Aural history
Harriet Swain may have been confused by my accent, as she misquoted me as saying that the publication of oral history testimony on the world wide web was the "antithesis" of oral historians' original...
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Beauty of the beasts
By arguing that researchers should examine the distinctive things animals can do, rather than the extent to which they can mimic humans, Stephen Budiansky touches on what may be a key political issue...
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Genetic credentials
Dave King quotes Mae-Wan Ho as suggesting that in order to be appointed as a lecturer at the Open University in 1976 she passed herself off as a population geneticist ("Objector on the road to gene...
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Jazz teaching is cool for cats
The "fierce debate" "raging" over whether jazz can be taught (THES, "Hot and bothered over all that jazz", December 25) is ancient history. Any people still arguing over it are being ignored by those...
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Jazz teaching is cool for cats
I originally suggested incorporating jazz into the AB syllabus in 1989 on the basis of long personal experience. Most of us are musically average and by no means blessed with genius. My unfinished...
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Jazz teaching is cool for cats
Could we please stop perpetrating this originally racist myth that jazz is so different from all other creative endeavours? By convention, the jazz aesthetic emphasises individual sound and...
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Keele brought to book
The Turner collection, formerly held by the university library at Keele, represented one of the most important research resources in its field outside London, Oxford and Cambridge. The results of a...
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Keele brought to book
I write as a member of Keele's senate, who voted against sale of the Turner collection. As John Rogers states (THES, Letters, January 8), we were told that our vote would not affect the final...
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With learning, responsibility
Those who gain most from higher education should fund its growth, argues Richard Pearson As a nation we produce, size for size, as many graduates as our competitors. The Institute for Employment...
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No place of terrorism
How should British universities counter claims that they are breeding grounds for terrorists, asks Paul Wilkinson Reports that several of those arrested in Yemen in recent weeks are British students...
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Agony aunt
Some of my first-year students are very reluctant to participate in tutorials. What is the best way of encouraging them without embarrassing them in the process? It is easy to forget that students do...
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The power of words in the right ear
As Burns Night approaches, an Edinburgh University team has chosen a Robert Burns quote to introduce its handbook, Reviewing Your Teaching: "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as...
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Star turn
Alison Utley flies in the plane that carried the A-bomb and, together with a peace studies lecturer and his MA students at Bradford University, decides whether to bomb Nagasaki. If this was physics,...
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The sense in satisfaction
Do student feedback surveys offer real customer care or are they just a marketing ploy? Lee Harvey explains the University of Central England's pioneering approach to satisfaction surveys Getting...
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The temptation of skiving off and mugging up
Jennifer Currie, a former English literature student at Glasgow University, describes her most boring lecture: It was always with a guilty conscience that I would decide against attending this...