Oxford
The End of the Future of Humanity Institute (updated)
The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford closed earlier this week.
The FHI was an interdisciplinary research group founded in 2005 by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who served as its director for its entire existence. He will now be leaving Oxford.
The closure of the FHI appears to be the result of decisions by Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy. A statement on the FHI website says:
Over time FHI faced increasing administrative headwinds within the Faculty of Philosophy (the Institute’s organizational home).
A “final report” on the FHI by Anders Sandberg provides a little more detail:
While FHI had achieved significant academic and policy impact, the final years were affected by a gradual suffocation by Faculty bureaucracy. The flexible, fast-moving approach of the institute did not function well with the rigid rules and slow decision-making of the surrounding organization. (One of our administrators developed a joke measurement unit, “the Oxford”. 1 Oxford is the amount of work it takes to read and write 308 emails. This is the actual administrative effort it took for FHI to have a small grant disbursed into its account within the Philosophy Faculty so that we could start using it—after both the funder and the University had already approved the grant.)
Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. Unfortunately, this led to the eventual loss of lead researchers and especially the promising and diverse cohort of junior researchers, who have gone on to great things in the years since. While building an impressive alumni network and ecosystem of new nonprofits, these departures severely reduced the Institute. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy announced that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down.
The reasons the Faculty of Philosophy told the FHI to stop hiring and fundraising have not been made public. It’s not clear whether it is related to personnel or administrative issues, shifts in funding priorities, dissatisfaction with the research focus of the FHI, or something else altogether. (Please avoid speculation about this in the comments.)
The website statement summarizes that research focus:
FHI was involved in the germination of a wide range of ideas including existential risk, effective altruism, longtermism, AI alignment, AI governance, global catastrophic risk, grand futures, information hazards, the unilateralist’s curse, and moral uncertainty. It also did significant work on anthropics, human enhancement ethics, systemic risk modeling, forecasting and prediction markets, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and on the attributes and strategic implications of key future technologies. One major contribution was in showing that it was even possible to do rigorous research on big picture questions about humanity’s future.
The report goes into greater detail on this research and its impact, as well as the various academic and public-facing activities of scholars at the FHI. You can read it here.
UPDATE (4/18/24): An inquiry to parties at the University of Oxford outside the FHI yielded the following statement:
Oxford University has taken the difficult decision to close the Future of Humanity Institute, a research centre in the Faculty of Philosophy. The Institute has made an important contribution to the study of the future of humanity, for which we would like to thank and recognise the research team. Researchers elsewhere across Oxford University are likely to continue to work on this emerging field.
While this confirms some facts, it doesn’t do much to explain the reasons for the closure. Some insight into those reasons, perhaps, can be gleaned from a section towards the end of FHI’s report:
Any organization embedded in a larger organization or community needs to invest to a certain degree in establishing the right kind of social relationships to maintain this embeddedness. Incentives must be aligned, and both parties must also recognize this alignment. We did not invest enough in university politics and sociality to form a long-term stable relationship with our faculty. There also needs to be an understanding of how to communicate across organizational communities. When epistemic and communicative practices diverge too much, misunderstandings proliferate. Several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received. Finding friendly local translators and bridgebuilders is important.
Another important lesson (which is well known in business and management everywhere outside academia) is that as an organization scales up it needs to organize itself differently. The early informal structure cannot be maintained beyond a certain size, and must be gradually replaced with an internal structure. Doing this gracefully, without causing administrative sclerosis or lack of delegation, is tricky and in my opinion we somewhat failed.
The post The End of the Future of Humanity Institute (updated) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Video: councillor quits Labour in tears over Gaza slaughter
Kirklees councillor Ammar Anwar resigns during council meeting as Labour mayor sits stony-faced – but party panicking behind scenes after reports of further impending resignations
Kirklees councillor Ammar Anwar resigned from the Labour party last night, delivering his tearful resignation speech to a council meeting as senior Labour figures, including the mayor, sat stony-faced.
Labour’s control of the council is now in danger. Nineteen councillors had already issued a statement rejecting Starmer’s support for Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians and Anwar’s resignation is thought to be just the first of a string of councillors quitting, triggering panic among Labour officials who are said to be meeting behind the scenes to try to stem the tide.
As Taj Ali, who published video of Anwar’s speech, pointed out, Labour has already lost control of four councils – Burnley, Oxford, Norwich and Hastings – because of the complicity of Starmer and his front-bench cohort for Israel’s genocide, forced transfer and crimes against humanity:
'My 5-year-old daughter saw images of what was going on in Gaza. She said to me, "dad, what have you done about the videos you were watching?"' pic.twitter.com/kx9edDVKPd
— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) January 17, 2024
While Anwar was comforted by a colleague at the end of his speech, the last few seconds of the clip shows hard-faced Labour figures
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Hastings council leadership quits Labour to form Independent Group
Resignation statement damning of lack of policies and vision
Hastings council cabinet (including two Green then-members) in May 2022
The leadership of Hastings Council has announced its resignation from the Labour Party to form a Hastings Independents group. A statement from the group summarising their reasons reads:
After long and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision today to leave the Labour Party and become independent councillors.
There are many reasons, but our view is that standing up for Hastings, and especially for our residents, will be much easier as independents.
The national Labour Party no longer provides us with the policies, the support or the focus on local government that we need given the many local issues we are committed to tackling.
We will now concentrate on standing up for Hastings, to work in partnership with all those who are passionate to drive our town forward, and our work in our communities, which is why we all became councillors.
As a group, we will not be making any further comment until the New Year.
Cllr Paul Barnett Leader of the Council
Cllr Maya Evans Deputy Leader of the Council
Cllr Andy Batsford Cabinet member
Cllr John Cannan Cabinet member
Cllr Ali Roark Cabinet member
Cllr Simon Willis Cabinet member
HASTINGS INDEPENDENTS
The Hastings cabinet consisted last year of six Labour and two Green councillors, but the coalition fell apart with the Greens ‘booted out’. Labour was already a minority on the council, but the largest party with fifteen out of thirty-two councillors. Now the party has less than a third of Hastings councillors, having already lost Norwich, Oxford and Burnley councils over outrage at Keir Starmer’s support for Israeli war crimes. It remains to be seen in the new year whether the genocide in Gaza is among the Hastings group’s ‘many reasons’.
Update: Statements by two of the councillors include Gaza among the reasons for their resignation:
Statement Cllr John Cannan, Wishing Tree Ward, Hastings Borough Council
Cabinet Member and Chair of the Charity Committee
14th December 2023
In May 2022 I was extremely proud to be elected as Labour Councillor for Wishing Tree Ward. I worked hard to get elected and received great support from the Labour Group. That same group of Labour comrades provided me with so much encouragement as I found my feet as a new Councillor. Since that time I have worked hard for the residents of Wishing Tree advocating for them across a broad range of issues.
In October 2022 I was delighted to be invited to join Cabinet as Chair of The Charity Committee. It’s been a real pleasure to work with a cabinet group of such talented, energetic, creative, and hardworking people. I have thoroughly enjoyed the journey described above which is why it has been such a difficult decision for me to make to resign from the Labour party with immediate effect.
Unfortunately, during the time I describe above the Labour Party Leadership and officials have moved the party away from the core values that I hold dear; protecting the most vulnerable, fairness, co-operatively working for the common good, protecting the interests of workers, cherishing the NHS, green policies to fight climate change, international co-operation to name a few. This has been evidenced by a failure to support striking workers and their unions, rowing back on green investment, support for the continued privatisation of the NHS and an appalling response to the tragedy currently taking place in Gaza.
At a local level unelected party officials have undermined Hastings Borough Council leadership over and over again. They vetoed a popular co-operation agreement with the Green Party. They have prevented popular local politicians from applying to stand as the local MP and have ‘parachuted in’ their favoured candidate. What does all this say about local democracy? They have blocked the deputy leader of the Council from standing as a councillor in the forthcoming local election. Where once there was a broad church receptive to ideas from all perceived wings of the party, there is now a narrow-minded vindictiveness directed at those on the left.
I wouldn’t join the Labour Party as it presents and operates today, hence this decision.
I look forward to working with the very talented group of newly independent Councillors who, I know, will put what is best for Hastings at the very core of everything they do.
Statement by Cllr. Maya Evans, Hollington Ward, Hastings Borough Council
Deputy Leader of the Council, Cabinet member for Regeneration & Climate Change
14th December 2023
I would like to announce my resignation of the Labour whip.
I was proudly elected councillor for Hollington ward in 2018 and have taken great pride and honour in serving my residents. Hollington has proven to me the importance of community solidarity and how people who have been given the least in life, often give the most when it comes to helping others. I have been both humbled and inspired by residents who have twice elected me to represent them on the council, and to be the change they want to see.
Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that the Labour Party has moved away from many of its core values and principles. To woo the Tory vote the Labour Party has lost its way, leaning into right wing policies and rhetoric which has become increasingly difficult to publicly justify and support.
I understand that Labour’s current election strategy is to mirror the Tories, and although I want rid of the current abhorrent Government, I cannot continue to volunteer hundreds of hours to an organisation which no longer represents working people, no longer stands up for the persecuted and oppressed, and no longer has a vision to radically improve life for a huge portion of society who are on low incomes, marginalised and vulnerable. I know lots of Labour supporters will feel confusion and maybe even anger at my decision, however it has now become impossible to continue with integrity.
Locally we have been micromanaged by Westminster centric unelected Labour Party officials who have barely visited Hastings let alone understand the town and its residents. The national Labour Party has denied Hastings’ members the right to select their own parliamentary candidate and selection of councillors; and there is now a well-established national pattern of the Labour Party blocking people of colour from leadership positions. It appears unelected Labour officials now have a very fixed idea around who is electable, sadly this tends not to favour people of colour, working class people, or local people from the community. I have personally been blocked by the Labour Party from standing as an MP and also to re-stand as a councillor, reasons given were spurious.
Labour’s policy position on Gaza has been completely unforgiveable, from not supporting a ceasefire, to silencing politicians from speaking out, expelling an MP, unofficially instructing councillors not to attend peace marches, and enforcing a three-line whip which led to the resignation of 10 Labour MP shadow ministers. To date 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, 7,000 of which were children. To stay silent is to not support humanity.
I will continue to work hard for my residents as a Hastings Independent councillor, I will continue to uphold the values and principles I was elected upon, moreover I will continue to put Hastings first, prioritising everything I do for the furtherment of the town and its residents.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Labour loses yet another council as councillors resign over appalling regime
Labour has lost its majority on yet another council after four Norwich city councillors resigned from the party in disgust at the direction in which Keir Starmer has dragged it.
The councillors are Karen Davis – also a former parliamentary candidate for the party – cabinet member Cate Oliver, Ian Stutely and Rachel Everett. Emma Corlett, until now the deputy Labour group leader at Norfolk County Council, has also resigned her membership.
A statement issued by three of the councillors, who all represent the same ward, was not specific about the reasons, beyond ‘national and local’ issues:
After long and careful consideration we have made the heartbreaking decision to leave the Labour Party and become independent councillors.
There are many reasons, but in essence we no longer consider the current national and local Labour Party matches the overriding principles that guide our work as Town Close councillors.
We will relentlessly focus on standing up for Town Close residents and our work in the community that makes a difference. We will be making no further comment at this time.
Labour has recently lost Burnley and Oxford councils after councillor resignations – and is wobbling in the London borough of Newham, with the Independents now the largest opposition group, after two landslide by-election wins and a resignation. The borough has also seen a string of senior elected party officers resign their positions and membership – and anger among residents over the high-handed and abusive behaviour of the Labour-run council.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
A Celebration of the Centenary of the Birth of Olive Gibbs
100 years since the Representation of the People Act, the act which gave women the vote.
Complexity in our multiple identities: the 2017 Disability Lecture
University of Oxford Annual Disability Lecture
Crossing Boundaries: Medievalists in Cross-Disciplinary Conversation
Launch event for the TORCH programme Oxford Medieval Studies The launch event for the TORCH programme Oxford Medieval Studies included speakers: Emma Dillon (Professor of Music, King's College London); Henrike Lähnemann (Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, University of Oxford); David Wallace (Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania); and Chris Wickham (Chichele Professor of Medieval History, University of Oxford).