Rules and process changes mean that this year’s Chancellor election has more candidates than ever before, with many seizing the chance to get some time in the spotlight. One of those candidates who may not have received the same level of attention in the past is Matthew Firth, a cleric who was branded himself as the ‘anti-woke’ choice for the job. This morning, he even finds himself in a New York Times headline but Firth denies this is a publicity stunt: in his view, he has a real case to make.
Firth is a vicar who most recently gained prominence as a whistleblower who claimed that asylum seekers were being baptised in order to improve their chances of a successful application. Senior Church of England figures and his own former diocese have strenuously denied those accusations. Since then, Firth has appeared on GB News and other outlets to make his case.
At its heart Firth’s campaign is a reaction to ‘wokeness’, something that very few people are able to define and Firth himself says is often a term used to “gain attention”. His definition is that it is “a serious thing based on a collection of world views and ideologies which are based on the critical theories.”
Those “critical theories” come up again and again with Firth, and he says they are “the dominant cultural moves which cause an erosion of free speech”. When I press him to identify an example of “critical theories” having that effect in higher education he repeatedly returns to the case of Professor Nigel Biggar. Biggar received backlash from some colleagues at the University of Oxford after publishing an article that was seen by some to make the case for British colonialism.
Freedom of speech is the other main strand of Firth’s argument despite the fact that it contrasts with some of his social media activity. On 17th October, he said in a post on X that he was “hardly going to take advice from someone with pronouns in their bio”. I push him on this but, although very willing to engage, he has little in way of an explanation as to why someone so keen on free speech won’t listen to someone based on whether they declare their preferred pronouns.
Instead, he says that “Twitter is a space where people do engage in fairly spiky discussions” and goes on to explain in detail why he doesn’t believe that anyone should ever be encouraged to state their preferred pronouns. In his words, he doesn’t “think they are based on truth or very much factual sort of thing, because I think there are self-evident truths and I don’t think that sort of ties in with that sort of truth.”.
Firth’s campaign slogan is “Make Oxford Great Again”, echoing that which brought Donald Trump to power in 2016. I ask him what about Oxford isn’t great at the moment, especially as it has just recently retained its status as the best university in the world in the Times Higher Education rankings. His response is that, “it isn’t actually about that … make x great again has been used in all sorts of brands in order to attract people who might want to vote for something more aligned with free speech.”. Having attended Cambridge as an undergraduate, he is also a staunch supporter of them in the Boat Race, tweeting earlier this year: “Go Cambridge”, and “Naturally, Cambridge has just absolutely trounced O****d in the Boat Race”.
A large part of the Chancellor job is acting as a figurehead to make people feel welcome and comfortable at the University of Oxford, and so I was also keen to ask Firth about a post on X from 2023. Here, he said that “All British people will very soon have to get off the fence and decide whether they want these islands to be ruled by Christ, Marx, or Mohammed. Choose one and choose carefully.”.
I put to him that “those tweets wouldn’t make anybody who wasn’t a Christian or a particular type of Christian feel comfortable, never mind welcome.” There was no apology from Firth, who stood by his comments. He reiterated that “Western civilisation springs from the roots of the Christian faith,” and that “we need to be recruiting the sort of students who would be comfortable with pushing back against those views.”. When I suggested again that he would surely be making a large number of prospective and current students feel like their beliefs and communities were less valid than his, he was categorical: “I do recognise other people’s beliefs … but I think my view is correct.”
Back on more conventional ground, Firth, like other candidates, was keen to stress the importance of raising Oxford’s endowment. He also suggested that “what UK universities are lacking is bring under one roof both a collection of academics, funders, philanthropists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and students, in order to create wealth.” Ahead of a coming “AI revolution”, he was also keen to that academics should be more open to working with business and not see it as “a grubby thing”.
His view on protest is that it is “a fundamental right” but that “people have a right not to be dragged into other people’s protests if they don’t want to.”. He called for a better management of protests in general so that they could take place peacefully, without causing disruption.
In the past, Firth has also been vocally opposed to what he calls “climate alarmism”. Here, he wanted to set the record straight: “I’m a physicist”, he said, “climate change is happening, there is no doubt about that.” He also said that people should “work together to offset its more devastating effects”. When I ask about those people but in real danger by the effects of climate change, Firth pointed out that “actually the whole creation is under the loving oversight of a loving Father who will bring about a new creation in the end, so we don’t need to be alarmed or worried.”
Firth is under no illusion, he knows he is the outsider and enjoys playing on that fact. However, he does also genuinely believe that he will receive a large proportion of the vote. “My views are very mainstream, and they’re shared by huge amounts of people in the UK and globally,” he says. I do point out to him the most recent census found that the UK is no longer a majority Christian country, but Firth still offers a staunch defence. Next week’s election will provide an answer as to whether his views really are the dominant ones.
