Reduction of inequality must come first

Of all the competing and only partially reconcilable ends that we might seek, the reduction of inequality must come first. Under conditions of endemic inequality, all other goals become hard to achieve. Whether in Delhi or Detroit, the poor and the permanently underprivileged cannot expect justice. They cannot secure medical treatment and their lives are accordingly reduced in length and potential. They cannot get a good education, and without that they cannot hope for even minimally secure employment - much less participate in the culture and civilisation of their society.

- Tony Judt Ill Fares the Land, p. 184

Fisher Library and the Unity of Knowledge

"From outside it [Fisher Library] is arresting; inside it is both convincing and hospitable and its message - not only the importance of books but the essential unity of knowledge - is clear to see and easy to understand."

Harrison Bryan, MA. Librarian, University of Sydney
The Veterinary Inspector, 1964




Image source - http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/about/fisher-dev/renovation/images/Fisher_Heritage_Study_2007-Part1_img_8.jpg

Wrecking the university system

"The question that future historians will find most interesting is why a political class should have set about wrecking a university system which by any criterion (including money) has been outstandingly successful"

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/12/12/ross-mckibbin/in-defence-of-british-universities/

One of the best things on universities I've seen in ages.

History in the Desert

I recently spent a week in the Broken Hill area. See what we did at http://sydney.edu.au/news/social_inclusion/84.html?newscategoryid=236&newsstoryid=10583

Learned some amazing history - see http://www.youtube.com/user/djbcjk?feature=watch

This is part of some new work I've been doing over the past year, but which hasn't made it into my blog yet. Thinking about ideas about making history inclusive.

There will undoubtedly be more to come.

MORE will mean WORSE?

I have spent far too long looking for this quote. This is Kingsley Amis, June 1960 in Encounter Magazine in an article called 'Lone Voices' (page 8). Naturally I think he is wrong...but we do still regularly hear scholars reminisce about the time there were fewer students and they were all smarter than they are now.......back in the 1990s, the 1960s...or in this case, the 1940s.

"I want to drum the fact ... into those who are playing what I have heard called the university numbers racket, those quantitative thinkers who think Britain if falling behind America and Russia by not producing as many graduates per head, and that she must catch up by building more colleges which will turn out more graduates and will give us more technologists (especially them) and more school teachers. I wish I could have a little tape-and-loudspeaker arrangement...set to bawl out at several bels: MORE will mean WORSE."

Look what happened recently....

I graduated.

Universities of whose future?

A report recently splashed across the pages of Australia's media claimed that universities were "a thousand year old industry on the cusp of profound change".

It is an old trope. Universities are often seen as "ossified", as an Australian federal minister once put it, and slow to adapt. Ernst & Young's report, University of the Future, uses pictures to underline the point. Page one features two children with an iPad (the future); page two contrasts this with a cloister, no doubt intended to represent an Australian university

Read more at
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=421819&c=1