There’s a particular kind of quiet tragedy in academia: not the big headlines about REF or funding cuts or strike action (though those matter, of course), but the small, daily loss of what academics were actually trained to do—produce knowledge.

I met this professor at a women in leadership event, and she was telling me about the time she spent her entire morning looking for these name tags and a welcome banner for the departmental open day.

A friend at another institution recently told me about their latest hiring process. They passed on an eccentric genius—someone with amazing research…