logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2023
38m 39s

Hostile Environment

Ethel Tungohan
About this episode

Since the end of April, the University and College Union in the UK has been on a marking strike to demand fair pay and working conditions that have deteriorated significantly. This week, we talk to Dr. Lucy Mayblin a Political Sociologist at the University of Sheffield, about what has been happening in UK academia, including how universities are transforming from institutions of public good to private institutions, and where university professors and staff are increasingly being made to act effectively as border guards with international students to create, quite explicitly, a hostile environment.

In our conversation, we talk about the rise of neoliberalism in British academia, about how bordering practices are taking hold in UK universities, and ways for academics to take back their time.

Related Links


Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.

Up next
May 14
Organizing, Mobilizing...and AI
Season finale!The past year, we’ve talked a lot about just how much we’ve had to fight for the university. From authoritarian leaders who wish to suppress dissent and protests in universities, particularly protests in support of Palestine, to rudderless senior administrators who ... Show More
47 m
Apr 2025
Communities of Care
The need for care - for radical care, for decolonial care, for accountable and reciprocal and emancipatory care - has never been more obvious. In a world where it is clear that institutions don’t care for us and that many of our elected political leaders just want to amass power ... Show More
50m 13s
Apr 2025
Depleting Higher Education
 We are living in an age of fascism where you have political leaders who disregard democratic process and are going full steam ahead in shaping the world the way they want it to look like. And this world includes a depleted higher education sector that they see as enemy number on ... Show More
48m 27s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2024
Escapism
Travel, reading, cinema and psychedelic drugs are all means people have used to try to escape. But do they ever really lead us where we want them to? With the election looming, Glastonbury in full swing and lists of beach read suggestions starting to appear -Matthew Sweet discuss ... Show More
56m 58s
Aug 2024
The University of Impossible-to-Get-Into (Update)
America’s top colleges are facing record demand. So why don’t they increase supply? (Part 2 of our series from 2022, “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”) SOURCES:Peter Blair, professor of education at Harvard University and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of ... Show More
1h 11m
Jul 21
Can college survive Trump?
American higher education is under attack. Project 2025 laid out the battle plan pretty clearly: Get rid of the Department of Education, shut off federal funding, take control of the accreditation system, and take down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And in the end, ch ... Show More
57m 42s
Aug 2024
Neoliberalism and the University, Part 1
This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote ... Show More
53m 16s
May 2021
Episode #24. Dissertations ft. Emma Gordon
How do you choose a dissertation topic? What are some common dissertation mishaps? In this episode, co-hosts Alex and Jasmine talk to Dr Emma Gordon, a research fellow in applied ethics and epistemology at the University of Glasgow who was voted Best Dissertation Supervisor at th ... Show More
25m 38s
Aug 2024
What Exactly Is College For? (Update)
We think of them as intellectual enclaves and the surest route to a better life. But U.S. colleges also operate like firms, trying to differentiate their products to win market share and prestige points. In the first episode of a special series originally published in 2022, we as ... Show More
50m 15s
Aug 2022
Prison Break
Prison breaks loom large in both literature and pop culture. But how should we evaluate them ethically? New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard asks what a world without prison would look like. His essay explores whether those unjustly incarcerated have the moral right to break out ... Show More
14m 41s
Feb 2025
American Higher Education Under the Second Trump Administration
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Riverside, about the early days of the second Trump administration and its impact on higher education. Brint discusses the ad ... Show More
32m 24s
Nov 2024
Advancing Behavioral Economics with Colin Camerer
What would YOU like to hear about on Bloomberg? Help make shows like ours even better by taking our Bloomberg audience survey. Barry Ritholtz speaks with Colin Camerer, Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at California Institute of Technology. Prior to join ... Show More
1h 28m
Oct 2024
Think Again: Is Free Speech Under Threat? with Suzanne Nossel and Charlotte Lydia Riley
Many liberals believe that in recent years we have seen an erosion of the right to air unpopular opinions without the risk of being cancelled. We are in an ever-intensifying shutting down of conversation, they maintain, with constituencies on both the left and the right demanding ... Show More
1h 30m