16 - 22 March

22 Mar 2007
Migration
Was sitting on the train on the way back from Southampton this week, when I saw an interesting letter in the newspaper about migration. It was from an academic (who's the subject of a petition to his university calling for him to be removed) defending his views on migration, and explaining how his membership of the Galton Institute and Migration Watch had nothing to do with his teaching. All quite interesting... but it got v interesting when I looked at the name and realised he was one of my undergraduate tutors.

He did teach us demography, but I don't remember any objectionable views. The only thing I can remember in relation to migration was that for our finals he sent us some recent papers about the EU decision to encourage mass-migration to address the ageing population structure. He may have suggested it was a bad idea, I can't remember. But the academic I remember and the one in the paper really don't correspond. He was the most traditionally 'academic' tutor we had, and barely seemed to function in the real world. He was late to our first meeting because he'd just got off the plane from somewhere important and exotic, and turned up wearing cycle clips and a cycle helmet (had he cycled from the important/exotic place we wondered?). He gave us references for our essays at top speed off the top of his head, and his office was so messy that a pile of papers in braille (very thick pile, A3 pages) were lost in there for a whole term. He seemed entirely inoffensive, except for the excessively fat text book that he'd written and which he expected us to have read and absorbed in its entirety.

So when do political views become so offensive that they shouldn't be allowed? Are political views relevant to your job? And when both sides of a political argument say they have evidence on their side, how do you judge between them? I have no idea whether this guy is racist or not, but I do know that he'll have evidence (good or otherwise) to back up his case.
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2341342.ece
17:52 - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

17 Mar 2007
no disaster

Pleased to report that the 666 birthmark on my back wasn't revealed to the group today. It was actually good to renew my acquaintance with someone I knew when we were undergraduates, and we both politely refrained from mentioning the ex-friend. It left quite a gap in the conversation though, bit of an 'ignore the elephant in the room' situation. On the plus side, she said 'yes I was a bit surprised to see you here, I remembered you being with the jesus army. You always were a bit of a heretic though." I may not be that keen on being thought evil, but am always pleased to be called a heretic - I like to keep people on their toes! And to be fair, I may have been with the jesus army last time we met, but she was going off to be a nun. So we're probably about equal in the oddness stakes.
23:26 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

16 Mar 2007
Evil edna

I'm going to a church related workshop tomorrow. Quite looking forward to it, except that I've found out I slightly know one of the other people going. This would usually be quite a good thing, but the context in which I know this person is a bit... complicated... She's the friend of an ex-friend. A very ex-friend. And will therefore have heard exactly how evil I am. When meeting a group of new people it's always good to know that one of them thinks you're the anti-christ - adds a little extra adrenaline to the procedings. I'll let you know how it goes - I'm planning to develop selective amnesia if necessary.
23:37 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Strange...

My head of department just wandered into my office "just to see if I was allright"... this is v strange. Am usually lucky to see him once a month and he doesn't generally even speak if I bump into him in the corridor. Kept expecting him to get to the point and ask me to do something/give me a deadline/tell me my last article was rubbish but he didn't... He didn't even seem to have much to say. V odd. And leaves me a bit paranoid, thinking, what was all that about? Suppose it's just about plausible that he was just being nice...!
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