Category Archives: Business and Law

The Utopian Law School and the Fate of the University

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This post was contributed by Joanna Hartl, a first-year student on Birkbeck’s three-year LLB.

The first day of  Law on Trial was well attended, with an impressive line up of academics on the panel. With Dr Adam Gearey in the chair, we were led into the first presentation by Jane Holder from UCL, which was about opening us up to Environmental Law and Ecology. We were told that it would be good if students and academics alike could walk the talk by becoming self-sustaining economic units, similar to monastic units, by fundamentally getting back to nature and living in a utopian ecological paradise experiencing a series of diverse ecosystems first-hand and learning how to manage them, while studying at the same time. It called to my mind an image of people becoming a modern day Diggers Group, led by Adam, spade in one hand, and photocopied earth stained seminar texts in the other, growing carrots and lettuces in Torrington Square, with Patricia Tuitt complete with trowel and compost planting tomato seedlings in pots on the roof garden of the 5th floor eatery! I was left waiting for the announcement as to when the work was to commence……..!?! Certainly food for thought, and with the rapid increase of community gardens, who knows what the result may be….it is up to us as students to be the movers, if anything is to be done!

The idea of running a self-sustaining academic unit, where all became involved was further developed through the second presentation from Maia Pal of Sussex University. Maia recounted the occupation of Sussex University in 2012 which lasted for approximately two months. A cross section of about 300 people from the university got together from diverse areas, taking over the conference centre – not only students but also security guards, administration staff and academics, together with cleaners and catering staff who joined forces to support a joint effort of protest against the management of the university, who had decided among other things to privatise, in order to try and save money, and outsource approximately 250 jobs. They managed to successfully occupy the university until a 2000-strong group of supporters somehow smashed the door of the main entrance, and then legal proceedings were taken to evict them, with five students being arrested. It is now illegal to stage a protest if the management haven’t given their consent! The slogan painted on the wall that summed it up was “A University Is Nothing Without Dialogue”. Maia energetically encouraged us all to think about who owns the University, is it the management? Is it the students? Is it the people who work there? The academics, and/or the non- faculty staff? Maia told us that she had learnt from her experiences in Quebec where both faculty and non-faculty could bind together successfully. She challenged us to think about the use of space and ownership, and that thinking about law should be a part of our education, especially where we are exposed to “Jurisdictional Struggles” which in themselves question the existence of the law, and the use of space.

From this pragmatic stance we were guided back into the realms of literature by the next speaker, Thomas Docherty of Warwick University, who told us that the poet Shelley stated “….Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world…..” But he then went on to give a very cogent account of the political history behind the introduction of tuition fees for higher education, and critiqued Cameron ‘s ” something for nothing ” gripe about people who don’t have any resources wanting a share of the cake, making a comparison with those business-minded types who seek to enforce this culture into academic fields, and business, whereby someone will be expected to bring more results for less funding year after year until finally there is nothing left! Ultimately leading to THEFT! He covered also how the teaching accreditation techniques were becoming increasingly meaningless, causing an administrative overload, and not much else. He threw out pertinent questions to the audience about student debt, and taxation, and the possible privatisation of the student loan book, which the government would like to sell off. He told us that this increase in debt (poetic reference here to debt being like a “….shadow that is cast…”) is adding to social injustice, and ultimately would create yet more inequality. What we need to aspire to is a just university where …”crisis decision making “… at the heart of the university can be seen to be effective in extending justice out into the community, rather than allowing injustices (of all sorts) to continue.Thomas then summed up, saying that what we often get is quantity not quality, proving that he is obviously a poet and a literary man at heart!

Plenty of ideas and information came from this meeting, we just need to decide what course of action to pursue now, as the ball is in our court.

The Networked Academic: Social Media and your Research Identity

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This post was contributed by Ceren Yalcin, Nelly Ali and Mayur Suresh, interns at the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research.

Twitter, Facebook, Academia.edu, Youtube, Pinterest, Delicious, Foursquare and many more…The list of available digital platforms is long, but what is the value of social media for academics?

Dr Scott Rodgers, lecturer in Media Theory at Birkbeck College, spoke yesterday about what academics can do with and in social media. He suggested that we should think of social media, a networked media, not as just as a form of ‘networking’. Rather than looking at it as an arena in which we make contacts and disseminate our work and view the work of others, he suggested we look at social media as a different sort of academic environment that develops its own intertia and channels the production of knowledge. The structural logic of social media enables different methods and forms of academic knowledge. In his talk Dr Rodgers presented a variety of popular social media platforms and discussed what sort of academic life each one of these seemed to produce.

The speaker pointed out several things that make social media different from ordinary sites of knowledge production. First that social media is persistent, in the sense that there is automatic recording of whatever you post and this stays online for a long time. Second, replicability. Meaning that once something is posted online, people can, almost instantaneously, make copies and further post it. This leads to the third characteristic: scalability. By posting and reposting by multiple users, there is the collective amplification of material that is posted online. And lastly, searchability. The fact that material that is posted online is persistent, allows for it to be searchable.

When the speaker asked the audience to comment on their own use of social media, one participant pointed out that her activities on Twitter resulted in a successful, international research co-operation. Others stated that they found Academia.edu especially useful as it allows users to share papers and to receive feedback on work in progress. However, there were also some mixed feelings towards social media amongst the participants. One participant said that tweeting during a conference might be good publicity for the event but she found that it also made her less concentrated and distracted from the actual conference talks. Another interesting account came from an academic who pointed out how ‘addictive’ social media can be and how it can prevent doing other and more important work. Further, the discussants commented on the conflicts online profiles may cause. Here, a few participants expressed concern that their work and personal personae may meet, potentially causing embarrassment (we’ve all been there!).

Dr Rodgers pointed out some of the concerns and hopes he had for a networked academia. Some of the concerns included the fragmentation of writing (how do you get a theoretical argument to fit into a tweet?), the need to get as much posted as often as possible, and the view that being logged into these new forms was just another form of academic labour – that in addition to publishing and speaking, maintaining an online persona was another things academics, particular early career researchers, needed to do to. On the plus side, he hoped that new media would engender less formalized forms of academic expression, more honest and generous academia, and a (differently) publicly engaged academia.

‘Riot From Wrong’ Film Screening

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This post was contributed by Fraser Alcorn, an LLB Law student and member of the Birkbeck Law Society.

The media coverage of the riots that swept through London last August may have decreased in the past few months, but the realities of many of the social injustices that brought them about are still being felt. ‘Riot from Wrong’ is a documentary film created by a group of 19 young people that intends to get to the underlying issues that led to the widespread social unrest and to challenge the perception and media representation of those involved. Birkbeck Law School and student Law Society hosted a screening of the film and a Q&A with the filmmakers at the Birkbeck Cinema on Saturday 24 November.

Primarily focusing on the local community in Tottenham where Mark Duggan’s shooting at the hands of police began four days of mass civil disobedience, but bringing in stories from across London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, the documentary is unique in gathering perspectives from those involved in rioting and looting alongside interviews with politicians and journalists. The filmmakers have succeeded in producing a slick and insightful examination of the complex realities behind the riots, moving the focus away from the rhetoric of a ‘feral youth’ and onto the unfair and prejudiced treatment of whole communities. Citing the 75% cuts to Youth Services budget, police mistreatment and stereotyping of young people through ‘stop and search’ procedures, as well as tracing the Thatcherite obsession with the individual to the detriment of society, the film provides a strong condemnation of the short-minded policies that produced and continue to produce a young population with few opportunities. That BBC News had commissioned the young filmmakers to produce a piece for broadcast – the first time this has ever been done – should stand testament to the quality of their work.

L-R: Teddy Nygh, Alex Simpson, Kye Taliana, Philli Glenn, Eddis Ozcelik.

Four of the team involved in making the film kindly joined us for a Q&A after the screening; Alex Simpson, Kye Taliana, Eddis Ozcelik, and Philli Glenn, along with director Teddy Nygh. Feedback from the audience was resoundingly positive and the team proved to be an engaging and thoughtful bunch to talk with. Considering that they experienced the beginning of the riots first-hand while filming, and put the film together as blame was being piled upon an unfairly demonised youth, their level-headed and considered opinions were heartening. That’s not to say they shied away from demanding that the powers that be need to take responsibility for their actions, and with around 30 screenings under their collective belts, including one at the Houses of Parliament, their direct approach is making waves in the right places. Far from resting on their laurels though, they talked about their desire to get more young people motivated in their cause with their ‘Million Youth Movement’, together with plans to shoot a new film explaining how to get involved in local politics with the intention of giving more voice to young people in Britain.

The ‘Big Society’ is a horrible term that suggests that people need to be reminded to care about our own communities. It too easily takes ownership of the positive work of a few and claims it as proof of the value of a valueless government initiative, where in fact that work has happened despite the absence of state support. This film is the product of a group of young people coming together in the most positive way possible to create something truly informative and perceptive, and it would be quite wrong for it to be held up by government as an example of how the young ‘should’ behave; Britain’s youth should hold it up to government to demand to know why they are having to address and resolve issues they had no hand in creating.

The next public screening is at The Salisbury in Tottenham on Sun Dec 9th. For more information follow the team on Twitter @UKFullyFocused & @RiotFromWrong . Watch the trailer here.

Follow Birkbeck Law Society @BirkbeckLawSoc or contact us at birkbecklawsociety@gmail.com

Perceptions of Pay Secrecy

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This post was contributed by Karen Drury, an alumna of Birkbeck’s MSc Organizational Behaviour.

I invariably enjoy the Birkbeck Business Week because it brings me up to date with the latest research interests of the School and fires up the Quattro grey cells.

This year was no exception – there were sessions on the impact of induction on employee identity and a session on the current darling of the consulting world, employee engagement.  Being the critical sort – Birkbeck had taught me well! – I was pleased to see Teaching Fellow Richard Williams was as healthily sceptical as I was.

But one of the most interesting sessions for me was Julie Dickinson’s presentation of project work on pay secrecy.

Academic research here is scarce – well, it is secret – and Julie gave some of the assumptions about the potential pros and cons of keeping pay under wraps.

It doesn’t seem to be a uniform phenomenon; the well paid would rather keep their payslips close to their chests; the less well-paid appear to talk more openly about it – possibly to complain?

The research – such as it is – is not only contradictory but also fairly difficult to compare.  Studies look at perceptions and employee outcomes from pay secrecy, but they look at slightly different variables.  And therefore reach different conclusions.

A lively discussion pondered whether pay secrecy isn’t more about the inability of organisations to properly define the value produced by different jobs than it is about a need to keep compensation private – although obviously privacy does come into it.  Some people thought that openness about pay may lead to “poaching” key staff – although a recruiter in the audience said that it was rare that she saw people being overpaid against the market average when pay secrecy was written into their contracts.

A key point about pay secrecy was the opportunity it gives for increasing pay inequality by the back door. There was a lot of discussion about the transparency supposedly inherent in the public sector (every senior civil servant had their salary published in bands, someone pointed out) and lacking in the private sector.

My own view was that inequality in pay seems to be in place regardless of how transparent pay is – there are plenty of women in the public sector who are paid less for doing more work than their male colleagues….

An interesting discussion, even without the solid empirical evidence.  Perhaps because of it!