The week in higher education – 9 July 2020

When it comes to breaching the lockdown rules, newspapers have been frothing at the collective mouth over reports that groups of students in Alabama have been throwing Covid-19 parties, supposedly attended by young people with the virus − where the first person who catches it gets a cash payout. The parties were allegedly held in Tuscaloosa, with city councillor Sonya McKinstry telling CNN: “We thought that was kind of a rumour at first. We did some research: not only do the doctors’ offices confirm it, but the state confirmed they also had the same information.” However, a report in Wired doused the reports with a large helping of cold water, highlighting the story’s “implausibility and utter lack of valid sourcing”. The publication pointed out the fad for similar reports, citing examples in March, April and May of this year, and wrote off the Alabama yarn as just “the latest version of the tale”.

The cultural lockdown phenomenon known as “children hilariously interrupting important video calls” has gained a significant new entry. Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, was being interviewed about local lockdowns on BBC News when her young daughter Scarlett appeared brandishing a picture of a unicorn. Dr Wenham’s heroic attempts to continue discussing the issues surrounding access to testing data were eventually derailed when Scarlett climbed on to her desk, artwork in hand, before spending some time choosing which shelf would be best to display the picture and asking: “Mummy, what’s his name?” BBC presenter Christian Fraser promptly told Scarlett his name and suggested that: “I think it looks best on the lower shelf…and it’s a lovely unicorn.” The clip quickly went viral and looks set to join the 2017 interruption of a BBC interview with North Korea expert Robert Kelly as a classic of the genre.

Another feature of lockdown life has been high-profile breaches of the rules, with the latest person to issue a public apology for such transgressions being Maria Hinfelaar, vice-chancellor of Glyndwr University. Professor Hinfelaar took a six-day trip to her holiday home in County Clare, Ireland, on 8 April − two-and-a-half weeks after Wales was locked down to stem the spread of coronavirus. She was previously president of the Limerick Institute of Technology, about 15 miles from her holiday home, before taking up her current role four years ago. Professor Hinfelaar has now apologised after being quizzed by the BBC over whether the university board knew about the trip, saying that: “I have informed the board of governors…I thought the trip was within the rules at the time but on reflection I accept it was an error of judgement and I apologise unreservedly.” A university spokesperson said: “Any further discussions regarding this matter will be conducted internally.”

While a large proportion of personnel adapt to working from home, employers the world over have been required to show patience and flexibility – not so much Florida State University, though. The institution recently announced it will prohibit its employees from looking after their children while working remotely from August. “This is a common requirement while working remotely and is typical of other universities in Florida and around the country,” said Renisha Gibbs, FSU’s associate vice-president for human resources. Unsurprisingly, the announcement has not gone down very well, with numerous critics pointing out its likely impact on women in particular. “I can log my child on to online school, grade essays while he does his school work, take a break and make him lunch, and then write lectures from home,” said Shaindel Beers, an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Oregon. “It’s sad that FSU is trying to commodify both teaching and parenting.”

The historian and broadcaster David Starkey has strong form for triggering controversy with his statements on race, so it seemed to be only a matter of time before he waded in on the surge of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The intervention eventually came in an online interview in which Dr Starkey claimed that slavery “was not genocide”. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there? You know, an awful lot of them survived,” he said.  Commentators queued up to denounce the statement, and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge accepted Dr Starkey’s resignation as an honorary fellow. With book deals being cancelled too, is this finally the end of the line for the “rudest man in Britain”?