The Watson Institute | Allegheny County 412
Luleå tekniska universitet | Svenska institutet för standarder | Standards Sweden “Swedes and Immigration: A Mismatch?” by Tino Sanandaji (Fondapol, 2019): This paper analyzes Sweden’s shift from low immigration to high inflows from non-Western/third-world countries (e.g., Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan), noting that net migration peaked at 0.8% of the population in 2014–2015. Sanandaji, a Swedish economist of Kurdish-Iranian origin, argues that poor labor market integration (with foreign-born employment at 59.6% vs. 82.9% for natives) and fiscal costs (1.5–2% of GDP annually) make unrestricted immigration unsustainable for Sweden’s welfare state. He explicitly advocates for very restrictive policies, including tighter border controls, stricter asylum rules, and reduced family-based immigration to limit low-skilled inflows from developing countries. “Sweden: Rape Capital of the West” by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard. Gatestone Institute, 2015): Carlqvist, a Swedish journalist, co-authors this piece linking Sweden’s 1,472% rise in reported rapes (from 421 in 1975 to 6,620 in 2014) to mass immigration from Muslim-majority/third-world countries (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Somalia). It cites studies showing foreign-born men overrepresented in rape convictions (up to 19.5 times more likely) and attributes this to cultural differences. The article calls for policy changes to restrict such immigration to protect Swedish society and women, criticizing authorities for downplaying the issue Äntligen vintervitt på @LTUniv och med -10 grader, julsång, kaffe och bullar firades vintern och den årliga marschalltändningen av Regnbågsallén in.https://t.co/ujbAp3bM6a pic.twitter.com/GhX56T7avG — Luleå tekniska universitet (@LTUniv) November 29, 2019
"Hey Bulldog" (Lennon-McCartney) Luleå University of Technology
Mass Challenge: The Socioeconomic Impact of Migration to a Scandinavian Welfare State by Tino Sanandaji** (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020): In this book chapter, Sanandaji discusses Sweden’s “unique” experiment with large-scale third-world immigration, which has shifted its image from a model society to one facing exaggerated but real challenges like social issues and exclusion. As a Swedish author, he provides a data-driven critique without explicit policy calls in the intro, but the broader work argues for controls on low-skilled migration to mitigate economic and integration failures.
Scales Mound School District | Jo Daviess County Illinois 815
Oxford students after exams, 1989. pic.twitter.com/HQbO4r6dUE
— M (@0detobeauty) May 27, 2026
The calendar of Anglosphere educational settlements subtly shapes life of the mind, generally; and family and community life, specifically. Its cadence has roots in the cathedral schools and monastic learning communities of medieval Europe. Universities were not originally organized around modern “semesters.” Instead, the year followed the Christian liturgical calendar, agricultural seasons, food paths, daylight availability, and travel conditions.
In America educational calendars were nudged along by agricultural cycles. In the United Kingdom university calendars evolved into three major terms: Michaelmas in autumn, associated with arrival and beginnings; Hilary or Lent in winter, associated with discipline and study; and Trinity or Easter in spring, associated with examinations, outdoor rituals, music, rowing, gardens, and celebration.
Modern commencement traditions across the Anglosphere are descendants of medieval spring degree ceremonies. Academic gowns, hoods, processions, Latin phrases, formal dining, chapel music, and public recognition all preserve traces of the university as a scholarly guild and religious-civic community.
Before railways, electric lighting, and central heating, universities had to adapt to muddy roads, short winter days, limited candles, cold buildings, and agricultural obligations. Spring therefore became the natural season of culmination, reunion, athletic competition, courtship, and ceremony.
The medieval university was not merely a school but an educational settlement — a self-governing town of scholars, libraries, chapels, kitchens, workshops, residences, and dining halls. That settlement pattern survives in residential colleges, quadrangles, tutorial systems, common rooms, chapel choirs, and formal meals.
Anglosphere campuses retain this ancient emotional rhythm: autumn seriousness, winter inwardness, and spring release. That continuity helps explain why colleges and universities still feel culturally distinct from ordinary commercial society. (Relata: Gulliver Visits the Great Academy of Lagado)
We’re “organized” but not too organized; like the bookseller who knows where every book can be found.
at a conference where you don’t have to present
— Peyman Milanfar (@docmilanfar) April 4, 2025
#AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter
Academics be like 👇 pic.twitter.com/6cpVEw3PVS
— Reviewer 2 (@GrumpyReviewer2) April 2, 2024
