Alexa Hepburn Alexa Hepburn kicks us off -an analysis of the gradient of escalation to admonishment #LboroCADay24

Thank you all for joining us for another well-attended #CAday2024 by 🄳 🄰 🅁 🄶 and Loughborough CRCC We are grateful for your support, exciting new research and mouthwatering cakes #CakeOff2024 See you next year 👋🥂🎁🎉

On 27 Feb my book comes out. It’s about how Liverpool’s recent history should change the way we think about modern Britain. In this thread, every few days till then, I will share an extraordinary fact about Liverpool’s twentieth-century. Pre-order here: waterstones.com/book/liverpool…

Was Zelenskyy ambushed in the Oval Office? New analysis of the last 10 minutes of Trump & Zelenskyy’s tense meeting using interaction analysis shows how claims of diplomacy and respect were in ironic contrast to interruptions, accusations, & rebukes. rolsi.net/2025/03/19/gue…

Excited, happy, delighted, only slightly anxious, to be talking about the emotionography of anger in Stockholm later. Alexa Hepburn @LizStokoe Derek Edwards International Society for Conversation Analysis Rutgers CA Lab #EMCA

Continuing the emotional Swedish saga, this time in Norrköping. Anger in Interaction before two exciting days of co-eating! Hosted by Sally Wiggins Young - Alexa Hepburn ISCA Rutgers CA Lab

Listening to Rest is Politics/US and reading other commentators, it's striking how widely talk of "left-wing bias" in universities has taken hold. That matters - when academia is under political attack. Some thoughts from someone who worked inside major US and UK universities.🧵

Adding some tags in case of interest and response: Katty Kay ALASTAIR CAMPBELL Rory Stewart Times Higher Education The Chronicle of Higher Education Inside Higher Ed American Association of University Professors PEN America

University research isn’t just opinion. It involves building evidence-based arguments, tested through peer review and serious critique. That's a much higher bar than casual commentary. 2/

Academia has produced plenty of sophisticated conservative scholarship in politics, philosophy, economics, and social theory. What counts is rigor, coherence, and evidence – not ideology. 3/

Populist thinking struggles to get a foothold in academia because it dodges facts, rejects trustworthy sources, and offers untestable assertions. Rejecting it is not bias; it is standards doing their job. 4/

Inequality, racism, poverty, and social change aren’t “left-wing causes.” They are realities, extensively documented in research – in both the US and UK. Critics are free to challenge the evidence - but must do so seriously. 5/

Faculty are closely engaged with students from diverse backgrounds (though with a middle-class skew in both countries). Their understanding of inequality isn’t abstract - it’s daily and personal. 6/

Academics are educated in hard histories: slavery, empire, LGBTQ+ persecution, systemic discrimination. Being “woke” often means facing uncomfortable truths, not following ideological fashion. 7/

Many entered academia because they care about ideas, education, and human betterment – not to wage ideological battles. 8/

It’s not surprising that higher education correlates with support for parties addressing inequality and diversity. It reflects informed engagement with the world, not partisan bias. 9/

DEI hiring has strengthened universities. In both the US and UK, there’s a highly qualified, historically excluded pool of scholars. Hiring them raises the quality of academic life – it doesn’t dilute it. 10/

Calls for 'balance' between evidence and baseless denial don't protect free speech — they undermine intellectual rigor. Universities thrive on serious, evidence-based challenges, not superficial parity. 11/

Serious conservative arguments are welcome - but like everything in universities, they must meet the same standards: evidence, coherence, and rigor. 12/

Universities aren't biased toward left-wing politics — they're biased toward knowledge. Thoughts here 👇