A row has erupted after a Nobel Prize winning scientist attacked new Oxford research funded by an institution that he claims is “attempting to drag us back into the Dark ages.”

Sir Harold Kroto, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, accused the American John Templeton Foundation of ‘corrupting’ science by funding pro-religious study.

However, academics behind the research have defended its credientials, saying that investigation into the ‘naturalness’ of religion and the nature of belief was vital. The research, into why people believe in God, received a £1.9m grant from the Foundation, an  organisation which provides grants to a variety of theological and religious projects.

The study is being conducted by the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, and asks questions such as ‘Does the naturalness of religious beliefs mean that they’ve been explained away and you shouldn’t believe in God?’

The Foundation, which has an endowment of $1.1 billion, describes itself as a ‘philanthropic investor in research on concepts and realities such as love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity’.

It was founded in 1987 by lifelong Presbyterian and investor Sir John Templeton, a former Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, who has said that “scientific revelations may be a goldmine for revitalizing religion in the 21st Century.”

Kroto stated, “Their only mission is to undermine the ethical position of the scientific community. They could not care a f*** what the outcome is they will still go on funding this sort of innane crap in an attempt to drag us back into the Dark ages. Galileo is turning in his grave.”

“They continue to throw money at this when there are massive problems around the world that really need action for example aids, malaria, TB, Darfur, and the fact that one quarter of all children are deficient in almost everything you can think of.”

He claimed that the funding had been provided to gain associate the Foundation with “the reputation of Oxford University…to give their pathetic initiatives some apparent semblance of scientific credibility.”

Gary Rosen, Chief External Affairs Officer for the Foundation denied that it only funded projects with a religious bias. “We take no interest in the religious beliefs of the researchers we support; we care only about the scientific quality of their work. Much of the research we fund is entirely unrelated to religious questions.”

“The Foundation supports scientific research on religious belief as well as civil, open-minded dialogue between scientists and theologians. Both activities are invaluable in deepening our understanding of the human experience,” he continued.

Professor Roger Trigg, senior research fellow at the Oxford Theology Faculty and Co-Principal investigator for the project also defended the proposal, saying that it had scientific validity.

“The study of cognitive religion is a new area which has aroused interest over recent years. What is at issue is how far religious belief of various kinds is ‘natural’. That might make atheism ‘unnatural’ in that it is not people’s starting point – either as children or in ‘primitive’ cultures.”

However American scientists who have previously criticised the Foundation questioned their attempt to combine scientific and religious research topics, saying that it could blur the line between the two. Sean Carroll, a Senior Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology Physics Department, said that they used their wealth to influence research agendas. “I think the Templeton Foundation is sincere but misguided.  

They are not anti-science, nor do they pay people to say things that they don’t believe.  But they find people whose beliefs are already compatible with their own, and raise their profile by awarding large amounts of money. They are interested in promoting research into spiritual questions and the intersection of science and religion,” he said.

Peter Woit, a mathematical physicist at Columbia University, said that it should not use its grants to encourage the joint study of religion and science, saying, “My problem has been that their agenda is to bring science and religion together, which in my view is not a good thing.”

In a statement, the University said, “The research is rigorous and will ultimately be published in peer-reviewed journals, and donors and funders have no influence over how research is conducted and cannot influence the final result.”In 1984, Sir John Templeton endowed the graduate Oxford Centre for Management Studies enabling it to become a full college, which was renamed Templeton College.

Chris Baraniuk investigates the University’s role in introducing refugees to higher learning in both past and present.

In 1983, at the height of the Troubles, my Dad jumped a Polish ship docking in Belfast and defected, successfully, from the cagey ‘Eastern Block’ of Europe and the confines of a Communist era.As the ship faded into the background, he made his way, presumably with much difficulty, to Northern Irish authorities by the harbour, where he deployed his only full phrase of English, “I am seeking political asylum”. The reception he got from a Troubles-worn cohort of the Royal Ulster Constabulary was one of astonishment (and, initially, laughter).

His original plan had been to defect in Liverpool, but the ship had to change its course at the last moment and as such he was forced to take a massive risk and make a getaway in Belfast. The fact that I’m here writing this feature will probably reassure you that everything, in the end, did go pretty well. Indeed, Dad was able to study for a degree and a few years ago received a PhD from the University of Ulster. What this piece of anecdotal family history brings to mind, I think, is situations where refugees or asylum seekers, taking a risk in a place they’re completely alien to, have been more than willing to knuckle down and make the best of things with the help of their new foster-state.Oxford has a vibrant and deeply interesting history full of similar cases where academics, fleeing war-torn regions or imminent political revolution, have sought a haven in Oxford’s quiet quadrangles and ancient libraries. You could call it, ‘educational asylum’ – instances where individuals have used their academic potential to start anew in a foreign, but accommodating university city.

Records and archives show ready examples of colleges offering generous financial support to asylum seekers. Merton College’s documents provide a number of intriguing details on refugees in Oxford, such as the Fellows’ decision in July 1916 to allow use of the college garden “for the entertainment of Belgian School Children and their teachers” who were fleeing the effects of the First World War.

And there are plenty of notable individuals whose experiences at Oxford as refugee scholars clearly paved the way for later successes. Take, for example, Nicholas Kurti. Kurti was a gifted physicist of Hungarian origin who studied in Berlin among the finest scientific minds of the twentieth century – from Einstein to Planck and Nernst. Being, as many of these scientists were, a Jewish academic, Kurti was prompted to flee Berlin as Hitler’s rise to power became ever clearer.

Forced to leave in 1933, Kurti arrived in Oxford in September. He once described his arrival in the city, coming over Magdalen bridge on the back of a motorbike and greeted by sun lighting up the college sandstone.A speech he made in Oxford, recorded in an old volume of the Brazen Nose (Brasenose College Magazine), described his evacuation in frank terms: “It was one of many traumatic emigrations. We fled a bloody terror.” In the same speech, Kurti honours the vibrancy of Jewish academic life that had been dispersed from Berlin in the advent of Hitler’s regime.

Kurti’s success at Oxford is particularly noteworthy. Although working for a few years in America, he returned to Oxford in 1945, was made a university demonstrator in physics that year before being elected to a senior research fellowship at Brasenose College two years after that. Kurti is well-known among physicists for his “successful adiabatic demagnetization of nuclear spins under temperatures of one millionth of a degree kelvin” – and this particular achievement in low-temperature physics procured an early appearance on Tomorrow’s World. Oddly, Kurti was well known and loved among his students and fellow academics at Brasenose for his passion for cooking. He had a penchant for live-cookery demonstrations and even organised a series of workshops on scientific gastronomy during the 90s which were attended by internationally-known chefs and scientists.

You may recognise this quotation, which is a Kurti original:“I think it is a sad reflection on our civilisation that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.”Elizabeth Boardman, archivist at Brasenose, remembers Kurti as “a lovely and engaging man” who has been missed since his death in 1998 at the age of 90.Unsurprisingly, Kurti wasn’t the only academic who came to Oxford during the 1930s in an attempt to avoid the changing political situation in Germany and Austria. Schrödinger (of philosophical cat fame) was a teacher of Kurti’s and came to Magdalen College in the same year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno too came during the 1930s, to Merton College, and became an exceptionally distinguished philosopher and music critic after continuing his career in America. But the wave of academics escaping Hitler’s grasp faced the danger of inflaming the dictator’s anger at defection.

A recently published book, Invasion 1940: The Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain, contains (along with less interesting statistics about England’s road network and urbanisation) a ‘wanted’ list of 2,820 people thought to be at large in Britain by the SS. If a Nazi invasion of the British Isles were to come to fruition, these individuals were to be arrested and placed in ‘protective custody’ once the Nazis had taken over British institutions and universities. The list includes a number of academics enjoying fledgling careers at Oxford, two of which were Nicholas Kurti and Otto Khan-Freund.

Both men were relatively unknown in 1940 but would become Fellows of Brasenose College after the War. Similar to Kurti, Kahn-Freund integrated well within British culture and left a profound effect on those who knew him. His friend, Dr J H C Morris, described Kahn-Freund during a memorial service in the University Church of St Mary in 1979, saying:

“I was immediately impressed not only by his immense learning, but, even more, by the stimulating quality of his mind and his wonderful sense of humour. To spend an evening with Otto was an invigorating experience from which one derived fresh insights into many things – law, and politics, and life itself.”

The period between 1930 and 1945 is far from the only time when Oxford helped gifted political refugees. An earlier example may be found in Dragomir Militchévitch, a Serbian national who studied at Merton between 1916 and 1920. The college archives reveal that Governing Body granted him a three-year placement, for free, “provided that he satisfies the Warden of his intention to study”.

This was later extended and Militchévitch achieved a 2nd Class Honours degree in Modern History in 1920. He does not appear to have become as famous as Kurti, and it is unclear what happened to him during the Second World War, but he should be noted for becoming Secretary to the Chamber of Commerce in Yugoslavia in 1935.Moving towards the mid-twentieth century, we find a large group of political refugees coming to the United Kingdom as the Hungarian Uprising takes place in 1956. Another Mertonian, Laszlo Heltay, had begun his work on music in Budapest under Zoltán Kodály and was granted academic support at Oxford from 1957-62, as a student studying for a B.Litt in music. It is not clear whether he was a ‘refugee’ as such, but political events certainly seem to have inspired his decision to leave Hungary. His experiences in England clearly bolstered his career as he conducted the Oxford University Musical Club and Union and founded the Kodály Choir at Merton in 1957.

These engagements led him on to a role as conductor of the Leicestershire Schools Orchestra which has since had other famous conductors at the helm. The orchestra recorded many examples of contemporary composer Brian Havergel’s music under Heltay. Later, the Hungarian musician would become the founding chorus master of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 1975. He went on to conduct Desden, London and Budapest Philharmonics as well as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and worked with classical stars such as Andre Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Yehudi Menuhin. Other refugees of Hungarian roots in 1956 include Laszlo Antal, who came to Keble College.

A successful Oxford don, Antal wrote to The Times on the 50th Anniversary of the uprising in Hungary along with Heltay and 48 other academics in order to thank British institutions and the British people for making them welcome after having to flee their Hungarian homeland. 11 of the 50 academics who put their names to the public letter had fellowships or emeritus fellowships at Oxford when it was published. In the letter the Hungarian-born academics acknowledge the opportunity they received in Britain and indicate that they felt a responsibility to put what they gained from the country back into its own students and institutions: “On our arrival we were received with compassion by the staff and students of universities and other higher education institutions.

They opened their doors and offered us the chance to complete our studies in this country … More than 300 Hungarian students received their first degrees here and many of us were encouraged and supported in completing postgraduate studies. … It is our hope that we have been able to repay some of the magnanimous support we received, during our working lives.”Examples of Oxford’s generosity to international scholars aren’t confined to the history books, though.

In Michaelmas 2007, Cherwell reported on the case of Sholeem Griffin who has had status as a political asylum seeker in the UK since her family left Pakistan in 2003. She is currently studying biochemistry in her first-year at St John’s College, which has agreed to waive her £10,000 per annum tuition fees. At the time of the report, Sholeem told Cherwell, “I knew the fees were high for an international student and that it would be difficult.

The alternative was sitting at home since I couldn’t really go further with my education because at every university it was the same story.”Oxford continues to offer support for asylum seekers in ways it appears to have done for many years now. There are however, unsurprisingly, no Admissions Office guides published for political refugees and no obvious information available on what one might do if they found themselves in a situation like Nicholas Kurti in 1933.

Although the people I have mentioned, and hundreds like them, were aided by organizations like The Society for the Preservation of Science and Learning, in finding places at Oxford, It seems to have been the autonomy of college Governing Bodies that was at the root of many decisions to help asylum seekers. Having a lot of cash and logistical flexibility obviously helps too, but we should probably most remember the generosity of Oxford as manifesting itself in the future careers of its refugee scholars – careers which were often highly-successful. The thank-you letter to The Times indicates just how much British institutions were happy to nurture young arrivals from all over the world, and send them back again, should they wish to go, with no questions asked.

Nothing good ever came out of Sweden, to which the resounding cry of, ‘Abba’ hails forth in angelic proclamation from the heavenly hosts of your ancestors. That said, you would be a (love) fool to limit a proclivity for instrumental and vocal polska music to the likes of Agnetha, Bjorn and the other two. Roxette taught us a great deal about listening to the heart, and lest we forget Ace of Base who overcame all the odds when they released a Greatest Hits.Unlike their sartorial namesake, there’s nothing woolly about The Cardigans, despite a first album entitled Emmerdale. With a further five albums behind them, the time was ripe for harvesting the lucrative fruits with a Best Of, what proved to be a nebulous attempt at assembling their hits on a double disc of 21 singles, with a further 24 variants on a theme. This is saccharine pop at its sweetest, with sufficient lyrical profundity and instrumental dexterity to shield it from sheer maudlin one-dimensionality. Lead singer Nina Persson’s voice is comparable to Chrissie Hynde or Deborah Harry, an allusion extended by the dirty blonde tresses, side-ways glances and on-beat shoulder jerks. Like Harry and Hynde, Persson has cultivated a voice to match her cool exterior, one of limited fluctuation, always erring on the minor; diffident, to the degree that in the languorous wake of such songs as ‘Erase/Rewind’ one is left with an overwhelming sense of boredom, specifically her own.That is the unfortunate truth about The Cardigans – they are a little dull, or certainly this medley would have you believe. Fifth album, Long Gone Before Daylight, features only 3 tracks on the Best Of, of which ‘And then you kissed me’ is a strange, and sad, omission. Good value, if you like that sort of thing.
Three stars.
– By Joanna Clegg

There’s been one of those annoying little notes flashing up on my Facebook for weeks: Fuse, promising thrills and spills and dancing grooves to the rhythm of the slightly aggressively named Audio Bullys. The image this conjoured, for me, was that of a weedy melody, quavering in the corner of the harmonic playground, while some pugnacious burly bass lines force him to give up his lunch minim. I went with an open mind. After a trek up the Cowley road to the Carling Academy (described by my editor as ‘our ‘local’ (well not really very local I know), it was a little disheartening to have to wait, tickets in hand, for a further 45 minutes or so. Even once the barricade of bouncers had been breached, queues again snaked throughout the night – the cloakroom, bar, and bizarrely, to go outside- strange because waiting in the foyer of the Academy is apparently ‘forbidden’. In taking over the Zodiac, Carling might have stapled some shiny new chrome to the loo doors, and attracted some larger acts, but staffing issues and these odd rules do little to qualify the price hikes (though the bar staff and publicity people were remarkably friendly).Back to the open mind. Wow. It was pretty much blown apart: Slide, Simple and Eclectric had done their job well. The Audio Bullies were fantastic – there’s something indescribable about a live dance act: special mention, goes, of course, to their sung remix of ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’. Electronica/techno Boys Noize were good: so good that it was almost impossible to scale the stairs to Nic Fanciulli.  When we did, the upper level of the Academy became a new zenith- again difficult to leave. In the end, the major problem of the night was this – everyone enjoyed themselves too much to experience all Fuse had to offer, just hypnotized and rooted to one room by their own dancing. Overcoming this ecstatic apathy had many rewards.– By Jack Orlick

The college rowing season got off to a belated start due to the cancellation of the Christ Church regatta, but needed no time to warm up. Oriel’s rule of torpids was guillotined by two superior crews. Especially in the mens torpids Oriels dominance has been staggering, having been head of the river for 34 of the last 36 years (and in one of the years they weren’t head they were penalty bumped 4 places). Their humanity was proved not only by Magdalen who bumped them early on, but also by Pembroke who rose from 4th to 2nd position and will consider themselves serious challengers come Trinity term to Magdalen’s head of the river title. Christ Church also looked strong, moving from 10th to 4th in mens division 1 during the week whereas Worcester had the most torid torpids starting out 5th in division 1 and ending up 3rd in division 2. In the womens racing Oriel falied to regain their headship being bumped on friday by a St Catz crew who had already bumped Queen’s. The performance of the Christ Church women complimented that of their men, moving from 6th to 3rd. New college were the other big climbers, from head of division 2 to 9th in division 1. These climbers were helped by the freefall of the post-grad Osler/Green partnership who shipped 7 places from 4th to 11th.by Jeremy Kelly

Oxford stormed to their fifth consecutive Varsity victory, with Oxford A taking the win by over a lap from Cambridge A at the sunny Rye House Raceway, London. With Harvey having put the kart on pole, Noble started the race and pulled away from the rest of the field, building up a comfortable lead over the Tabs. After the driver change, Harvey was left with the simple task of bringing the kart home. Dix and Yarwood chased hard for Cambridge, but could not match Noble’s initial pace, falling to a distant second. The final spot on the podium was taken by Oxford’s Gaskell and Senior, whose superb race saw them earn half-blues. Oxford’s Duhig and Bratt were engaged in an extremely close battle until contact between them, and the subsequent black flag for Duhig saw the end of their challenge for honors. By the time Tan and Seretis took to the wheel, there was little that could be salvaged. Despite this, Oxford veteran Davis and his teammate Wootten enjoyed a solid race, taking an excellent fifth place. Meanwhile, Cherwell reporter Kenber enjoyed his first taste of 2-stroke kart racing, gaining a respectable 15th place. He said ‘It was good fun but quite tricky. I span out eight times during the race, and got shunted a lot.’ The teams’ focus will now return to defending their overall position at the top of the national championship, which continues in the coming weeks.by Nikos Seretis

A massive plastic bag sculpture was laid out in Christ Church’s Peckwater Quad this weekend, as part of an ongoing campaign to raise environmental awareness.

The six foot letters, each made from around 60 bags, were the work of JCR Environment rep Ed Parker. “I reasoned that if you collected plastic bags from the cupboards of your friends, you’d have enough to build, er, a massive sculpture”, he said.

He aims to end the use of plastic bags by Christ Church students, by the end of his tenure. Parker stressed the scale of the environmental problem.

He said, “If every Oxford undergraduate said ‘yes’ to one plastic bag a day, that would be 4.5 million bags a year.”

The sculpture was well received by students, porters, and even tourists. Parker admits his initial plans were grander: “I wanted to carpet Tom Quad in plastic bags. Then I remembered how big it was.”

The college has wider plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050. In the short term, funding has been allocated to give every student a ‘bag for life.’

by Oscar Cox Jensen

Real Emotional Trash is a pithy summation of the music Stephen Malkmus has been making for the last sixteen years. As part of 90s legends Pavement, he wrote songs that acknowledged the noble truth that good pop is both infantile and profound. 2005’s Face the Truth saw him re-ignite some of the old attitude; this disc represents a musical reinvigoration, as he triumphantly manages to raise his musicianship without losing his dishevelled charm.The guitar here is simply excellent, each riff, lick, and solo apparently pathologically refined during the album’s tortuous recording process. The most obvious comparison is Television’s classic Marquee Moon, which, as the discerning listener will know, is no faint praise. Malkmus’ talent seems limitless: he can solo with laser control like Tom Verlaine, chug like Pete Townshend, he even rocks it like Jimmy Page on opener ‘Dragonfly Pie’. Thankfully, he hasn’t forsaken either his wackiness (‘Hopscotch Willie’- the surreal story of a framed mobster), or his wry melancholy; “Sometimes it feels like the world’s filled with feathers/ Table-bottom gum just holding it together…”, which stops the album descending into a festival of fret-onanism. The Jicks are a fantastic band, turning their talents to blues-rock, folk-ballad, and goofy Velvet Underground style pop, but all with an individual flourish. The title track is the group’s shot at Marquee Moon/’Paranoid Android’ glory, and while it doesn’t quite make it, its 10 minutes still glide like the proverbial marshmallow boat on the chocolate river.  You’d like to think that this album would get massive press and sell a million, but sadly Malkmus is no longer 21 and the plaudits will go to the supple youngsters that the industry slathers for. Never mind, whether you’re already a fan or not, this should be an essential purchase for fans of guitar rock.Four stars.By Richard Woodall