A 58 year-old lecturer at UCL, has been banned from teaching a “provocative” course involving China to protect its commercial interests. The Telegraph has more.
Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), told the Telegraph she had “no choice” but to blow the whistle in order to “expose” how British universities were “conceding to the censorship demands of some Chinese students”.
Ms Shipworth, 58, was also accused of being anti-Chinese after she caught out two students from China who were cheating and they were subsequently expelled. One had used a body double in an attempt to hoodwink her during a supervision.
Her head of department at UCL told her he was taking action because “in order to be commercially viable”, the university’s courses “need to retain a good reputation amongst future Chinese applicants”.
UCL has the highest number of Chinese students in the UK, making up almost a quarter of its total student population. More than 10,000 Chinese students are at the university, typically paying two to three times the fees of home-grown students – up to £40,000 a year.
Ms Shipworth, who teaches at UCL’s Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, found herself under investigation after a seminar last October examining data from the Global Slavery Index 2014. The data claimed China had the second-highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.
She asked small groups to discuss the question: “Why are there so many slaves in China?” in order to build their data assessment skills, leaving the methodology open to criticism.
Far from being anti-Chinese, Ms Shipworth said her use of the survey was only to highlight problems with it – not least that, because China has the world’s second-largest population, it would inevitably be close to the top of a modern slavery index.
She recalled that, at the end of the seminar, one of the Chinese students “stood up and said in a fairly cross tone – I wouldn’t even describe it as angry – something along the lines of: ‘Why are you using such a horrible provocation?’”
Prof Neil Strachan, Ms Shipworth’s boss, was alerted, culminating in her being told that another academic had been asked to “take over” the research module she had taught for the past 10 years.
She was also told to “not use teaching case studies or examples that only focus on one country”, and advised against posting “educational issues about only one country” on social media.
In an email, Prof Strachan also informed Ms Shipworth that she had been accused of “being biased against students from a single country – China”.
He cited as an example of a “specific instance of bias” that, having caught out Chinese students for cheating, she was now “overly suspicious” of students cheating “and these students are all from China”.
Prof Strachan said a further complaint had said that “you used a provocative in-class exercise – investigating data quality but using the subject of slavery – that focused only on China and that made Chinese students feel demeaned”.
He went on to say that “the result of this perceived bias is that Chinese students are not having a good experience at UCL, and that the reputation and future recruitment of our courses is being damaged”. …
Ms Shipworth’s case has been taken up by the Free Speech Union, which has written to UCL’s provost to demand that all restrictions be lifted.
A Free Speech Union spokesman said: “The documents we have seen reveal an undue deference to the sensitivity of some Chinese students that is utterly incompatible with academic freedom.
“Academics and students have every right to discuss and even criticise China, even if it is inconvenient for institutions increasingly in hock to Chinese student fees, and we will defend that right.”
Worth reading in full.
You can watch a short film the FSU has made about this case here.
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) March 8, 2024
BREAKING: FSU member and University College London (UCL) academic Michelle Shipworth has been BANNED from teaching her own course, after a Chinese student complained that discussing modern slavery in China was too "provocative".
Incredibly, UCL sided with students who said… pic.twitter.com/bIcJs67PLF
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Damn, I was looking forward to this. Looks like I’ll be giving it the swerve.
First of all, what are you doing watching a show that clearly has an 18 rating?
I’ve seen the whole season (it isn’t finished – the next season is coming later this year), and thought it was ok. The woke story line (not really a story line) about the trans person came across as hamfisted and, dare I say it, retarded. It doesn’t dominate the show at all.
Obvs the novelty value isn’t there any more if you watched the first season, but I thought the games themselves were plenty thrilling. If you enjoyed the first one then you should enjoy the second one as long as you put your finger in your ears and go ‘la la la’ during the woke bits.
You never tried to sneak into an 18? Wierdo!
If you enjoyed the first one then you should enjoy the second one as long as you put your finger in your ears and go ‘la la la’ during the woke bits.
And that’s exactly what you shouldn’t be doing.
The creator explained that including a trans character was a bold effort to raise awareness about the challenges and prejudices faced by gender minorities in South Korea.
First, that’s probably a lie: The creator was almost certainly paid to including this walking (as I assume) propaganda vehicle and didn’t do this because he actually cared about it. Otherwise, the character hadn’t magically appeared once the show had proven to be successful enough to consider it for delivering propaganda camouflaged as entertainment.
Second, the message behind this is clear. The first season was an entertainment show with characters the audience wanted to identify with going through a challenging, suspenseful story. A conventional design for the entertainment industry, so to say. But this has now changed. Characters are now forced onto the supposedly already hooked audience because they ought to identify with them in order to lecture them about somebody’s preferred pseudo-medical treatment for something that’s – at best – a disturbing and somewhat disgusting mental health issue affecting a tiny minority of the population and – at worst – simply a scam to make $$$ by harming vulnerable children (eg, depressed or autistic).
If you don’t roundly reject that because “the special effects are still so cool!” (I made that one up) you’re proving to be exactly the kind of target person (in the opinions of the people behind this scheme) whose brain is to be put through the propaganda ironing machine in order to make interpret the world in the proper way, this to be done by programming memories into it.
This may be entirely harmless because it may not work. But I’m not convinced of this and I’d never consciously let these people install anything into my brain because I want it to remain mine.
You could be talking about Eastenders!
Steyn on the ten years anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks
“To be honest, it makes me vomit to see people holding these Princess Dianafied candlelit vigils, and using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie – I am Charlie -and in effect appropriating these guys’ sacrifice for this bogus solidarity. It makes me sick to see all these ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ cartoons that have appeared in newspapers all over the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Australia, everywhere, from other cartoonists, again expressing solidarity with these very brave men – but not doing what they did…
I’ve been on enough events in Europe with less famous cartoonists than these who live under death threats, live under armed guard, have had their family restaurant firebombed – it’s happened to a Norwegian comedienne I know – have come home and found their home burned, as a Swedish artist I know happened to. And all these people doing the phony hashtag solidarity, screw your phony hashtag solidarity. Let’s have some real solidarity – or if not, at least have the good taste to stay the hell out of it.”
Off-T
Two episodes of “Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal” are showing on Channel 4 tonight. The second one features Tommy Robinson.
Very timely; suspiciously so.
My concerns:
Channel 4 – in total lockstep with tin eared, two tier Keir
We watched about 20 minutes then binned it. Anyone want me to spoil the new Day of the Jackal? That really boiled our piss to steam.
What a great expression!
Sorry mate, not a clue what this is about?
Please don’t try to explain, again sorry, squid game isn’t my greatest priority!
I don’t watch TV or any movies. For me, entertainment is music¹ and books and I make a conscious effort to stay away from anything I (for myself) refer to as activist’s prose. If I want to inform myself about a certain topic, I’ll buy a or some non-fiction books dealing with it. If not, then I don’t and I don’t want people who want to ‘inform’ me about stuff I don’t want to learn anything about sneak it into my brain through the back door. Should I discover something like this in a book I’m reading (happens sometimes), I’ll usually immediately stop and throw it away.
¹ In case someone cares about this. Here’s a track from a nice, current EP of a London-based death metal outfit (I have this on CD, obviously).
https://decrepid.bandcamp.com/track/vortex-of-chaos
I love music and books
Currently reading the new “Smiley” novel by Le Carre’s son. It’s reasonably well done but the son has introduced lots of females into the story – there were many fewer females in the Le Carre Smiley books, presumably because that was an accurate reflection of the reality of a world that the author knew well. A bit disappointing- back to Dostoyevsky after this.
Remember stumbling across a Mills & Boon book, quite raunchy!
Obituary is a well known death band. Here is a British thrash band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8-5Ya_OTMs
See also: John Tardy is a wuss!¹
Unfortunately, I think Xentrix is about as exciting as an old sock lost in some corner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgNqvxQD9RI
¹ Because he uses (or used to use) a harmonizer for his vocals.
Just started watching it, already into the 3rd or 4th episode of season 1, I am getting bored with the mellowdrama.
One dimensional, in-substantial, excessively violent. Perfect for the Tik-tokkers
Good young writer is Jack Watson, however, I suggest that one stops watching banal programmes like this and read a good book
My goodness you shouldn’t be watching things with people dressed up like that it isn’t right.