16 June 2019  Issue No: 556

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has urged members of parliament and everyone concerned about the freedom of science to oppose government proposals to strip the society of its research institutions and hand them to a new body whose members would be appointed by the prime minister.

The Home Office in the United Kingdom has been accused of institutional racism and undermining UK research projects after making arbitrary visa refusals to African academics. In one example, 24 out of 25 participants in a workshop at the London School of Economics and Political Science were denied visas – and they were all African nationals.

Faculty are crucial to how successfully technology is integrated into learning and teaching. While course design and planning and acquiring technical skills are important, their ideas about education, society and the role of technology are more crucial areas for engagement and training.

Japanese and Sri Lankan universities are collaborating in a project that challenges paradigms of development in a way that will make universities drivers of change, supporting research towards economic growth, social transformation, combating climate change, peace-building and disaster prevention in their regions.

A Zimbawean student masters student – studying peace, human rights and governance at Africa University – was absent when her colleagues graduated last week because she was locked up in a maximum security prison on a charge of planning to unseat President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.

The University of Auckland is the first higher education institution in New Zealand and Australia to join a global robotic process automation company that aims to equip more than a million students with what it calls ‘critical automation skills’ as part of an ‘academic alliance’.