By not being part of a mission group, Keele University can shape its own identity and avoid group politics, says Nick FoskettAs vice-chancellor of a British university, I recognise how vital it is for universities to support one another during a time of extensive reform in the higher education sector. Yet one question I am regularly asked is: why is Keele University not aligned to a mission group and never has been?With mounting pressure on universities to lead the growth of our knowledge
economy, it continues to surprise many of my contemporaries that being part of a mission group is a move Keele regularly considers, but has not yet been persuaded to undertake.The simplest answer is that none of the existing mission groups provide a natural fit for Keele, a university founded on a principle to break away from established patterns.
Keele is not unique in this respect,
as a significant number of universities choose to be non-aligned, a fact frequently overlooked in the media and political engagement with the sector.In an article for the Guardian earlier this year, Peter Scott surmised that universities are always going to be "more different and individual" than the identity they share with their mission group, and this is one of my main concerns with group alignment.Yes, mission groups aim to highlight diversity in the sector, encourage collaboration and stimulate debate – the Russell Group provides the prevailing example of how a group can rally strength in numbers to create a powerful voice to stimulate change. Yet for me, being aligned brings with it greater risks of marginalising a university's own interests for the benefit of the wider group, which cannot be ignored.Firstly, the very nature of group politics means that each group has clearly defined parameters, usually controlled by two or three dominant universities and
voiced by just a handful
of spokespeople.
Doesn't alignment to a group come with an added pressure to pursue and conform to an agreed agenda, potentially sidelining your institution's interests and concerns? – particularly when these interests either aren't a priority for
the group, or worse still, are not shared by the group at all.Secondly,
we need to consider the strong public identity of each group, and the impact of this on its members. We see time and again how MPs, parents, students and the media find mission group "identities" helpful to their own analysis. The group identity aids in the compartmentalisation of what its members stand for and each university becomes inextricably associated with its group colleagues and their latest campaigns, successes and failures.
While there are undoubtedly some benefits to be had by this association, for me they are surpassed by the risk of being overshadowed, outshone and, in some cases, tarred by the overarching interests of the group, potentially causing lack of understanding about a university's offering and dampening its wider profile.Most importantly for me, are the negative effects of alignment on innovation in the sector as a whole. Arguably, it discourages competition between universities aligned to the same group and creates a hierarchy where research funding and investment are more likely to be granted to universities in the Russell Group because of its collective success and powerful presence, as opposed to universities in other groups, which have an outstanding track record of developing world-leading research within smaller institutions.So is Keele non-aligned simply because of the negative aspects of mission-groups? No.
In my three years as vice-chancellor, I have found a number of positive reasons for Keele's standalone approach. Clearly, it helps Keele to define its own identity and interests without conforming to an overarching body, but what's more, it means we are viewed as more of a neutral, non-partisan university.
I have found that senior colleagues are more likely to be
invited to sit on thinktanks and committees to discuss issues in the sector and voice Keele's view.Perhaps most importantly, it provides my staff with more opportunities for partnerships with a broader group of institutions, as we are not bound to collaborate with universities within our group.For me, universities have the majority of their issues in common.
We must be prepared to come together strongly around these issues, rather than simply allowing the compartmentalisation of the sector to provide an easy option for policymakers and resource providers to engage with the mission groups which, by definition, only ever represent a minority of the sector.Professor
Nick Foskett is vice-chancellor
at
Keele University – follow it on Twitter @KeeleUniversityThis content is brought to
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is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds A study traces government use of an off-the-shelf program called FinSpy to monitor the electronic activities of individuals, often in countries with a record of political repression.The
Obama administration plans to reallocate money designated for high-speed rail if the states granted the funds reject them. Deciding whether to start fresh or work within an existing framework.
United Airlines said yesterday that it was dismantling Ted, its low-cost "airline google sniper airline" created in 2004 to compete with Southwest Airlines.
United said Ted was the victim of soaring fuel costs.
John Lannan didn't really want to talk about last season. He has answered some of the questions before and professional athletes are loath to look back. The Obama administration reiterated its support Monday for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" law and policy as Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) worked to strip language repealing the ban from the annual defense authorization bill.
While "narcocultura" has penetrated every other element of Mexican pop culture, from movies and music to TV and religion, the masked lucha libre characters and
their corny good-vs.-evil story lines have remained untouched.
Lawyers say officers will exercise right not to answer questions to avoid incriminating themselves in criminal proceedingsPolice officers on duty at Sheffield Wednesday's
Hillsborough football ground when 96 Liverpool supporters died in 1989 will refuse to give evidence to the new inquest into the disaster, their barristers have said at a pre-inquest hearing.Lawyers
for the three most senior surviving officers in command that day, and the Police Federation representing lower-ranked officers, said the inquest should be delayed for years until any possible criminal proceedings have been concluded. If held before that, said Paul Greaney QC, for the Police Federation, officers under investigation for possible criminal misconduct would exercise their right not to answer questions, to avoid the risk of incriminating themselves."Many
of those witnesses will be under investigation for possible offences, including
homicide, and there is potential for them to be prosecuted," he said to the coroner, Lord Justice Goldring. "It is likely there will be an increased incidence of witnesses refusing to give evidence by invoking the privilege against self-incrimination."From the rows of bereaved Hillsborough family members in the large courtroom on High Holborn in London,
there were audible gasps,
and one said, quite loudly: "Outrageous."John Beggs QC, representing Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, who was in command at Hillsborough, and the senior officers inside and outside the ground, Superintendents Roger Greenwood and Roger Marshall, supported Greaney's call for the inquest to be delayed.Goldring
refused, however, and ruled that the new inquest should start in early 2014. He said that waiting for the criminal investigation, which was being led by former Durham chief constable Jon Stoddart, and then any prosecutions and appeals, could amount to a six-year delay.In his opening remarks, Goldring expressed sympathy for the families' anguish and grief, and emphasised the need for the inquest to be held quickly, given that 24 years have already elapsed since the disaster.
The original inquest with its verdict of accidental death was quashed in December after a long campaign against it by the families of the victims."I bear in mind that over that course of time some of the bereaved have died, most recently, of course, Anne Williams," Goldring said.
Williams, 62, who lost her 15-year-old son Kevin at Hillsborough, died last week.
"Her death is a powerful reminder, if one were needed, that there is an urgency attaching to the commencement of the inquest hearings."Michael
Mansfield QC, representing some of the families of the victims, pressed Goldring to appoint his own staff to handle the evidence for the inquest, saying the families had no faith in the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is gathering the evidence on police conduct during and after the disaster, and with whom Stoddart is working closely. Goldring said he would consider that request.Goldring will decide next week the location for the new inquest, after the family groups disagreed about where they would prefer.
Mansfield, representing the largest group, 71 families who are HFSG members, said their overwhelming majority view was for the inquest to be held in London. The principal reason, he said, was that London would be perceived as neutral in the bitterly contested history of Hillsborough, and there would be no possibility of "actual or perceived bias".However
Pete Weatherby QC, representing 20 families, and lawyers for two other families, argued London was too far for mostly Liverpool-based family members to attend in full, and somewhere neutral in the north, such as Preston, should host it.Hillsborough disasterLiverpoolPoliceDavid Connguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Epic EV’s 2013 Torq looks like a personal spacecraft and has three wheels, but a former Tesla executive raved about it.
Does your community association have a swimming pool or hot tub? If so, you should be aware of a law that requires new safety measures. In 2010, three years before he became Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio sat down with prosecutors and human rights lawyers in his office to give formal testimony about his role during Argentina's "dirty war."
The internal conflict had killed thousands
of civilians from 1976 to 1983, but was, and is, still only partially resolved.
The Catholic Church, a powerful institution in Argentina, has
long been accused of working with the right-wing military regime. It was probably only a matter of time until someone in Argentina asked about Bergolgio's role. Read full article >> Across the country, businesses have recovered while
the public sector forex-growth-bot and Detroit may be the most extreme example of a city’s dual fates diverging. Buffalo, Cincinnati and Indianapolis were the first three teams to use the franchise tag on players. Plant with contractual maintenance Chile's largest labor union called a nationwide strike on Thursday to demand improved labor conditions and tax reform, but officials said only a small percentage of workers participated. Fitness groups in the city are fuming about rules that restrict group exercise in parks and open spaces. During her free time back in high school, Madeline Salazar was often surrounded by piles of balsa wood in her house in East Los Angeles, sanding down her carefully designed bridges for engineering competitions.�I
remember being a real nerd about my bridges; I had this whole rack with all the supplies to make bridges,†she laughs. â€?It was a mess in my house in those days.â€Now
a senior at MIT, Salazar always excelled in school: Her parents, who emigrated from Mexico in search of greater opportunity for their family, encouraged her. �Although I’m a first-generation student, my parents really valued education,†Salazar says.
�From the moment we started school, there were very high expectations for me and my younger sister.†This weekend, MIT hosts the 59th meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies, the largest annual conference devoted to the history of France. The event, running through Sunday, April 7, will feature 110 panels and roughly 550 participants from around the world. While the conference’s theme is �Nature and Technology in French History,†the panels cover all periods of French life and a wide array of topics. MIT News spoke with professor of history Jeffrey Ravel, a specialist in France who has helped organize the event, about the state of the field.
Q.
This conference covers a wide array of subjects ranging from medieval times through 2013.
What are a few of the topics being discussed that help us understand France’s place in the contemporary world?A. Most of the conference participants would tell you it is the very broad sweep of French history, from its beginnings a millennium ago to the election of François Hollande and the military intervention in Mali today, that means the subject speaks to the concerns of the contemporary world in so many ways: It helps us understand today’s politics, culture, and many other aspects of the world, such as globalization.
A lot of places around the globe have histories that are a thousand years old or more, but few of them have been so richly preserved, or so amply debated, as France. Until recently, much of that argumentation has been conducted by the French themselves, in the service of creating the French national identity and determining who can claim membership in
the state.
In the last 10 to 20 years, however, historians both inside and outside the country have taken a closer look at France’s colonial and postcolonial history. These investigations have placed the country in a global context, not only since the heyday of European imperialism at the end of the 19th century, but in earlier periods as well. In my own field of Old Regime and Revolutionary French history, we now look more carefully at France’s Mediterranean rivalries with the Ottomans and North Africans, or the kingdom’s colonial competition with Britain around the globe, when trying to understand the origins of Enlightenment and Revolution. The fact that so many panels at the conference are devoted to colonialism and globalism indicates the current vitality of these approaches.Q. Given the event’s theme and MIT’s role as
host, what are some of the important questions concerning technology and society in France that historians are most interested in — and why?A.
France has been a leader in technological innovation for a long time, beginning with engineering developments in the 12th century that led to the construction of soaring Gothic cathedrals, down to the Eiffel Tower, the Concorde supersonic jet, and current infrastructure such as nuclear power and high-speed rail.
Panels during our conference will examine information technologies from the printing press to the Internet, and France’s changing transportation infrastructure over the last two centuries. While our conference theme of �Nature and Technology†highlights France’s technologically rich history, it also pairs this topic with the long interplay of humans and the
natural environment
on French soil.
An influential mid-20th-century group of French historians called the Annalistes taught that history was driven by long-term changes between human populations and the natural environment, a remarkably prescient insight in a discipline previously characterized by the stories of great men and the formation of nation-states.
This newer tradition will continue in our conference, where a number of sessions will be devoted to the history of forests, water usage, Alpine recreational activity, and other environmental topics.
In our Friday afternoon plenary session, three colleagues will consider how technological and environmental history alters the
traditional narrative of the French past that centers on the radical political rupture of the 1789 Revolution.Q.
The study of history in any given area evolves over time.
What kinds of changes in the field of French history have you observed during your time at MIT?A.
The biggest change has been the internationalization micro niche finder history.
Even a quarter-century ago, when I began graduate school, the center of gravity in the field was Paris. The leading French scholars welcomed non-French historians of the country into their seminars, but they rarely read work in French history published outside France, or in languages other than French. Paris is still important, and of course U.S.
historians love going to France for conferences and research, but the dialogue between the French and others is much more vibrant today.
In part, this is
due to new academic exchanges and funding possibilities within the eurozone, which have encouraged French historians to learn other languages and team up with colleagues in other European countries. But it’s also due to the high quality of work being published by non-French scholars outside Europe, especially in North America.Dozens
of our French colleagues will be joining us in Cambridge this weekend for
the conference, where papers will be presented in French and English.
One of the sessions I most eagerly anticipate is a pair of videoconferenced panels on the theme of �Nature and Technology in the French Revolution,†which we have organized jointly with the Institute for the History of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne. In the first half of
the session, three U.S. scholars will give papers on this question, then respond to comments from Paris. In the second half, three Parisian scholars will present their work on this topic, then engage in discussion with the group here at MIT.
These sessions illustrate perfectly the internationalization of French history, aided by technological advances. The industry’s regulator ruled that a campaign for Dove body wash unfairly maligned competing products and said that it should be stopped.
Republican national committee says Democrats' 2012 election campaign had 'clear edge in new media and ground game'Five months before the presidential election, the Republicans started making a claim that struck close observers of digital tools and social media in political campaigning as pretty optimistic. They said that despite being vastly outspent by the digital
wizards in Barack Obama's re-election team, they
were confident that they had the wherewithal to compete with him on election day. As Zac Moffat, Mitt Romney's digital director, put it: "We are creating the campaign that we need to be successful in November."Funny the difference a drubbing at the polls can make. This week, the Republican party said the exact opposite,
admitting that the conservative movement had been left standing by
Obama for America, the president's highly sophisticated digital network of campaigners and volunteers that was unleashed in 2012.The
admission comes from the Republican national committee, which has conducted a wide-ranging consultation as part of its autopsy into the failure of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign last November.
The results of the survey, contained within the RNC's soul-searching report, makes for sober reading as it admits that the Republicans were left standing by Obama for America, the president's highly sophisticated digital network of campaigners and volunteers that was unleashed in 2012."Democrats had the clear edge on new media and the ground game," the report says, "in terms of both reach and effectiveness." It notes that the Obama campaign knocked on twice as many doors as Romney's, and managed to convert that personal contact into actual votes with far greater frequency.The
RNC calls for nothing less than a sea change in attitudes. "Our challenge is less of a technology problem and more of a culture problem. We need to strive for an environment of intellectual curiosity, data, research and testing to ensure our programs are working."The emphasis on a "new culture" is a recognition on the part of Republican leaders of the severity of their defeat last November in the digital realm.
It has been welcomed by influential digital thinkers on the Republican side.Patrick
Ruffini, president of the digital media agency Engage, said the phrase a "culture of curiosity" was crucial. "If
we are doing in 2016 what Obama did in 2012, it would show we have no new ideas.
We have to catch up this year so that by 2014 we can get to a place where we are stronger than they are."Ruffini
stressed that it was not just a question of technology, but of talent. The Obama
re-election team, based in Chicago, drew together some of the most talented new media and technology developers of their generation, and allowed them to innovate through the course of the campaign.The result was a customised and unified database of millions of voter records and connecting it to social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.
By contrast, the Romney campaign, scrambling always to play catch-up, put their faith in more traditional campaign techniques such as TV advertising paid for by billionaire donors and their Super Pacs.As
a first move towards confronting that disparity, the RNC is going out to recruit a chief technology and digital officer from Silicon Valley.
The party has set a deadline of 1 May to bring on board someone "whose experience and background sends a strong and immediate signal that we are serious about growing our digital and tech operations".As
part of its autopsy survey, the RNC talked to 227 Republican campaign managers and field staff and asked them fat burning furnace how well the Romney campaign had done in comparison with the Obama network. The participants felt that the Republicans did better than their Democratic rivals in only one regard – in mobilising third-party campaigns, in other words the Super PACs put together by outside supporters.By
contrast, the Democrats had the upper hand on all core aspects of the new generation of digital campaigning: data analytics, micro-targeting voter files, social media, internet advertising, using email to persuade voters and email fundraising.Chuck
DeFeo, who managed the digital side of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in 2004, said that "the first step to solving the problem is admitting there is a problem." But he added
that the autopsy report was "very much the beginning stage"."I'm certain the Republicans are going to move the ball down the field by 2016. But Obama is clearly far out ahead, and whether they can do enough to catch up remains to be seen."RepublicansUS elections 2016Obama inaugurationInternetSocial mediaUnited StatesEd Pilkingtonguardian.co.uk
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All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Opportunity for an hour with tech giant's chief executive is auctioned for charity – and already stands at $180,000It might be the most expensive cup of coffee ever. If you want to meet Apple's chief executive Tim Cook over a hot brew at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, you'll need to stump up more than $180,000 – the current going price for an auction on the website Charitybuzz that will give you some real face time with the man now running the business.Proceeds from the auction, which will run until 14 May, are going to the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a charity, making Cook the latest participant in an ongoing series of "time auctions" to bring benefits from celebrity.The
chat – expected to be about an hour – might give people time to quiz him about whether the company has lost its mojo, or how important China is, or get a little help with their new iPhone or iPad.
Or just to discuss coffee.The auction kicked off on Wednesday at 4pm BST with a $6,000 bid; within four hours it had hit $16,000, and then
burst through the $100,000 level after eight hours as news of the auction spread on Twitter and Facebook.With Cook's time
seen as so precious – and interaction with him so potentiaily valuable – bids on the auction have ramped up rapidly. Though the bidders don't have to give real names, they seem already to include executives from rival companies such as BlackBerry, as well as Clearcrate, which makes cases for the iPad mini tablet, which was
briefly the leader with a $160,000 bid.One British photographer who bid $130,000 before being trumped
said he wanted to talk to Cook about human rights in Asia, where he is travelling.
Jason Denning, a photographer, works for a charity which he says
has similar aims to those to the one Cook is fundraising for: "I
thought it would be a good way to bring light onto my project and other charities here in Asia which I could discuss with Tim during the coffee," he told the Guardian.
"However sadly the bidding has gone too high now for me to even consider bidding again. My money would be better spent on the project itself."Cook's auction has the chance to rival or even beat the current record on Charitybuzz, where someone paid $255,000
to shadow former president Bill Clinton for a day.But
it will be hard to match the $3.46m
paid by a group of investors in 2012 for lunch with the financier Warren Buffett, who has been auctioning
the chance to lunch with him since 2000. The money is raised for the Glide Foundation, which provides for the homeless in San Francisco. Then again, Buffett's auction allows the winner to bring along seven friends – meaning that on a per-person basis each had in effect paid $430,000.Charitybuzz says it has raised more than $60m for charity since setting up in 2005, by offering experiences such as going backstage with Paul McCartney ($70,000), climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and getting business advice from Richard Branson.It says bids have to be made with a valid credit card, which is checked for sufficient funds
before bids are accepted.CharityBuzz
said: "The highest bid we've had in our history was the winning $610,000 bid for a 2013 Lamborghini Aventador roadster this past March 2013 to benefit One Drop.
The highest bid for an experience at Charitybuzz was a $255,000 winning bid to spend a day shadowing President Bill Clinton to benefit the Clinton Foundation."AppleComputingTablet computersTim CookCharitiesWarren BuffettCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd shared a passion for football and little else. But their lives did cross, and now Hernandez, an N.F.L.
tight end, is in jail, charged with Lloyd’s murder.
WASHINGTON - Higher oil and food prices.
Unemployment near 9 percent.
Crises in the Middle East and