# The Capture of Academia | UK Column Interviews

An episode of [UK Column News](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1008807223), 22 Oct 2026, 58 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/1044e334c/podcast/play/127330516/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-9-16%2F434300651-44100-2-12017c67637dc.mp3

Professor Norman Fenton speaks with Professor Diane Rasmussen about his new book, The Capture of Academia: How Universities Shape Power, Silence Dissent, and Influence Society. Sharing common ground as former senior academics who lost their university careers for opposing popular stances, they speak about the hidden corruption that drives today’s British universities. Professor Fenton is Emeritus Professor of Risk at Queen Mary University of London and founder of Agenda Ltd, a company that specialises in Bayesian network tools for risk modelling and decision support. He has previously been interviewed on UK Column to discuss skewed Covid vaccine data (2022) and, later, to explain how questioning the official Covid narrative effectively ended his academic career (2023). In this 2026 interview, Professor Fenton says he went “from respected professor to academic pariah” for his unpopular views. He speaks about the requirement for university staff to follow the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) cultural Marxist agenda that pervades today’s UK university system. One example can be found in the University of Cambridge’s Behavioural Attributes Framework, which requires all staff to adhere to “the principles of diversity and inclusion”. He believes this mandate helps explain why Jason Arday received his professorial appointment at Cambridge. Professor Fenton explains how these DEI mandates provide preferential treatment to groups with certain characteristics while it excludes others, and how they deny diversity of thought. He also discusses the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a bureaucratic, expensive, and corrupt process that claims to assess “the quality of research in UK higher education institutions”. In the next REF exercise (2029), 30% of “research quality” will be evaluated based on the incorporation of DEI principles into the research. This corruption extends into scientific peer review; only grant proposals and papers that support agendas such as Net Zero and Agenda 2030 tend to be reviewed favourably. Professor Fenton can be found on X, on YouTube, and via his website. He runs a popular Substack, ‘Where Are the Numbers?’, with Professor Martin Neil. Professors Fenton and Neil also co-authored the groundbreaking book Fighting Goliath: Exposing the Flawed Science and Statistics behind the COVID-19 Event. ► Join UK Column Live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1pm UK time or watch previous live recordings here ► \[UK Column Website\] Explore all our written and video content on the official UK Column website ► \[Support UK Column\] Please donate to support our independent journalism & investigative journalism ► \[UK Column YouTube\] Please subscribe to the UK Column News YouTube channel for more alternative news and independent news Follow #UKColumn on: ► X ► Telegram ► Facebook ► Instagram

## Transcript

[0:00] (gentle music) - Hello, everyone.
[0:09] This is Professor Diane Rasmussen with UK Column.
[0:11] I'm really happy to be here today speaking with Professor
[0:14] Norman Vitten, who's a professor emeritus of risk at
[0:17] Queen Mary University, London. As you'll realize during this
[0:22] conversation, Professor Fenton and I have a lot of things in
[0:24] common, both that we exited the university system in Britain as
[0:29] full professors for reasons of
[0:32] truth, and standing for what I think we both believe is a
[0:36] case of academic freedom and the real search for answers, which
[0:39] is what we were trained to do years ago in the first place.
[0:42] So, Norman, you have a great book that you've just written
[0:45] and published called The Capture of Academia, and I was really
[0:48] happy to read this book. I actually read it.
[0:51] I think the first day it came out.
[0:53] There it is. Thanks very much.
[0:55] Yeah, the first day it came out. I bought it and a few days
[0:58] later, Brian Garrett contacted me and he said, "Diane Norman
[1:01] has a new book. "You've got to talk to him
[1:03] about this, right? " I said, "Yeah, absolutely. "
[1:05] So, I welcome again to U.K. column Norman.
[1:07] It's really great, as I said, to have you here.
[1:10] So, I know you've been with us before, but maybe just like to
[1:13] say a little bit about yourself for anyone who hasn't seen you
[1:17] previously. - Yeah, so I was in academia for actually 47 years.
[1:21] So, I about benefited from the system.
[1:24] I was part of it. I benefited from a lot of the,
[1:28] what I now consider to be quite corrupt aspects of the system.
[1:35] But I came increasingly disillusioned with it, with
[1:39] the things like the obsession with the diversity of inclusion,
[1:44] infrastructure, which became completely crushing.
[1:47] But most of all, the crushing of free thought, critical
[1:53] thinking. And the fact that I was
[1:57] effectively canceled because of my views on challenging the
[2:02] official COVID narrative. And then later, and also things
[2:06] like the climate catastrophe, narrative, both of which I felt
[2:10] were being pushed by a kind of like globalist, UN agenda, you
[2:17] know, agenda 2030, that type of stuff.
[2:22] And I was effectively, I had a
[2:29] In, you know, I'd been a professor for actually over 30
[2:33] years, the last 22, those years were a Queen Mary.
[2:38] But in the end, the fact that I was being canceled by
[2:44] colleagues who I'd worked closely with, I was being
[2:50] canceled from seminars, which I previously given.
[2:54] I was infamously canceled last
[2:58] H. S. a big NHS conference on a
[3:00] topic which had nothing to do with COVID, or any of the things
[3:03] that I was supposed to be the Maverick in.
[3:07] It was just, I was canceled because of who I was and what my
[3:11] public views on those other issues were.
[3:14] So yeah, that's, that's my story.
[3:17] I went effectively, as soon as
[3:20] about things that we weren't allowed to speak about, I went
[3:24] from, you know, respected professor to act on a pariah
[3:27] very quickly. - It's just amazing to me how quickly it
[3:32] happens. And I don't know if it's because
[3:34] the current climate is just getting more intense.
[3:36] But, you know, I'm about 20 years younger than you believe.
[3:39] I was a full professor for four months before I started my
[3:43] cancellation process. So I had worked for 20 years
[3:45] to get to where I wanted to be, which was my career goal was
[3:49] to become professor. And I got there starting January
[3:52] 2023 was when I started my appointment as professor.
[3:56] And then in April 2023 is when it all started to crash down for
[4:00] me. So it was a very (laughs)
[4:02] soul-destroying experience to get to where you finally were
[4:06] thought, this was actually the start of being a senior
[4:09] academic and being able to provide leadership and
[4:12] continue to work with my students and all the things I
[4:15] love doing. And then it just left from
[4:18] there. And that was it. - So in your
[4:21] case, it was, it was, you challenging the kind of DIY
[4:25] ideology and dogma, is that right?
[4:28] - Yeah, it, you know, it really started at a conference
[4:31] that I was attending at Cambridge in April 2023.
[4:35] And it first, it had to do with identity politics initially
[4:39] where they said you have to say disabled student.
[4:42] You can't say student with a disability because the
[4:46] identity comes before the person.
[4:48] And after speaking to a disabled student about that particular
[4:52] issue, and that student said to me, it doesn't matter about
[4:55] the order of the words, it just matters that I'm a person and
[4:58] yeah, I'm disabled, but I'm also
[5:01] And when I tweeted that opinion from that student on the
[5:05] Twitter account for the conference, taking the
[5:08] conference in, that's when it started.
[5:11] And it just went down from there.
[5:13] And, you know, it spread into cancellation from my
[5:18] professional body where I was being disciplined by them, I was
[5:22] the incoming president in Scotland of my professional body
[5:29] disciplinary action at my university.
[5:31] And it was ultimately charged with gross misconduct.
[5:34] And luckily I was able to join UK column full-time before I
[5:38] went through that process. I just went off on leave and
[5:42] that was it. It is absolutely incredible
[5:45] that the crushing autocracy, that whole D I movement.
[5:50] I mean, there's a few examples of course in my book.
[5:52] I mean, I wasn't affected personally in my challenges to
[5:57] that ideology as you were because I was never
[6:00] particularly public about that. I was always challenging the
[6:05] oppressive requirements and mandates that were being
[6:09] thrown across with respect to the D I within the university.
[6:13] I never went publicly on X about it.
[6:16] I have, I've done it since I've been out, I've been very public
[6:21] about it on X and on Sussack. But I mean, yeah, just bizarre
[6:26] examples. I mean, that were in the book,
[6:28] you know, the one that especially sort of along those
[6:31] lines, you just can't believe it.
[6:33] Things like all in many university reading lists now.
[6:38] You have to give the appropriate pronouns to all historical
[6:42] figures, including specifically the example cited
[6:44] that if you refer to a summer bin lad and you have to refer to
[6:48] him as he, him and stuff like that.
[6:50] I saw that, but the interesting thing about Cambridge, right?
[6:53] 'Cause this is in my book as well because I have, there's
[6:57] some close ties that came, which I mean, I did a six month
[7:00] sabbatical there in the rise of Newton Institute mathematics
[7:07] and I have some, let's say close contacts on the inside who
[7:11] feed me different bits of information.
[7:14] And so I was actually wearing, it was in the book before the
[7:18] Jason Arday affair about what they call this so-called
[7:22] behavioral attributes framework is what, which is what
[7:26] determines, which governs their entire appointments process,
[7:30] whether it's appointments or promotion.
[7:32] So this can be anything from professor all the way down to a
[7:37] cleaner, if you're either applying for a job at Cambridge,
[7:41] irrespective of what the position is or a promotion, then
[7:44] you have to basically make a case against what they call this
[7:53] framework, it has a number of attributes.
[7:56] Some of which are completely reasonable, you think, to expect
[7:59] to explain how you basically satisfy the relevant attributes.
[8:03] They've got things like achieving results,
[8:06] communication, stuff like that, and for each of these
[8:09] attributes, there's like four or five levels, A, B, C, D, E,
[8:13] depending on what kind of job you're applying to.
[8:16] So if it's achieving results, there's going to be, you know,
[8:20] if you're going from a professor ship, you know, there
[8:22] might be, you might have to satisfy the A grade, the top
[8:24] grade, whereas if it's a cleaner's job, you know, it
[8:27] might be a bit below and things like communication and stuff
[8:30] like that. But there's the actual,
[8:33] there's one attribute in there, which is called valuing
[8:36] diversity, which only has a single grade, which is A.
[8:40] And everybody, meaning that everybody, irrespective of
[8:43] what job you're applying for, what promotion you're applying
[8:47] for, you have to score an A grade on valuing diversity.
[8:51] And what does that value in diversity mean?
[8:55] What is it you've got to explain in your application that
[8:58] you are committed to with respect to valuing diversity?
[9:01] Well, I'll tell you what it says.
[9:02] These are quotes from the website and you can go on to
[9:05] Cambridge's job adverts and you'll see these there.
[9:07] Unless they've changed them as a result of me publishing the book
[9:13] outspoken about it. I've been talking about it
[9:15] 'cause people can't sort of, people can barely believe
[9:17] what's in there, but it is. It says, so you have got to
[9:22] explain how you will promote an inclusive environment.
[9:26] You have got to explain how you would challenge or report
[9:31] attitudes deemed inappropriate.
[9:33] And of course, by that, it doesn't mean attitudes that
[9:36] you think are inappropriate. It means attitudes that they
[9:39] think are inappropriate. I attitudes which as far as
[9:42] they're concerned conform to their political ideology,
[9:46] which is of course cultural Marxism, critical race theory
[9:50] and all that garbage. D.I.
[9:54] And fine, and this is the one it is really interesting.
[9:57] You have got to affirm, and I'll read it out when it says, a
[10:01] broad range of social and cultural customs, beliefs and
[10:05] values. So those are the minimum
[10:08] requirements that you have got to satisfy.
[10:12] And your application of course, because it's the only
[10:15] attribute, which has that single grade, if you fail on those,
[10:18] you won't get appointed. Doesn't matter how well you do
[10:22] on everything else. That's how they're judging
[10:24] people. So you can understand how
[10:27] appointments like Jason R.D. occur, because above all else,
[10:32] they're satisfying that value and diversity attribute.
[10:36] Which they clearly see is the most important one.
[10:40] And the interesting thing is that when the book first came
[10:44] out at the end of July this year, and it was literally a few
[10:49] days, couple of days before the Jason R.D.
[10:52] But they came out, and it just occurs to me that I was
[10:56] thinking, "Of course this is no surprise for me, "this is
[11:00] happening, it kind of completely explains it. " So
[11:03] actually, cheekily, because the book is self published on
[11:06] Amazon, I'm able to update it with each print run, basically
[11:10] any time I can update it. So I've actually added a kind
[11:14] of like a paragraph about the Jason R.D. affair in there.
[11:18] So people who are getting the book now will see that,
[11:22] whereas people bought it, initially wouldn't have seen the
[11:25] Jason R.D. added. - That's really
[11:29] interesting, and you know what I mean?
[11:31] So that whole D.I., I mean, it just dominates everything in
[11:36] every, it seems to dominate everything in every university.
[11:40] And it's not something you can, it's not something you can opt
[11:43] out of. It's kind of like mad that you
[11:45] know, when there's a sort of black history month, or LGBTQ,
[11:48] whatever activities, you know, you get an email, saying, "It's
[11:53] asking how are you going to basically do something "and
[11:59] support of these things? "Please tell us what your plans
[12:04] are for celebrating "black history month, for example. " -
[12:08] Right, and you know, the interesting thing about that
[12:10] word diversity to me is that it seems to me there's a
[12:13] hierarchy of you are diverse based on some characteristics,
[12:17] but not another characteristics, right?
[12:19] So that, for example, you're diverse if you come from one
[12:22] country, but you're not acceptable if you come from
[12:25] somewhere else. - Exactly. - And that's the thing I don't
[12:29] understand about the structure. And one of the things that I
[12:32] said in my defense of myself, when I was trying to save my
[12:36] academic career, was, well, how is this inclusive to
[12:40] conservative, religious people who maybe don't, you know, I
[12:43] personally don't have an issue as someone being gay, but some
[12:46] people do, it's against their religious beliefs.
[12:48] So how is it inclusive to them? But I was told that I was being
[12:53] bigoted and hateful when I said those things. - Of course,
[12:56] I mean, the thing is, of course, the one aspect of
[12:58] diversity, which they don't allow, is any diversity of
[13:01] thought, that's the problem. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, so this is
[13:05] the problem is that you're diverse, but only if you follow
[13:09] their ideological lines, it's always subject to their
[13:14] political ideology. As I said, that is an ideology
[13:19] based on critical race theory,
[13:26] - It really is. - Well, it's called identity politics, the
[13:29] classic identity politics, which comes out of the critical race
[13:31] theory, which again, it's all, it's only about, as you say,
[13:35] inclusivity of the things that they believe need to be
[13:39] included. Which as you say, it excludes
[13:43] any conservative thought, it excludes any religious beliefs
[13:47] other than, actually, other than Islam.
[13:50] I thought, I'm about cosmopolitan. - I've read well.
[13:54] - You don't know any love, really just believe that you
[13:58] can have. - Well, that's an interesting point, because one
[14:00] of the things that I thought of when I was reading that part
[14:03] of your book was, I actually went to Saudi Arabia, because
[14:06] as you've mentioned, international funding,
[14:07] international students in your book, I had a PhD student based
[14:11] in Saudi, as we had a reciprocal agreement with a
[14:14] super vision for women in Saudi Arabia in particular,
[14:17] because they couldn't access for such a provision otherwise.
[14:21] And so, what I used to say to people was, well, when I went to
[14:25] Saudi Arabia, I had to cover up, because I'm a woman.
[14:29] If I went into the airport in Riyadh, and said that I identify
[14:32] as a man, and therefore don't need to wear an abaya, do you
[14:35] really think that I would have
[14:38] alive? (laughing) And they just went
[14:41] quiet. I said, that's inclusivity.
[14:43] I said, I'm not a Muslim, that's not my belief, but I have to
[14:46] respect their beliefs, so why can't respect everybody's
[14:48] beliefs, even if we don't agree with them?
[14:50] And for some reason, that just made it worse for me.
[14:53] I thought I was trying to use simple logic in a way, but it
[14:56] didn't work. (laughing) - I can show it to
[15:00] them, I don't know yet. (laughing) Which brings me on
[15:04] to, you've mentioned Jason R. Day, and of course, you can
[15:07] call him some coverage of this as well as a discussion that I
[15:10] recorded with Brian Garish and Ben Reuben, when this all
[15:14] happened, we recorded it the week of his death, I believe,
[15:17] and then it aired the week after.
[15:18] So it was strange time, but when everything was going on, it
[15:22] also ties into some of the more sort of issues that only as
[15:26] academics really know about, but I think everyone needs to
[15:29] know about to understand what drives our systems, and that is
[15:33] those issues of the ref, the issues of funding, peer review,
[15:37] all of these things. And I think Jason R.
[15:40] Day is such a good case study for looking at that because
[15:44] I'll let you talk about the ref because you're probably more
[15:48] familiar with ref's submissions that I am because I just
[15:50] avoided them as much as I could, I knew that I haven't shown
[15:53] it. - Because I had years, I was having a long period, I was
[15:59] actually in charge of the ref for the whole of my school at
[16:03] school of electoral engineers, computer science, Queen Mary's.
[16:07] I have more about ref and the problems with it than just about
[16:11] anybody. - So if you could explain that maybe for the
[16:14] public, I think that's important. - Yeah, so ref, which
[16:18] is this research assessment exercise, is takes place every,
[16:22] typically every six years, sometimes it's very five
[16:25] sometimes, it's gone along as long as seven.
[16:28] It was introduced, or about 25 years ago now, to be an
[16:36] international system for determining which universities
[16:40] get research funding and how much.
[16:43] The so called governments block ground.
[16:46] Government has a block ground for research funding, which is
[16:50] separate from the money it gives to the research funding
[16:54] councils where individual academics or groups academics
[16:57] can bid for funding on the basis of a particular project
[17:02] proposal. So that's separate.
[17:03] They have this other block grants and mountain money,
[17:05] quite a lot of money. That's exactly something of the
[17:10] order of what several billion a year, which they're going to
[17:13] award to universities just to do research whatever they want,
[17:17] spend it how they want on research.
[17:20] The problem is, of course, they decide, well, how they're going
[17:22] to determine who is most deserving of this, so you have
[17:25] this exercise, where each university has to submit a
[17:29] number of research active staff and make a case for how good
[17:37] they are. And the way it's typically been
[17:42] done, it's varied over the different exercises of the
[17:46] different half dozen exercises
[17:49] happen. There's about to be another
[17:51] one next couple of years. But generally, what happens is
[17:54] that each first of all, you have to identify, the university has
[17:59] to identify their research active staff.
[18:01] And those are people, and this is the critical thing who are
[18:05] considered to have had very good peer reviewed, enough very
[18:11] good peer reviewed journal articles.
[18:13] And we can come onto that whole thing about peer review, but
[18:16] that's the main criteria. It used to be the main criteria.
[18:19] I can say something else about the new criteria, but the main
[18:23] criteria was you've got to have a set of good peer reviewed
[18:32] best peer reviewed articles, you would have to make a case
[18:36] about how good an impact they were, and that would typically
[18:39] be how many citations it got, whether there was any
[18:44] exploitation, in particular commercial exploitation, for
[18:47] example, as a result of it, whether it led to future,
[18:51] whether it led to, you know, researching come, and at the
[18:56] main part, they were increasingly after that, that
[18:59] was the main criteria. Then they started to add new
[19:02] things, like with the sort of research environment, you
[19:04] know, how good you were, how good the your department was
[19:09] in getting research funding. And then now the new thing is,
[19:14] and this is completely dissolved, is that they're
[19:16] talking about for the next research, exercise 30%, it's
[19:19] going to be about how well committed you are to D.
[19:24] I have nothing to do with how good, so the whole research
[19:31] assessment now is going to partially, quite a significant
[19:35] portion, has to take care of how good you are at inclusivity,
[19:38] diversity, and all that nonsense.
[19:39] But anyway, forget about that, because that's coming up next
[19:42] time, and the past hasn't been there.
[19:44] And even actually, to credit, actually a lot of advice,
[19:48] chances have been, you know, and researchers have actually
[19:51] questioned why they need to include that D.
[19:55] I, they might be quite happy with it generally, but even they
[19:58] realize how dumb it is to say, this is, you've got to explain
[20:02] your commitment to that in order to get research funding
[20:05] anyway. So basically, the university's,
[20:10] then so you have this, it's a ridiculous exercise, because all
[20:14] of the universities I've been involved with, where we've been
[20:18] involved in a ref, you devote enormous, enormous resources
[20:23] to planning for the ref. They have, so every year you'd
[20:27] have a drive run with payy consultants, external
[20:29] consultants to come in and determine how well you're
[20:33] doing and make recommendations about how you can improve your
[20:37] ref submission. And eventually get submitted,
[20:39] and then they have a panel in each of the different subject
[20:43] areas who review each university and each department
[20:46] for their ref submission on the basis of that.
[20:50] You're then classified as, you
[20:55] star, four, three, and you had to be at least four or above to
[21:02] get any research funding whatsoever.
[21:04] So it's all about how many, and of course, how much money you
[21:09] get is then based on, it's not based on the number of
[21:13] research active people, academics you've submitted,
[21:16] and then you're overall grade. So Oxford and Cambridge, LSE,
[21:21] you know, typically come out on the top on this research
[21:26] assessment exercise, and they get the bulk of the funding.
[21:32] I mean, I was at Queen Mary, so Queen Mary, I think they've got
[21:34] the figures in the last time. Queen Mary did very well the
[21:37] last time. I was involved, and I think we
[21:42] came out, in my for example, my, yeah, I think overall Queen
[21:46] Mary came out six or seven out of all of the 180 universities
[21:51] that submit, but compared to the top three, you still only
[21:57] get, you know, a very small amount compared to them.
[22:00] And it's a significant number of minions, but not nothing
[22:03] compared to what the top three get.
[22:05] The top three or four are well above everybody else.
[22:09] 'Cause the interesting thing is that about Oxford and
[22:11] Cambridge, this is interesting, it's 'cause they do
[22:15] unbelievably well on the, you know, in getting this research
[22:19] income and that, but if you look at independent, the
[22:24] independent student assessments, so there's a complete, there's
[22:27] a separate national student assessment exercise, which takes
[22:33] place each year where students give feedback, assess, give,
[22:38] yeah, provide feedback about the quality of their teaching
[22:41] experience in universities. Oxford and Cambridge, the last
[22:44] time this was done, the last time I looked at it, 2025, they
[22:47] did not, can you believe I didn't get in the top 100?
[22:51] So anyway, that's the research, but so that's the research
[22:54] assessment exercise, but it's, so it's all based, it's all
[22:58] based on peer reviewed publications, more than anything
[23:01] else. Yeah, and, and research funding,
[23:04] but you get research funding, people get research funding, if
[23:09] they're part of, as I've explained in the book, you need
[23:12] to be part of research cleek really, and this is the whole
[23:15] thing that drives all academic research and why it has become
[23:19] an increasingly corrupt. As I said at the beginning,
[23:23] I've actually benefited in, you know, at different times my
[23:27] career through being part of research cleek.
[23:29] Now, what do we mean by research cleek?
[23:32] In most areas of research, whether it's in the sciences
[23:35] or social sciences or arts and humanity, what happens is
[23:40] there'll be certain niche subject areas where cleeks of
[23:44] academics form around there, and these can be actually, they
[23:47] can be quite big like the climate science cleek, or they
[23:52] can be very, very small things like some of the things in
[23:55] critical race theory, for example.
[23:57] But as long as you've got, as long as you've got cleek, which
[24:00] is sort of self perpetuated, so typically it will start off
[24:03] with just one or two professors or senior academics who
[24:08] gather, get some income, let's say start, start off with some
[24:14] research students, then some research assistants and
[24:17] postdocs, all working in that same area, and then they then go
[24:22] on to become, all of the post grads or the postdocs, then
[24:26] eventually, you know, maybe get academic posts, and they do
[24:30] the same, they basically continue in that same, very
[24:33] niche area of research, right? So you've got basically these
[24:37] cleeks of people who all know each other, have all worked
[24:40] together, came from the same, you know, originated from the
[24:43] same place or the same one or two academics, and they all
[24:49] cite each other's work, work in exactly the same areas.
[24:52] I've exactly the same ideological conformity to that
[24:57] particular research clique, that particular niche area of
[25:01] research, and you then basically capture the journals,
[25:06] which are relevant to that area,
[25:08] stuff. So what happens is that the
[25:10] people who get there, you get papers published in the top
[25:14] peer-reviewed journals, essentially by being part of a
[25:16] clique, of a niche area of research where you're part of
[25:19] the clique in that area. And so because there's a
[25:25] continual demand on academics to keep publishing papers all the
[25:29] time, the research isn't very good, the research gets that
[25:32] done, even if it's an important area isn't very good, because
[25:35] you've got to rush it. You've never, there's not such
[25:37] idea, like, you know, it's not lacking Einstein's time where
[25:40] you can spend your whole, you know, 30 years developing a
[25:44] single research hypothesis, and then published that, it
[25:47] doesn't work like that, because you're not gonna have enough
[25:50] publications, so I need to get
[25:53] your career, you've got to keep publishing all the time.
[25:55] So it's never properly finished work.
[25:56] It's always, in most cases, complete junk, actually.
[26:00] Or it's a little bit of research, which are nothing of
[26:03] great importance, but because you're part of a clique, as
[26:05] long as you're part of a clique, you can get that work published,
[26:11] doing the reviewing of it. And anybody who's outside of
[26:15] that clique, but who challenges, who wants to challenge some of
[26:19] that niche area of research. I mean, again, think about
[26:22] climate science has been a very obvious example of this,
[26:26] where you've got a massive clique of people, a very, you
[26:30] know, you've got enormous departments all churning out
[26:32] this, you know, basically part of the same ideological
[26:36] framework, which says that, you know, those catastrophic climate
[26:40] change, and it's all, and it's man-made, and therefore we've
[26:44] got to have these bizarre, global interventions to save
[26:47] humanity. That's a mess, clique, and in
[26:49] order to get, if you're part of that clique, you can get
[26:53] complete junk work published in the peer review journals,
[26:57] include the very top ones like nature, science, et cetera.
[27:01] But if you're doing work in that
[27:04] it, you won't get the work, you won't get it peer reviewed,
[27:08] you can't break into it. And in the rare occasions where
[27:12] something might slip through, it ends up getting redacted,
[27:15] 'cause you get a pile in from the clique.
[27:17] So we can't have this, this is challenging it.
[27:21] And so you've got these cliques, and the peer review is
[27:24] such as actually such an unbelievably overrated concept.
[27:30] You can't believe because for a start, because of that demand to
[27:37] keep publishing, you've got every academic, of course, churn
[27:41] that paper all the time, which means there's lots of papers
[27:44] that need to be reviewed. Now, when I was in, well, even
[27:49] more or less the last 20 years was in academia, because I
[27:52] heard a fairly senior position and have been involved in quite
[27:57] a number of different new shares of research with its own
[28:01] cliques. I was getting at times at 20
[28:05] papers from journals, quite, you know, top journals to review a
[28:09] week. Of course, I wouldn't be able
[28:11] to take on all of them, but I would like take on it many
[28:14] times, I was doing three or four reviews a week.
[28:16] And of course, to properly review a scientific paper, like
[28:19] the ones that I was being sent, because I'm in the era of
[28:24] magnetistic software engineering, to do it properly
[28:27] really would require many cases three to four weeks of
[28:30] solid work. You've got to really understand
[28:32] a very advanced piece of research, you've got to go to
[28:36] all the source material to properly review it.
[28:38] And I'll be quite open, it was very rare.
[28:41] Only if it was, let's say, a very close colleague.
[28:43] And if the work was something which was so directly related to
[28:47] mine where I could see it would actually improve my own
[28:50] research if I really could understand everything that's in
[28:53] it. Other than that, I would just
[28:55] do pretty superficial reviews. And as I said, I was part of
[28:58] this corrupt system myself because if it was someone I
[29:01] knew and liked, I would much more likely to give it a
[29:05] favorable review if it was someone I didn't.
[29:06] And if it was, if it was someone I didn't like, but let's
[29:10] say, citing or praising my own
[29:15] review. And that's what happens, and
[29:17] anybody who denies any academic who says, oh, we don't do
[29:22] that, they're basically lying. And this is how it works.
[29:25] So it's quite, it's very corrupt.
[29:27] And it gets even more corrupt because with the, it becomes,
[29:32] it's become so difficult for journals to get people to
[29:36] agree to do reviews because of this unbelievable pressure on
[29:39] academics. They don't get paid as a part
[29:42] of the corruption because you don't, you, academics don't
[29:44] get paid. The journals, journals make
[29:47] their money out of academics results as academic time
[29:52] because the academics are the ones who write the papers and
[29:55] also ones who review the papers.
[29:56] The journals just make the money out of the academics.
[30:00] So that's got even worse because now academics, in order to get
[30:06] your papers published, you normally have to now, they'll
[30:09] say, you have to make it open access.
[30:11] But it's all online now. And the journals say, well,
[30:14] you need to pay for open access. And for a top journal, it's
[30:17] about $2 and a half thousand, or two grand, five, 2,000 pounds.
[30:22] And unless you've got some research, let's show
[30:24] university pays for that or you've got a research grant,
[30:26] you can take that from, you can't get, you know, no matter
[30:30] how good your research, you're a young researcher without those
[30:33] funds. You're not going to get your
[30:35] research published in a peer review journal.
[30:36] And so you get these predatory journals which look like their
[30:40] peer at proper peer-reviewed journals, but they're praying on
[30:43] younger researchers and they'll say, well, peer review
[30:46] and publish your paper and it'll only cost you $500, not to
[30:50] an half thousand dollars. So you've got that sort of
[30:53] corruption going on. All of this stuff's going on.
[30:55] So the idea of peer review journals is, and it'd be in the
[31:02] sort of the test of hype. This is like, you know, it's
[31:05] in a peer review journal. That means it's high quality.
[31:07] It's complete nonsense, right? It's all about being part of the
[31:10] click. And it's exactly the same now
[31:13] for getting research funds. You know, if you're prior to
[31:17] the research councils, you've got no chance of getting
[31:20] funded now if you're not part of a click and you're not
[31:24] conforming to the particular niche ideological research,
[31:28] which is why. I mean, so definitely, I mean,
[31:31] a list of examples of bizarre. You have to go, you've got to
[31:36] the government publishes and there's a website which
[31:38] publishes all of the funded grant that gives from the
[31:42] various research councils. So just a cursory look down
[31:45] there. You'll find, you know, a
[31:46] quarter of a million, three quarters of a million pound
[31:50] for pregnant men and an exploration of trans mal
[31:54] experiences of practice as a reproduction.
[31:57] Two point million, a two million
[32:01] cultures, global circulations of identity politics and
[32:05] representation, a million quid for decolonizing knowledge,
[32:09] identity power and university curriculum.
[32:12] That's a sort of not, I mean, those are of course in more
[32:15] industry of humanities. Of course, which of course is
[32:17] because of, so you get all the DEI people are committed to
[32:21] the DEI nonsense or I've getting
[32:24] stuff. But you'd be amazed now even
[32:28] in the sciences, the, for example, the engineering
[32:32] science research council, says you have now got to, if you
[32:36] are going to make any proposal for a research project in any
[32:43] area, you've got to submit not just the normal research
[32:46] proposal which describes, you know, what your research
[32:50] objectives are, you know, how you're going to carry that out
[32:53] and stuff like that. You've got to have this DEI or
[32:56] they could, it's quality diversity, inclusion,
[33:00] submission, which explains how you are going to further the
[33:04] aims of equality diversity, inclusion, as part of your
[33:09] research. And you think, what the hell
[33:11] does that mean, you know? So I can tell you what it means
[33:15] for things like, so I was involved for example, a lot of
[33:19] the work I was doing in the last five or 10 years my career
[33:22] was in risk assessment in medical decision-making.
[33:26] So we'd been involved with clinical specialists in
[33:32] particular in areas of chronic diseases, right?
[33:35] And so there would be proposals around new treatments,
[33:39] for example, or new early diagnosis for particular,
[33:42] let's say chronic diseases. And you'd get a research
[33:45] proposal based around that, which was maybe talking about
[33:48] that, maybe setting up a clinical trial or an
[33:51] observational study or something like that.
[33:53] And basically, what would happen is that, unless you could make
[33:57] a case for specialized, for having a focus on a particular
[34:03] ethnic minority, that's what they're looking for for that
[34:08] type of study. So you can see how that was
[34:11] going, right? But even if you've got like a
[34:14] mathematical, what pure mathematical one, how you're
[34:16] going to put the di-stuff into that, what I'll tell you, what
[34:20] they're expecting. They were expecting you to say,
[34:22] how are you going to make sure that you're going to be
[34:26] sufficiently inclusive in how you make the appointments to
[34:29] research fellows in that? And stuff like that, how are
[34:33] you going to make sure that when you do the technology
[34:38] transfer, the results that you're going to be able to
[34:42] target ethnic minority communities, it's that insane,
[34:45] right? And again, just as with the,
[34:48] like the Cambridge behavioral attributes framework, if you
[34:51] don't pass, if you don't pass your DI submission on your
[34:56] research proposal, then look at that first.
[34:58] And if it then that's, if you haven't passed that, you won't
[35:00] get, they won't even look at the research proposal.
[35:03] This is the insanity. This is where we've ended up
[35:05] with. It drives everything.
[35:07] It's just, as I said, it's oppressive, it's oppressive and
[35:11] it needs to be completely dismantled in my view. - No,
[35:15] absolutely. And you know, in my field is,
[35:17] you know, I was in a professor of social informatics, so
[35:20] information science informatics and so I was frequently in
[35:23] departments with people like you and computer science and
[35:27] mathematical structure programming.
[35:28] And, and you would think that our disciplines would not be
[35:32] that influenced by ideology because we're supposed to be
[35:35] based on actual data, not based on ideas and theories.
[35:38] And yeah, let's actually look at what's actually happening
[35:40] with information and data and looking at those kinds of things
[35:43] as much of an objective point of view as possible.
[35:46] But what I was finding and sort of especially my last
[35:49] couple of years of when I was receiving, when I was in grant
[35:54] panels and peer-reviewed articles, it was like they were
[35:56] specifically going out of the way to ask research questions
[35:59] that were targeted toward DEI. You know, whether or not they
[36:02] were actually intellectually curious about this problem or
[36:05] not. So one of the areas in my field,
[36:07] that's kind of one of the more softer sides of informatics is
[36:10] looking at what kinds of information needs people have.
[36:13] So how can we, you know, from a professional point of view as
[36:16] a librarian, which is the sort of the practical side of my
[36:19] field, how do we create services and libraries or online
[36:22] that meet people's needs and they can work with them easily?
[36:25] So I was seeing research questions for thousands of
[36:28] dollars and pounds and euros, depending on which country I was
[36:31] in, of how do we meet the information needs of LGBTQ
[36:35] people? Now, how is that really, really
[36:38] any different from anyone else that they were just like, they
[36:42] were just inserting those words in there to say, well, here's
[36:44] a certain group that we're going
[36:47] particular demographic, but there was really nothing in the
[36:50] proposal that was actually any different from any other
[36:53] defining group if you wanted to put it that way.
[36:56] And I was seeing the same thing in papers.
[36:58] And it was just, it was all embedded, even in the
[37:02] engineering fields. You wouldn't think DDI would
[37:04] matter to, you know, a building and instruction, but they
[37:08] would find a way well, it has to be built to meet the net zero
[37:12] specifications because with 2050, we will be decarbonized,
[37:15] et cetera. And no matter what you think
[37:18] about whatever field, you know, maths is now racist, for
[37:21] example, right? Because we're using a Western
[37:23] system. I was in trouble for saying
[37:26] that, in fact, academic citing referencing is not racist and
[37:30] oppressive. It's just respectful and helpful
[37:32] to people. And that was also part of my
[37:35] cancellation as a librarian. And it's just amazing how all of
[37:38] the stuff has embedded into every field.
[37:39] And you think maybe I'll go down this route or look at this
[37:43] paper. This doesn't sound like it
[37:44] could be captured. And there it is.
[37:45] There's somebody with the pronouns in there.
[37:47] You know, there's the DEI statement or their land
[37:51] gratification, which is something that they do now in
[37:54] America and Australia, saying this used to be the ancient
[37:57] people of the et cetera tribe. It's no longer Canada.
[37:59] It's now this trial. I mean, that's exactly not a
[38:03] statement. As you said, there's quite a
[38:07] push for decolonizing mathematics.
[38:09] Yeah. But for school level, and the
[38:11] universities. I mean, we were told, so I was
[38:14] in, you know, as I say, in an engineering computer science
[38:18] engineering school. And yet, we were effectively
[38:23] mandated to include in all of our taught modules some
[38:31] component, which was basically explaining how we were going
[38:36] to further the calls of EDI. So that would be-- so you're
[38:42] quite-- how are you going to effectively make your calls on
[38:46] statistical risk assessment, or whatever, which was, in my
[38:50] case, how are you going to make that more inclusive?
[38:54] You know, how are you going to make-- how are you going to
[38:57] improve the diversity? So there was no getting away
[38:59] from it. And something that goes--
[39:01] which, again, people might not-- outside universities might not
[39:04] be aware of. And this is very important.
[39:07] And what's interesting about this, because there's always one
[39:10] to whether these things are even legal, but in just in so
[39:14] many universities, and certainly ones I've been in,
[39:17] there were increasing numbers of scholarships being
[39:21] advertised only to blame students, which is a cause black
[39:26] and ethnic minority, ethnic students.
[39:29] And we had some interest in discussion.
[39:33] Less and almost laughable discussions about this.
[39:35] Because I remember-- we-- when
[39:40] when these were first advertised, a Queen Mary, and
[39:45] now in our department. And in staff meetings, I was
[39:49] quite sort of cheekly raising concerns about this.
[39:52] So actually, Mike and such, just
[39:57] exactly-- who exactly is included in this fame
[40:01] criteria, right? And they started to give us some
[40:04] examples. I said, what about-- so it's
[40:08] like a Black Asian-- what about someone from Turkey?
[40:13] And it was agreed, actually, yeah, Turks were-- if you're
[40:18] from Turkey, that's allowed. That's part of it.
[40:22] I said, well, what about Israel? Oh no, but Palestinians were.
[40:30] So already, you get this kind of obvious problem of racism
[40:35] coming into this, blatant racism.
[40:38] But it got more ridiculous than that.
[40:39] Because it turns out that they
[40:45] this. But they determined that
[40:49] people from Ireland weren't included unless they had gypsy
[40:57] heritage. So Irish people were included as
[41:02] And then he got onto the issue of, well, what about people who
[41:06] self-identify as Black, even if they are not?
[41:10] And they were categorical that if you self-identify as Black,
[41:14] even if there's no evidence that you are, then you were
[41:17] allowed to apply for these scholarships.
[41:18] I mean, this is the insanity that we're talking about.
[41:21] It reminds me of-- this is not about academia, but it reminds
[41:24] me of a man that I saw in the Newcastle train station a couple
[41:27] of weeks ago in the women's lube.
[41:29] Like, completely, totally a man,
[41:32] But I guess if he says he's a woman, it was OK for him to be
[41:35] in there. And I was in there alone with
[41:37] him. And I was not comfortable.
[41:39] The issue of this whole racism identification issue, one way
[41:44] that I-- when I was in my process of getting further and
[41:48] further into trouble, they were talking about migrants.
[41:51] And the information needs of migrants.
[41:53] There's another information group.
[41:55] And they have them in their mind what they think a migrant
[41:59] is. And I'm sure people all have
[42:01] that sort of idea of what a migrant is today in Britain.
[42:05] But I said to them, you know what?
[42:06] I'm a migrant. I said, you know, I'm white.
[42:10] I have blonde hair. English is my native language.
[42:12] But I am a migrant. I came here to recruit it here
[42:16] to teach your children at British universities.
[42:18] But my information needs have nothing to do with the type of
[42:23] characteristics that you are speaking about, which is,
[42:25] apparently, people with no skills, no English speaking
[42:28] abilities, no money, no access to place to live.
[42:31] That was not my case. But again, you know, their
[42:34] identities and their categories that they like to put people
[42:37] into never work well. But you give them a counter
[42:39] example. They don't know what to say.
[42:41] All they do is get angry and defensive.
[42:43] They don't want to hear the bigger picture of things, which
[42:46] is unfortunately called function of that point.
[42:48] No, the brains just can't deal. It's not even serious.
[42:51] Yeah. That's a failure.
[42:54] So easy to catch these people out.
[42:56] And it doesn't change at the end of the day.
[42:58] They just double down. You can't change their minds
[43:03] because they're so-- let's say the capture is so complete.
[43:06] The book is called the capture of academia.
[43:09] And unfortunately, they have captured the minds of most
[43:15] young people incidentally who now goes through the
[43:19] university system. Because of course, the whole
[43:21] point is, as I say, as I keep talking about with the capture
[43:25] academia, it's if this nonsense just stayed in academia, it
[43:31] wouldn't be a problem for the course.
[43:32] It doesn't because they indoctrinate the people who, in
[43:36] each cohort, then go on to become the politicians, the
[43:39] lawyers, you know, the regulators, the policing,
[43:42] increasingly, and the regulators, you know, and that's
[43:47] how they've captured all the institutions over the years, I
[43:50] really believe that even though we know that most normal
[43:55] people in this country don't buy into this nonsense,
[43:59] unfortunately, the people who get into the key positions in
[44:04] all of the key institutions to state do, that's the problem,
[44:07] that's where we're at, just look at the whole has-- we know
[44:12] that just look at the two tier policing, for example.
[44:14] That's one error. We never believe that that
[44:16] could have happened and it has, because the people are now
[44:20] getting the positions, who are getting the important positions
[44:23] in the police force and getting the promotions, are the ones
[44:26] who are completely bought into this EDI ideology.
[44:33] That's complete, and you have to, in order to get to those
[44:36] positions, there's no resistance there's no resistance
[44:39] to it. And the problem also is that
[44:42] they become the teachers, not only the teachers of next
[44:45] generation, but the people who write the curricula for the
[44:48] next generation. And so what we've got now is
[44:51] that things like, as you say, not just the DEI stuff, but all
[44:55] the climate change nonsense net zero, that the propaganda in
[44:59] the curricula that goes right down to the, in fact, infant
[45:03] school level. Now, it literally goes to
[45:05] infant school level. - Yes. - In junior elementary and high
[45:09] school level. So the kids coming out of
[45:13] schools and going into universities, and of course,
[45:16] thanks to Blair, that's still over 50% of school levers, which
[45:25] academia. They're already primed,
[45:26] they've already gone through one, or several stages of
[45:30] indoctrination to this EDI net zero conformity.
[45:34] And they're perfectly primed then to get it in the
[45:37] university, even if they're not studying those subjects,
[45:40] 'cause they get it from, it's everywhere in the universities,
[45:43] all the student activism is based around that.
[45:46] And of course, you know, the cultural Marxist thing, I mean,
[45:50] all of the activity on campus is from, sort of Marxist-type
[45:56] groups, Marxist-Islamist groups, increasingly the ones
[45:58] who dominate campus activities.
[46:00] So even if the subject of students studying has got
[46:04] nothing to do with any of that, right, that's where they
[46:06] get on campus, that's what they're seeing in the posters,
[46:08] that's what they're seeing in the student debates, et cetera.
[46:12] So for example, any conservative groups who wanna set up a
[46:16] store in the university, or wanna have a debate, or wanna
[46:19] invite a speaker, it doesn't happen because the
[46:24] universities can't provide the security for those events to
[46:28] happen. This is happening all the time.
[46:30] I mean, there's loads of examples of this going on right
[46:33] now where even the most modest or conservative type activity
[46:38] gets threatened. And the universities turn around
[46:40] and they say, well, we believe in free speech.
[46:43] We're not stopping free speech. We just can't afford to police
[46:46] those events. We can't afford to have the
[46:48] security of those events. And therefore, the only events
[46:50] that go ahead are the ones which are sort of basically sort of
[46:55] anti-for-aligned. - Yeah. - And so you get the most radical
[47:01] student activity dominating campuses. - And that's what we
[47:05] went back to at the start. We were saying that that's the
[47:07] inclusivity is the extremism, especially on that sort of
[47:11] leftist angle on the certain sides of political situation,
[47:14] the certain sides of ideology,
[47:17] And those who are not on that side are not included
[47:20] essentially, but we're back to it.
[47:22] It's just, it's really, really difficult.
[47:25] And I, you know, I... (laughing) - There's something I
[47:31] not gonna put it out this picture.
[47:32] I know it sounds, people sound racist for this, but I've got to
[47:44] experiences, I've got where is it?
[47:47] So it's a, it's basically a university.
[47:51] Queen Mary University, I've got it, I've got it.
[47:54] Queen Mary University has its, if you go onto their website for
[47:58] their mission statement, the 2030 mission statement, it
[48:01] actually says their mission statement, and it's the only
[48:04] mission, it's about there's no
[48:05] It says their mission statement is to be the most inclusive
[48:09] university in the world. And what the hell does that
[48:12] mean? So you think any university, I
[48:14] mean, Queen Mary is a, you know, a Russell Group university,
[48:17] it's a 2020 university, I said it can six in the last research
[48:22] assessment exercise overall. You think its mission statement
[48:25] would be something like to be the best in researching this
[48:29] area, to produce the most high quality teaching in this area,
[48:32] whatever. No, it's mission statement,
[48:34] it's to be the most inclusive university in the world, which
[48:38] means absolutely nothing. And yet let's look at, let's
[48:41] see what this inclusivity means. This was the latest of the
[48:45] time of writing this. This was the latest set of
[48:49] people, the six people who were on the student executive,
[48:54] student union executive. - That does not look diverse or
[49:02] inclusive to me. - Exactly. There's nothing included on
[49:06] that. - No, no, no, no. There's some, but as far as
[49:09] they're concerned, that that's a cheaper.
[49:10] I'll tell you another final anecdote maybe about that
[49:14] inclusive, it's inclusivity. So Queen Mary has one of the
[49:19] highest of course proportions of
[49:23] because of where it is in the East End of London.
[49:26] And in my school, which is a course electronic and computer
[49:30] science poem, it's especially, it was especially so.
[49:32] So at the undergraduate level, let me tell you this and this is
[49:36] an exact, the quotes in there, I've got the evidence of nobody
[49:39] consuming over this because I've got the emails to back this
[49:43] up. So Queen Mary had, at the time
[49:46] when I wrote it, had 79% of it's, in my school, 79% of it's,
[49:56] universities were BAME or classified as BAME.
[49:59] So only 21% were basically white British.
[50:07] Students. We got an email sent round
[50:12] saying, how this is a great statistics.
[50:15] We're doing really, really well. But we've got to get that
[50:20] number 21% number even lower. And I kid you not, that's what
[50:25] was, that was the aim of this inclusivity mission to get it
[50:30] effectively, it seems to me to get the, to get the BAME
[50:33] component to 100% on the white British down to zero.
[50:37] That's inclusivity. - And who are the taxpayers in this
[50:40] country? The white British people who
[50:42] have been here their lives and their answers have been here
[50:45] forever and we're sending, we want to send their children to
[50:48] these universities and they fight for a place.
[50:50] They don't get as much a chance sometimes in my experience
[50:53] because they don't pay as much in fees as the overseas
[50:56] students. So they actually, in my, the
[50:58] universities I worked at in Scotland, they had sometimes
[51:00] less of a chance over competitive PhD places, for
[51:04] example. - Because it's an exciting case for foreign
[51:07] students pay for, we know that. But, and there's another thing.
[51:10] No, but it's, even the UK based bank students will get
[51:14] preference, will get preference over the white British.
[51:19] We know this in lots of areas. In particular, in the high
[51:23] demand subjects, like medicine, medicine, you would definitely
[51:27] be at an advantage if you are a BAME applicant, rather than a
[51:32] white British applicant. But the other thing, the one
[51:35] other thing, I mean really hard, I have to leave as my final
[51:38] point. In actual fact, this is another
[51:41] really concerning thing that I bring out in the book, is the
[51:44] fact that certain, certain countries, namely, and I'll say
[51:48] it, it's the China, the Chinese Communist Party.
[51:54] It basically, we basically subsidise their students to come
[52:00] here, they pay less. In fact, their PhD students pay
[52:04] nothing. There's a scheme called the
[52:06] Chinese Scholarship Council scheme, which at the time when
[52:09] I left, was funding 650 Chinese Communist Party approved PhD
[52:14] students a year across 40 different universes in UK.
[52:19] Queen Mary's one, we had, we took on 65 of these, I believe,
[52:25] a year. Six, we took on, I'm sorry, it
[52:31] was 650 in total. I think Queen Mary took on 80,
[52:35] I'm not sure what, what the number was.
[52:37] But those 650 students, we take them on, on zero fees.
[52:47] Why am I asked, but I'm never, this was like, I spent ages
[52:51] trying to understand, I've never got any proper answer.
[52:54] Well, the answer was, oh, it's great, isn't it great to have
[52:57] all these top class PhD students studying with you
[53:00] 'cause you're gonna get the benefits of, you know, joint
[53:02] research out, you're gonna publish more papers, you're
[53:05] gonna get, but all this and all that.
[53:06] Actually, they're the hardest and worst students to
[53:08] supervise a PhD. - I was gonna say, they're a lot of work,
[53:11] they're a lot of work. - Yes. - And the Chinese scholarship, the
[53:16] Chinese, under that program, what they get is a very
[53:19] minimal living allowance from the Chinese Communist Party.
[53:24] And even that's not enough to keep them actually going, so you
[53:27] end up, not only will we be paying their fees, which are 25
[53:30] and average of 25,000 pounds a year, which means that each
[53:35] cohort per year was costing the British taxpayer about 50
[53:39] million pounds, just in the fees alone, in the no fees basis
[53:44] alone, and 50, that's worth 50
[53:51] But in addition, we were having to basically fund them,
[53:54] give them sort of teaching assistant posts, which they
[53:58] were completely unqualified, just because we felt sorry for
[54:00] them, because they couldn't live on the wage, on the stipend
[54:03] they were getting from the Chinese Communist Party.
[54:06] And at the end of this, incidentally, all of them have
[54:10] to actually, the end of the three or four years they're
[54:14] here, they have to go back to China, which means that there's
[54:18] this massive technology transfer going from us into the
[54:21] Chinese Communist Party. They're all Chinese Communist
[54:24] Party approved, these students, so you've got that.
[54:27] And also, interestingly, they're not applying for the
[54:30] crappy, critical race theory courses.
[54:32] They're applying for the hard sciences, these students.
[54:35] So they're getting the best of the advanced technology, and
[54:40] it's going straight back to China, and we're paying for it.
[54:43] That's where we are, universities.
[54:44] It's completely insane. - Yeah, and it's true as well.
[54:47] I would say sort of a similar scheme with the Commonwealth
[54:50] scholarships. So we had students from Pakistan
[54:53] and Commonwealth related countries who are also not
[54:56] qualified to be in the place that they receive, but they get
[55:00] the money from their own schemes, and then we're expected
[55:04] to teach them, and then actually, in my experience, it
[55:07] actually decreased my publication rates because I was
[55:11] doing very remedial teaching skills where they didn't have
[55:14] the English skills. They've, you know, maybe got
[55:16] their way through there. English language was the
[55:18] answer they shouldn't have. So they didn't have good
[55:20] English. They certainly didn't have any
[55:22] basic research skills, and somehow this is supposed to
[55:25] help me make me more research productive, which was actually
[55:28] an opposite. I would've been better off on my
[55:30] own. (laughing) - Exactly, that's so.
[55:33] - So unfortunately, Norman, this has been a great conversation,
[55:36] very dynamic. I've really enjoyed this.
[55:37] I always ask people, "Is there
[55:41] say? " I know that you had your last
[55:42] chapter in your book on how we reform the systems, but maybe
[55:45] we should let people buy the book so they can find out your
[55:48] ideas or do you want to talk about them?
[55:49] - Yeah, there's a book, you can find it on Amazon, or
[55:53] Amazon, any countries on Amazon, or just search, I mean,
[55:57] I'm on X, prof, and Fenton, or one word, but if you just go
[56:02] to NormanFenton. com, then you'll get all of the links to
[56:05] the book. And what I will say is a private
[56:07] word. So this book is actually
[56:08] compared to all my previous books.
[56:10] I need to 100 pages long, and it's actually quite an easy
[56:14] read, compared to, you know, my sort of previous books, and at
[56:18] 200 pages, it's only about the fifth of the size of a typical
[56:23] university D.I. manual. (laughing) There's some
[56:28] inspiration. I was wondering why I had such
[56:30] a good time reading it. - That's really great.
[56:35] Well, thank you again for your
[56:38] helping us, I think those of us who have lived through it can
[56:41] speak from our own experiences and for those of us who
[56:44] understand the system. I think we need to do as much
[56:46] of this as possible to inform the public who are paying the
[56:49] taxes, who are sending their children to universities, whose
[56:52] hard earned money is going towards D.I. enabled research
[56:57] essentially. And, you know, is this really
[56:59] what we want for our country and for the future of Western
[57:02] education? What I look back to the Scottish
[57:07] quite disappointing when we think about the fact that, you
[57:10] know, David Hume Tower at the University of Edinburgh was
[57:12] renamed George Square because we can't talk about David Hume
[57:14] anymore because he was a white man.
[57:16] You can't do that. So, but anyways, I want to thank
[57:20] you again for your time and your
[57:23] as you enjoyed it.
[57:26] Enjoy it. - Yeah, and I will put
[57:29] your ex-account and the write-up that we do for the
[57:31] interview so people can just go to that and easily access all
[57:38] So, thank you again and we will keep working for the truth
[57:42] and for getting it out there. So, appreciate your help once
[57:45] again. Thanks again, Norman. - Okay,
[57:46] thanks. Bye.

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