Police have arrested dozens of students across US universities this week after a crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on campuses. Erum Salam and Margaret Sullivan report from New York

As the Israel-Gaza war grinds on amid a worsening humanitarian crisis, the world’s attention this week was captured by a battle on the campuses of elite US universities. Pro-Palestine student protesters were arrested en masse by New York City police at the prestigious Columbia University, prompting outrage that spread across other college sites.

Guardian US reporter Erum Salam tells Michael Safi that the scene on Columbia’s campus was one of orderly drum circles and organised anti-war demonstrations, not the all-out violent chaos that might have been imagined.

Ministers considering more funding to protect important research sites, with China seen as a particular concern

MI5 has warned universities that hostile foreign states are targeting sensitive research, as ministers consider measures to bolster protections.

Vice-chancellors from 24 leading institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, were briefed on the threat by the domestic security service’s director general, Ken McCallum, and National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) chief, Felicity Oswald.

Teaching unions share family’s disappointment after government says system has ‘significant benefits’

Ofsted’s controversial single-word judgments are here to stay, the government has ruled, in a blow to campaigners who hoped they would be scrapped after the suicide of the primary school headteacher Ruth Perry.

Perry’s sister, Prof Julia Waters, reacted with fury to the government’s statement, published on Thursday in response to an inquiry into Ofsted by MPs on the Commons education committee, describing it as “woefully inadequate”.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie . In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org , or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

AmiMoJo writes: Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade. An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students' submissions in Canvas -- the most widely used online learning management system -- which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames. What's more, the researchers found, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute closed this week in what Swedish-born philosopher says was ‘death by bureaucracy’

Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.

The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence.

Protesters into seventh day of hunger strike in support of Palestinians and in effort to demand university divestment

A group of students at Yale University were on Friday into the seventh day of a hunger strike in support of Palestinians in Gaza and in a protest to pressure the university to divest from any weapons manufacturing companies potentially supplying the Israeli military.

The group titles itself Yale Hunger Strikers for Palestine and one protester, the graduate student Miguel Monteiro, described losing weight and feeling dizzy, while attempting to put the group’s efforts into a wider perspective.

Some say more schools may ban organised prayer after court ruling but others say judgment was based on unique circumstances

The ruling on a prayer ban at a top London school has created a “classic English policy muddle” that has divided school leaders over its implications, with some experts predicting that more schools could ban organised prayers as a result.

The warning came after a high court judge upheld the ban at Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, dismissing a challenge by a Muslim pupil who claimed it was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

We would like to hear from Muslims in the UK about theirs or their children’s experiences of prayer at school

A Muslim pupil has lost their high court appeal against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, over its ban on prayer rituals . The pupil had claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

We would like to hear from Muslims in the UK about their experiences of prayer when they were at school. We’re particularly interested in hearing from Muslims aged 18 or over who were able to pray at school in the UK and parents who are comfortable with sharing their children’s experiences.

Charity that uses football to help pupils build relationships found to improve happiness in Greater Manchester project

Intensive mentoring for troubled schoolchildren using football kickabouts has significantly increased wellbeing, delivering happiness boosts equivalent to an unemployed adult getting a job, a study has found.

A project involving more than 2,000 pupils in dozens of secondary schools in Greater Manchester showed that instead of wellbeing declining among pupils at risk of exclusion who had behavioural issues and special educational needs, their happiness scores increased.