Last week, I covered some ways you might tackle the current state of British politics, after the EU referendum.
Following that, I’ve had some conversations about running a joint simulation during the autumn semester, across institutions, so if you’d be interested in joining that, then drop me a line (s.usherwoodATsurrey.ac.uk) and we’ll see what we can work up.
This is a good example of how you can manage bigger subjects – by working with partners in other institutions – albeit with some associated transaction costs. The upside is not simply more bodies to take on roles, but also the introduction of a dynamic that gets students speaking to strangers, remotely, which is not untypical of political negotiations.
Putting that to one side, I’d liek to briefly consider yet another avenue for teaching Brexit, namely a more legal approach.
In the weeks since the vote, there have been plenty of reports of academics geting cut out of EU funding bids, British nationals being removed from important posts in EU institutions and the like.
Under EU law, this is illegal: Article 18 TFEU prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality.
That sets up a nice little project to produce a brief for a legal team to bring a case against the EU. Students could collect case histories and statements and then use that to work with law students on the necessary court paperwork. It clearly leads into a moot court or, if you have a rich backer, an actual court case.
As a subject, it’s clearly topical and it gets into many of the trickier questions around the UK’s departure: given that it is about to go, at what point to EU legal principles cease to apply and who is competent to determine this?
My own view is that this is not simply a pedagogic opportunity, but a more wide-ranging issue that needs to be addressed in any case, so for any UK academics looking for an impact case-study for REF, then this is a great opportunity too.