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I am proud that no one at UWA was made redundant, she said.

We used the negotiated collective jobs framework approach, buying time until the end of 2021 so that a better plan could be considered, consulted and mapped for the future.

But she did not welcome the culture wars that broke out between universities and their leaders when they couldnt agree on a national framework to save jobs with the National Tertiary Education Union.

When you take a VC job, the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them.

We ended up catastrophizing; universities deciding their sovereignty was being challenged, as if. And that certainly wasnt by the NTEU, she said.

She criticised the federal governments Groundhog Day of budgetary cuts and regulatory changes.

The reductionist view of our elected leaders is demoralising and at risk is our place in the world as funding is cut and an increasingly narrow of what a university education is takes a grip, Professor den Hollander said.

Universities can contribute much more to our nation than simply ensuring graduates get jobs within six months of their graduation.

She said the great moral challenges of climate change and the Indigenous voice to Parliament had not gone away, which remained significant for the nation and the higher education sector.

The surge of support for Black Lives Matter, the increased homeless numbers, the deaths in aged care and the trending violence against women are red signals; signals that were not getting it right and that there are divisions that will bring us down if we do not stand up.

That is the job of universities; to reflect the society, to educate, to speak and write the truth and also to provide some of the solutions.

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As a specialist in digital technologies, Professor den Hollander created profound changes to Deakins tuition and research more than a decade ago by founding it in a digital origin and creating better access for distance education, which helped it roar up the rankings.

She said delivering such change was very rough in the beginning and you cannot shy away from the discussion and the battles, labelling it the hardest job in the university sector.

When you take a VC job in fact, any leadership role the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them that is the measure of our success, and it is our individual legacy.

She pointed to the importance of having a strong culture that backs strategy: UWA staff did that and my part in that I will cherish.

And in an almost call to arms, she told academics that the university sector was now in harms way.

Years of successive cuts and malignant disinterest are paying out, she said.

Inclusion and a right to education are now in question, as is our capacity to contribute ideas and to speak the truth.

Our social licence is being questioned and this will need our full attention.

Murdoch Universitys senate election, which closes on December 10, will be telling about what motivates those invested in higher education to vote.

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The alumni seat held by Abby Agrawal is being hotly contested by 10 others, including a retired fisheries science professor who opposed the dissolution of face-to-face lectures at Murdoch, and a corporate watchdog lawyer and the former guild president, who only recently left the university.

Law graduate and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigator, Alex Bellotti, has called for the end of bad press about the university and to hold the senior leadership to account.

Murdochs current approach to management and pedagogy is a disservice to everyone involved, causing Murdoch to achieve the unenviable rank as the states worst-performing public university for research, teaching and impact in the influential Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Mr Bellotti said.

We as alumni must take a stand and declare enough is enough, before Murdochs reputation (and by extension our degrees reputation) is further eroded by the discontinuance of leading areas of research and teaching, cost cuts masquerading as contemporary pedagogy or unproductive legal campaigns against whistleblowers.

Former CSIRO marine biologist and Murdoch Professor Emeritus, Neil Loneragan, agreed that since 2012 major and harmful restructures have impacted the reputation and the morale of staff.

In nominating for an alumni position on senate, I bring both senior inside experience and an outside perspective on which priorities are likely to ensure the greatest value and quality of Murdoch University for WAs public good and the alumni community, he said in his election profile.

If elected, I would uphold the values of fairness, respect, equity and transparency in planning and decision-making to ensure the reputation of the university and the value of the Murdoch degree.

But among the most sweeping changes is the universitys academic council, where academic representation is being increased from 19 seats to 25 out of 50, with an additional two seats for heads of school added and two more seats for students, while ex-officio seats are being rolled back from 21 to 17, in a reversal of the national trend.

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It sends the balance of power over academia back into the hands of its grass-roots representatives, which was conceded after a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency review found Murdoch was at risk of failing to comply over its academic council adequately identifying, mitigating and maintaining oversight of material risks that impact teaching and learning quality at Murdoch.

Based on research, recommended practice and benchmarking, the composition of Murdoch Universitys academic council has been adjusted where elected members now make up the clear majority, a university spokesperson said.

The university has also added the direct election of academic members to many subordinate committees, thus broadening participation in academic governance across the university.

Dr Michael Tomlinson, who was a governance and compliance consultant at TEQSA until January 2020, said academic councils or boards used to be central to the decision-making structures of universities, where academic policies and strategies were debated and decisions made to accredit courses.

But their position has been gradually eroded and more decisions have been made by management over the years, he said.

This was a trend in all universities both here and overseas.

Dr Tomlinson said the changes at Murdoch should allow more collective oversight of managerial proposals.

This is more difficult to achieve if the academic council is dominated by ex-officio appointees from management, who will naturally tend to support a management agenda, he said.

In some respects these collegial bodies can be internal watchdogs ensuring that academic standards are maintained and corners are not cut in the pursuit of entrepreneurial goals.

Murdoch academic and whistleblower Gerd Schroeder-Turk said it was great to see the university bucking the trend over academic representation on boards, councils and committees as it was key to the greater public good of educating future generations.

The recent changes make me optimistic and will strengthen Murdoch University as it continues its proud and strong contribution and service to our society, he said.

I believe that empowered and happy staff are the best guarantee of great outcomes for a university. Increasing elected membership positions on committees does just that.

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Is Murdoch University changing its culture? An executive and governance shakeup is afoot - WAtoday

Crowds march through central London to demand a People's Vote on the Governments new Brexit deal on October 19, 2019 in London, England. As in politics, the temptation is to chase differentiation for your brand in exaggerating difference but the real task is to bring people together and cool the temperature.

Photo: Peter Summers/Getty Images

The business of business is business. Whether or not Milton Friedman, the icon of free-market economics, said these exact words, he would certainly agree with the sentiment. It has been 50 years since he published The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, an epochal essay the title of which makes its position pretty clear.

But a lot has changed since then. Its hard to imagine any business focusing only on the profit margins and staying out of wider societal debates. Some have embraced the shift. For example, the CEO of Axios, the U.S. news site, explains that the Axios way is to think of your brand as a political candidate, where you need to be hyper-aware of how youre seen by your core constituencies (employees and customers) and by the broader public.

Most businesses, however, are trying to navigate a path between the extremes, something that is becoming increasingly difficult in more fractious times.

The focus on so-called culture wars has exploded in the last few years in countries around the world. It used to be a largely American battle, but our major study on cultural divides across countries shows thats no longer the case. For example, our analysis of media content shows there were just 21 articles in mainstream newspapers talking about a culture war in the U.K. in 2015 but by 2020 there were 534.

Whether and how to engage in relentless cultural skirmishes presents real challenges for businesses. Taking sides can alienate a large chunk of your customers but not taking sides can be as big a risk when remaining neutral is increasingly viewed as complicit and when both action and inaction can go instantly viral.

The challenge is not a simple communications problem, but goes to the heart of business strategy. And as with any strategy exercise, we should start with a full understanding of the real position.

Our research suggests that there are three main lessons from a more careful reading of where the public is.

The first is that U.K. consumers are not nearly as exercised as the explosion in media focus on culture wars may lead you to believe. Sections of the media may have imported the U.S. language and concepts of culture wars wholesale but its much less clear whether the majority of the public is as interested.

When people are asked to describe, in their own words, what sorts of issues the term culture wars makes them think of, by far, the most common response is that it doesnt make them think of any.

And only tiny minorities associate culture wars with many of the stories that have been prominent in U.K. media coverage: Just over 1% link the term to the Black Lives Matter movement or debates over transgender rights, while under 1% make a connection to the removal of statues.

But the second point is that this doesnt mean these are unimportant debates or an easy task for businesses far from it. The language and images of the culture war in the U.K. suggest two monolithic blocs of Brits facing each other in a battle over whether being woke is a good or a bad thing. But thats very far from the reality its more complex than that. In fact, weve identified four main groups of people: the Progressives, the Moderates, the Traditionalists and the Disengaged.

The Progressives and Traditionalists make up a quarter of the population each, and the extent to which they have entirely different worldviews is clear from just a couple of defining features.

On one side, 97% of Progressives think equal rights for ethnic minorities have not gone far enough in the U.K., and just 15% agree that political correctness has gone too far. This is an almost perfect mirror of views among Traditionalists: Only 10% of this group believe ethnic minority rights have not gone far enough, while 97% think political correctness has gone too far.

But while the most extreme slithers of these two ends of the spectrum draw most attention on social media and phone-in shows, there are large chunks of the population in the Moderate and Disengaged groups with more nuanced perspectives or no views at all.

The challenge, then, is not picking between two sides, but deciding how to engage with a much more fragmented public position, where businesses need to understand who they are appealing to and help shape a more nuanced debate.

This leads to the third point: Simple demographic profiles are a poor predictor of which of the four culture war groups people fall into, including age or generation. A lot of the discussion around culture wars paints a picture of coming generations of social justice warriors facing off against older generations. But, while there are clearly differences in the age profile of our four segments, with the young being more likely to be progressive, its far from a simple split between young and old.

Ive recently finished writing a book on Generations, which analyses real data and changes over time, rather than the generational myths and stereotypes were more typically served.

Related Reading

This shows that younger generations are always pushing the boundaries of socially progressive views but that the gap between young and old today is no larger than it was in the past. The issues may have changed, from, for example, gender equality to gender identity, but the pattern is the same.

And on some measures, its older groups that are more likely to act against brands. For example, it is Gen Xers and baby boomers who are most likely to have boycotted a product in the last 12 months, while Gen Zers currently lag a long way behind. On this measure, cancel culture is more of a middle-age thing. This is not a passing fad or fashion among the young.

The advice for business from our research is the same as for politicians.

We dont yet have a full-blown culture war in the U.K., but were in a dangerous position, because we could create one if we keep emphasizing division.

Business has huge power and reach across national and cultural borders and, whether it likes it or not, it has a role to play in setting the tone and terms of debate. As in politics, the temptation is to chase differentiation for your brand in exaggerating difference. But the real task is to bring people together and cool the temperature.

No one wins in a culture war, not for long at least. The key social responsibility of business today is to help find common ground.

Link:
Has the UK Imported a US-Style Culture War? - BRINK

China's internet censorship machine has expanded to include crypto media outlets and mining pools in a continued attempt to minimize Chinese users' exposure to the crypto market ecosystem.

Chainnews, one of the major Chinese crypto media outlets established since 2017, is now shutting down all channels of content production and distribution.

Meanwhile, Chinese internet service providers have taken further steps to detect and block domestic miner IPs from connecting to major mining pool services, based on a China Telecom document seen by The Block.

These moves are signs that China is not loosening its grip over the crypto industry even if its most severe crackdown efforts ever since the summer has already dampened retail interests and forced businesses and executives to either cut ties with the Chinese market or physically move overseas.

Earlier this month, the mobile apps and web domains of at least three major Chinese language crypto media outlets Chainnews, ODaily and BlockBeats all became inaccessible almost at the same time. Since then they have switched to their official Telegram channels to distribute newsflashes to subscribers and changed to new web domains.

Yet still, after much thought, Chainnews editor-in-chief said in his WeChat news feed on Friday that the platform is shutting down entirely and expressed his genuine gratitude toward everyone in the community that has been with it over the years. Other outlets like ODaily and BlockBeats are still operating on new web domains but their mobile apps are inactive, which has limited their readership reach on the mobile front.

This comes months after popular market information sites such as CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and TradingView were blocked by China's Great Firewall.

According to a recent document made by China Telecom and seen by The Block, the top Chinese internet service provider has come up with a detailed solution to detect domestic miner IPs that have communicated with mining pools' URLs.

Based on its ongoing detection, it can either cut off the internet service to specific IPs or manually blacklist the URLs that mining pools use to connect with individual equipment.

As of writing, the domains of almost all the 10 biggest mining pools by real-time hash rate for both Bitcoin and Ethereum are not accessible from IPs inside China, based on The Block's verification.

Among them, F2Pool, ViaBTC, BinancePool and BTC.com have seen sharp real-time hash rate declines by around 10% for either Bitcoin or Ethereum over the past 24 hours.

2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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China's crypto censorship reaches over news outlets and mining pools - The Block Crypto

Madonna at the Billboard Women in Music Awards in New York on December 9, 2016. Gregory Pace/Shutterstock

Speaking out. After an image of her exposed nipple got removed from Instagram, Madonna wasted no time speaking out against societys double standards for censorship.

The 63-year-old singer took to Instagram on Thursday, November 25, to share the same sexy snaps that were previously taken down. This time, the lingerie-clad star covered the portion of my nipple that was exposed with a heart emoji.

It is still astounding to me that we live in a culture that allows every inch of a womans body to be shown except a nipple, she captioned the post. As if that is the only part of a womans anatomy that could be sexualized. The nipple that nourished the baby! Cant a mans nipple be experienced as erotic ??!! And what about a womans ass which is never censored anywhere?

The Material Girl singer went on to explain that her experience with censorship pre-dates Instagram shes been dealing with it for nearly 40 years.

Giving thanks that I have managed to maintain my sanity through four decades of censorship . sexism .. ageism and misogyny, she wrote.

The pop stars followers quickly came to her defense, dropping FREE THE NIPPLE throughout the comments section. End to the patriarchy, a user wrote, while another added, Freedom of expression. Someone else chimed in: EXACTLY WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SHOW OUR BODIES.

Madonnas sexy photos werent just part of a statement about censorship Kate Beckinsale used them to pull a prank on her daughter Lily Sheen, whom she shares with ex Michael Sheen.

The 48-year-old actress texted a photo of the Madame X singer crawling under the bed, showing off her butt and legs, to her daughter.

Do you think its too much that I posted this. The thing is my ass looks good, she wrote to her 22-year-old daughter. Sheen responded: Im a little confused I must say. I do thinks its a little much, but its also very artsy.

With a stamp of approval from her daughter, the Underworld star finally let her in on the joke. Lol its Madonna. Like Id ever. I cant believe you cant recognize your own mothers anus from under the bed, she joked.

Naturally, Beckinsale posted a screenshot of the exchange to Instagram and it didnt take long for the conversation to rake up a decent amount of laughing emojis in the comments section.

Selma Blair even jumped in and wrote: I could tell that wasnt you. Also @lily_sheen is very open minded. Madonna, is very open as well, I see.

Continue reading here:
Madonna Slams Instagrams Censorship Policies After Photo of Her Exposed Nipple Is Removed: Ageism and Misogyny - Us Weekly

When a staffer at the independent media website Iwacu in the central African state of Burundi tried to visit the outlet online in late October, they received an error message instead. Hum. Nous ne parvenons pas trouver ce site; the site could not be found even though the local media regulator had promised to unblock it in February.

A report published in August found Burundian networks using technology from Chinese company Huawei to block Iwacu and other news sites. The report was funded and published by PrivacyCo, the parent company of privacy research and advice website Top10VPN.com. Co-authors Valentin Weber and Vasilis Ververis, PhD candidates at the University of Oxford and Humboldt University of Berlin respectively, told CPJ in a recent video call about their research tracking Huawei equipment known as middleboxes to internet networks in 72 countries, 18 of which were using the devices to block news or other websites. (Weber has since joined the German Council on Foreign Relations as a cyber research fellow.)

In Cuba, the report found the sole state-controlled internet service provider ETECSA using Huawei technology to block independent news website Cubanet, among others; authorities in Cuba have subjected Cubanet and its journalists to frequent restrictions. Readers can bypass blocks using virtual private networks (VPN), but many news outlets must shift their work to other sites or social media. In Egypt, a number of outlets have gone out of business after being blocked.

Middlebox devices can examine the packets of data that facilitate browsing and communication using a process called deep packet inspection. DPI has benign, even essential functions, like making connections faster or caching content for future access, but it can also be used to manipulate or filter information, the authors said. In the wrong hands, a middlebox could divert visitors to a rogue website designed to steal passwords or install malware, for example.

Such intrusions are hard to detect, but the 18 countries in the report acknowledge blocking notifying users via their browsers that the content they are trying to access is restricted making censorship a starting point for researchers to assess whether countries are using middleboxes to undermine human rights, according to Weber and Ververis.

Glenn Schloss and Rob Manfredo of Huaweis U.S. corporate communications team acknowledged CPJs request for an interview when the report was initially published, but did not subsequently respond to emailed questions.

The interview with Weber and Ververis has been edited for length and clarity.

You describe Huaweis middleboxes performing online behavior management where does that term come from?

Weber: It comes from Huawei marketing material relating to a specific middlebox, the ASG5000 series. We found it in a Chinese language source, so its our translation, but I think it matches the capabilities well it can detect traffic and act on it, managing the behavior of [internet] users in various contexts and venues.

Why are you concerned about the security implications of middleboxes on national networks?

Weber: Important traffic is flowing through these devices but the policies [for the data Huawei receives from them] sometimes werent clear what happens to the data, or whether it can be transferred further. For different continents or territories, we found a database location in Mexico for Latin America for example but you wouldnt know what happens once the data is transferred there.

Ververis: An analogy for a consumer would be a cleaning robot that sends data to the vendor about the dimensions of your house. Hopefully its in good faith, but I would not be surprised if that data was being sold or analyzed [for other purposes].

Should individuals on a network be concerned that a middlebox could access private information, or passwords, for example?

Ververis: Usually you should not be worried when youre visiting websites, especially websites that use some kind of encryption or secure layer [like HTTPS, which prevents others from reading or intercepting information exchanged between a reader and the websites that they visit]. We all know that you shouldnt connect to open WiFi, [but instead] use a VPN or Tor [on untrusted networks], and [log in to accounts with] two-factor authentication.

But its difficult to protect against a strong adversary. Lets say youre a journalist on a network that you dont trust. The network can gain a lot of information from your connectivity, and middleboxes can [be used to facilitate a cyberattack].

How did you detect that these middleboxes were being used to block websites?

Ververis: We use open data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference, which collects network measurements from volunteers all over the world. When youre sending and receiving a request from a web server you get back some metadata, and we were able to find the specific Huawei tag added to these responses. That might reveal the device, the model, sometimes the version. The middlebox we found had already been found in 2017 OONI research on Cuba.

Its only possible to do this research if the data is provided openly, the way OONI does. Other entities like Cloudflare and Google, or the transparency reports from social media companies, dont help researchers and journalists find out whats going on.

You found 18 countries blocking content with middleboxes, up from seven in an earlier study you did in 2019. What does that suggest?

Ververis: We have more data from OONI now than before, but censorship has [also] been increasing. Its actually quite surprising that [so many countries] use the same device, so there may be more to unpack there whether its cheap, or easy to deploy, we dont know.

Is Huawei providing maintenance on these devices or facilitating how they are used?

Ververis: In general, infrastructure [used by internet service providers] should be maintained by the vendor. You usually pay for a license to keep using it [for a specified period].

Weber: The devices report back to the vendor, sending error notices and other information, so the manufacturer might be incentivized to act on that, for example to provide software updates. We also expect that Huawei is likely to provide keyword lists or broad categories for blocking to the customers.

Your report found websites in the news and media category were among those most subject to blocking what do you take that to mean?

Ververis: News and political advocacy were among the higher categories, though in some countries we have much more data than in others. There are [also] other [blocking] methodologies. In Cuba, they still use the Huawei middlebox, but theyre also deploying something else. Either it doesnt have a tag or its the same equipment thats been changed, or, most probably, other devices.

The research is not conclusive, but our goal was to raise awareness. If one vendor and one device can do so much damage, what happens with the other dozens or even hundreds that are also out there?

Weber: We uncovered the tip of the iceberg. If there has been some political censorship in a country, even if its just a few websites, we can expect there to be more.

Would you argue Huawei is more likely to facilitate censorship because of its origins in China, one of the most censored countries in the world?

Weber: Like all other companies, Huawei is profit driven, which means they will sell anywhere they can make money. Weve seen that Blue Coat Systems, a company based in the U.S., was selling to regimes that were questionable. There are very few international regulations that would inhibit any of these companies [from] selling wherever there is an opportunity.

[Editors note: Researchers at the University of Torontos Citizen Lab have reported products sold by Blue Coat Systems being used to censor and surveil internet traffic around the world in the past, including in Syria in 2011, despite a U.S. trade embargo. The company which has since been acquired and restructured, according to Forbes told the Wall Street Journal that the technology had been transferred without its knowledge.]

What is a companys responsibility if it supplies a middlebox to a customer that uses it to censor news under local law?

Weber: There are best practices to engage customers abroad and do risk assessments. I havent seen much evidence that Huawei does this.

If youre a manufacturer selling to law enforcement or government entities, you have to assess their human rights record. Its too easy to say, We dont know how its going to be used. We were able to find questionable use of the technology, a multi-million or multi-billion-dollar company should be able to as well.

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How Chinas Huawei technology is being used to censor news halfway across the world - CPJ Press Freedom Online