Ian Webster

My TLS piece on the Exeter cuts ✨

"the pleasure of describing complex things and conveying the joy of understanding" Good Weird or Bad Weird www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Why is 'Ubu Roi' not more in our discourse?

Well done University of Exeter management. Redundancies, a shortage of accomodation, and now this. A tip top team. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The management of the University of Exeter goes from strength to strength.

It’s difficult. But perhaps a moral imperative to imagine a world “expanded to the limitless dimensions of hope.”

Excellent letter from the BSPS. Watching what's happening at Exeter with great concern for friends there.

Make sure you make it to the end 16/16 is super important. Congratulations Matt.

Let's not forget that these changes are about remaking the university into a corporate entity... no longer an education, but customers buying products

Someone's labour theory of value - Ricardo, Sraffa, or maybe Marx www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

What a crass vandal

And I thought Burnham should have kept Jones as he seemed a capable minister and his previous chairing of Select Committees was brilliant. But now I understand Burnham's reasoning

Easy win @lucympowell.bsky.social

Congratulation to @lucympowell.bsky.social. You've been brilliant as deputy leader and can you now please sort out the mess in higher education?

Looks like Burnham’s going for the Poincaré option: ‘The Rentiers of the Right could entrust him with their purses, and the Puritans of the Left could entrust him with their principals’

It's something that The Guardian is supportive, but it needs to be longer and louder in that support www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

More evidence that the Exeter cuts make no sense.

My heart is heavy that we are making a collective miscalculation in undervaluing the humanities - from my FT piece www.ft.com/content/fbde...

Though not about the cuts in humanities in the UK this piece wonderfully explains the inadequate thinking, reading, and analysis done by those making decisions with "the credulous use of social-science or scientistic [or economic] methods for the concerns and objects of the humanities"

Maybe there is some economic value in English after all.

Kudos to Bristol www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Good to see that University of Exeter has its priorities right. Cutting humanities, and cozying up to the defence industry.

Succinct and brilliant

So much for universities cutting humanities departments. It is naive and will back fire.

This analysis of the crisis at British universities, using Exeter as the prime example deserves a wide audience. johnheathershaw.substack.com/p/the-crisis...

Only when big names shout out do the media pick up the story. The story is not Exeter or their supporters it is about the dismantling of humanities: www.theguardian.com/education/20...

In solidarity, always, while simultaneously aware that I am extremely lucky to be where I am. c.org/2nzpctxpmF

This is one of the reasons why Exeter's decision to make cuts to the English department doesn't make sense. Even in a world where universities are solely for getting a job for graduates, English manages to do that rather effectively.

@steveracemp.bsky.social any comment on what's happening at the university?

Unbridled vandalism www.timeshighereducation.com/news/i-thoug...

It might just help change the senior management team's minds

Don't let the senior management at Exeter play silly financial games with the brilliant academic staff c.org/XDMSfwtvw5

It's made it to the FT giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

T.S. Eliot described by Golding as a 'silly old twit'. It's a wonderful review. www.the-tls.com/lives/letter...

Well that's all clear then

We're overjoyed to announce next summer's star-studded line-up of scholars. Join us at Merton College, University of Oxford, 4-12 July 2026, for an unforgettable week of poetry!

This tells us what a Reform government would be like

Why is the Eliot Summer School ALWAYS FUN? We think it's thanks to Director Cuda and all the students! Sign up, join, come or come again to nerd out at Eliot Camp this summer 💪🤓🌻

Perhaps if we think of AI as a market it might give us a reasonable guide on how to regulate it

An excellent, and to my mind, compelling read

It's the time of the philosopher

be gone analysis, examination, and determining... it is time to wonder

Why is this mysterious woman ALWAYS RIGHT? She's the skeleton key to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land... register for the 2026 International Summer School and let's talk about why! tseliotschool.com. @intleliotsociety.bsky.social @tseliotfoundation.bsky.social thanks @benjuhmuhn.bsky.social art,

Hey what could be better on a chilly Thursday in November than to edit those abstracts destined for MSA/BAMS? Doing so with the Eliot Society grad reps, of course!

The Waste Land, Halloween edition!

Help me get this word out? Thanks! Scholarships available, full schedule soon

From the FT "Joel Mokyr is known as an economic historian rather than someone who stuffs their papers with whizzy maths. And this is the fourth Nobel in a row to feature a substantial economic history element." Some hope for the economics profession?

Always an fascinating award to following. Congrats to the winners. societyofauthors.org/prizes/the-s...

Shout it from the rooftops...