This article is an updated version of a piece in the W0 print.
Irene Tracey is used to doing uncontroversial good. She has dedicated her remarkable career in anaesthetic neuroscience to understanding and preventing pain. She’s a fierce advocate for women in STEM, involved in several mentoring programmes. In January 2023, she became the first state-educated and second female Vice-Chancellor in the University’s history. Initiatives like the Colloquium and development of the Schwarzmann Centre speak to her administrative abilities. But mere administration is not governance and reviewing her tenure thus far paints a mixed picture: she hasn’t fully managed to diffuse challenging political situations or solve structural issues concerning pay and college disparities, though some progress has been made.
The Vice-Chancellor is the face of the University. This means responding to controversy, and Tracey has faced some unenviable issues in her tenure since January 2023. When ‘gender-critical’ feminist Kathleen Stock’s planned address to the Oxford Union in June 2023 stirred a maelstrom of transphobic rhetoric, calls to cancel, and protests, Tracey responded by defending free speech and Stock’s “right to come and speak”. Months later, she expressed regret at the University’s handling of the situation, saying they “should have done more” to support the trans community. In trying to tread a middle ground, Tracey struggled to clearly advocate on behalf of either side.
In some ways, it is a peculiarity to install academics into governance positions. Academia, particularly science, involves specialisation, engaging in careful inquiry for months, and refusing to conclude without a high degree of confidence. By contrast, an executive like a Vice-Chancellor must generalise, act quickly in the face of scandal, and weigh unclear trade-offs. Uncontroversial good is hard to come by. Acting decisively can come at the expense of the necessary precautions, whilst vacillation can prolong problems.
In the wake of strong pro-Palestine protests, when 17 members of Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) were arrested, Tracey took a harder line than some university vice-chancellors, condemning the action as “violent and criminal”. It’s not clear whether this was in fact the case, but the tact did deter much more protest, as well as provoking consternation. The University waited a month after the establishment of the OA4P encampment to meet with students from the group (though the University has said it met individual affiliated students before then in an unofficial capacity), and agreed to regular meetings on the final day of Trinity term. The University’s efforts have not been negligible: they have implemented a crisis graduate scholarship scheme for Palestinian students and an expansion of the Bodleian’s online service to students in Palestinian universities. But engagement with calls for divestment and review of investments, top demands among student protesters, which some universities have committed to assess, has been underwhelming. Tepid plans for an “accelerated” review of investments into companies manufacturing arms that are illegal under UK law were hardly ambitious.
Tracey calls herself the “ultimate insider”, and this is no exaggeration: postdoctoral stint at Harvard aside, Irene Tracey has been living, learning, or teaching in Oxford for her entire life. Maybe this limits the extent to which she can look outside the institution and see different ways of doing things. Oxford has been criticised by its University and College Union (UCU) branch for low pay and prevalence of insecure zero hours, hourly paid, or fixed-term contracts, even over decades of work. A UCU report last year found that 66% of academics were on fixed-term contracts, double the national average. Tracey named pay and conditions a “priority” for her and commissioned an independent analysis on the matter, which resulted this June in some pay increases, extension of benefits, and a promise to “change the culture” around contracts. How substantial this culture change is remains to be seen; the report’s requirement is that departmental heads review contract status annually – after four consecutive years of work under fixed-term contracts. At the same time, the University continued ill-fated litigation against two academics fighting to be recognised as full employees after 15 years of teaching. The tribunal ruled the pair should have been classed as employees in a case that attracted significant media attention for the University.
Financial disparities between colleges, another hot-button issue within the University, was recently highlighted by a report by the Student Union showing vast differences in wealth translate into disparities in the price of accommodation, student bursaries, and even academic results. Tracey’s steps have been incremental – introducing university-level mental health provisions, thereby standardising support across colleges – but she has largely refrained from addressing the problem head-on. College autonomy is certainly structurally and socially established, and is what allows Oxford to offer such a distinct experience, but serious problems with the design are unlikely to be solved by college-led action. Active support by the Vice-Chancellor of the new energy injected by the SU’s campaign would be welcome. Vice-Chancellors ought to tackle such fundamental ‘big picture’ issues, not shy away from them. Coordination across the University isn’t out of reach: just take the Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium, Tracey’s initiative and a praiseworthy programme designed to bring together the disparate academic branches of Oxford using her convening power. A similarly unitary approach could be directed at more contentious issues.
Tracey has not held the post of Vice-Chancellor for long, and perhaps some of these teething problems are the result; a good leader takes time to survey the landscape and command authority. But Tracey is past the stage in which she could be called new. Her instincts as an academic – to observe at length, to look for uncontroversial good, to reject partial solutions – may restrict her willingness to seize the moment. We need only look to America’s Ivy League, where four out of eight university presidents resigned amidst campus demonstrations, to conclude it’s a difficult time to lead. And Oxford’s structure is both idiosyncratic and difficult to change. In a less troubled time, Tracey would doubtless excel at Oxford’s helm; but now, real movement forward may require bolder strokes.
One of this piece’s three authors has publicly supported an open letter by OA4P.
The original version of this article, found in the W0 print, falsely implied the Pay and Conditions outcome and recommendation report had not yet been released. The report was in fact published in June.
