Badenoch's comments on Critical Race Theory aren't an aberration from the government, they aren't out of keeping with government statements over an extended period of time. There's been ministers talking about 'cultural Marxism' for instance...

Not apparently caring about the white supremacist use of that concept or indeed its antisemitic framing.

There's been some 'both sideism' I've seen in people trying to process what was said, that academics shouldn't rise to the 'culture war' bait...

To that I want to say this. We are in that 'war', not by choice.

The government doesn't say these things because they believe they are true, though some of them will, nor to win an argument with those they criticise (the naive way some academics think politics works)

They say them as performance, to delegitimse a set of institutions they regard, frankly, as an enemy.

They are whipping up hate against universities as they have done much of the past five years, as neoliberal marketisation policies were repurposed in service of neonationalism

Last week, I saw a post on a community Facebook group I belong to that stated that BLM was 'Marxist terrorists'. This is the kind of person they are trying to reach, trying to activate, and the people who don't post but click 'like'.

Goodwin, who has no substantial expertise as a scholar of educational policy or education, wrote a piece in the Mail after a select cttee appearance, and spouted unsubstantiated bile about academics.

It got wider coverage, of course.

Policy Exchange have set up a History Matters initiative featuring figures highly critical of decolonising the curriculum initiatives and defensive of the legacy of the British Empire.

The Tories refused to bail out the HE sector during the pandemic, for one analogous reason to why they wouldn't agree to Manchester's demands.

They hate universities outside of a few, they hate Andy Burnham and uppity northerners, and they want to show who is boss.

If a uni gets into trouble and has to go to the government cap in hand, the govt announced they would be restructured. Manchester was told point blank they weren't getting what they needed.

Back to Critical Race Theory. The government wants to regulate what can be said and taught on campus.

They have no time for the idea of academic freedom - save for transphobes and racists - or indeed for the idea of institutional autonomy.

As late as a couple of years ago when I did the Brexit moment book I was still being told I was hyperbolic when I said the changes in the research structure had neonationalist undertones.

Yet recently the Education Secretary was mouthing off at a culture war conference, talking about 'free speech' on campus, even as thousands of COVID cases were on campus due to government and uni management policies.

Some unis brought in social media policies to stifle criticism

In a pandemic. Others already had restrictive ones. And that's without talking about PREVENT.

I get frustrated when I see academics naively speak about 'but we have all this expertise, why didn't the government listen to us?'

They didn't listen to experts on PREVENT. The scholarly consensus is damning, so to take one of Stephen Ball's concepts ('policy intellectuals') they just take the experts that suit them.

In fact they seldom listen to experts who say something they don't want to hear.

We know now that SAGE recommended online-only wherever possible. We know now that Vallance wanted a national lockdown weeks ago.

We know the government's scientific advisers don't think Tier 3 can work.

They don't want to hear that, as they didn't want to hear the WHO in March/April, which is why Dr Harries came out with that nonsense about WHO advice being for developing countries.

That went well

But none of this should be revelatory to anyone. Expertise only works in political systems when aligned with Power.

We aren't.

We can't stand outside wider politics and expect to be listened to 'cos Reason'

When I was 18, I was a young journalist on a local paper and I learned a valuable life lesson.

A major corporation wanted to build something for public use on a former chemicals site.

My editor was tipped off by a source that the corporation in question had commissioned a site survey which had revealed the presence of large concentrations of carcinogens on the decommissioned site.

The story was handed to inexperienced me, shepherded by the news editor. When the first survey turned up unwanted news, the corporation got another one that said something else.

Useful expertise.

TL;DR - there are only political solutions to what is happening. It an aspect of @aurelmondon and @aaronzwinter call 'reactionary democracy'.

We cannot stand idly by and refuse to fight, hope that it will all go away (I am STILL hearing academic voices saying that)

Both because that is morally wrong - white privilege is real, and we should say so - and because in the end we we will lose if we don't contest these narratives.

And the consequences, already horrific, will be worse.