Merton College withdraws from local solar panel initiative
Merton College has withdrawn from a possible land use collaboration with Botley West Solar Farm, forfeiting the potential of generating 840 megawatts of clean energy. Merton College’s Hall Farm site in Begbroke, the site of the potential collaboration, entailed only 5% of the total project land area, and the College’s withdrawal will not jeopardise the viability of the scheme.
The development plan, supervised by German firm Photovolt Development Partners, is to cover around 3500 acres of land, of which 2500 acres will be used for panels and infrastructure. Classed as a Nationally Significant Project due to its sheer scale, Botley West Solar Farm will be almost ten times larger than the next biggest British solar project, Shotwick Park, which produces just under 70,000-megawatt hours of renewable energy every year.
The decision aligns with the goals of the ‘Stop Botley West Campaign’, which has led efforts coordinating action against the Botley West Solar Farm’s project, objecting to it on environmental, moral and political grounds. The Campaign says the energy project is detrimental to the protection of biodiversity: digging would destroy rare ancient water meadows, and the piles on which the solar panels are mounted would “represent real threats to biodiversity and birdlife.”
The Oxford community has similarly voiced complaints against the Botley West Solar Farm project. The panels require the land from 2-3% of Oxford’s green belt, and would involve around 50% of Oxfordshire’s total land area. Some objections stem from fear of the project’s negative effect on arable agricultural farming. Others believe the panels will cause visual pollution and diminish Oxford’s natural beauty.
Residents of Witney and West Oxfordshire have created a petition urging parliamentary repeal of the project. They have also requested reform of the National Planning Policy Framework in order to clarify guidance on the appropriate location, scale and design of proposed solar farms.
The Botley West Farm project website states the project’s ambition and that it is realistic to both “add to Oxfordshire’s biodiversity” and “generate enough low-cost clean and renewable electricity to power approximately 330,000 homes.”
Though Merton has pulled out of the project, the College said they continue to align themselves with long-term sustainable objectives. In an official statement on its website, Merton said they plan to continue “planting extensive wildflower meadows” in partnership with the Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project and supporting “soil renewal” schemes.
The College has also committed to improving the energy efficiency of its buildings. Newly implemented sustainable changes include the fitting of the T.S. Eliot Lecture Theatre with adiabatic heating and cooling systems and the replacement of gas hobs in the college kitchens with electric induction hobs. They also plan to install Megaflo systems, highly efficient unvented water cylinders which increase hot water storage and form part of a central heating system.
MARCO SOLO: Manuscripts and Archives at Oxford University
Although unnoticed by many students and tutors alike, a revolutionary new service by the name of MARCO was unveiled last week, taking the archivist world by storm. I was lucky enough to attend the launch event at the Bodleian archives, one humble student amidst a flock of archivists and librarians from all over the university.
There’s nothing the Bodleian staff hold so dear as an acronym, hence MARCO. But so everyone reading can fully appreciate the new amenity, it seems appropriate to explain what is stands for – Manuscripts and Archives at Oxford University. It’s a website combining eleven of the Bodleian’s existing manuscript catalogue sources (such as the disparate ‘Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts’, ‘Western Medieval Manuscripts’ and ‘South Asian Manuscripts’) into one, easy-to-navigate system. Students familiar with SOLO will recognise its hallmark as the colour blue; following this trend, MARCO’s signature colour is purple. You’ll know you’re in the right place if the page looks like a lavender farm. Mind you, it isn’t only university archives being collated, but college ones too. Inter-college collaboration is much easier as a result, since the wide range of historic manuscripts held within various college archives are much easier to access.
Archivists are the unacknowledged legislators of the university: despite being one of its backbones, we pay them little mind. Think about how soul-crushing work would be, regardless of whether you do a STEM or Humanities degree, if there was no rhyme or reason to how the documents you needed were arranged. But the archivists are at hand! It is they who provide order amidst the chaos and are always coming up with better ways to keep knowledge organised.
I had the privilege of chatting briefly with my college’s archivist before the event, in order to get an idea of the problems this service was trying to remedy. He informed me that looking for manuscripts is essentially the bane of an archivist’s existence. Manuscript manuals are tricky to navigate, full of inconvenient omissions and constantly in need of updates. These hurdles aren’t the exclusive concern of archivists, though. Students also suffer from manuscript archives being clunky and circuitous – just ask anyone doing a dissertation! A better system benefits everyone at the university, whether they’re students, tutors, archivists or researchers.
MARCO will be a boon to anyone who wants to access manuscripts, whether they attend Oxford or not. As one of the speakers aptly put, it is a way of democratising access to manuscripts as no previous training or proficiency is required. That being said, while making archives easier to navigate, some complexity is necessary to maintain the different priorities each archive has. It’s something I hadn’t thought about before, but makes sense: as different archives focus on distinct places and diverse periods of history, any documents in common must be considered from unique angles. Rather than trying to be some universal lone archive, MARCO is instead a collation of all the different archives any document is in, ensuring the organisation of every field.
Though archives might not be one of your major concerns right now, whenever your course requires you to brave them for the first time, you’ll be glad people went to the trouble of making it as easy and intuitive to navigate as possible. We’re very lucky indeed to have a group of such dedicated and friendly experts on hand. To the unsung archivists!
A laugh, stifled
Comedy can help people make sense of everyday developments, and it can help in releasing tensions during tough times and suffering.
“I have seen this movie before”. On the 18th of October, Egyptian comedian and public figure, Bassem Youssef, used these words on Facebook to imply that people will turn against him once more, even if they cheer him on in the present. Bassem recently became one of the most watched guests on the Piers Morgan show, when his satire and political commentary on the Gaza-Israel Conflict went viral.
I remember waiting eagerly for the uploads of his talk show during the aftermath of the Arab Spring in Egypt – it was called El-Bernameg – and as it translates to “the program”, it really was *the* program in the Middle East and North Africa for those interested in political satire. A show with a live audience, very akin to shows hosted by formidable comedians such as Jon Stewart. Bassem is no longer in Egypt, having moved to the United States after his show was cancelled. Bassem was victim to censorship and ostracization in a changing socio-political landscape.
I deliberately will not go into the details that led to his censorship, but the story goes as most stories of censorship go: he picked his battles, and a large section of society did not appreciate taking the hit.
But I started this article with Bassem’s overt prediction that his resurgence as a popular figure is temporary, and indeed it may very well be. I fear for comedians because their profession is misunderstood. Bassem has repeatedly said, as have most comedians, that he has no political ambitions, nor is he a political player. Comedians like Bassem, as with many comedians that face calls for censorship in the West, are not out to appease everyone: they are out to make fun of our ideas, conceptions, and norms. This will offend, but offence is a part and parcel of the profession. Do not exercise your power to censor someone because one of their jokes does not sit right with you at the current time. The fact of the matter is that comedians talk on an endless range of topics, and eventually, they may rub on you.
In fact, they may touch on the very points you have felt so hard to express before and agree with wholeheartedly that you forget their previous offences. Bassem is the case in point. His censorship may have led to him quitting the profession altogether, and that would have deprived many of his commentary lately.
Bassem has been exercising his freedom of expression through comedy, even if it’s not always in purely democratic contexts. The importance of comedy lies in allowing us to go where we cannot in regular conversation and in allowing us to have difficult discussions without having them, thereby being an instrument of democracy and progress. Indeed, the failure to do so is a failure to sustain the lifeblood of democracy which is civil discussion, disagreement, and exploration.
Perhaps Bassem was wrong to predict the same movie being played in his life again one day. I hope he was. Perhaps his appearance on Piers’ show was a sign of progress and acceptance of satire in the Arab world. However, let’s not forget that in some parts of the world, this acceptance has been a given. It has been around for a long time, and it seems like it may just be at risk of fading away. I hope I am wrong about that.
Tech institute to reopen Eagle and Child pub
The Eagle and Child, the shuttered historic pub on St. Giles’, has been purchased from St. John’s College by the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), who plan to renovate and reopen it as a pub.
The pub has been closed since the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Prior to that, it was owned by St. John’s since 2004. St. John’s had purchased it from University College, who were the landlords since the pub’s opening in the sixteenth century.
EIT have hired Foster + Partners to renovate the pub, retaining its function as a pub but also adding study spaces and a restaurant to the building. This follows unrealized plans from St. John’s to turn the upper floors of the building into a boutique hotel.
The pub is famous for its links to authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. From the 1930s through the 1960s, these authors and their friends met at the pub in an informal literary group called “the Inklings.” Here, they read aloud early drafts of some of their most famous works, such as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
EIT’s purchase and planned renovation of the pub comes as it plans construction on a new 30,000 m2 campus in Oxford. The institute, founded by American tech billionaire and co-founder of Oracle Larry Ellison, has the stated goal of “developing and deploying technology” in order to solve the world’s “most challenging and enduring problems.” Their Oxford campus will host laboratory space as well as supporting the new Ellison Scholars program that will fund education for scholars at the University of Oxford.
News of the pub’s revival has excited Oxford’s residents with an interest in history and literature. One student fan of Tolkien talked of her “disappointment” when she arrived at the University and found the Eagle and Child closed. Though the EIT has not yet set a date for the pub’s reopening, these fans are hoping their wait is almost over.
Multiple subjects to introduce typed exams
The University has recently confirmed that multiple Preliminary Exams and Finals will be assessed as in-person, computer based exams in 2023/24. These include English, Classics, Biochemistry, Theology, and the MBA. Preliminary exams “across a number of subjects” and “several Social Sciences Division and Humanities MPhils” will also be typed.
For English, students were made aware of this decision in October 2023 ahead of the May 2024 exams cycle. This is a result of an English Faculty decision, the discussion of which started when the possibility of typed exams was raised in the JCC meeting in May 2023.
The University has stated that the decision to move exams online (in-person) has come “following a successful launch involving more than 6,000 exam sittings in 2022/23, the University has extended invigilated, typed exams to a wider range of subjects. The exams reflect the experience of most students who now type essays and other submissions, and also provide more legible scripts for assessors.”
Previous typed exam sittings involved 1,903 individual candidates and 22 exam boards, including Politics, Philosophy, Medicine and Geography (Preliminary exams).
The University has apologised that this information was not circulated earlier. While they have outlined that the exams will be invigilated “closed book” exams, and that students are able to book one-hour orientations to practice typed tests, current students are still raising concerns over the implementation of this new measure.
English Finalist from St Hugh’s College, Lucy Phillips, told Cherwell that the decision “just seems really poorly planned, as though we were an afterthought. They neglected to tell us something that will be potentially catastrophic for many students’ Finals experience. Whilst the faculty email only came out this week, many more ‘prestigious’ colleges found out from their tutors earlier in the term, which sets an unequal playing field ahead of exams.”
She added: “This decision also disproportionately impacts state school students such as myself who oftentimes have less developed touch typing skills than their peers.” In response, the University told Cherwell that students can apply for an exam adjustment if typing is difficult or impossible for them.
Phillips further reflected on the shift from traditionally handwritten to typed exams, stating: “I also worry about the preservation of handwriting as a craft – surely the Oxford English course … would want to maintain this historic practice?”
The English Faculty have been made aware of these concerns and have released FAQs for timed exams in English in hopes to reduce apprehension over the year.
BAME students constitute majority of UK applicants to Oxford for first time
New data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) has revealed that, for the first time, UK applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds have outnumbered white applicants to ‘highly competitive courses’ at UK universities. These include courses offered by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as medicine, dentistry, and veterinary degrees, all of which have an early application deadline in October instead of the regular January deadline.
For the 2023-24 application cycle, 50.8% of the 51,890 UK applicants to these courses were BAME students, a noticeable increase compared to the previous year (49.3%) and significantly higher than the corresponding proportion in 2015 (32.1%). By contrast, the number of white applicants from the UK fell to 25,530 this year, the lowest such figure in over ten years.
Moreover, this year marked a record high in the number of 18-year-old applicants from the most deprived regions in the UK, with 3,160 applications made to Oxbridge and medical degrees, which constitutes a 7% increase compared to last year and is over twice the corresponding figure in 2017.
Although applications from disadvantaged students have increased at a greater rate than those of students from the wealthiest areas, the latter are still much more likely to apply to highly competitive courses.
Dr Mark Corver, managing director of dataHE, a higher education data analytics firm, told The Telegraph: “The profile of applications to these courses remains highly skewed, with 9.2% of young people in richer neighbourhoods applying, compared to 2.2% in poorer areas, but this gap does not seem to be widening this year.”
These findings coincide with the introduction of new outreach initiatives at Oxford, including the Astrophoria Foundation Year programme, which welcomed its inaugural cohort of students this year. The programme provides an opportunity for academically talented students who have experienced significant disadvantage or disruption during their education to obtain an undergraduate degree from the University, following a foundation year designed to bridge the gap between sixth form and undergraduate study.
Decline and fall: How They Broke Britain by James O’Brien – review
National decline is a difficult thing to prove, because at every point in history there have been those who idealise the good old days and lament the way the world is going. This is especially true in Britain. In the 1540s, East Anglian peasants under Robert Kett revolted because food prices were no longer what they had been. In the eighteenth century, especially after the territorial gains of the Seven Years’ War, there was a widespread bitterness that the country had branched off from its constitutional roots; and against this background the historian Gibbon wrote his six-volume Decline and Fall. In the first half of the twentieth century, the death of Empire occasioned a similar feeling that the nation’s identity and power had somehow collapsed. By the 1970s Britain was the “sick man of Europe”.
Today, in the wake of Brexit, Britain is once again broken – so argues commentator James O’Brien in his new book, How They Broke Britain.
In writing this history of especially the last thirteen years, O’Brien seems to have modified Carlyle’s famous dictum: “History is but the biography of nasty men and a woman”. Ten chapters detail the ten nasty men and women whom he holds responsible for the decline in the economy, the media and politics. And, significantly, all of his points are packed with enough evidence and examples to show that the decline is provable and measurable.
In terms of the economy, O’Brien deconstructs the links between various free-market thinktanks, Murdoch-owned journalists, and government policymakers which have led to decline. Austerity programmes since 2010 reduced the annual rate of increase for public spending, which not only meant that transport, health, and social care services became weak from undernourishment, but that they eventually buckled under the COVID crisis. Brexit, which made us the “first country to impose economic sanctions on itself”, only added to government debt. Then an estimated £30 billion was flushed away by Liz Truss’s mini budget.
O’Brien’s revelations about the Murdoch-owned media and the Daily Mail under Paul Dacre certainly deserve to be public knowledge. He demonstrates several links, some of which date back to the Thatcher era, between the interests of the Murdoch press and Conservative Party policy. The way in which ideological and commercial agendas are set above the truth is frankly disgusting. All of the blame for absolutely anything is shifted away from the lawmakers responsible and onto a giant conspiracy made up of immigrants, lefties and ‘remoaners’. When O’Brien compares the Mail’s anti-immigrant headlines of the 1930s to its almost identical ones of today, the whole thing becomes downright depressing.
The chapter on Boris Johnson is a dossier of corruption and amorality, which should be read by anyone who still believes that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel was fit for office. The real highlight, though, is the section on Nigel Farage. There is nothing O’Brien does better than pick apart the lies and prejudices of that man. He sees him for what he is: a cartoon villain whom everyone took way too seriously. The flashbacks to Farage’s schooldays, to his later “assassination attempt” in France, and to his constant pandering to bigotry, are related with a blend of comic irony and genuine concern at the fact that this man was allowed so much influence over British politics. He is, after all, responsible for what O’Brien calls the “Faragification” of the Tory Party; its increasing appeal to the far-right.
O’Brien, a man of the Left, is not a one-note pigeon, and he lays into Jeremy Corbyn as fiercely as into any one of the right-wing conspirators. And, even aside from the ten people who get their own chapters, the smaller fry is not spared either, whether political bullies like Dominic Raab or hatemongers like Douglas Murray.
The saddest thing about this story of national decline is that none of the right people will ever read it. There will remain those who believe that austerity was the right decision after Labour “maxed out our credit card”; who continue to harp on about Brexit benefits; and who say Liz Truss really had the right ideas but was brought down by the “left-wing establishment”.
The journalists, think-tankers and politicians who broke Britain have all delegated the blame for it onto the “wokerati”. To these people – all of them right-wing, and most of them Tory – I would put only one question. O’Brien does not specifically ask it. Nonetheless it is an important one to raise. The question is: Given that wokery came about on the Tory Party’s watch, how can they seriously fight an election on an anti-woke platform? I once asked this of a Conservative MP who was giving a talk at my college. He couldn’t give an answer.
The real answer is that wokery is the merest deflection. It is a scapegoat for these people’s own failures. Yet the myth of the woke mob has eagerly been assimilated by the readers of the Murdoch Press, who now feel threatened if schoolchildren are told about Mary Seacole as well as Florence Nightingale, or if library books now contain the kinds of trigger-warning labels that used to be on DVD cases.
Another recent book that How They Broke Britain is worth comparing to – briefly – is Nadine Dorries’ The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail. This masterwork of political analysis is less remarkable for any actual points it makes than for explaining what the author was up to for the three months it took her to resign from Parliament “with immediate effect”. Dorries’ thesis, of course, is bound to be swallowed by the sorts of people who will read it. I can already see the Mail subscribers flocking to tell their friends that they know “what’s really going on” in politics.
At first glance, Dorries and O’Brien seem to be writing on two sides of the same coin. Their titles both have an air of conspiracy theory, and they both seek to blame one quarter for most of the country’s political decline. There are, however, two essential differences between them.
First is that fact that O’Brien uses verifiable evidence to support all of his claims, whereas Dorries relies cryptically on a sort of ‘insider knowledge’, and refers to the key puppet-masters only by pseudonyms like ‘Dr No’.
Then there is Dorries’ underlying assumption that everyone was in it together, that the coup against Johnson was perfectly coordinated and agreed on by everyone involved. O’Brien suffers from no such persecution mania. He has the sense to see that it was not one grand master conspiracy, but that Britain was broken “sometimes by design” and “sometimes by incompetence”.
These may seem like small distinctions, but together they are all the difference between a conspiracy nut and a serious polemicist. As for O’Brien’s book: it is excellent. It is true that the most diehard Brexiteers, Tories, Corbynites and the right-wing press are sure to revile it. O’Brien does not write as well as he speaks on the radio; but that is largely because he speaks so well. He remains unmatched among modern broadcasters for impassioned analysis, biting irony, heartfelt sympathy and sheer rhetorical flourish. His trademark warmth, lucidity and wit – and above all his power to call an idiot an idiot – make How They Broke Britain immensely readable.
The French left: its own worst enemy?
For as long as the left has existed, leftist infighting has existed with it. The task of achieving social progress is no mean feat. It requires clear goals founded upon clear values, organisation and above all political unity.
To say that the French left has a political unity problem would be an understatement. On the 17th of October 2023, the French Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party) suspended its membership of NUPES, the broad left-wing opposition alliance, after Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the alliance’s largest party, refused to refer to Hamas’ recent attacks against civilians in Israel as “terrorism”. Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) said that his position had been misrepresented. He condemns Hamas, but considers their recent actions to be war crimes, and not terrorist attacks. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, was unequivocal in their statement, which “unreservedly” condemned “Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel”. After the fallout, Mélenchon and the Socialist Party leader, Olivier Faure, accused one another of sowing division. Mélenchon blamed Faure for “splitting up” the left-wing alliance, claiming that the Hamas controversy was merely a convenient pretext for the Socialist Party’s withdrawal. Faure, on the other hand, said that Mélenchon had become an “obstacle” to the alliance, and called for “radical change” in the organisation of the French left. Faure is not alone in this view. Former Green presidential candidate, Yannick Jadot, has called for his party, Les Écologistes (The Ecologists), to suspend its partnership with NUPES. Le Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party) has recently adopted a resolution condemning the “hegemonic will” of France Unbowed within the alliance, and calling for a “new type of union” on the left. The perception that the French left has a Mélenchon problem is now fairly widespread. “We cannot work with someone who decides everything for everyone”, said Socialist Party politician Johann Cesa. “What the French people want […] is for us to put forward a common programme, with a single candidate [for the presidency] in 2027.” Mélenchon may be the most recognisable figure on the French left, having come third in the 2022 presidential race, but he is no longer seen by his alliance partners as a unifying figure. If “radical change” in the left alliance comes to pass, it is possible that another figure will emerge as the left’s candidate for the next presidential election.
Just over a year on from its founding, NUPES appears to be on the brink of collapse. Arguably, its unity has been fractured from the very beginning. Founded in 2022 to contest the June legislative elections, NUPES brought together France’s main left-wing parties. These parties became deeply divided following the political realignment effected by the victory of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist En Marche! party in 2017. By 2022, the Socialist Party, a former titan of French politics, was relegated to tenth place in the first round of the presidential race. The left-wing vote was split between six candidates, which, if consolidated into one, would have won the first round, preventing the far-right Marine Le Pen from contesting the presidency in the second round. Something had to change. Mélenchon took the initiative and entered into talks with other left-wing parties to find a common platform on which to fight the upcoming legislative elections. Their main points of alignment were:
- A reduction in the retirement age from 62 to 60
- A raise in the minimum wage to €1,500
- The reintroduction on wealth taxes
- A freeze in the price of essential goods
- The creation of a million jobs
However, this offer did not appeal to the French people enough to secure the parliamentary majority which the alliance had hoped for. NUPES candidates won 131 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats, far behind Macron’s party, which was able to form a government through an alliance with other centrist and conservative parties. At this time, NUPES’s tensions were already beginning to show. Mélenchon had proposed that the newly elected NUPES MPs should form a fully fledged parliamentary group, but was shot down by the junior parties in his alliance, who stressed the importance of a “plural” left.
Controversy struck again later that year, when the France Insoumise national co-ordinator and MP, Adrien Quatennens, was accused of domestic abuse by his wife. He was not expelled from the party and Mélenchon initially rushed to his defence. Junior NUPES parties vocally protested this decision, expressing support for Quatennens’ wife. Some pointed out that if one of their number had been in the same position, they would have been suspended from the party.
Suspicion of Mélenchon’s party has run deep within the alliance since its inception. A 2022 poll indicated that 51% of Socialist Party supporters and 43% of Écologistes supporters considered France Insoumise to be “dangerous for democracy”. The same poll found that a majority of Socialist Party supporters disapprove of the way France Insoumise conducts itself in parliament, and find its views “too radical”. Although NUPES seemed to converge in the fight against Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, their strategy was not coherent. Communists sought to vote on the bill as soon as possible, in the hopes that it would fail, whilst the other parties flooded the floor with amendments, aiming to avoid a vote and build momentum among protestors. Mélenchon openly criticised the Communist Party during this process, further alienating his NUPES partner and laying bare the internal division plaguing the alliance. Despite a mass protest movement against Macron’s plans, NUPES was unable to prevent the bill’s passage and to gain the political initiative. Opinion polls show no significant rise in support for the alliance in the wake of the protests, despite a marked decline in Macron’s popularity.
It is clear, then, that the recent Socialist-NUPES split is a symptom of historical division, infighting, and political failure. Whether the Hamas controversy was the last straw, or simply a convenient excuse for the Socialist Party, is largely unimportant. What matters is how the dust will settle. Mélenchon, a veteran of the French left, doubtless sees himself as the natural rallying point for progressives in the next election cycle. But the animosity which has grown between him and the other left-wing parties has cast doubt on this order. A left-wing alliance that can pose a real threat to the centre and the far-right must succeed first in making all its parties feel like valued contributors to its goals and strategy. It must shun the curse of leftist infighting and stand united around a clear, popular political project. Currently, French law prevents Macron from running for re-election in 2027. In fact, he has recently indicated that he will step away from politics altogether after the end of his second presidential term. This could be the opening the left needs to climb their way to the presidency, provided they rally around a figure who is not an “obstacle”, but a lightning rod for progressive energy.
ASEAN Secretary-General gives lecture in anticipation of Oxford Southeast Asian Institute
The Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Dr Kao Kim Hourn, addressed a group of students and academics at an event that took place in the Divinity School at the beginning of November. The event was organised by the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) and was also attended by UK Ambassador to ASEAN, Sarah Tiffin.
Kao’s lecture, entitled “The Future of ASEAN: Challenges and Opportunities Beyond 2025”, outlined upcoming ASEAN initiatives, spoke on the future of the UK-ASEAN partnership, and reaffirmed the commitment of the bloc to collaborative decision-making. It also celebrated Kao’s appointment as an Honourable Member of the International Advisory Board of the Institute of ASEAN Studies.
Kao’s invitation to speak at Oxford is the latest in a list of public figures from the region who have spoken in anticipation of the establishment of the ASEAN Institute. In an article on the event, OSGA clarified the terms of Kao’s appointment at the request of Cherwell, stating that Kao will sit on this advisory board once the ASEAN Institute is established. No members have yet been publicly appointed to this board, aside from Kao.
An undergraduate student in attendance at the event expressed their disappointment at Kao’s failure to address the devolving state of democracy in Myanmar, following the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi after the country’s 2020 general election. The student told Cherwell that: “[Kao] definitely glossed over a lot of the deeper strains in ASEAN, and only got around to addressing the situation in Myanmar following a question on the subject from an audience member.”
The Institute, which will run as a part of the OSGA, was announced to great fanfare in 2018 at an event attended by HRH Sultan Nazrin Shah, the Deputy King of Malaysia. The mission statement for the Institute announced that six associate professorships were to be established under it, and that its research areas would span the sustainable development, politics, culture, and history of Southeast Asia. The statement also predicted that the foundation of the ASEAN Institute would “create research and teaching opportunities to be shared across several departments.”
Although five years have passed since this announcement, there are still no full-time faculty-members at the ASEAN Institute – which is alternatively referred to as the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies – and the OSGA have not released any timeline for its full establishment publicly. When approached for comment on this by Cherwell, OSGA gave no indication as to when the institute will be established.