Our universities! Our planet!
The end of the first week of UCU strike action coincided with the latest climate strike on Friday 29 November. rs21 members report on pickets from around the country.
Support the climate strikes!
Tomorrow striking university workers will be joining the next youth strike for climate. What can the movements learn from each other?
UCU strikes: a fighting start
Eight days of strikes got off to a confident start across sixty Higher Education institutions today.
Education struggles in Greece
A struggle against neoliberal reforms to Higher Education in Greece has come to a head this week.
Striking together for Higher Education
The whys, whats and what nexts of the upcoming higher education strikes, which begin on 25 November.
SOAS in crisis: a year of struggles
Seth Uzman looks back over the struggles on campus at SOAS in the past academic year, and draws lessons for the higher education sector as a whole.
Student bans and securitisation at KCL
Politically active students at KCL have been barred from entering campus without any justification. Read KCL Justice for Cleaners’ statement here!
How students supported the miners’ strike: an activist remembers
On 6 March 1984, the walkout at Cortonwood Colliery signalled the beginning of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Colin Revolting remembers how he and his fellow students supported the miners.
Não passarão – the fight against Bolsonaro
Listen to anti-Bolsonaro activists discuss the far-right turn in Brazilian politics and what we can do to organise in solidarity.
Rape culture and the neoliberal university
Warwick University’s response to sexism, racism and rape culture on campus has been appalling but sadly predictable, writes Warwick graduate Rachel Jones.
‘Courageous conversations’: students occupy SOAS library
This week students at SOAS occupied the library in opposition to cuts. Seth Uzman points to the wider education struggles they are part of.
What exactly does a university Vice Chancellor do?
As HE workers prepare for action over pay, Mike Haynes asks: what do VCs actually do?
Library cuts and mathemagics
A struggle over library cuts reveals how shock doctrine tactics work at the level of an individual university.
Three days that shook the UCU leadership
Rank-and-file university workers are pushing UCU’s leadership in a bid for democracy, accountability and a fighting union
The death of irony at UCU congress
At the heart of the fight is the question of who controls the union: the officials or the membership?
50 years from May ‘68, students in France are mobilising again
France is again in the midst of a wave of intense social action, with universities disrupted for months and mass arrests in Mayday protests.
“They can never stop the spring”: France in 2018
Fifty years after the 1968 uprisings, social struggles are flaring up in France once again following attacks on workers and universities
University picket lines – a place of learning
Footage from Goldsmiths college picket line where staff and students talk about their experience of striking so far.
Read the new bulletin on the UCU strike!
Introducing USS Strike Bulletin, a collaborative online project exploring the bigger questions around neoliberalism in Higher Education.
Update: what’s new in the UCU strike?
We look at the latest developments in the wave of strikes that has taken employers by surprise across the higher education system.
UCU strike: dispatches from the picket line
Striking academic workers and their student supporters report on the ongoing nationwide action in defence of pensions.
“We have to fight this”: interview with a striking lecturer
The strike action beginning next Thursday will be one of the largest ever in UK Higher Education.
Review: Student Revolt by Matt Myers
Nick Evans reviews a new oral history of Britain’s 2010 youth uprising against fees and EMA cuts. “It’s just a point in a line of history, but for me it’s absolutely the beginning. It’s point zero.” Charlotte Gray “For me, Millbank was about collective power.” Natalie Graham “Look. Tomorrow and the day after a lot […]
Interview: Annie Cohen, Union of Jewish Students presidential candidate
Annie Cohen has been called the ‘anti-Zionist candidate’ for leadership of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). rs21 interviewed her about why she’s standing. Annie Cohen, tell us a bit about why you decided to stand for UJS President. I’m very involved in Jewish left wing activism with Jewdas*, which has grown incredibly over the […]
Video: Free Education Now demonstration 15 November 2017
Watch interviews and speeches from the march against university tuition fees and the costs of living for students on 15 November 2017.
Interview: The Fight for Fair Pay in Universities
‘Fractionals’ are hourly paid part-time teaching staff in universities who are paid a ‘fraction’ of a full-time salary. An increasing proportion of academics are on these precarious contracts. On 8 May, SOAS Fractionals for Fair Play (FFFP) announced via their Facebook page that, after threatening a mass marking boycott in late March, management had accepted all of […]
Review: An Ounce of Practice
Heike Becker reviews An Ounce of Practice by Leo Zeilig, discussing the themes of love, resilience and pragmatism across a varied theatres of activism.
Defend Malia Bouattia
Lisa Leak argues that socialists should back Malia Bouattia in her bid for re-election as President of the National Union of Students. This week’s conference of the National Union of Students will be a quiet litmus test for British radical politics. The main focus will be the NUS presidential election, which will pit the incumbent […]
‘End investment in fossil fuels’ occupation at King’s College London
Students at Kings College are occupying part of the Strand Campus in order to pressure management to divest from fossil fuels
South African students resume their fight – and face repression
The last few months have seen protests erupt in universities across South Africa. Ashley Fataar, from the South African organisation Keep Left, reports. In September students at universities across South Africa began demonstrating for the complete removal of university fees for poor students. The protests erupted when the minister responsible for higher education announced that […]