While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall from our archives some memorable posts from our 2018-2019 season.

Here are five good reads on issues relating to justice and/in the academy that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

• Matthew Adams on Justice and ‘Contingent Faculty’, which explores whether permanent university faculty have responsibilities to their colleagues holding (much) less secure positions, and if so, what these could be.
• Mirjam Muller’s post entitled Who Cares: Emotional Labour in Academia, which persuasively highlights three reasons why we should care about a more equal distribution in providing emotional labour within our universities.
• David Yarrow on Grade Inflation, Market Ideology, and the Contradictions of UK Higher Education Policy, which responds to politicians blaming academics for lowering standards by arguing that these effects are caused by their own ideologically-driven market reforms.
• Lisa Herzog’s post addressing the question: What, if anything, is wrong with private money in political philosophy?
• Robert Simpson’s essay, published as a two-part post, on Universities and Democratic Legitimacy.

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 2nd September with fresh weekly posts by our regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Politicians blame academics for lowering standards, but it is caused by their own ideologically driven market reforms. A version of this post was published in the Guardian on Friday 12th July. 

The Education Secretary Damian Hinds has followed in an illustrious tradition of governments’ blaming Universities for the phenomena of grade inflation. Responding to findings by the Office for Students of an 80% rise in first class degrees (that the body claimed was ‘unexplained’), Mr Hinds attributed this problem to ‘unfair practices’ by universities. It follows his comments last year that ‘institutions should be accountable for maintaining the value of the degrees they award’, with the threat of fines for institutions who fail to comply.

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Last April the Hungarian parliament approved a new law that regulates the operations of foreign (non-EEA) universities in Hungary. Among other things, the new law requires a bilateral agreement between Hungary and the country of the university’s origin, and they should also deliver education programs in the countries where they are accredited. Although ‘lex CEU’, as has been popularly referred to, was defended on purely administrative grounds it clearly is part of an orchestrated attack on free institutions—NGOs, independent media, and the judiciary. At the time, it seemed impossible for CEU to fulfil these conditions: deadlines were tight, the costs were enormous since CEU has no educational activity in the US where it is accredited, and securing a bilateral treaty with the US government was unfeasible since, American educational matters are regulated at State level rather than at the federal’s level.

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