Writing an opinion column in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) 1989-1993

by | Jul 27, 2026 | Stories

Miriam David

I was thrilled to be invited to write a monthly Opinion column in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). I felt some childlike joy and felt (and still feel) this was the pinnacle of my career. I wrote my first column in September 1989 entitled Guilty of thinking in journalism. At the time I was Head of the Department of Social Sciences at what was then South Bank Polytechnic, in London, later to become South Bank University. I had become a professor in the inaugural round the previous year. I was quite well-known as a feminist activist and academic and I used my column as an opportunity to advance my socialist-feminist views, especially about education. I continued to write the column for almost four years, finishing with a flourish on 1 January 1993, in a column entitled Pride and Prejudice in a final analysis. Here I talked about the need to expand higher education opportunities to the economically and socially disadvantaged and especially women. This was my forty-fourth piece.

A particular favourite column of mine has the bye-line A mature attitude of self-belief. It has a neat link to HOWL and is about the publication of a book entitled Generations of Memories: Voices of Jewish Women edited by Jeanette Copperman with the Jewish Women in London group https://howl-uk.org/?s=jeanette+copperman. I wrote about the book launch in Swiss Cottage library in early November 1989 and went on to extol the virtues of feminist biography or autobiography linked as it is and was to self-education and becoming a mature student. I then went on to discuss what has become a perennial problem of higher education making spaces and places for mature women students. Then, over 36 years ago, as now, provisions are subject to the vagaries of Government economic policies of stringency. Then, it was still in Thatcher’s years of Government but now, sadly, Labour seems to be aping the austerity of Thatcherism and George Osborne. Indeed, all of my columns have an eerie significance and relevance to today. We may have some more policy provisions but economic, gender, sexual, social and racial inequalities remain deeply entrenched.

THES ARTICLES WRITTEN BY MIRIAM DAVID

BETWEEN 15/9/89 & 1/1/1993

  1. 15/09/89 Guilty of thinking in journalism
  2. 13/10/89 Hidden faces in the race minefield
  3. 10/11/89 A mature attitude to self-belief
  4. 15/12/89 Women’s work is more than child’s play
  5. 05/01/90 From fringe to the fore in 10 years
  6. 02/02/90 What women can learn from man management
  7. 02/03/90 Married, single or misconstrued?
  8. 30/03/90 Legion voices on the best of all worlds
  9. 27/04/90 Leaving guilt on Disney’s doorstep
  10. 25/05/90 Ltd answer to social science factory (picture placement changed)
  11. 22/06/90 Glass Ceiling and a shattering of myths
  12. 13/07/90 Penetrating the last male bastions
  13. 17/08/90 Academics laden with managerial burdens
  14. 14/09/90 Holiday Alibi for Death in the Factory
  15. 12/10/90 Loose Ends tied and batteries recharged
  16. 09/11/90 Campus Reality Outstrips the Policy Makers
  17. 07/12/90 Major Triumphs in General Ignorance
  18. 04/01/91 Educating Professor to accept Rita as an equal
  19. 01/02/91 A research frontier policed by accountants
  20. 01/03/91 Penned in fear of Virginia Woolf
  21. 29/03/91 A Tribute to an Academic Pioneer
  22. 26/04/91 Life after 40 opens up for a broad church
  23. 24/05/91 Worsening plight of Thatcher’s babes
  24. 21/06/91 Management of Late night Hotel break-in
  25. 19/07/91 Jubilation for the Women’s Network
  26. 16/08/91 Silly season’s happy families joker (picture placement changed)
  27. 13/09/91 Days that shook a women’s world (picture place changed again)
  28. 11/10/91 Higher hopes for peripheral girls (picture changed) about CAR’s bat
  29. 08/11/91 Changes set pace for birth of business life
  30. 06/12/91 United fight for a seat on the flight
  31. 03/01/92 Moving moment in a time of change
  32. 31/01/92 Poor prescription for a healthy body
  33. 28/02/92 Loss of reason in a tender mood
  34. 27/03/92 Consensus wins over root and branch
  35. 24/04/92 Choice as a disposable commodity
  36. 22/05/92 Postmodern reply to ‘fin de siecle’ blues
  37. 19/06/92 Final reading of the triple echo?
  38. 17/07/92 Genes that go into changing nappies
  39. 14/08/92 Paradise News parable for our times
  40. 11/09/92 A bequest of painstaking passion
  41. 09/10/92 Tapping into a rich vein of research
  42. 06/11/92 New moon and time for change
  43. 04/12/92 No choice for twilight students
  44. 01/01/93 Pride and prejudice in a final analysis