Content warning: This article contains descriptions of psychological and verbal abuse. If this article causes you any distress, please seek support.  There is a form of privilege that we try not to speak about. Society knows this privilege and often casts woeful eyes and aching hearts to those without it but, in academia and science, we cover […] … learn more→

Students enter university as young adults embarking on a new life. Hazing rituals are meant to be a lighthearted initiation into university life that breaks down barriers between seniors and freshers and prepares the newcomers for their future. But hazing can be a terrifying ordeal. Many practices associated with being initiated by other students are cruel […] … learn more→

As an educational ethicist, I research teachers’ ethical obligations. These can include their personal ethics such as protecting students from harm, respect for justice and truth, and professional norms like social conformity, collegial loyalty and personal well-being. Moral tensions in schools can come about when certain categories of norms conflict with each other. For example, sometimes […] … learn more→

Those unfamiliar with the details of the US Constitution may have been surprised to learn last week that the “electoral college” is not an academic unit within American universities. In fact, the campus is a dubious place from which to project outcomes of campaigns in national politics. It brings to mind the fool’s errand attributed […] … learn more→

What goals does what we call inclusive writing pursue? Essentially, this writing aims to make women more visible, by explicitly indicating their presence, and to end the supposed domination of the grammatical masculine. On the linguistic and sociolinguistic level, we can distinguish three aspects which inform us about the treatment that the school should reserve for […] … learn more→

Universities are increasingly being challenged over their responses to racial, gender and class inequality. As a result, even those reluctant to admit that they perpetuate discrimination are at last trying to do something about it. Yet certain issues remain largely undiscussed. The wake-up call has been loudest about black and ethnic minority (BAME) school-leavers, who […] … learn more→

An online “proctor” who can survey a student’s home and manipulate the mouse on their computer as the student takes an exam. A remote-learning platform that takes face scans and voiceprints of students. Virtual classrooms where strangers can pop up out of the blue and see who’s in class. These three unnerving scenarios are not hypothetical. Rather, they stand as stark, real-life examples […] … learn more→

As consumers shifted their discretionary spending on electronics to price-competitive online offerings after the Great Recession, some analysts were predicting the demise of the well-known US electronics retailer Best Buy. Enter CEO Hubert Joly in 2012. Joly quickly did away with undifferentiated, small-ticket items, such as DVDs and alarm clocks, that had zero chance of […] … learn more→

The pandemic has increased the situation of social isolation of human beings, social by nature. For this reason, we have needed to resort to the massive use of social networks and the internet to be able to maintain our basic needs for affiliation and socialization . Although this fact appears to be positive, technologies carry risks that can seriously affect […] … learn more→

In August 2020, California passed a law that requires college students in the state university system to take an ethnic studies course in order to graduate. In essence, the California state legislature has made it mandatory for the nearly 500,000 students in the Cal State system to take the classes that student activists and others fought for universities to […] … learn more→