Sexual minorities – people who identify as, among others, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer LGBTIQ+ – enjoy very few legal protection in Africa. In some countries, “homosexual acts” are criminalised and may even carry the death penalty. South Africa is the only country on the continent that has enshrined the rights of sexual […] … learn more→

A car can seem like a fantastic investment, but you’ll often find that it depreciates quickly in value after you’ve purchased it. Depreciation can cause headaches for owners who are looking to upgrade. You don’t want to have bought a vehicle a few years ago, only to find out that you can’t get any money […] … learn more→

Time and again I’ve covered how the kangaroo campus court system, incredibly vulnerable to corruption, has been corrupted. The vast bulk of the time when I’ve detailed what goes on in this grotesque simulacrum of a legitimate court system, I’ve shown how corrupt administration uses this system in one of two ways. The first way […] … learn more→

You may not know this, but a great deal of our data about the human mind is based on a relatively small but intensively studied population: first-year undergraduate university students. There has long been concern about the over-reliance on students as a source of data, particularly around lack of demographic diversity and limited sample sizes. […] … learn more→

People often ask me about the professional doctorate, what it’s about and whether it’s worth doing.  Here’s the beginning of an answer to that very big question… I need to come clean about my own prejudice about professional doctorates first of all. I think they are A Good Thing. You may have thought that I […] … learn more→

It’s pretty clear something’s up in the economy. The strip mining of our economic system has been going on for years. Only the tremendous wealth pouring in from the student loan scam has allowed the devastation which has hammered most every other job field to skip higher education. Now, if higher education were run by […] … learn more→

Young people today are constantly at risk of indoctrination – whether deliberate or inadvertent. This can be by advertisers, politicians, religious extremists or the media – and can make it hard for young people to get a handle on the world around them. But in this age of contradictory images and constant messages, I believe […] … learn more→

In late February, the headline of a news commentary website that receives more than 2.8 million monthly visitors announced, “Jews Destroy Another One of Their Own Graveyards to Blame Trump.” The story, inspired by the recent desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, was the seething fantasy of an anti-Semitic website known as the Daily […] … learn more→

In a review of my 2009 book, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves, I’d been described as “a 21st-century Indiana Jones”, who travelled to “the remotest regions on Earth researching something many regard as mythical”. I liked that image of myself: an intrepid, adventurous academic. Indiana […] … learn more→

In Australia approximately one student in five is bullied at school every few weeks or more often. Many of these students suffer serious emotional and psychological harm, such as persistent anxiety, depression and suicidal thinking, and are unable to concentrate on their school work. It is clear they need help. Teachers routinely inform students that […] … learn more→