This blog came about after many years of listening to people talk about excellence.

The main purpose of the blog is to host The Academic Pledge. The Academic Pledge is an attempt to move beyond critique and answer the eternal question: ‘what is to be done?’ It is about mapping out how we can do academic work in a collective and socially-conscious way. The political and institutional background to, or context for, the pledge is described here and problems of measuring excellence here.

No action will be successful if it remains the action of a few individuals. But, at the same time, until we, as individual academics end our complicity with a regime of excellence – and stop celebrating individualism and ‘success’ – our eloquent objections to neo-liberalism will remain gutless.

The pledge was written with the help and suggestions of colleagues from my and other institutions and revised after presenting it in York in Summer 2014. I hope that it provides a useful starting point. Suggestions for additions, clarifications and amendments are welcome.

A minor note: The pledge focuses on our relations with one another, as academics. As such, it is not concerned with the ethics of research primarily. It can, therefore, be read as complementary to disciplinary statements of ethical practice (such as this from the BSA). Nor does it directly relate to the subject of academic work, although implicitly it does. 

About me: I work at a London university. It is not especially worse nor better than other universities at which I’ve worked. I am a member of UCU.