Tuesday 22nd July 2025
Blog Page 101

Flights to Rwanda? Navigating political, economic, and moral turbulence 

Oliver Hall
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Flights to Rwanda? Navigating political, economic, and moral turbulence 

“Batshit crazy”, was how one cabinet minister (James Cleverly) described the Rwanda policy.  In his former role as chancellor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was characteristically more reserved, saying “it won’t work”.  Human rights organisations are less kind: “This would be a clear breach of the refugee convention and would undermine a longstanding, humanitarian tradition of which the British people are rightly proud.”, said the UNCHR when the policy was announced.  When announced in 2022 by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson it was branded by most (including initially Johnson himself) as a laughable concept that would never be implemented and yet here we are two years later.  All norms of parliamentary and legal process have been tossed out, the right wing of the Conservative Party continues to call for Britain to withdraw from the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR), and the Sunak will have you believe that “No ifs, no buts, these planes are going to Rwanda”.  So how did we get here, what planes might actually go to Rwanda, and will they have anybody on them?

The only place to start is more than two years ago on 14 April 2022 when Boris Johnson announced his plans to deport those arriving in the UK on small boats to Rwanda for their claims to be processed.  Independent human rights organisations disagreed but Johnson insisted that the country was in fact “one of the safest countries in the world”.  How that would also provide “the very considerable deterrent” that he claimed it would was a mystery at the time and continues to be today.  Importantly, the plan that Johnson outlined at the time would allegedly have seen “the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead”.  Fast forward to June that year and the first flight bound for Rwanda was grounded minutes before takeoff after an injunction issued by the ECHR.  That plane only had seven people on board.  

After that, the plan somewhat vanished from public consciousness until Suella Braverman rekindled it at the Tory party conference in October, telling a crowd that “a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession”.  (It is also worth pointing out that Braverman is against the current plans, which she doesn’t see as extreme enough).

In March 2023, Home Secretary Braverman introduced ‘the illegal migration bill’, which became law in July.  It was there that the home secretary was given ‘a duty in law’ to detain and remove those arriving in the UK illegally, either to Rwanda or another ‘safe’ third country.  Notably, detainees were not entitled to any appeal, bail, or judicial review for the first 28 days of their detention.

In November of that year, the Supreme Court ruled the policy unlawful, upholding a court of appeal ruling that there hadn’t been any proper assessment of whether or not Rwanda was safe, with ‘substantial grounds to believe that deported refugees are at a risk of having their claims wrongly assessed, or of being returned to their country of origin to face prosecution’.  That might surprise the more trusting of you, who believed the government line that sthe policy had been “designed with empathy at its heart”. It did not surprise Sunak.   Rather, he already had civil servants working on a new treaty to get around the ruling and that ‘he was willing to change the law’.

And so to December, and perhaps the most barely believable moments of the saga to date.  James Cleverly became the third home secretary to travel to Kigali and announced a new treaty that he said ensured migrants would not be returned to a country where their lives would be threatened.  The next day, the government introduced the ‘Safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration bill)’, perhaps the most extraordinary example of government overreach into our judiciary in memory.  Former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption, said at the time that “it would be constitutionally a completely extraordinary thing to do, to effectively overrule a decision on the facts, on the evidence, by the highest court in the land.”  This bill rules that Rwanda is a safe country and must be viewed by politicians, judges, and anyone else as such.  There is no time limit on this judgement, there is no scope for its review.  Despite the attempts of various crossbench and Conservative peers in the House of Lords last month to add amendments, the government refused to compromise on any.  That was when, once again, Sunak stood behind his podium in Downing Street emblazoned with ‘Stop the Boats’ and said that Parliament would sit for “as long as it takes” for the bill to pass.  

Now, this is a lot of information to take in but it is crucial to acknowledge the context of this policy, why it was suggested, and why such unprecedented measures have been taken to secure its passing. Just like the EU and the United States, there is no doubt that the UK faces a substantial problem with illegal migration. Last year, 52,530 irregular migrants were detected entering the UK, up 17% from the year before.  85% of these arrived in small boats and since 2014, some 245 migrants have tragically lost their lives in the Channel. Far more important to Sunak however, is the significant proportion of the electorate who he believes could be persuaded to vote Conservative again at the next election if he manages to get this plan in action.  On this, it is nevertheless hard to claim that Sunak is anything other than extremely out of touch.  Just 11% of voters cited immigration as a priority issue at the end of last year, the lowest level in two decades.  Even worse for Sunak is that if this plan does actually come into force, he will all of a sudden be left with no-one else to blame and nowhere else to hide.  All of a sudden, failing to fulfil one of the ‘five pledges’ central to his leadership will be entirely on him.

Now it cannot be denied that there is a genuine economic debate to be had on migration.  Modern Britain has been built on immigration; from the post-war Windrush generation and as an out for our most serious economic problems ever since. Between just 2000 and 2011, according to a UCL study published in 2014, “the net fiscal balance of overall immigration to the UK between 2001 and 2011 amounts therefore to a positive net contribution of about £25 billion.”  Immigrants were also 39% less likely to claim state benefits than natives during that time. Economists tend to agree with this pattern with The Migration Observatory stating in 2022 that “immigration had little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers”.  Evidently then, the problems with the UK economy are not the fault of the comparatively small number of people driven to make tragic journeys across the channel.  Only 6% of immigration to the UK in 2022 was attempted via the channel (most of those journeys would be unsuccessful).  If the government wanted to limit migration (which is bizarre, given the labour shortage in countless areas of the economy) then it would be able to via other methods which aim to better control legal migration.

Likewise, if the UK government wanted to stop hundreds of innocent children dying in the channel and eradicate the criminal gangs at fault it could straightforwardly establish safe and legal routes to asylum from France. Similar efforts in Ukraine and Hong Kong have been rightly praised but the fact remains that there is absolutely no legal way for someone in a war-torn country to apply for asylum in the UK without crossing the channel.  It would also be wholly disingenuous to suggest that those coming do not qualify for support: 92% of those who made the crossing between 2018 and 2023 applied for asylum and of those who received a decision, 86% were granted protection.

Has there been any immediate, observable change since the Rwanda bill has passed?  Tragically not.  On the 23rd of April, five more people lost their lives in the channel, crushed whilst French police watched on from the beach in Wimereux. On Wednesday alone, 700 people made the journey to bring the total since the bill’s passing up above 2000.  The initial deal with Rwanda would see only 300 people travel there.  

Perhaps the only tangible impact so far has been in Ireland, where foreign minister Micheál Martin has said that increases in asylum applications are as a result of the Rwanda bill passing in the UK.  When the government in Ireland confirmed that they would be returning asylum seekers to the UK, as per an agreement in November 2020 and the UK Common Area Travel policy agreed more than a century ago, Westminster rebuffed it.  Instead of honouring the agreement or talking compassionately about the hundreds who have set up camps in Dublin, Rishi Sunak claimed that it was an example of his policy changing immigrants’ behaviour to deter them from entering the UK (one of his own ministers later disputed this).

This comes as little surprise.  Many have pointed out that having made the journey from war-torn countries, across multiple continents, the odds of being one of the 1% of people who are  sent to Rwanda is unlikely to serve as much of a deterrent.  Numerous interviews with prospective asylum seekers have rubbished the idea that it would make any difference; most fail to understand the complexities of the policy and the gangs profiting from illegal migration devote significant efforts to paint the scheme as nonsense.

It is in its impracticality and economic irresponsibility, where the Rwanda policy is at its most shameful and most disappointing.  Whitehall’s official spending watchdog found in February that each and every one of the first 300 people would cost £1.8 million to send to the country. As Sophy Ridge pointed out to the Chancellor this week, every such payment could fund the education of 234 schoolchildren for an entire year. 

For the government, this has never been about finding a workable solution.  Instead, it is about standing behind aggressively emblazoned podiums, claiming to be “up for the fight” against human rights law, and showboating non-existent solutions.  Instead of wholesale reform, investment, and the establishment of safe and legal routes in an attempt to save lives, Sunak’s government has chosen impractical showmanship.

Oxford Israel Society and Jewish Students For Justice release statements addressing pro-Palestine encampment

Cherwell News
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Oxford Israel Society and Jewish Students For Justice release statements addressing pro-Palestine encampment

Oxford Israel Society issued a statement on Wednesday condemning the pro-Palestine encampment organised by Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P), which was set up on Monday 6th May in front of the Pitt Rivers Museum. The Society condemned OA4P’s “failure” to mention Hamas’ role in the war in the Gaza strip and called on the University to reject the protesters’ demands.

Jewish Students for Justice (JSJ) also issued a statement in solidarity with Oxford Action for Palestine saying they “fully support the encampment’s struggle” and “call for the University to accept their demands in full.”

Oxford Israel Society’s statement expressed disappointment that students and staff at Oxford “have chosen to mimic” pro-Palestine encampments at US universities which it says “have already led to violence and antisemitism there.” 

The encampment in Oxford follows dozens established across the US, notably at Harvard, Yale and UCLA, where instances of violence and police-involvement have occured. The Society stresses that in Oxford “the demands of the petitioners and protestors are not the way forward.” 

Oxford Israel Society also says the statements from protestors “have failed to mention Hamas” which the Society describes as “by design” and states: “by not calling out Hamas, they are unwittingly complicit in its propaganda and strategy.” 

The Society describes itself as “a Zionist organisation, defined as desiring the maintenance of the sovereign democratic Jewish State of Israel.”

On 2nd May, the Union of Jewish Students, which represents 9,000 Jewish students across the United Kingdom of Ireland, issued a similar statement. “While students have a right to protest, these encampments create a hostile and toxic atmosphere on campus for Jewish students.” They also called on universities to take “their duty to care for Jewish students seriously.” 

JSJ expressed support for the encampment stating it is “a diverse and welcoming space” and that “as Jewish students we have felt nothing but support and solidarity.” Their statement also referenced “attempts of zionist communal organisations…to trivialise antisemitism by conflating it with antizionism.”

The statement urged “the University to abandon the toxic IHRA definition of antisemitism” since it “shuts off legitimate criticism of Israel and does nothing to protect Jewish students.”

Since the beginning of May, encampments have been set up at the universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle. Today Rishi Sunak will meet with vice chancellors from universities across the country at Downing Street to tell them to do more to combat antisemitism on college campuses. 

He issued a statement ahead of the meeting stating: “Universities should be places of rigorous debate but also bastions of tolerance and respect for every member of their community. A vocal minority on our campuses are disrupting the lives and studies of their fellow students and, in some cases, propagating outright harassment and antisemitic abuse. That has to stop.”

The statement from Oxford Israel Society ends by “call(ing) upon the University to reject all the protestors’ and petitioners’ demands” and expressing confidence that the University will ensure that “antisemitism is swiftly and sharply addressed, and that the rights of Jewish and Israeli students and staff to move about the University free of harassment are respected and safeguarded.” 

The full statement from Oxford Israel Society follows here: 

“The Oxford Israel Society is saddened and disappointed that students and staff at our shared university have chosen to mimic the encampments at US universities, which have already led to violence and antisemitism there. The suffering of innocents in Gaza is heartbreaking, a terrible consequence of a war Israel never wished to fight. However, the demands of the petitioners and protesters are not the way forward. Their statements contain a litany of half-truths and outright lies, and crucially, they have failed to mention Hamas, the source and cause of this war. This is by design.

To acknowledge Hamas would be to acknowledge that Hamas initiated this war, with its horrific invasion on October 7th, when it murdered over 1200 people in Israel and took 200 hostages – filming and celebrating the massacre and torture of innocents. To acknowledge Hamas would be to acknowledge Hamas’ use of innocent Gazans as human shields and propaganda props. To acknowledge Hamas would acknowledge the twenty years of terror inflicted not just on Israel, but on Gazan civilians. To acknowledge Hamas would therefore acknowledge the necessity of military action against them. These protesters are not protesting for the safety of innocent Palestinian civilians and peace, for if they did, they too would demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza. By not calling out Hamas, they are unwittingly complicit in its propaganda and strategy.

We call upon the University to reject all the protesters’ and petitioners’ demands. We are confident in our expectations that the university and its administration will ensure that any antisemitism is swiftly and sharply addressed, and that the rights of Jewish and Israeli students and staff to move about the University free of harassment are respected and safeguarded.

Israel has a duty of defence towards its citizens and must pursue that duty to the best of its ability. We maintain our confidence in the IDF’s commitment to minimise any harm done to innocent people. We grieve for all the victims of Hamas, in Israel and in Gaza, direct or indirect, and hope for a lasting resolution to this terrible war. We pray for the swift release and rescue of the hostages.”

The full statement from Jewish Students for Justice follows here:

“Jewish Students for Justice stand in total solidarity with the Oxford Action for Palestine encampment.

We stand with the people of Palestine, and fully support the encampment’s struggle to end the University’s complicity in Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide. We call for the University to accept their demands in full.

The encampment is a diverse and welcoming space, and as Jewish students we have felt nothing but solidarity and support there. We reject the attempts of zionist communal organisations – including the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) – to trivialise antisemitism by conflating it with antizionism, attempting to stoke fear of these encampments among Jewish students of this University and elsewhere. This is why we demand that the University abandon the toxic IHRA definition of antisemitism, which shuts off legitimate criticism of Israel and does nothing to protect Jewish students.

The IOF has begun its invasion on Rafah. We stand in unconditional solidarity with Palestine and call on our community to continue the fight until Palestine is free.”

OA4P was approached for comment on the statements.

Celebrating 70 years: The Bannister mile

Isabel Valovin
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Celebrating 70 years: The Bannister mile

Seventy years ago, on a blustery day at Oxford’s Iffley Road sports track, history was made. On May 6th 1954, a young British medical Oxford student named Roger Bannister achieved what was once deemed impossible: he broke the four-minute mile. This monumental feat which had captivated the imagination of athletes and spectators for decades not only transcended the realm of athletics but also became a symbol of human endeavour and perseverance.

The starting bell echoed across the track at 6:00pm, and the race had begun. With Brasher and Chataway as pacers, Bannister determinedly raced and finished the final lap with the crowd erupting. In that moment sporting history was changed forever as the electronic timer displayed a time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds, making Roger Bannister the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes. His name was now etched into history. Bannister created a legacy that others can learn from; through hard work and self-belief nothing is impossible.

On May 6th 2024 Oxford marked the 70th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s historic feat by celebrating with a community mile for the first time in the morning, with over 1,500 people running in the typically British rainy conditions. Sports clubs, universities, children, and even members of the Bannister family took part to remember the accomplishment. At Iffley a museum was set up to teach people about the story of this event. Special guest speakers, including prominent athletes and the vice chancellor of Oxford University, reflected on the significance of Bannister’s achievement and its lasting impact on sport and society. Max Anderson Loake ran in the community mile and stayed to spectate the elite races in the afternoon. He told Cherwell: “This morning I participated in the community mile with a group from the swimming club. It was my first mile, so it was good fun. I wanted to be a part of it.”

“Sport does such a big thing for culture and community because it gets people out of the libraries and spending time with each other, having fun and getting some endorphins going. It’s a bonding experience.”

This event started to take form in 2012 but with Covid-19 it had taken a hit. Thomas Renshaw, one of the co-directors of the event, spoke to Cherwell about the importance of bringing the Oxford community together through events like this. He shared: “It’s been really nice to have lots of families and students, as well as the world record holders. People have clearly enjoyed the afternoon and learnt a lot, even though the rain has been pouring. Thanks everyone for coming and hope we’ll see you next year.”

Matt Buck, a member of the Achilles club, the Oxford and Cambridge athletics alumni, spoke to Cherwell about the races and their impact for generations. He shared: “This is the first time in my memory that they’ve organised events and races all throughout the day. Inviting younger children and getting the community up and running and racing is great. It’s a big day for Oxford.”

At precisely 6:00pm on May 6th 2024, with the crowd in complete silence, the same bell that rung for Roger Bannister rang loud and 70 years later the elite men’s race set off. The crowd erupted in unison as a close and competitive race took place. The winner, Ossama Meslek, completed the mile in an amazing time of 3:56.15, closely followed by James Young and Tiarnan Crorken who were both also under the 4-minute mile. This new generation of athletes showed that there is no limit on human capabilities if we have passion and perseverance for what we do. From the crowd it was an incredible watch, and I myself felt inspired by the atmosphere created.

Even though this event marked the historic event of a man, it is important not to forget the women that raced, they too also showed the capabilities and improvement of humanity after we remove the mental barrier. The women’s A race set off at 5:45pm, with the top 4 runners creating an exciting and close race for the spectators. In an astonishing time of 4:36.09 Khahisa Mhlanga won, followed by Bethen Morely and Lauren Church. Speaking to Cherwell, Mhlanga shared: “It’s a very unique event and nice to be part of the elite mile, with a pb as well!”

Overall, this day successfully celebrated the sporting icon Roger Bannister, showing that no matter how daunting the odds may seem if you persevere you can chase your dream. This historic milestone honoured the legacy of Roger Bannister, who paved the way for generations of future athletes to come. Oxford University were proud to commemorate this sporting excellence, and with Irene Tracey (the vice chancellor) the University has an ongoing commitment to nurturing and fostering sporting achievement. The future of sport is unpredictable and incredibly exciting, with athletes motivated more than ever.

The death of the FA Cup

Sebastian Page
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The death of the FA Cup

For the majority of people, Joe Ironside could be a next-door neighbour, or an aptly named blacksmith. For myself and perhaps just ten thousand other people around the world, the name is synonymous with cult hero status. On a miserable afternoon in January 2022, he pivoted on his weaker foot, and calmly swept the ball past Martin Dúbravka to hand Newcastle one of just two losses at St. James’ Park for the calendar year. Myself, alongside the fellow Cambridge supporters were sent into raptures up in the famous away end. I’m hugging strangers and someone’s set off a yellow smoke grenade at my sixteen-year-old feet. The magic of the FA cup is a sentiment that all fans of teams below the Premier League hope to experience, and the financial magic provided by a big team are the dreams of every team owner. 

The FA cup, which first took place in the 1871-72 season, and once won by Oxford University in 1874 after a victory over Royal Engineers, boasts some staggering prize money figures. This year (2023-24) will see just shy of £20 million issued (£19,829,800), as the final distributes £2 million to the victor, and £1 million to the loser. But for the lower league teams, these figures are dwarfed by the potential for TV revenue and gate receipts. The FA cup uniquely enforces evenly split gate receipts between the home and away sides, the only anomaly being an even more favourable 55/45 split in favour of non-league sides when they play away against teams in the Football League (clubs in the top four divisions). This year’s fairy-tale run by Maidstone United of the Vanarama South (England’s 6th tier) to the final sixteen, or fifth round proper, earned them around £350,000 in prize money, but owner Simon Ash expected a total revenue of nearly £800,000 after gate receipts from an away fixture at Championship side Coventry City (where I unfortunately watched a first half hat-trick from Ellis Simms put Elokobi’s side to the sword). This £800,000 does not even include the £125,000 offered for the rights to an ITV broadcast of the fixture.

The competition rules dictate that should a fixture end in a draw, the tie must be replayed at the other team’s stadium, however from the fifth round proper fixture to the final, fixtures will instead go to extra time and penalties, as fixture congestion has become an increasingly contentious issue in regard to player health. These replays offer teams like Maidstone the opportunity to earn these huge paydays, often reviving a club’s financial status. Maidstone operated at a £200,000 loss in the 2022-23 season, so this run will extend the club’s lifespan for the next four years, regardless of any future money earned, a guaranteed future that will even make professional sides jealous. However, on the 18th of April, the FA announced that all replays after the first round proper will be scrapped. Since Championship sides like Coventry City enter in the second round, and Premier League sides enter in the third, this makes it incredibly unlikely for a minnow like Maidstone to draw the lucrative away fixture away that could preserve them for years. 

There has also been increasing controversy surrounding the selection of games for television broadcast, as lots of games are selected to cater towards pure viewing statistics, rather than offering smaller teams the opportunity to sustain themselves. Standard mid-table Premier League clashes like Crystal Palace vs. Everton, that are broadcasted twice a year, take place over games featuring teams from lower divisions such as Watford vs Chesterfield or Newport against Eastleigh. Larger games like Liverpool vs. Manchester United take place to cater to international viewership, despite the forty-six times they have played each other this century. These hegemonic clubs do not need the broadcasting fees, when they already generate £2.8 billion from national and international viewership in the Premier League alone. The playoff final for Championship clubs to enter the Premier League is already known as the ‘richest game in football’ due to the prospect of receiving these broadcasting fees, and clubs are issued parachute payments to keep them financially afloat after relegation.

Beyond the financial side, the scrapping of replays denies fans and players a possible once in a lifetime opportunity to witness the atmosphere that most Premier League fans regularly take for granted, or even a Wembley visit. Many Cambridge United fans like myself will recount that day in Newcastle as one of the highlights of their years of support, and players share similar sentiments. Manager George Elokobi told Kent Online that: ‘The magic of the FA cup is still alive. It’s about showcasing our skills and coming up against a fantastic Championship side in a fantastic stadium.’ One of his star forwards and Grenadian international captain, Jacob Berkeley-Agyepong, shared a similar view, telling me via Instagram messages that ‘the run will live with [him] forever’, and that ‘[he] wants to go on another one’. The ‘special’ experience even led him to ‘tears of joy’ for the first time in his career after both the Ipswich and Coventry fixtures.

The main opposition to the FA Cup replay is fixture congestion, as competitions such as the UEFA Champions League are being expanded, meaning that players are being forced to play a dangerous number of games. When knockout competitions progress to their latter stages nearing the end of the season, players are at their most vulnerable, and any further playing time can be detrimental. Despite this, cup competitions offer teams the capability to rotate squads, and offer playing opportunities to younger players coming through the academy system. A fine example of this came from Liverpool’s Carabao Cup win over Chelsea this year (a competition played by teams in the top four divisions), as their final-winning team featured five academy graduates. Of these five, three were teenagers who had made a cumulative eleven appearances for a total of one hundred and forty-five minutes between them this season. Replays ultimately offer larger clubs the opportunity to nurture this talent through squad rotation, encouraging efficient player management and rotation.

The magic of the cup is a phenomenon referred to when the tale of David and Goliath is echoed. Scrappy teams with wage bills one hundredth of the size of their opponent’s shock thousands. The scrapping of FA cup replays may not totally eradicate the magic of the cup, but it marks another step away from beloved traditions, towards the rampant consumerism that has progressively taken over domestic and continental football.

24 hours inside the OA4P encampment

Selina Chen
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24 hours inside the OA4P encampment

Mud swamps over grass where disintegrating cardboard and puddled tarp trace a crude footpath; wooden pallets provide the only solid ground. Upon this foundation lies Oxford’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a community supported by donations where students learn from teach-in lectures and look after one another. As a Cherwell journalist embedded in the camp for the first night, I didn’t scrounge for polished statements but documented the mundane details of life in the “Liberated Zone.” Here’s what I observed.

Masks On

Sprung up during the pre-dawn hours of 6 May, the welcome tent stood at the encampment entrance where newcomers filled out an onboarding form asking for their first name or pseudonym only – no full names. Responses are kept encrypted and private, it said, and a legal team is advising their collective action. 

Many picked up face masks for anonymity, while some students also donned sunglasses and scarves. Some students didn’t bring their Bod cards in fear of confiscation. Tape covered up the initials and college crests embroidered on Oxford’s signature puffer jackets. All communications occurred on Signal and Telegram – two platforms chosen for their security.

A prospective camper raised his concern about losing his work visa, and a volunteer informed him that the encampment was setting up protocols to sort people into groups by levels of risk to stay or leave in case of a situation involving the police.

A Learning Environment

Prominent scholars visited the encampment: feminist philosopher Amia Srinivasan brought students lunch and Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim gifted students a box of dates. Daily schedules are filled with teach-in lectures, poetry circles, and news announcements. Scheduled chants were interspersed with spontaneous cheers whenever a car honked its horn in support as it drove by.

Books were stashed around the camp and readers nestled in every corner. Some were doing coursework, the flutter of their pages accompanied by shuffles of flashcards. A volunteer left after dark for a midnight hospital shift; others trickled in and out throughout the day to attend lectures. Even the encampment couldn’t keep Oxford’s academic demands at bay.

Dr Refaat Al-Areer Memorial Library, a tent named after a Palestinian writer killed by Israeli airstrike, held a waterproof bag filled with books – everything from copies of a Palestine Colouring Book for kids to Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Books inside the encampment’s library.

In the Public Eye

Journalists from national outlets hovered around the premise, greeted and accompanied by one of the media-trained campers acting as spokespeople. Shireen Abu Akleh media tent, named after a Palestinian-American journalist shot by Israeli forces while covering a raid, hosted a number of interviews.

This was also where the embedded journalist Madeleine Jane slept. She had been documenting the organisation for two weeks and planned to live in the encampment until its end. She told me: “every journalist thinks ‘yeah I totally would have covered the civil rights movement’ and every historian thinks ‘yeah I totally would have marched with the civil rights movement.’” This was the historical moment of her time, one that she wants to be able to tell her grandkids about.

Most interactions were mutually courteous, but not all media outlets were welcome: Daily Mail’s interview request was declined due to past “unfriendly” coverage, although the dissatisfied reporter was still allowed to roam the encampment. Later, two students independently alleged that she had been unzipping tents to look inside.

Camera crews trickled out by sunset and returned as early as sunrise. “I feel like I’m on a film set,” a student remarked. And indeed when I pulled up the news, I saw many of the masked faces and sombre eyes I’d become familiar with during my time there.

Night

As dusk descended, exterior lights of the Natural History Museum cast a faint warm glow upon the two dozen tents. An estimated 50 campers slept there – fewer than the two hundred during the day – their soft chatter and occasional laughter audible late into the night. Many voices carried American accents, and topics of discussion involved their jailed friends across the pond and their surprise at the gentle demeanour of the British police forces.

The organisers arranged guard shifts, taking campers’ essay-writing schedules into consideration. The pair of guards chatted by the entrance throughout the night, providing me a sense of safety the countless times I woke up shivering in the cold.

Inside a camper’s tent.

I got up at 4am, unable to sleep any longer on the ground that chilled me to the bones, and opened the tent to sludge muddier than the night before. The guards told me that many automated sprinklers had turned on throughout the night with no obvious pattern, splashing the tents and worsening the drainage situation. They had put trash bags over the sprinklers as a temporary solution. 

The police came briefly at midnight and left without many words. A few foxes also visited – only to be shooed away.

Early morning guards replaced the night guards as golden sunlight swept over the campground. Campers stretched, challenged each other to push-ups, and ran laps around the grass – a brief reminder of their youth amongst the talk of war and death.

Connections and Hostilities

One of the early morning guards was an Israeli-born student who moved to the UK at age seven. His parents supported his involvement in the encampment, but his other relatives in Israel weren’t yet aware. “I often play a hypothetical in my head,” he said, “that if I hadn’t left I would have been drafted into the IDF [Israel Defense Forces].”

Two Jewish passersby separately approached the camp in the morning and expressed their support. One of them said that he had been involved in a Jewish student group for Palestine twenty years ago: “I’ve come to meet my juniors.”

The Israeli-British camper pulled out a Star of David from around his neck, “that’s me,” he smiled.

In another polite interaction, staff members from the Natural History Museum came to check that the encampment understood that the museum remains open.

But some encounters turned hostile. A construction worker employed by the company that upkeeps the grass entered the encampment despite being asked to remain outside. “Wakey wakey!” he yelled at the sleepy campers in the early morning as he took photos. He expressed his concern for the state of grass under the tents and foot traffic.

At breakfast a camper commented on the incident: “Grass grows back. Palestinian children don’t.”

Logistics

By day two shoes were caked with mud, and dramatic slips grew commonplace, so volunteers began fortifying the sinking footpath. The site ran on voluntary action, requiring no strict duties or hierarchies to be maintained. Yet the portable toilet remained in pristine condition.

The encampment’s portable toilet.

Dr Hammam Alloh medical and welfare tent, named after an Al-Shifa Hospital physician killed by Israeli airstrike, stored boxes of supplies including first aid kits, sanitary pads, tampons, clothes, and hangers. A rigged car battery was used to charge cameras for journalists.

Central to the encampment were donations from the Oxford community. Upon seeing Oxford Action for Palestine’s wishlist on Instagram, people arrived with everything from hot meals to chairs. The community tent was quickly filled with piles of food.

There was no top-down leadership structure in the encampment despite its highly organised operations. While designated volunteers took charge of various logistical aspects such as media, the encampment had no hierarchy, and indeed the organisers’ meetings saw horizontal decision making processes.

As the encampment continued to capture Oxford and national attention, the protesters fought to direct all eyes on Gaza.

Pro-Palestine protesters rally in attempt to present demands to Vice-Chancellor

Cherwell News
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Pro-Palestine protesters rally in attempt to present demands to Vice-Chancellor

A group of around 150, organised by Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P), rallied outside the Sheldonian Theatre during Vice-Chancellor’s awards on 8th May, aiming to hand their demands to Oxford University’s leaders.

They gathered at 2pm outside the Theatre to demand that the University reveal and divest funding in Israel and arms companies, and boycott all institutional connections with Israeli universities.

Protesters travelled from the ongoing pro-Palestinian encampment and elsewhere in Oxford to the Sheldonian Theatre to deliver their demands. Shouts of “occupation no more” and “Israel is a terror state” could be heard and a banner titled “Our Demands” read: “Disclose all finance. Divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid, and occupation. Overhaul university investment policy.” 

Some protesters standing outside the locked gates to the Sheldonian Theatre had painted their arms blood-red and held them up to onlookers. A sign was displayed at the front of the demonstration which read “Stop Israeli attacks on Gaza”. Police and members of Oxford University Security Services were also present at the protest. 

A student at the protest told Cherwell: “it’s completely justified [referring to the concerns of the protesters]” and emphasised how the conflict has reached the point where people can no longer do nothing. Students described Israel’s recent actions as a “genocide”, and one sign read “Oxford Uni complicit in genocide”. 

The protest lasted just under an hour and protesters dispersed at around 3pm. 

The rally takes place on the third day of encampment outside the Natural History Museum. During the encampment, also organised by OA4P, members of the University have called for the University to disclose and divest investments into arms companies and those with connections to Israel. They have also demanded that Oxford cuts institutional ties with all Israeli Universities. 

An open letter, written in support of the encampment, has received over 350 signatures to date. The letter also calls for the Vice-Chancellor to “unequivocally condemn the killing of over a hundred university professors and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s educational institutes and universities.”   

The day before, Cambridge students’ encampment delivered envelopes with their demands to the Pro-Vice-Chancellors and Vice-Chancellor. 

Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss review: Revenge of the lettuce

Hassan Akram
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Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss review: Revenge of the lettuce

I have met Liz Truss only once. It was in Oxford Town Hall in November of last year and I had tried (without success) to smuggle in an iceberg lettuce under my shirt. The lettuce having been confiscated, I made my way into the hall. Very soon Truss climbed onstage, looking pleased as a duck. She began to rant about how she had been toppled by transgender activists in the civil service and the left-wing economic establishment. What struck me even more than the talentlessness of her oratory was her absolute lack of self-awareness or self-reflection. “It is,” as James O’Brien puts it, “as if Liz Truss seems to operate in a universe where she’s never met Liz Truss.” 

The same attitude is clear throughout Truss’ new memoir. Reflecting on her time as Prime Minister, she can mention “policies I believed in ” in the same line as “catastrophic economic meltdown” without ever once linking cause to effect. She simply cannot accept that her policies were on the wrong side of the debate, and the few debates in this book which she does win are, as if in the shower, completely imaginary. Justifying radical low-tax policies, she writes that: “If we push taxes up to 80 per cent… fewer people will aspire to earn more or start a new business”. A sound point. But nobody is saying that we should push taxes up to 80 per cent.  

The closest she comes to self-reflection is in a paragraph beginning “To be self-critical,” which runs to about four lines. Mostly she complains that she had no political honeymoon, or that we need radical reforms to give prime ministers more agenda-setting and policymaking power. For one who regards herself as an apostle of democracy, she has remarkably little regard for checks and balances.  

High taxes, wokery, identity politics, the deep state, global left-wing media elites – these, in Truss’ eyes, are the evils from which she is destined to save the West. She comes out with solutions like “We Must be Conservatives” and “We Must Dismantle the Leftist State”. Much of it is pure Daily Mail stuff (although the Mail sells roughly more copies every fifteen minutes than this book sold in its first week). 

Truss, like so many populist politicians and pseudo-intellectuals, is eager to defend “Western values” from attack. But I doubt whether she or anyone of her political leanings could define that term if called upon to do so. It is a tricky one, not least because by naming something as a Western value the implication is that it cannot be an Eastern value. Then what exactly is a Western value, according to Truss? Democracy cannot be one, because she speaks at far-right conferences alongside maniacs whose stated aim is the outright overthrow of democracy. Tolerance? No, no, she wants to repeal the Equality Act. Human Rights? Impossible: she is also opposed to the Human Rights Act. Rational thinking? Individual responsibility? No, in Truss’ case they all fall flat. All that she knows for certain is that Western values are under siege from the woke mob. 

The “wokery” charge is interesting only in one respect. In principle Truss is right to object to “the rewriting of history”, though her examples on the matter are quite misguided. She opposes the idea of schools teaching more inclusive curriculums, or of students moving slaveowner statues from street corners into museums; she cannot see that for a country to have an honest rethink about its own history is not revisionist, at least not dangerously so. The real dangers of revisionism come when some countries – some, indeed, which she otherwise praises in  this book – completely erase or deny the barbarities of their own recent history, and, doing so, go on in the present day to enact even more terror. That is infinitely more dangerous than the kinds of trivialities which Truss falsely holds up as examples of “rewriting history”.  

One positive which emerges from this book is that she has at any rate given up trying to cast herself as a modern-day Margaret Thatcher. She compares herself instead, bizarrely, with Sir Robert Peel. A far closer parallel would be Anthony Eden, another Tory who, despite extensive experience as a minister, made such a hash of the premiership that his only choice was a very hasty resignation. Truss also expresses a strange admiration for the polemicist Thomas Paine, whose work she surely cannot have read; otherwise, she would have denounced his plans for an eighteenth-century welfare state as “handouts”. 

Some of Truss’ personal insights are terrifyingly banal. She confesses that: “Leading the nation in mourning after the death of our beloved monarch of seventy years was not something I had ever expected to do” (it would have been an oddly specific expectation if she had), and adds that this book is not “simply a chance to tell the detailed inside story of my time in government” (a good thing, too, for it would take a Joycean level of detail to fill so many pages with so few days). 

Making an effort to be likeable, she tries to be funny about the inside life of a Prime Minister, and shares some very lifeless anecdotes. For example, she once confused Mrs Macron for Mrs Biden at the UN! (The real master of this kind of gaffe was Truss’ foe Tony Blair, who once tried to tell an interviewer in French that “I desire to emulate the French prime minister in many positions”, but omitted the verb “to emulate”).

The accounts of Truss’ early career do make for fun reading. We learn that at school she was wildly paranoid about the risk of being stabbed with safety-scissors. (It would be useful if any psychology students are able to connect this early phobia to her later career: please do get in touch at [email protected]). She was shaped by her time as an officer at Oxford Student Union, which left her with a loathing of “political correctness”. In Parliament, when she inherited Labour’s Department of Education, she describes her horror at discovering… “rainbow decorations hanging from the ceiling”. (Now, this is just the kind of thing that makes it impossible to take her seriously). It is also interesting to learn that, as early as 2010, The Spectator had named her the “human hand grenade”, and perhaps, if we had known that, we wouldn’t have allowed her within firing distance of the economy.  

There is no question of Truss’ genius, at least in Truss’ own mind. I can only think that – perhaps having heard that the infallible sign of genius is to have all the dunces in confederacy against you – she cast the Treasury, the governor of the Bank of England, Joe Biden, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the late Queen in the role of the dunces, and herself in the role of the genius referred to.  

And there is nothing that makes for funnier reading than a self-proclaimed genius.

‘Theatre is, at its best, one of the most democratic of the arts’

Natascha Norton
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‘Theatre is, at its best, one of the most democratic of the arts’

I had the chance to sit down with Gregory Doran, Oxford University’s Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor and the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, to talk all things Shakespeare, contemporary theatre and the importance of accessibility in the Arts.

Greg Doran is Oxford University’s Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor and the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His current project is the student-led adaptation of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona running at the Oxford Playhouse this May. This production marks the milestone of his direction of all 36 plays in Shakespeare’s First Folio, yet this is the first time Doran has worked with a student-dominated cast and crew. He tells me how after receiving an initial eighty student self-tapes, he and his co-directors and producers ended up with the twenty current cast members. “I was casting who I thought were the most talented actors in those roles. And what was great, and sad at the same time, was having to turn down so many talented people who actually were great actors, but, you know, [we] had a particular idea for the role.” However, this seemingly cut-throat approach was within reason, as he reminds me about the importance of suitable casting,“There was a great Shakespeare director called Tyrone Guthrie, in the 1950s, … who used to say that directing is 80% good casting. And I sort of believe that. I think if you’ve got the cast right, I don’t think you’ve got 20% of the job left to do, but it’s a huge part of the process.”

Having directed over 35 Shakespeare productions, Greg explains what keeps him coming back to the world of theatre, and to Shakespeare specifically: “I think I’ve always been a sort of Shakespeare nut. I was lucky in that I was brought up by the Jesuits in Preston and we did a Shakespeare play every year. So, from the age of 13, I was kind of looking at plays and wondering, you know, what kind of part might I get? I wasn’t looking at Shakespeare and thinking of answering essay questions, I was looking at Shakespeare for the opportunity to be in the play and have a good time. I think Shakespeare became a kind of thread or passport through my life.” Greg then went on to train as an actor following his university years, and did some (to use his words) “complete rubbish, sitcoms”, before auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company at age 26: “And that was the rest of my life.”

On being reminded of how many incredible projects Greg Doran has worked on, and with the student cast and crew having an equally fortunate opportunity to work with such a notable director, I wondered whether he ever felt any sense of impostor syndrome during his career and what he learnt from it. “When I became an actor of the RSC, I was in two productions in the first part of the first season, one of which I felt completely engaged in and that my contribution was embraced. You know, I felt part of it. The other one, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was really being asked just to say the lines and follow the blocking. I realised how much better it is if you can encourage that investment from the cast, because then they will pay it back and the production will be more successful as a result. You could always tell a production where it isn’t an ensemble because the actors who aren’t speaking don’t look as though they’re listening, or that they don’t really know what it’s about. I think [theatre is], at its best, one of the most democratic of the arts because it is about what we produce in the room.” 

Having previously directed the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen and the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, I wonder what drew Greg to staging his final untouched Shakespeare play in the First Folio with a strictly student dominated cast and crew. “When the Cameron Mackintosh professorship was offered to me, the one play I had not directed in the entire first folio was Two Gentlemen of Verona. And because of it being about young people, to do it as part of my professorship seemed to be the ideal opportunity. Even though it’s a much bigger time commitment, it just so happened that I’d stepped down from the RSC, I had lost my husband, and I had the time. Also, it felt like the time to give back, to share the legacy of all the people that I worked with, all the great actors and directors, having had the opportunity to be in their rehearsal rooms, and share that a bit with the next generation. That’s been the joy of it. And really, what’s been lovely is how the cast all kind of seem to be embracing that.”

But why put the play on in Oxford, and why now? “One of the reasons I wanted to do this play here was because it’s a play about young people, it’s about them leaving home, it’s about them making a way in the world for themselves, working out their own identities and making horrible mistakes. Falling in love and then falling in love with the wrong people. And it becoming quickly, kind of, difficult. And what was interesting was seeing how those actors responded to the play, and how quickly they saw how it reflected their own experience and their lives.” 

“For me, Verona is wherever you left home from, or whatever was, for 18 years of your life in this case, a sort of home. And to me that was Preston, which is where I grew up. I wanted people to connect with their own experience of coming into the bright lights of the big city and the excitement of that but also the challenge [it poses]…I mean, it isn’t like any other Shakespeare production I’ve done. Certainly, from the point of view of its contemporaneity, I think with comedy you need a very precise social structure that you recognise. And I guess, certainly, with the tragedies, I have found ways of finding something that is contemporary and then just smudging it a little so it doesn’t involve the kind of things that we take for granted in a contemporary setting. I often say in a modern dress production of Romeo and Juliet, when they get to them I always think, why didn’t she text him? And that’s an irrelevant question for me to ask but if the production has alerted you to that kind of contemporary detail, then why shouldn’t you ask those questions?”

Once only accessible in the flesh and on stage, the landscape of theatre has rapidly changed to include pre-recorded or live-streamed theatre productions in cinemas and on television screens. Greg reflects on the impact of technological advancements on the world of theatre: “When I became artistic director [of the Royal Shakespeare Company], I had done a production of Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart and we were invited to be the first theatre production to do a ‘Live-from’ (like how the Met in New York [stream] the operas ‘Live-from…’). Theatre had never done it by that point. We were invited to do it with Hamlet.”

”One of the cast simply didn’t want to [record the performance]. They felt that theatre was transitory, and it should be left in the memory of the audience. But when I became artistic director, I thought, ‘Well, what I think we’re going to do is broadcast every production’, because I had decided that we would work through the entire canon of Shakespeare’s plays… I just felt that the technology was open to us to embrace. The technology of being able to broadcast live into cinemas around the country and indeed around the world. The joy of that was that somebody sitting in a cinema in Newcastle was sitting down at the same time as the audience in Stratford was sitting down. The response of a live audience was infectious.” He shares a heartwarming memory that was made on the night of the filming of Richard II. “I got a tweet from somebody who said:  ‘loving David Tennant’s Richard II at my Whiteley cinema, eating my chicken korma.’ I thought, well, A: I’m glad I’m not sitting next to you, but B: if that’s how you want your Shakespeare, then great! And if it’s not intimidating, then you kind of get a sense of what it’s about… and maybe next time you go and see it live in Stratford.”


Gregory Doran’s contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona promises to be an engaging display of young talent and creative collaboration. The production can be seen at the Oxford Playhouse from the 15th to 18th of May 2024, with tickets on the Playhouse website available now.

The Rwanda deal: Inspiration for other countries?

Mahdi Ghuloom
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The Rwanda deal: Inspiration for other countries?

The UK confirmed on the 1st May that it had detained an unspecified number of asylum seekers in the previous few days ready for deportation to Rwanda in July. This comes after legislation passed in Parliament that same week in support of such an arrangement, which would see forced deportations of asylum seekers to have their claims processed abroad. A man has reportedly already gone voluntarily to Rwanda. The policy purports to primarily focus on those who have taken a dinghy to cross the English Channel. According to the BBC, there are currently 52,000 people in this pool. Rwanda has “in principle” agreed to accept 5,700 migrants already in the UK this year.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has said that the UK’s Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is “setting a worrying global precedent.” One may wonder, then, whether the UK is the first to have innovated such a policy, and whether other countries will follow suit – as hinted at by the UN.

Firstly, the policy was ruled as unlawful by the UK Supreme Court, citing concerns that Rwanda could not be considered a safe country. Rishi Sunak subsequently circumvented this by drafting the now successful bill which legislated for the designation of Rwanda as a safe country.

As the UK’s Refugee Council has expressed, the concern with the Rwanda deal may not just be about Rwanda as a destination. It is concerning that a country like the UK, which does not take a very large share of the proportion of the world’s refugees, still considers it necessary to transfer them abroad. The UK is capable of finding other ways to promote safe routes to its country, and it can find the resources to process the claims it receives domestically.

Australia introduced a deportation policy in 2001, similar to the UK’s current policy, targeting migrants arriving in Australian waters by boat. Asylum seekers were transferred to offshore detention centers in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the South Pacific island nation of Nauru. The policy went through several changes, including a brief dismantling between 2008 and 2012. It was only last year that the last few asylum seekers pursuing Australia as a destination were relocated from Nauru. The policy had a reputation of being extremely costly for Australia and one may wonder, given the UK is also facing financial pressures if the Rwanda agreement is implemented, whether the UK will sustain the policy longer, or even as long as Australia.

Additionally, the BBC reports that some 4,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers based in Israel were sent to Rwanda and Uganda between 2013 and 2018. Other reports suggest they were given the choice of either being deported to their country of origin or accepting a payment of $3,500 and a plane ticket to either Uganda or Rwanda, facing jail in Israel otherwise. However, the agreement between the countries was secretive and eventually abandoned. Nonetheless, given the Australia model has already inspired the UK, and similar legislation in Denmark which was not implemented, it may be expected that other countries will also find inspiration in the formalised Rwanda deportation model.

But which countries may follow suit? According to the Spectator, “asked if they would like France to adopt a Rwanda-style bill, 67 per cent of the French canvassed replied favourably to the idea.” Although current French leadership remains opposed to the idea, any possible future change in leadership, especially a change towards a populist one, may lead to a French Rwanda-style deal. It is worth noting that French support is higher than the 37% that view the policy favourably in the UK, according to a YouGov poll in January. 

Arab Gulf States have also conducted weekly deportations of migrants, facing huge criticism. Given they are claiming to be working to improve their human rights records, they may see the UK-Rwanda model as one that they could follow. ُThough they are not signatory to the same international agreements, the UK is a country that publishes Human Rights and Democracy Reports as part of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)’s efforts to promote human rights abroad. If the UK is seen going through with such policies, then that may hold its weight in policy considerations of other countries – especially as they may view the UK as a global leader or have strong historic ties. 

Yet such a consideration may be misleading. Although the UK is indeed a country that holds its weight internationally, including as a member of the G7 group of advanced democracies, it is not immune to making mistakes on advancing and protecting human rights. This may be the UK’s contemporary moment of violating such rights. Therefore, it is certainly not a good idea for other countries to follow suit, even if they will naturally watch closely to see the legal and reputational backlash the UK may receive. If the UK survives this backlash, it may inspire them. However, this inspiration would stand in the way of better solutions that could be developed to migration issues. 

Lastly, even if other countries do not follow suit, the UK itself may expand the policy to deport asylum seekers to other partners. Reports have indicated Armenia, Ivory Coast, Costa Rica, and Botswana as contenders for similar arrangements with the UK. This is possible not only as Rwanda has limited capacity, but also because Rwanda may be risking domestic political trouble by receiving all these asylum seekers. In fact, though much of the blame for this policy is rightly set on the UK, Rwanda should also bear some of the criticisms that arise from this deal. Many countries have reportedly declined being approached by the UK for a similar deal, including Morocco and Tunisia. Rwanda still has the chance to be the last line of defence against this policy, preventing the proliferation of a costly, abusive, and populist solution to international migration.

Inaugural Vice-Chancellor Colloquium to mark Earth Day

Poppy Littler-Jennings
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Inaugural Vice-Chancellor Colloquium to mark Earth Day

This year’s Earth Day on April 22, saw the completion of the first Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium, a forum based on collaborative efforts to improve the climate crisis. To mark the end of this programme, a special event attended by the participating students and the Vice-Chancellor, Irene Tracey, took place at the Maths Institute.

In October 2023, the Vice-Chancellor launched this new project and said it was: “an experiment in helping students learn from each other across the divide.” The conference was focused on climate change, to which the Vice-Chancellor said: “Building on the success and popularity of our student-led Oxford School of Climate Change, we’ve decided to make climate the unifying theme of the pilot colloquium.” 

The project ran for eight weeks with 200 undergraduate students from 25 academic departments and all 33 undergraduate colleges participating. The activities ran ranged from attending keynote lectures held by experts, to college-based skill sessions and student projects. The participating student body comprised 100 undergraduates reading STEM subjects, and 100 reading social sciences and humanities. 

This project focuses on adherence to the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which encompasses two main targets: to achieve net zero carbon and make biodiversity net gain by 2035.

The Vice-Chancellor has since congratulated all involved in the inaugural Colloquium, and said: “By working collaboratively, our students have developed some brilliantly creative and innovative projects that show the value of fostering strong cross-curricular skills to tackle global issues.”

The winning project was selected from a shortlist of proposals submitted by three teams. Their success was announced at the Maths Institute on Earth Day. This initiative intends to engender a connection between Oxford students and nature as well as providing a “platform for community and wellbeing.”

The winning proposal will install communal allotments at all colleges. Alternative proposals consisted of a review of college travel grants to promote low emission travel, and ‘Oxford Students’ Green Plate’, which is a book of plant-based recipes that seeks to reduce the carbon emissions that students’ diets contribute toward. 

Anna Serafeimidou, first year Medicine student at Wadham College and a member of the winning team, said the interdisciplinary nature of the Colloquium “actively bridged traditionally ‘different’ disciplines.”

Curriculum project lead in the environmental sustainability team, Dr Bill Finnegan, said: “The theme of climate also represents an alignment of strategic priorities for Oxford, advancing the curriculum priority of the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy – which I work on in parallel to the colloquium – and reflecting Continuing Education’s [the University Department] vision of promoting sustainability and social justice.”

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