Category: Politics

Among explosions and gunfire, a quiet place to study

A 2017 study found that 45% of the adult population of the Kashmir Valley — around 1.8 million people — suffer from some form of psychological distress. It reported high rates of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The most recent India-Pakistan escalation on May 7, involving cross-border shelling, further worsened conditions, damaging homes and killing civilians in border districts like Uri, Poonch and Kupwara.

Jan said such stories often lead her to question what went wrong in their society and why such tragedies continue to emerge from her homeland. Her parents advised her to shift to a private reading hall. She describes the atmosphere there as refreshing — a place filled with peers preparing for the same exam. The environment, she says, is motivating and focused, making it easier to concentrate and feel a sense of community.

Spaces for students

In recent years, the trend of private reading halls has seen a sharp rise across Kashmir. More and more students now prefer these dedicated spaces over studying at home, seeking focus and stability amid the turmoil. While such reading halls were once limited to urban centres like Srinagar and semi-urban towns like Anantnag and Baramulla, they’ve now expanded into far-flung areas such as Achabal and Kupwara — regions located miles away from the city hubs.

Muazim Altaf, a pharmacy graduate and the owner of Pulse Library in Achabal — where Jan studies — recalls how the idea for the reading hall came to him.

He noticed that many students from nearby villages were travelling all the way to Srinagar, which is 70 kilometres from Achabal, staying in hostels just to access reading halls and a better study environment. “That’s when I thought, why not create something similar here in Achabal?” he said.

In October last year, he opened Pulse with the intention of offering an affordable alternative to students who couldn’t afford hostel rents in Srinagar. The initiative wasn’t purely profit-driven, he said. His goal was to support local students by providing a productive study space within their own region.

Initially, he started with 60 study cabins, which were fully booked within days. Encouraged by the overwhelming response, he expanded the facility. “Now we have 120 cabins, all booked until June,” he said. Each student is charged a modest monthly fee of nine pounds to use the space.

He admits he hadn’t anticipated such a strong turnout. Students aged 17 to 29 now frequent Pulse — some preparing for competitive entrance exams, while others focus on passing exams required for government jobs.

One trend stood out to him: nearly 60% of the students are girls.

A hunger to learn

In 2022, more than 250,000 people visited just 131 public libraries across Jammu and Kashmir, highlighting both a hunger for learning and the shortage of adequate study spaces. With thousands of aspirants preparing for exams, existing public libraries are overwhelmed and operate only during daytime hours, making it tough for students who need longer study sessions.

In response, young people across the region have stepped in, launching private reading halls that offer 24/7 access. Equipped with Wi-Fi, heating, cooling, kitchen spaces and discussion zones, these modern study hubs have quickly become essential for serious exam takers in Kashmir.

Javed Pathaan, a recent PhD graduate from Kashmir University, runs a private reading hall in Srinagar’s Rajbagh area. “Having personally gone through the rigors of competitive exam preparation, I understand how valuable these extras can be,” he said. “Students who study for long hours need occasional breaks, so we’ve created a designated space for short naps.”

He said that young students face intense mental and physical strain while preparing for exams in a conflict-ridden region. That’s why many choose private services like his over free public libraries.

Shazir Ahangar, who wants to pass an exam to get a government job in Kashmir, shifted to Pulse Library at Achabal after leaving the public library in Anantnag. He found the public facility overcrowded and said it was hard to concentrate there.

“They’re open for just eight to nine hours a day, which isn’t enough when you’re preparing for competitive exams,” he said.

The exchange of knowledge

One of Ahangar’s main concerns was the lack of basic facilities. The public libraries he visited didn’t offer air conditioning during summer or designated kitchens for making tea or coffee. Nor do they have discussion rooms.

“At Pulse, it’s more than just studying,” he added. Students engage in group discussions, exchange ideas and even enjoy small breaks together. He especially appreciated the privacy provided by individual study cabins.

Last year, Manan Bhat, 28, from Soura area of Srinagar, secured the 88th rank in India’s civil service exam, a major feat considering that every year, more than one million people appear for India’s Civil Services Examination, but fewer than 1,000 candidates are selected.

When he first began coming to reading halls they were often nearly empty. “Now, they’re packed with students,” he said.

Manan said that the biggest advantage of reading halls is the individual focus they offer, allowing students to concentrate without distractions. He also highlighted how being surrounded by peers preparing for similar exams creates a supportive environment that encourages the exchange of knowledge.

Safe spaces to study

Owners of reading halls often play an active role in encouraging students, staying in touch with their parents to share updates on their performance and dedication. The atmosphere in these halls is competitive, similar to coaching centres.

Muazim Altaf said that admitting students to the reading hall comes with significant responsibility, as parents place a great deal of trust in them.

“We share weekly reports with parents, including details like how much time their children spend studying and whether they arrive on time,” he said. This becomes especially crucial in a region battling widespread drug addiction. Parents often urge him to keep a close watch on their children. According to Muazim, any form of indiscipline or violation of library rules results in immediate expulsion.

In December last year, Shri B.L. Verma, the minister of state for social justice and environment, told the Indian parliament that more than 823,000 people in Jammu and Kashmir — around 8% of the region’s population — use drugs of some kind, including cannabis, opioids or sedatives.

Basit Fayaz, who recently secured an All India Rank of 70 in the national exam that determines placement in professorships and research fellowships, believes that joining a reading hall played a crucial role in his success. He said that without the focused study environment it offered, cracking the exam — let alone making it to the top 100 — would have been nearly impossible.

“The reading hall in Achabal [Pulse] provided exactly the kind of calm and distraction-free atmosphere I needed,” he said, adding that it helped him stay insulated from the recurring disturbances like crackdowns and gunfights that are common in Kashmir.

Fayaz appreciated the peer group he found there. He recalled how group discussions and study sessions with fellow NEET aspirants added great value to his preparation. He added that without such spaces, constant exposure to conflict-related events often disturbs one’s mental state and heightens anxiety.

“In situations like escalations between India and Pakistan, gunfights or political crackdowns, these spaces help us stay focused and shielded from the chaos,” Fayaz said.

Questions to consider:

1. What distractions from studying do so many young people in the Kashmir region face?

2. How can political turmoil at the national level affect people who live far from city centres?

3. How important is it for you to have a safe, quiet space to study?

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May 22, 2025
Podcast: Immigration white paper, Jacqui Smith

This week on the podcast we get across the government’s new immigration white paper. What does cutting the graduate route visa from two years to 18 months mean for international students and universities?

Plus we examine the proposed 6 per cent levy on international student fees and tighter compliance requirements that could put some institutions at risk.

We also discuss Skills Minister Jacqui Smith’s Telegraph op-ed criticizing universities for “losing sight of their responsibility to protect public money” – are her concerns reasonable?

With Smita Jamdar, Partner and Head of Education at Shakespeare Martineau, Roscoe Hastings, Director of Teaching Excellence and Student Experience at the University of Exeter, James Coe, Associate Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Jim Dickinson.

Read more

Everything in the immigration white paper for higher education

There are lots of ways to be more transparent about university finances

Lessons from innovating in our student support model

Euro visions: A playbook to fight the populists in the Netherlands

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May 15, 2025
New international education focus in Albanese ministry – Campus Review

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a new role overseeing international education with the appointment of Julian Hill as International Education Assistant Minister. Mr Hill will retain his previous Customs and Multicultural Affairs Assistant Minister role.

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May 14, 2025
A history lesson on Europe for Donald Trump

“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it.” So said U.S. President Donald Trump in February. He repeats this assertion whenever U.S.-European relations are a topic of debate.

Trump voiced his distorted view of the EU in his first term in office and picked it up again in the first three months of his second term, which began on January 20 and featured the start of a U.S. tariff war which up-ended international trade and shook an alliance dating back to the end of World War II.

What or who gave the U.S. president the idea that the EU was “formed to screw” the United States is something of a mystery. If he were a student in a history class, his professor would give him an F.

Trump’s claim does injustice to an institution that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 in recognition for having, over six decades, “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” as the Nobel committee put it.

So, here is a brief guide to the creation of the EU, now the world’s largest trading bloc with a combined population of 448 million people, and the events that preceded its formal creation in 1952.

Next time you talk to Trump, feel free to brief him on it.

Staving off war

With Germans still clearing the ruins of the world war Adolf Hitler had started in 1939, far-sighted statesmen began thinking of ways to prevent a repeat of a conflict that killed 85 million people.

The foundation of what became a 28-country bloc lay in the reconciliation between France and Germany.

In his speech announcing the Nobel Prize, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, singled out then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman for presenting a plan to form a coal and steel community with Germany despite the long animosity between the two nations; in the space of 70 years, France and Germany had waged three wars against each other. That was in May 1950.

As the Nobel chairman put it, the Schuman plan “laid the very foundation for European integration.”

He added: “The reconciliation between Germany and France is probably the most dramatic example in history to show that war and conflict can be turned so rapidly into peace and cooperation.”

From enemies into partners

In years of negotiations, the coal and steel community, known as Montanunion in Germany, grew from two — France and Germany — to six with the addition of Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The union was formalized with a treaty in Paris in 1951 and came into existence a year later.

The coal and steel community was the first step on a long road towards European integration. It was encouraged by the United States through a comprehensive and costly programme to rebuild war-shattered Europe.

Known as the Marshall Plan, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the programme provided $12 billion (the equivalent of more than $150 billion today) for the rebuilding of Western Europe. It was part of President Harry Truman’s policy of boosting democratic and capitalist economies in the devastated region.

From the six-nation beginning, the process of European integration steadily gained momentum through successive treaties and expansions. Milestones included the creation of the European Economic Community and European Atomic Energy Community.

In 1986, the Single European Act paved the way to an internal market without trade barriers, an aim achieved in 1992. Seven years later, integration tightened with the adoption of a common currency, the Euro. Used by 20 of the 27 member states, it accounts for about 20% of all international transactions.

Brexiting out

One nation that held out against the Euro was the United Kingdom. It would later withdraw from the EU entirely after the 2016 “Brexit” referendum led by politicians who claimed that rules made by the EU could infringe on British sovereignty.

Many economists at the time described Brexit as a self-inflicted wound and opinion polls now show that the majority of Britons regret having left the union.

In decades of often arduous, detail-driven negotiations on European integration, including visa-free movement from one country to the other, no U.S. president ever saw the EU as a “foe” bent on “screwing” America. That is, until Donald Trump first won office in 2017 and then again in 2024.

What bothers him is a trade imbalance; the EU sells more to the United States than the other way around; he has been particularly vocal about German cars imported into the United States.

Early in his first term, the Wall Street Journal quoted him as complaining that “when you walk down Fifth Avenue (in New York), everybody has a Mercedes-Benz parked in front of his house. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not many, maybe none, you don’t see anything at all over there. It’s a one-way street.”

This appears to be one of the reasons why Trump imposed a 25% tariff, or import duty, on foreign cars when he declared a global tariff war on April 2.

His tariff decisions, implemented by Executive Order rather than legislation, caused deep dismay around the world and upended not only trade relations but also cast doubt on the durability of what is usually termed the rules-based international order.

That refers to the rules and alliances set up, and long promoted by the United States. For a concise assessment of the state of this system, listen to the highest-ranking official of the European Union: “The West as we knew it no longer exists.”

So said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission, the main executive body of the EU. Its top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, a former Prime Minister of Estonia, was even blunter: “The free world needs a new leader.”

Questions to consider:

1. Why was the European Union formed in the first place?

2. How can trade serve to keep the peace?

3. In what ways do nations benefit by partnering with other countries?

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May 12, 2025
Labour is learning the wrong lessons from Reform on immigration

The working classes are an easy foil for the dreams of conservative politicians. They are the salt of the earth, proper people who do real stuff, unlike the woke metropolitan elite who sit around and think things but are removed from the real world.

As Joel Budd points out in his new book Underdogs The Truth About Britain’s White Working Class, they are to the conservative imagination “sensible truth-tellers and bulwarks against left-wing nonsense.” Even more so they are the consensus position on immigration “The mass immigration that the elite has tolerated is crushing their wages, burdening the public services they rely on and filling their neighbourhood with strangers.” As Budd also points out this, well, isn’t true. In 2024 they voted for Starmer’s Labour Party who campaigned on public finances, NHS, and inflation.

New Labour old problems

It is with this in mind that Labour’s response to Reform’s election performance is as wrong as it is entirely predictable. Its wrongness could have significant consequences for universities.

Let’s start with the big results. In May’s local elections in England Reform gained 677 councillors,ten councils, two mayors, and an MP. The votes are spread across the country but as John Curtice points out for the BBC there is an education faultline.

Reform did best in places that most overwhelmingly voted for Brexit. University graduates overwhelmingly did not vote for Brexit. Reform received less than 20 per cent of the vote in wards where more than two in five people have a degree compared to 43 per cent in wards where over half of adults have few qualifications. As Curtice states

In summary, Reform did best in what has sometimes been characterised in the wake of the Brexit referendum as ‘left-behind’ Britain – places that have profited less from globalisation and university expansion and where a more conservative outlook on immigration is more common.

The policy solution alighted on by outriders in the Labour Party has so far been to say that Reform has done well therefore Labour should do things that appeal to the kind of people that vote for Reform. Or, at least, the kind of things Labour assumes appeal to the people that vote for Reform. And one of the key assumptions is that getting immigration down, whoever those immigrants might be, including students, is necessary for their electoral survival.

Blue Labour redux

University of Oxford graduate, and Blue Labour standard bearer, Jonathan Hinder MP has said he would not be “that disappointed” if universities went bust because of reducing international student immigration. Presumably he does not mean his own alma mater. Jo White, of the Red Wall Caucus, has urged Labour to “take a leaf out of President Trump’s book” when it comes to immigration. The end of the Labour Party which purports to be closer to its working class roots is moving rapidly and decisively against immigration. Tightening restrictions on graduates, and by extension making the UK a less attractive place to study, has been reported as an idea winning favour at the Home Office.

The issue with the general public is that it is complicated. On its own, reducing student immigration will not win Labour a single vote in Runcorn in Helsby where Reform most recently won an MP. For a start Runcorn does not have a university so it will certainly not address immigration issues brought up during the election. Runcorn does however have several organisations that benefit from a vibrant university sector. SME net-zero collaboration with Lancaster. INEOS which benefits from the proximity of a university workforce and industrial collaborations. And Riverside College, amongst other examples, as a franchise partner of the University of Staffordshire.

It is also worth making entirely clear that people in Runcorn also go to university. It’s a particular fault of both an understanding of class and an understanding of universities that this conflation is often made.

Immigration, immigration, immigration

If reducing student immigration will not make a material difference perhaps it will signal a vibes shift that will bring places like Runcorn on side. Again, here is where the working class will let you down. Analysis of the British Election Study collated by Joel Budd demonstrates that “Young white working-class people are not as liberal as young white middle-class people. But when it comes to immigration and race, they resemble them more closely than they resemble old white working-class people.” Again, there is just not a long term winning strategy in discouraging student and graduate migration.

For universities this might be comforting but it isn’t the point.

The extent to which anyone is willing to defend student immigration is the question of the extent to which they are willing to defend the value of universities. The value of universities is felt in exports and jobs but it is most directly felt on the extent to which the effects of a university make a place feel better. The thing that Boris Johnson, or at least his advisors, understood that higher education consistently has not is that people see politics through their places. Crime. Clean high streets. Local shops. Good jobs. Green spaces. Feeling safe to go out at night. And the myriad of tangible things that make up a place.

In policy terms the absolute antithesis of levelling up are reforms which will depress international student numbers. The last thing Runcorn needs is a poorer Liverpool and weaker universities. The challenge for universities is to tilt the scale toward being popular not just being valuable. So popular as to make decisions on cutting student immigration culturally and electorally harder not just economically wrongheaded.

The question then is how can universities do things in places that feel like they are doing good as well as actually doing good.

A day like today is not for soundbites

A key question is how infrastructure can be use toward a broad and good civic end. For example, of all of the things that the University of Liverpool did during Covid (of which there were many I have direct experience of, having worked there), the one that looms largest in my memory is when it gave up its car parks for NHS staff. Not the vaccines it helped develop or the PPE it manufactured but a low cost, high kindness gesture that resonated with people at the time. The other part of this is how largely universities loom in local communities. The extent to which their infrastructure, offices, shops, cafes, and other buildings and amenities are dispersed across the towns, cities, and localities so their presence has a resonance with the lives of people from day to day. People will often be aware of a university where it precedes the word hospital. There are opportunities for other collaborative infrastructures.

Universities tend to be pretty good at turning their research into lectures, experiments, and days out for young people in an education setting. They are less good at making their research experiential for adults. Light Years by the University of Durham (full disclosure: I volunteer in supporting this work) has taken research to places people actually gather, places of worship, highstreets, and places of local interest across Durham county, as opposed to just the city.

And it’s harder to articulate or even work out, but the extent to which local people feel universities are on their side matters. The cultural closeness universities build to their populations is not always about what they do but whether local people feeling it’s “their” or “the” university. There is no magic bullet for this beyond the slow grind of knowing a local place and acting with it.

The political vibes risk overtaking a political reality. The key to Labour winning back its voters is to make tangible differences in the places they live. The economic headroom for them to do that runs through higher education institutions and their success. The permission to do so depends on people feeling like universities are a thing worth saving even with difficult political trades offs.

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May 9, 2025
Podcast: Finances and cuts, VC pay

This week on the podcast we discuss “naming and shaming” over vice-chancellor pay packages when student outcomes fall short.

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May 8, 2025
Decoder Replay: Australia waltzes with two superpowers

The index ranks 26 countries and territories in terms of their capacity to shape their external environment. It evaluates international power through 133 indicators across themes including military capability and defense networks, economic capability, diplomatic and cultural influence, as well as resilience and future resources.

The portrait that emerges from its latest survey is that while China’s overall power still lags the United States, it is not far behind, even though the current economic slowdown is holding it back in the short term.

After the two superpowers, trailing a long way back as the next most powerful countries in the Asia-Pacific are Japan, India, Russia and then Australia.

Economic versus military power

The index confirms that China draws its power from its central place in Asia’s economic system, while that of the United States comes from its military capability and unrivaled regional defense networks.

Australia’s relationship with the two mirrors the dilemma facing the whole region.

The United States is far and away Australia’s main strategic partner and has been since the Second World War.

In a deal signed in March 2023, Australia is set to acquire a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability with help from the United States through the AUKUS Treaty, which also involves the United Kingdom.

This was followed by plans to station more U.S. forces in Australia, especially in air bases in northern and western Australia. There are also moves to increase cooperation between both countries in space, speed up efforts for Australia to develop its own guided missile production capability and work with the United States to deepen security relationships with other countries in the region — most notably Japan.

This comes as Australia has been working hard to get trade restrictions eased with China after it imposed tariffs on a range of Australian products in 2020 during a standoff with the previous government.

Dining with Joe and Jinping

China is still Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for almost one third of its trade with the world. Two-way trade with China grew 6.3% in 2020-21 to A$267 billion (about US$180 billion), mostly due to the coal and iron ore sectors.

So as it stands, Australia’s security relies on the United States but its economic prosperity is heavily influenced by China.

It’s no surprise then that Prime Minister Albanese had to walk a fine line in 2023 — going from a state dinner at the White House with U.S. President Biden on 26 October to meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping 11 days later.

Colin Heseltine, a former Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Beijing and now senior advisor for independent think tank Asialink, said Australia is in a conundrum over China.

“Australia’s major trading partner is also perceived as our No.1 security threat,” he said.

Normalizing relations before an abnormal U.S. election

Heseltine believes there is a mood of cautious optimism about the growing relationship between Australia and China since the election of the Albanese government, but expects the future will not be completely free of headwinds.

In the end, Australia, like many other nations in the region, is pragmatically making the situation work. It has seen relations with Beijing normalize, or as some prefer to describe it, stabilize.

As for the United States, relations between Canberra and Washington remain vibrant and strong.

The next big issue for Australia in managing this twin policy of improving ties with the Asia-Pacific’s two diverse superpowers could well be the 2024 U.S. presidential election — who wins it and if China features in it.

And those things are outside its control.

Three questions to consider:

1. What is the emerging dilemma facing most democratic nations in the Asia-Pacific region?
2. Is China likely to overtake the United States as the Asia-Pacific’s major superpower anytime soon?
3. What is the biggest threat to the current status quo facing nations in the region?

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May 7, 2025
How Labor can use its strong majority to support universities – Campus Review

The higher education sector is craving stability and investment after the policy changes, regulation warnings and instability of Labor’s last term.

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May 7, 2025
As universities embrace the civic, they must transcend activist/academic binaries

Everyone has their own expertise. For academics, that expertise leads to intellectual authority. Some happily choose to use that authority in the cause of activism. Others cringe at the thought, fearing the overtly political and a loss of actual or perceived objectivity.

The debate as to whether academics can be or should be activists is alive and well. But, as universities across the UK (re)discover their civic purpose, institutional spaces for overtly activist academic work are emerging.

One such space is that offered through activist-in-residence (AiR) schemes. Typically hosted by university research centres, these programmes invite activists to work alongside academics and students on projects with a social justice focus. The activists gain access to institutional resources, collaborating with their hosts through a wealth of mutually transformative and enriching encounters that may challenge traditional academic practices. Such schemes are relatively rare in the UK but more common in North American higher education institutions.

Oppositional or diplomatic activism?

Ronald Barnett has said that academic activism can lend itself to an array of stances. He suggests that activism in universities may be situated along two sliding axes – diplomatic/oppositional and individual/collective actions. Oppositional to the state, to the status quo, versus a diplomatic willingness to engage with powerful institutions.

But let’s face it, universities often are powerful institutions perpetuating the status quo. And anyway, can you really be activist within institutional structures? For some, it’s a clear “no”. When our Queer@King’s research centre at King’s College London launched a call for activists to join a pilot AiR scheme, several rejected the invite, concerned to connect their queer activism to oppressive institutional structures.

However, for those willing to accept such an invite, there’s the potential to become a (diplomatic) institutional irritant. Here, we view the work of AiR schemes as that of “collective diplomacy”. Residencies carve out institutional spaces for academics and activists to unite around a social justice cause, practising theory-informed activism and activism-informed theory.

Those engaged in AiR schemes might act as tempered radicals, working subtly to forge change, both within and beyond institutions. Quiet acts of rebellion, compared to the vocal stridency of their oppositional cousins.

Transcending the binary

Back in 2023, we launched four new AiR schemes in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London. Since then, we’ve followed the journeys of the activists and academics involved as they walk the tightrope between conformity and rebellion.

The schemes, which involved four discrete research centres, have recently concluded. They spanned diverse areas – from decolonising wellness practices to challenging media narratives on race and migration, from reclaiming language justice to reframing the lived expertise of women with HIV. The communities engaged were equally diverse – French anti-racists, diaspora communities from East and Southeast Asia, movement artists, radical translators, poets, community organisers, a charity supporting women with HIV.

Despite thematic differences, what united the schemes was a commitment to co-creation, disrupting institutional norms, and centring knowledge that often remains undervalued or excluded from academia.

Activists have, quite rightly, long been wary of universities’ historical tendencies to extract knowledge without genuine reciprocity. Our AiR schemes attempt to shift this, striving for shared authorship and long-term relationship-building over transactional engagements. Academics, meanwhile, began questioning their own positionality. Several noted how the process helped them to see the activist within. Someone who takes a different approach from big marches or picket lines. Someone who instead, operates in a different sphere, with different tools from conventional protest.

A core element of the schemes involved deep conversations in which participants explored different ways of “being”, “doing”, and “knowing”, navigating creative tensions that ignited activist potential. Engagement in transformational dialogue demanded a rethinking of traditional academic hierarchies.

A striking outcome was the impact on identity. Many participants shifted from seeing themselves as strictly ‘academic’ or ‘activist’ to occupying a hybrid space—the activist-academic or the academic-activist. As one participant put it:

I’ve learned to see myself as an academic-activist, rather than assuming that activism is something distinct from what I do as a researcher.

Others reflected on how their roles had become more fluid, disrupting rigid institutional scripts about who generates knowledge, and how.

The schemes were not without tension. Bureaucratic barriers, power imbalances, and institutional inertia were recurrent frustrations. Activists were often faced with institutional red tape, while academics navigated the challenge of validating non-traditional forms of knowledge in spaces structured around rigid frameworks. Yet, the schemes demonstrated that universities could serve as incubators for new forms of activism and collaboration – if they are willing to do the hard work of structural change.

The future of AiR schemes

AiR schemes must be more than symbolic gestures. Universities must actively dismantle the barriers that limit their potential: from rethinking funding structures that exclude grassroots activists to challenging rigid research output models that fail to recognise activist knowledge production. And of course, always ensuring that sustained funding is made available.

As universities embrace their civic role, they should go beyond the activist/academic binary. The most powerful insights from AiR schemes come not from forcing these categories into opposition, but from allowing them to blur, evolve, and co-exist.

For the academic hesitant to embrace activism, AiR schemes provide a pathway for engaged scholarship. For the activist wary of academia, they offer a chance to disrupt from within. And for the university itself, they provide a critical mirror, one that reveals its complicity, its contradictions – but also, its potential as a site of radical possibility.

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May 5, 2025
Labor champions education accessibility in sweeping win – Campus Review

Australians have resoundingly re-elected Anthony Albanese as prime minister delivering Labor a huge majority, while Peter Dutton has lost his own seat in what was one of the most devastating results for the Coalition in living memory.

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May 5, 2025