak up.

You can switch to Libre Office instead of Word and change the OS to Ubuntu.

Anyone in academia who has not thought of where this is heading has serious blinders on.

What are we going to do about it?

The School That Never Sleeps A UNICEF-supported school has become a safe space for learning and living for displaced families in Rokero, Central Darfur, Sudan.

By day, 1,200 students, including 400 internally displaced children from Al Fasher and Tawila, crowd into this school's classrooms. By night, the same rooms become a refuge for families displaced by the brutal civil war in #Sudan.

A look at how support from UNICEF helps keep the school running:

It's not the longest but the most fun one I saw. :)

Benzoides (9)

True! I always forget this.

Makes sense given how the pandemic was handled in the US. These data show what many of us warned then.

I don't think doctors and solicitors at that time would be considered 'middle class' on the income distribution in the UK - there is a slight difference in the usage of everyday terminology but certainly, it is the case the single-income families in most white collar jobs got by relatively well.

It was the same for most middle-class families in Canada around that time too. Not anymore. And hasn't been for a long time. There is something about broad-based public health and education and social security and pensions that led to this but it is no longer the case.

Such a global public good, the Young Lives research and data. Amazing trove.

Read @ox.ac.uk's latest feature on how Young Lives captured first-hand accounts of how #conflict affects young people’s lives — & our recommendations for governments, donors, NGOs & community groups⬇️

@younglivesethiopia.bsky.social @odid-qeh.bsky.social @socsci.ox.ac.uk @uk.theconversation.com

Maybe the same institutions need to consider serious propositions to debt relief and international tax reforms.

When the right hand produces excellent data the left hand needs to act.

The end of progress against extreme poverty? In the last three decades, the world has made progress against extreme poverty faster than ever before. But unless the poorest economies start growing, this period of progress against the worst form…

Read @maxroser.bsky.social's article, “The end of progress against extreme poverty?”, which goes into this question in much more detail: ourworldindata.org/end-progress...

This is because most of the extremely poor today live in countries with stagnant economies. If these do not see much stronger economic growth, the world will have nearly one billion living in dire poverty for decades to come.

Looking ahead, based on the latest available projections from researchers at the World Bank, this reduction in global extreme poverty is expected to end. In fact, numbers in 2040 might be higher than they are today.

At the turn of the millennium, 2.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty. In international statistics, this means they survived on less than $3 per day (in today’s money).

In the two decades that followed, this number more than halved. You can see this decline in the chart.

That such humans existed in flesh and blood...

And in the face of 'Nah, don't want to', the punitive measures and enforcement mechanisms are so arduous that there are few routes of direct accountability.

Effectively, the things we learn as schoolchildren - 'be nice to each other' - is essentially the roadmap to solid, functional systems.

That is, those running governments and those working in/for high-level organisations sign up to a code of *values* that guide collective state and transnational accountability.

Most of these are *unstated*.

Laws and rules codify some of this but cannot codify basic buy-in of 'nah, don't want to.'

As a former UN and international NGO civil affairs officer, it's been increasingly clear to me that most of the world (particularly last year but we could pin it to 2022) is waking up to the fact that our international and democratic systems actually hinge on informal norms more than formal rules.

We have a new blogpost on What will the paper of the future look like?

What if research papers stopped being static PDFs and became closer to software?

The reductive model we have now in academia globally + the technological speed of AI renders the writing process mainly technicist. A way to get words out fast.

But the process of writing is a system of meaning-making and that is what we are losing to the perfect marriage of reductive technicsim.

What is 'worth it' depends on what we value. Yes, in a model of crude efficiency getting a 'good enough' paper out 'fast' is efficient. From a productive efficiency perspective though, one could argue it is very well 'worth it' to spend the brainwaves it takes to argue through a point in one's head.

Were Immigrant Kids Barred from Quebec’s French Catholic Schools? | The Walrus Former students say yes, historians say no. A new investigation is forcing the province to confront its past

I was part of the first cohort of Bill 101 kids. The reasons Anglo/Allophones chose English then were manifold.

The vast majority of those children (now adults) choose French for their own children: 92% of Allophone children attend French schools.
@mtltoula.bsky.social thewalrus.ca/were-immigra...

Yes - like you show - 'the percentage of Quebec’s allophone population that attends French schools rose from 79% in 2000 to 92% in 2021' - again it's systemic - not just choice.

Off the top of my head I think in the 1980s ~30-40% (but I don't have it on hand).

Bill 101 was 100% a success.

Research on this is sorely lacking. As I note in my own post, the rest of Canada, the world, and frankly Quebec is largely ignorant of how the schooling provisions in Bill 101 shaped current society - and how different communities were inserted within.

I was one of the first cohorts of Bill 101 children. The reasons Anglophone and Allophone communities 'chose' English were manifold.

It's also very important to not that the majority of those children (now adults) choose French as the default option for their own children. The data show this too.