Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

‘More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries.’

Stark piece from a former diplomat on how loss of language learning hits our defence & geopolitical capabilities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/proc... @timeshighered.bsky.social

More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries. We need universities like Nottingham to be pumping out Russian and Mandarin graduates each year, to work across Whitehall.
A British Academy report from 2013 on the need for foreign languages in diplomacy and security recommended strengthening the pipeline between academia and government.
Practically nothing has been done to advance this agenda in the intervening 12 years, however.
My old department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has a dreadful track record in training its staff to speak foreign languages. A target recommended in 2018 by the Foreign Affairs Committee for 80 per cent of diplomats who study foreign languages for their jobs to pass their exams, has never been met.

November 26, 2025 at 8:54 AM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Interesting suggestion from EBRD chief economist that countries will suffer policy lock in once the electorate ages, and so there is an urgency to acting early

"The time to act is now before demography closes off your options. Because there may be this spiral that's being created as voters get older, as leaders get older, they care more about issues of interest to the elderly,
in particular pensions, and therefore it becomes harder to do any pension reforms,"
said Javorcik.

November 26, 2025 at 7:12 AM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Zoe Strimpel on the myth of the decline of family, as inspired by her @britishacademy.bsky.social postdoctoral fellowship
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11...

The decline-of-family-panic that has been stalking the land since the early 1970s, when marriage rates began to rapidly decline as divorce finally became more accessible and the dam of marital discontent finally burst.
I got interested in all this when I was researching the history of gender and relationships at Sussex and Warwick universities, where I undertook a PhD and postdoc (Sussex) and a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship (Warwick). After all, it seemed to me, this panic ignored the other narrative that I had spent my 20s and 30s observing as a young woman intermittently on the dating scene, and a keen consumer of media. Namely: romantic marriage and the nuclear family are still the ideal, and by many measures, thriving.

November 25, 2025 at 9:35 AM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

‘We need to think about the value of arts, humanities & social sciences. Look at any of the successful companies & they are full of people with a mix of disciplines.’ Great to hear Lord Vallance the Science Minister talking about the importance of the full range of research for future UK prosperity

November 24, 2025 at 2:06 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

I’ve been quoted in @thespectator1828.bsky.social about the importance of taking a strategic approach nationally to language provision as universities are making individual decisions to slash provision which may collectively be very bad for the national interest
www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-p...

Critics of this proposal argue that the problem is not one of unsustainability but of under-resourcing. Language departments are easy targets because they tend to be relatively expensive to run, as they usually offer a large amount of contact hours and need comparatively high levels of staff. Yet the skills and intellectual rigour they foster are worth saving. As Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy argues, we need to 'safeguard' our language provision: 'It would, for example, be geopolitically unwise to find ourselves without capable Russian or Chinese speakers. While it's easy to turn off the tap, it's much harder to turn it back on.
Foreign language degrees may not be the most traditionally lucrative, but do we really want to be a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?

November 24, 2025 at 1:30 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

The Charlotte Edwardes interview with Danny Kruger is as good as everyone says. A great skill to get someone to open up in such revealing ways, like this bit about how much he disliked Eton, but still sent his son to it.

There is a deep natural order to things…
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

He remembers the school's ritual humiliation: the reading out of results in graded order, how his scholar cousin in the same year would be first or second out of 259, "and I would be 249th".
'. It doesn't sound like he
much enjoyed the place, so I am surprised he's sent his son there. "I didn't really think very hard about it," he says. "They all went to state primary, which we were happy with."

November 22, 2025 at 7:58 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

When Harry Truman left office he ‘lived on income from his memoirs and an army pension worth $1,350 a month in today’s money. What a sucker!’
Good piece on the rise of public corruption in the US. You know it all, but it’s helpful to see in one place
economist.com/leaders/2025...

What a sucker! Had he been president in the 21st century, Truman could now be flying private to paid speaking engagements, soliciting donations to his foundation from foreign governments and watching his daughter serve on company boards and his former staffers run their own lobbying shops.

November 22, 2025 at 12:14 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

What would Schumpeter make of today’s AI economy? He’d recognise the behaviour of the big tech companies as stifling the entry of new firms and in turn growth

To encourage creative destruction, Aghion argues that governments should protect innovators' intellectual property but prevent them from impeding other competitors. But large tech bought up potential threats, which competition regulators failed to block, and growth suffered.
"They expanded to such an extent that they ended up discouraging entry of new firms.
That's very Schumpeterian," he says, a phrase he repeats throughout our lunch.
Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others who developed in this period now also have a firm grip on the nascent Al economy. "The danger is that a lack of competition would again stifle the growth potential of AI... In that sense, I'm not that optimistic."

November 22, 2025 at 7:58 AM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Well this is rather delicious from @emilylawford.bsky.social on being mansplained to about the roots of sexism by the Revolutionary Communist Party
www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...

"I don't know if you've heard of the beginning of the oppression of women," he began. I said I hadn't. This delighted him.
"In the early days, as Engels said, everyone
'lived frivolously' - everyone fucked." He looked wistful. "It was only with the start of class society we started producing a surplus, and men wanted to pass their surplus on to their children. So they couldn't let women sleep around." It all came down to who's inheriting your wealth. "You have to know your children are yours." He shook his head.
"It blew my mind."
The idea that class is the root of sexism - as opposed to, say, I don't know, men - is the sort of thing revolutionary communists like.

November 21, 2025 at 8:49 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

This is a good note to end the week. The plight of @britishlibrary.bsky.social has been picked up in @nature.com’s influential daily briefing. Thanks everyone (including @floragraham.bsky.social)
who is getting the word out there about our national library
us17.campaign-archive.com?u=2c6057c528...

Don't ignore the crisis at the British Library
In 2023, one of the world's most significant libraries was hit with a cyber attack that destroyed multiple systems, requiring that its entire technology infrastructure be rebuilt and costing millions. Staff at the British Library say that the attack undermined the working environment, and more than 300 are on strike. The Library's chief executive has resigned, less than a year after she took the position. And some material is still not available to scholars.
"Libraries and archives are the labs of humanities and social science scholars, and history is not possible without them," argues Hetan Shah, the chief executive of The British Academy. "The nation rightly values scientific infrastructure, but it pays extraordinarily little attention to what is happening at our national library."
Museums Journal | 3 min read & City AM | 4 min read

November 21, 2025 at 6:25 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Obviously a heck of a lot to digest from the Covid inquiry but this one rings true with our experience at the time. Stronger multi disciplinary expertise might have helped show the interconnections and trade offs between health, economics, geography and societal impacts
www.bbc.com/news/article...

• Create expert groups to advise on economic and social implications, not
just the science

November 20, 2025 at 8:25 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

History lessons from the recent Nobel prize in Economics
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

The recent Nobel Prize was awarded to three economists (two of whom are Fellows of the British Academy) whose work shows the importance of ideas, research and development to innovation and growth. Their work showed that we should care about the research infrastructures if we care about
prosperity. And the Nobel award makes the case for these infrastructures in a second, more subtle way. One of the three recipients was Professor Joel Mokyr FBA, an economic historian. Libraries and archives are the labs of humanities and social science scholars, and history is not possible without them.

November 18, 2025 at 9:20 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

I know it’s easy to call for a Select Committee inquiry and, reader, that’s what I have done
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

The science select committee should recognise that its remit covers all of research, and conduct an inquiry into the Library, with a view to helping it recover. It could quantify the funding that is needed to properly rebuild the Library's digital infrastructure, so that an independent case can be made to the government.

November 18, 2025 at 8:02 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Something I mention in today’s piece is the wider pressure and undervaluing of libraries and archives. Even less well known than the issues facing the British Library are the worrying proposals for the BBC Written Archives Centre. More here observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Libraries and archives are the labs of humanities and social science scholars, and history is not possible without them. But increasingly they are not prioritised - for example the BBC Written Archives Centre, paid for by public money, is moving to restrict responding to researcher queries, making exploratory research extremely difficult.

November 18, 2025 at 12:17 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

On any average day in the last 35 years, about 115,000 people left extreme poverty behind. But based on current trends, progress against extreme poverty will come to a halt.

Important slow news story on @ourworldindata.org

ourworldindata.org/end-progress...

Chart: Total population living in extreme
poverty by world region, 1990 to 2040 - projected to be flat
Extreme poverty is defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $3 per day. This data is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. Projections from 2026 to 2030 are based on growth forecasts from the World Bank and the IMF. From 2031 onward, projections are based on the growth rates observed in the period 2015-2024.

November 17, 2025 at 8:02 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Chinese sales of tomato paste to Italy have collapsed due to concerns about alleged use of forced labour in Xinjiang and country of origin mislabelling
on.ft.com/4p0CORL

Chinese tomato paste sales to Italy have collapsed this year
China's exports of processed tomatoes (Smn), by selected EU countries, Jan-Sep
Italy Poland Germany • Croatia
•Spain 1
• Romania
80
60
40
20
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
FINANCIAL TIMES
Source: General Administration of Customs • Data corresponds to commodity code 2002, including processed tomato products such as tomato paste and canned tomatoes

November 15, 2025 at 11:37 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Great 40th anniversary show by @theprimitives.bsky.social tonight. Worth catching if they are coming your way (can see the dates here www.seetickets.com/tour/the-pri...)

November 15, 2025 at 11:19 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

‘Why is it so hard to be director-general? Mainly because of the BBC’s size. It is too big not to fail.’ Such a good piece by @henrymance.ft.com this
on.ft.com/4hZuNtz

Directors-general have run into trouble for specific actions and for their opposites. They have struggled because programme-makers have edited a public figure's words (the Trump Panorama) and because they have failed to do so (Bob Vylan at Glastonbury).
They have been criticised for forcing out highly paid, rebellious stars (Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson), and for not forcing them out sooner (Match of the Day's Gary Lineker). They have been accused of airing news biased towards the government (pre-Brexit) and against it (post-Brexit). Their problems have been attributed to an insular mindset (this was Margaret Thatcher's critique) and to reliance on externally trained executives.

November 15, 2025 at 6:04 PM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Interesting also that this operation has been set up outside the chain of command as a separate unit, in the fashion of UK Vaccine Taskforce etc

Its creation - outside Russia's clunky and arbitrary command chain - is one piece of evidence that Moscow's army, once a
lurching, uncoordinated mass, has begun to innovate.
"In a lot of ways, they're the opposite of the way the Russian military operates," Lee said.
"They're not working based on this bureaucratic quota system; instead, it's more akin to innovative Ukrainian drone
units who can respond faster, take initiative."

November 15, 2025 at 8:13 AM

Hetan Shah

@hetanshah.bsky.social

Not sure if this qualifies as one of those impossible jobs but will certainly be maddening, interesting and important
www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...