Read our full response to the news from University of Nottingham ⬇️

You think people get a PhD from a university French department off the back of a rigorous test to confirm that they can use the subjunctive and have seen 3 French films?

Are you really claiming that the scholars who people these departments are just people who speak really good French/Czech/German? What do you think they do all day? What do you think they've been doing over the years of research and publication, wider engagement, teaching? ...

who wants to go to evensong they'll happily avail themselves of the free entertainment, as though that exists without the daily services and rehearsals, and the knowledge and training behind the careers of those who provide it.

If you kill the infrastructure, you lose the rest. Strong recollections of Oxbridge college fellows who moan about the choir and chapel (ahem, instituted by the statutes) but when they have a guest for dinner ...

They aren't here to make sure the university does a nice carol concert for you to go and feel warm and fuzzy about, or take your donors to. The fact that the university is able to offer that is because there is an infrastructure comprising the interrelated disciplines of music research...

an ecosystem that includes multi-disciplinary specialism, and you cannot have 1 without the other. Music research includes history, languages, anthropology, technology. You don't get orchestras and choirs without this. Not all scholars in music depts are performers....

‘More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries.’

Stark piece from a former diplomat on how loss of language learning hits our defence & geopolitical capabilities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/proc... @timeshighered.bsky.social