Monthly Archives: July 2019

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world except in US

School spankings are banned just about everywhere around the world except in US

In 1970, only three countries – Italy, Japan and Mauritius – banned corporal punishment in schools. By 2016, more than 100 countriesbanned the practice, which allows teachers to legally hit, paddle or spank students for misbehavior. The dramatic increase in bans on corporal punishment in schools is documented in an analysis that we conducted recently to learn more about the forces […] … learn more→

How Australia can make AI work for our economy, and for our people

How Australia can make AI work for our economy, and for our people

The idea of robots taking our jobs is not radically new. But artificial intelligence (AI) is now completely reorganising the global economy. Some estimates of productivity-driven economic growth conclude that AI will contribute approximately $US16 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Unfortunately – compared to the European Union, Japan, United States and United Kingdom – […] … learn more→

Universities must exorcise their ghost students

Universities must exorcise their ghost students

Most seasoned university teaching staff will have encountered them at some point in their careers. They are the mysterious “ghost” or “no-show” students who enrol in your modules, sometimes in significant numbers, but then fail to attempt any assessment tasks. In many cases, these students also avoid the lectures and tutorials, or don’t participate in […] … learn more→

Where I stand: Rewriting the academic bio

Where I stand: Rewriting the academic bio

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about expertise and its history and the ways that academics like me deploy it to underpin our knowledge and authority claims. This is my current bio, taken from my UTS website: I send versions of this bio to conferences and academic journals and reproduce it in thousands of conversations. […] … learn more→

Why Facebook’s new ‘privacy cop’ is doomed to fail

Why Facebook’s new ‘privacy cop’ is doomed to fail

The Federal Trade Commission issued its largest-ever fine, of US$5 billion, to Facebook for violating a 2011 privacy settlement in late July. But the amount is only about a month’s worth of the company’s revenue, suggesting that the fine, while seeming large, is, in fact, rather modest. More significantly, Facebook is required to have an “outside assessor” – a […] … learn more→

There is a College course on “Problematizing whiteness”

There is a College course on “Problematizing whiteness”

In my book I detail how academic fraud is systemic in higher education, detailing how our corrupted accreditation system and corrupt “leadership” have allowed what used to be the greatest university system into the world to debase into predominantly a massive scan to indebt and enslave our kids. That was over 5 years ago, and […] … learn more→