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After the glut: A renaissance for the AI age?

Agatha Crowther
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After the glut: A renaissance for the AI age?

Erasmus had a content problem.

By 1525, Europe’s most famous humanist was being pirated, misquoted and buried beneath unreliable editions. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” he demanded in the preface to his 1508 Adagia. Print had made ideas wonderfully democratic. Unfortunately, it had done the same for bad ideas, plagiarism and errors. Mangled editions of Erasmus’s own letters travelled under his name faster than he could disown them. “The sheer multitude of books creates a glut”, he complained. 

His quarrel was not really with Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. It was with what happened once Gutenberg’s innovation met the market: printers, chasing speed and profit, flooded the Republic of Letters with texts of wildly varying quality. The problem was no longer access to information, but how to judge an abundance of it.

Five centuries later, the glut has acquired a familiar interface. Open a search engine and ‘Ask Gemini’ hovers nearby; Google search results arrive pre-digested into an ‘AI Overview’; Microsoft Copilot offers to summarise your email before you have to suffer the inconvenience of reading it. More telling is how hard it is to say no. Google says AI Overviews “can’t be turned off”, directing users to its separate ‘Web’ filter, while the more committed refusenik can append ‘-AI’ to a query, or the ‘udm=14’ URL parameter. What began as an experiment is now the default. Opting out is the specialist manoeuvre. 

The appeal is obvious. Once a neatly sourced AI Overview can answer your most obscure question in seconds, the old ritual of opening six blue links and piecing together an answer yourself begins to feel wilfully inefficient. But that convenience is also the temptation: implicit in each click is the invitation – you needn’t read this yourself. Erasmus’s “swarms” of books still sat on shelves one could choose not to visit; AI now stands between us and the shelf, offering to read it first. James Marriott’s newly published The New Dark Ages calls this wider retreat from cognitive effort the “Great Simplification”: leisure reading declines; attention fractures; even television plots repeat themselves for viewers presumed to be checking WhatsApp. AI pushes the argument further: we are outsourcing not only our attention, but the first act of interpretation itself.

Erasmus offers a less gloomy sequel to information overload. Faced with his own glut, he did not read less; he learned to read more carefully. His 1516 Novum Instrumentum, produced by comparing Greek New Testament manuscripts against one another, became a landmark of textual criticism. The abundance of unreliable print generated new methods for tracing provenance and separating the authentic from the plausible. The technology that made error cheaper also made discernment more valuable. Renaissance Europe had, in effect, invented the fact-checker. What if AI produces the same counter-swing?

Photography offers a useful precedent. When Louis Daguerre unveiled his process in 1839, painting lost its monopoly on one of its oldest jobs: faithfully fixing a face, landscape, or moment. Accurate representation suddenly had a mechanical competitor – and worse, a progressively cheap one. Painters did not respond by trying to ‘out-photograph’ the camera. At the famous 1874 exhibition that critic Louis Leroy mockingly christened as ‘Impressionist’, Monet, Renoir and Degas made conspicuous what the camera could not. Through subjective brushwork and improbable colour, they rendered what was felt rather than what could be reproduced mechanically. Monet’s 1890-91 Haystacks series, 25 canvases of the same subject, painted across different hours, seasons and weather, makes the point. The brushwork makes no attempt to hide their creator’s human touch. Where the photograph seemed to efface the labour of representation, the Impressionist canvas flaunted it.

History often appears to be a constant pendulum. Romanticism answered Industrialisation’s cultural flattening with Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. An excess of Romanticism, in turn, provoked Realism, the return to ordinary life and close observation. Culture develops an appetite for whatever the previous age has made scarce. 

AI has renewed the old scarcity of trust. It counterfeits the appearance of knowledge almost frictionlessly, at a scale and fluency that Erasmus’s Europe could not have imagined. A citation can be hallucinated in seconds but, once exposed, the suspicion it leaves lasts much longer. Trust in a brand or source takes years to accumulate and one search bar to puncture. 

But accuracy cannot be the whole story. Humans are perfectly capable of getting things wrong, yet we still seem to prefer human work even when the work itself is identical. In a 2023 experiment, researchers showed participants the same AI-generated artworks, labelled either “Human-created” or “AI-created”. The human label alone made people like and value them more. Perceived effort and the sense that there was a story behind the work helped explain why. Art itself is defined, to a degree, by its context. We value not only the finished object but the person we imagine behind it. Artificiality therefore unsettles something beyond accuracy; the inefficient things, such as handwriting, marginalia, drafts, print newspapers and visible edits, consequently acquire a peculiar new luxury. As with Monet, proof of labour becomes proof of life.

Advertising may be the clearest place to watch this mechanism operate in real time, precisely because brands are attentive to shifting audience values. Commercial director Ash Xu noticed brands increasingly spotlighting the creative process itself, hiring her not just to shoot the advert but to shoot a companion film documenting how it was made. Similarly, at New York Comic Con in 2025, DC president and publisher Jim Lee pledged that the company would not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork: “not now, not ever.” Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV series Pluribus puts “This show was made by humans” in its end credits. Heineken answered the rise of AI companionship with its “Real Friends Aren’t Artificial” campaign, turning the AI wearable into an argument for the considerably older ritual of having a beer with a mate. 

Crucially, this new premium on human provenance is acquiring market value. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 20% of brands will deliberately position themselves by the absence of AI in their businesses and products. The prediction rests partly on mistrust: 72% of consumers Gartner surveyed believed AI-generated content could spread false or misleading information, prompting Senior Principal Researcher Emily Weiss to foresee an “acoustic” turn towards brands perceived as less “impersonal and homogenous”. Mirroring the rise in ‘organic’ labelling for food produce, once production becomes cheap and abundant, knowing who made something, and how, becomes as valuable as the product itself. Provenance shifts from footnote to selling point, as Gutenberg’s flood of print raised the value of scholars who could tell the authentic text from the corrupted one.

Employment gives this human premium rather higher stakes. Stanford researchers have found no economy-wide AI jobs apocalypse, but something more selective: among 22-25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed occupations (software development and customer service among them) employment is now 19% below that of peers in less-AI-exposed industries. Stanford says the gap is driven largely by reduced hiring rather than redundancies, and concentrated where AI automates human tasks rather than complementing them. It is widening fast, increasing from 15% when Stanford first documented it in July 2025 to 19% by June 2026. The familiar anxiety that AI might take our jobs is beginning, at least at the bottom of some career ladders, to acquire numbers.

Yet the counter-movement is visible too. PwC’s analysis of more than a billion job adverts finds AI-exposed junior roles seven times more likely to demand traditionally senior skills such as leadership and strategic thinking; as routine work becomes automatable, judgment and creativity become more valuable. The appetite for the human, then, need not be sentimental. When a machine can supply competent output, proving what remains distinctively yours acquires economic value. AI may be squeezing the bottom of the career ladder while raising the price of the qualities hardest to automate. 

Admittedly, there is something suspiciously convenient about all this optimism. Pendulums do not always swing back because sometimes the new technology simply wins. Nobody mounted a revival of horse-drawn travel once the car arrived, and letter-writing has quietly become a niche hobby for the sentimental few. AI may behave the same way in some fields: routine writing and translation could simply disappear into automation, while elsewhere the glut grows without ever producing its glorious counter-swing. 

There is also a difference in what, exactly, is being displaced. The car mechanised physical locomotion and email made correspondence considerably faster. AI arrives on more intimate grounds, replacing cognitive and creative labour, the very activities Western culture has spent centuries treating as markers of selfhood, authorship, and intelligence. Threats to identity provoke a different register of anxiety than threats to convenience. And the compressed timeline sharpens the unease: adoption that once unfolded over generations now happens between software updates.

And even where a genuine ‘renaissance’ does occur, it’s worth asking who gets to have it. We remember Monet, but not Ernest Meissonier, once the darling of the Salon, nor the hundreds who failed, or could not afford, to make the same turn. Erasmus’s philology was a pursuit for an educated few in a mostly illiterate Europe. If ‘verified human content’ becomes a premium option, the ‘renaissance’ risks being less a cultural rebirth than a luxury good: a small, well-lit room of authenticity for those who can afford to escape an ocean of automated content that everyone else remains submerged in.

None of this scepticism cancels hope; it just means the pendulum requires some pushing. Discernment seems more useful than resistance. With the recent addition of AI-generated prompts in ChatGPT, where even your own requests are being automated, it becomes increasingly pivotal to notice which habits we surrender to it. Thinking has always involved a certain amount of wasted time: the bad first argument, the paragraph abandoned after an hour of muddled sentences. The polished thought usually owes something to the half-formed, incoherent one that came before it. Friction is not always inefficiency; sometimes it is where judgment is made.

So, read a print newspaper some mornings. Not from nostalgia or because print possesses some inherent virtue, but for the minor inconvenience or small pleasure of deciding what you think before a chatbot decides what deserves your attention. Get to the source before the algorithm digests it. Let a thought remain awkward, unfinished, even wrong, before it is optimised or gently flattered into agreement. 

This is an AI age. Whether we will get a renaissance is harder to know: retrospect supplies the capital R. The people living through the last one had no such luxury. They had a glut of new information, unreliable technology and rather a lot of reading to do. 

So do we.

In defence of the dreamer

Honor Thompson
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In defence of the dreamer

I recently asked someone what their dream job would be, casting aside money, practicality, etc., and their answer was to be a writer. We both immediately acknowledged that this could easily remain a hobby, something to be done here and there. It was like a reflex, our voices shifting from a higher, speculative tone to the lower hum of the ‘harsh reality’ of it all: that this wouldn’t really be a viable full-time career. I couldn’t help feeling like these practical boundaries we felt obliged to mention did nothing but reinforce an invisible barricade preventing true belief. And so I had a think about it.

There’s this idea of a ‘dream job’, one that comes with the insidious undertone that it’s a dream for a reason, that dreams don’t fully belong in the real world. This dangerous underbelly of thought, whilst pretending to repel delusion on the surface, actually just stops us from deeming our dreams truly possible. You might understate your ambitions in attempts at humility, or use self-deprecation as armour against the social threat of arrogance, but believing in yourself has never been more important. In a climate such as our own, with polarising politics and feeds that punctuate our mornings with the comforting ideas that robots, along with their billionaire puppeteers, are preparing to render us extinct, backing yourself and your talents, especially as women, is a skill that divides opinion, but one that couldn’t be more pertinent. 

At a university like Oxford, the origins of this ‘backing’ vary quite spectacularly from person to person. Some learn in childhood – or indeed in private education – that they are entitled to the best, that they should aim the highest, and that they must destroy competition at all costs. While it may sometimes seem challenging to befriend people who embrace these attributes, they are qualities that do tend to be conducive to realising ambition. Factors such as geographic location, parental networks, and teaching standards each contribute to the kind of confidence that might be cultivated for a child. 

For example, for those wanting to pursue the notoriously inaccessible arts industry, a particular kind of school, with particular kinds of support, may ease the transition into the structure of, say, the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS). This can be a great thing, but it can also mean that those who haven’t been raised in the same environment get to Oxford and struggle to swim in comparison to those buoyed by self-belief and exclusive connections. Now, I am not suggesting that we suddenly revere qualities like entitlement and arrogance, or criticise those who have grown up with these advantages, but I do think it is important to recognise the advantages of a mindset built on self-belief. Of course, there are extremes and, as ever, a nuanced balance of humility and determination is the aim. 

Coincidentally, I have recently found myself consuming media that claims there has been no better time to go after your dream career. With AI replacing, putting at risk, or just reinventing a large portion of jobs, it feels as if we’re existing in an onslaught of threats that we’ve never seen before. So why not gamble on something you’re passionate about, when the ‘stability’ of a career predicted by the past becomes a risk regardless?

So… insecure, fearful, and doubting yourself in your twenties? There is little surprise there, and much to blame with the way our world works, but that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility we have for ourselves. Part of that responsibility is indeed the ambition and drive we have to realise our goals and dreams, but ambition is meaningless without the confidence and belief that these dreams are possible. The two go together like bread and butter; ambition fades quickly when you don’t let yourself believe. It then becomes a reminder of everything you can’t do, instead of actionable goals that you deserve to achieve, and indeed, have the ability to. 

Feelings of doubt are very normal, and very common even – so I’m told. But I think we owe it to ourselves to try and alleviate these doubts for our future selves. The self-help books were right: self-love is of the utmost importance in creating the life you want. I don’t intend to sound preachy here. If anything, I feel like writing this is as much an exercise in self-belief for me as it is a call to awareness for you – awareness of your own attitude towards yourself, and how this could drive positive ambition, rather than short-lived ambition that flails from a lack of self-belief. Our thoughts, actions, and habits reflect who we believe ourselves to be. And this belief is something to act on.

So,  do your everyday habits look like you want to be a writer? Could they shift to look more like it? What does writing mean to you? I saw an interview with Toni Morrison where she explains that she started writing in a time of isolation – the act of writing bringing order and routine to a chaotic time in her life. We all have demanding lives in our own ways, but the more you allow yourself to believe, the more you will make it work and fill the little crevices of your free time with things that bring you joy and make you feel fulfilled. It’s for yourself, a devotion and care that requires effort and attention, but couldn’t be more worth it. 

More than anything, despite this article just brushing the surface of the subject, I wanted to write this to encourage more people to say yes to what they’ve always wanted to do, to say yes to themselves, and to say yes to believing in their dreams. 

Hope can always be created, lives can always change, and you can always change your mind – it’s never too late.

Oxford falls to lowest ever spot in The Times UK University Guide 2027

Mair Andrews
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Oxford falls to lowest ever spot in The Times UK University Guide 2027

The University of Oxford has placed fifth in The Times’s 2027 UK university rankings, falling from joint fourth with the University of Cambridge last year. This marks Oxford’s lowest ranking in the guide’s 33-year history and only the second time the University has not been in the top three. 

For the third year running, the University of St Andrews and the London School of Economics (LSE) topped the ranking, achieving first and second place respectively. Imperial College London has risen from sixth place to third in the most recent ranking, marking the first time that Imperial has overtaken Oxford or Cambridge. Imperial College London is also named University of the Year 2027 by the paper.

Helen Davies, editor of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide, said that this year saw “an emphasis on preparing students for future careers. Universities have tailored their campuses to suit hands-on learning… But, for this next generation of students and the higher education sector at large, this is a challenging time with institutions struggling with their own finances, and the toughest graduate jobs market in more than a decade. 

There are hard questions to ask: can I afford it? What will I get from a degree? Is it worth it?”

Since the National Student Survey, which informs this ranking, was conducted earlier this year, universities across the country have announced budget cuts to humanities divisions. Severe financial cuts at the University of Exeter, which placed 16th in this year’s chart, caused controversy within the university and national media. 

A printed, supplementary guide containing “An analysis of the rising cost of higher education and its long-term value” and “Is Oxbridge losing its prestige?” will be published with The Sunday Times on 20th September.

Despite ranking poorly in The Times’s national survey, Oxford topped the paper’s league table of all southeastern universities (not including London). The Times also named Oxford runner-up for University of the Year for Scholarships and Bursaries 2027, behind Manchester Metropolitan University.

The annual guide produced by The Times ranks universities based on factors including academic achievement and employment prospects. Based on each category, universities receive a total score that informs the overall ranking. 

In The Guardian’s UK rankings, Oxford retained its top spot, ranking first since 2025. Within the same survey, St Andrews dropped from second to fourth place while Cambridge gained a spot from third to second. Different metrics used by papers are understood to produce differing rankings. 

The Times Higher Education’s World Rankings 2027 will be published on 30th September.

NAZA: The most important film of the year

Willow Jopp
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NAZA: The most important film of the year

It was my final day at what had been a simultaneously controversial and underwhelming Venice Film Festival – controversial because of the lack of major Hollywood releases and the scarcity of female directors among the lineup, and underwhelming because the films which remained were boring, pretentious, or a combination of the two. The festival had a promising start, opening with the adrenaline-filled Ink, directed by Danny Boyle, and the crowd-favourite Wild Horse Nine, directed by Martin McDonagh, a couple of days later. However, there was a run of complete filler throughout the middle portion of the festival. The lack of female voices in the lineup was noticeable in the films themselves, with one film after another about a man struggling with his conscience while also cheating on his wife. Needless to say, I was feeling the fatigue.

However, upon the release of the festival lineup, there was one that I just knew was going to be good. That film was NAZA, a documentary produced by The Guardian and directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The title refers to “collateral damage”, according to one of the Israeli officers interviewed – the number of civilians who are killed in a targeted strike, in this case the drone strikes which Israel can use to kill any person they want, at any time. Both directors made the incredible No Other Land in 2024, and the premise of this film – interviews with Israeli intelligence officers about the systems used to remotely kill Palestinians essentially at will – was too good to fail. Going into my 28th film screening of the festival, I was proven right, with the film prompting the longest standing ovation in the festival’s history – 25 minutes. While watching it, I knew I had to write about it, especially while details of its wider release are still emerging. 

The death and destruction feel remote and are not shown to the audience until the film’s very last moments, in an emotional gut-punch. This is fitting, as the interviews focus specifically on remote killing. The filmmakers interview 24 Israeli operatives on the rooftops of Tel Aviv – only 60km away from a site of extreme devastation. Tel Aviv, however, is unsettlingly quiet. We see people in high-rises doing yoga, washing up, watching television, leading normal and uninterrupted lives. The interviewees, silhouetted and with digitally altered voices, talk matter-of-factly about the methods of remote massacre which they helped to create and execute. NAZA creates geographical, moral, and cinematic distance from the destruction in Gaza, withholding what many other filmmakers would want to confront their audience with. I am reminded of The Zone of Interest, in which violence is kept just out of frame, and the film’s normality is made unsettling by what it chooses not to acknowledge. The filmmakers of NAZA clearly know that beyond physical distance, emotional distance is what allows the violence in Gaza to continue, and show us just how easy it is to ignore what is going on right under our noses.

In case the film does not get a wider release, I will take some time to describe some of the topics discussed by the Israeli officers. We begin by being told that every phone in Gaza is being tracked and constantly surveilled by the Israeli government, which is how the following technologies can function. Firstly, ‘Lavender’, an AI program that tries to evaluate whether a potential target’s phone ‘behaves like’ a Hamas phone by comparing your activity to that of a confirmed Hamas member. It is a program which, despite creating thousands of targets to be bombed, is often incorrect – at least 15% of the ‘targets’ are incorrect, according to one of the tech officers who helped make it. The idea that the decision of whether a person should live or die is decided by artificial intelligence is harrowing, and yet is described as safer than being in the hands of a person who has a personal vendetta against Arabs.

We then learn of ‘Where’s Daddy?’, which spies on family members’ phones to see or hear when a target returns home, so that they can be killed in their house. We are told that the preference is to strike Palestinians in their homes, often at night, when they are least expecting it. Again, it is a system which often makes mistakes, as we are told of a case where the potential target simply left their phone at home, and only the man’s family was home, including his daughters of ages 3 and 6. We learn that the computer program used to analyse homes (every home in Gaza has a ‘serial number’) informs you of the expected NAZA, including whether they are children. 

The IDF has rejected the film’s central allegations, but NAZA’s emotional force comes from the accumulation of testimony, and the calm, technical language of those who say they participated in the system. The Israeli officers being interviewed don’t care about who they are killing, and this is clearest through their damning language. Here are a few quotes given by interviewees about the murder of Palestinians:

“It’s like a video game.”

“Quantity not quality.”

“The goal is to destroy.”

“Destroy everything as quickly as possible.”

“We expect them to learn it through blood.”

“If they want him dead, he dies.”

“We erased history.”

While some interviewees express guilt for what they have done to the Palestinian people, the overwhelming sense created by the language of the officers is that of pride. Some describe it as fun, an exhilarating, mission-driven sense of accomplishment. The film attempts to contextualise this way of thinking. In one clip, Benjamin Netanyahu is shown saying that he believes that all Palestinians knew about the 7th October attack before it happened, and that they are all implicated in the attacks. Another shows him advertising a book he edited in 1986 – Terrorism: How the West Can Win – in which he ironically describes terrorism as the targeted murder of civilians for political reasons. 

I gained no comfort in watching NAZA, no cathartic ending, and no sense that anything will change because of it. It plainly describes a machinery of violence operating at this very moment. After the screening, the audience leaves in a sombre silence, like a funeral procession. It is a strange feeling to leave a film about mass death by walking over a red carpet, above which the Israeli flag flies. I leave on a vaporetto and say goodbye to this year’s festival.

Protest held outside Town Hall over sale of Council-owned building to St Peter’s

Oskar Doepke
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Protest held outside Town Hall over sale of Council-owned building to St Peter’s

A protest took place today outside Oxford Town Hall against Oxford City Council’s plan to sell 11 New Road to St Peter’s College, which would convert most of the building into student housing. The protest, organised by the campaign group Save Our Spaces, was held at 5.30pm, ahead of the Council’s Cabinet vote on the sale of the building.

The Council-owned building, a mixed-use property on the edge of St Peter’s estate, houses a six-bedroom flat leased to the College and three other businesses: Castle News, Classy Barbers, and American Nails. Under the College’s plan, it would convert all but the ground floor into 24 student rooms and add an extra floor. The proposal is subject to planning permission. 

A petition opposing the sale of the building, launched on 11th September by the campaign group Save Our Spaces, has gathered over 400 signatures by the time of publication. A spokesperson for Save Our Spaces told Cherwell: “Once again, the City Council is selling off community space to serve the University’s land grab. These three businesses serve thousands of local people and are much loved by the local community. But they have been treated with total contempt by the Council and St Peter’s College, who have been drawing up plans behind their backs to kick them out.”

The spokesperson added that selling a publicly owned building that brings in “well over £100,000 per year in rent”  is “an incredibly short-sighted strategy”.  

The Council told Cherwell: “St Peter’s College… approached the Council with a proposal to acquire the property, and terms have subsequently been negotiated. The decision to dispose of the freehold title will generate a capital receipt that can be used to support the provision of investment in and services for communities in Oxford which otherwise would not be affordable.”

They added that the sale would “remove future liabilities associated with the property”, as a “significant future expenditure would be required” if it kept the property. 

In their statement to Cherwell, the Council disputed “misinformation” and claims that have “circulated online about the loss of community space as a result of the sale”, as the building is part of its commercial portfolio and has only commercial tenants. A spokesperson for Save Our Space, however, dispute the Council’s claim, and told Cherwell that 11 New Road is public space as it accommodates “three vibrant spaces open to the public, providing much-appreciated services to thousands of members of the public every week”.

The proposal would also see two of the three businesses continuing to operate, as St Peter’s is “proposing modifications to the upper floors and basement, not the retail on the ground floor”, according to the Council. St Peter’s similarly told Cherwell that it “plans to retain the business tenants, Castle News and Classy Barbers, occupying the ground floor of the building”. However, the floor occupied by the third tenant, American Nails, would be converted into student accommodation. 

St Peter’s added that “this project is in line with the College’s strategic commitment to increase the amount of College accommodation available to students who would otherwise be out on Oxford’s private rental market”. The intended purchase follows St Peter’s recent expansion on New Road, including Castle Bailey Quad, a 54 en-suite room Passivhaus development, which the College opened in 2024. 

The College’s plan is the latest in a series of disputes over college and University developments in Oxford. In February, residents objected to Oxford University Development’s plans for redeveloping 25 Wellington Square, which houses several independent businesses. In April, the Council rejected Regent Park’s plans to convert the Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles’ Street into its Middle Common Room.

Oxford student and family run record-breaking half marathon in memory of father 

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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Oxford student and family run record-breaking half marathon in memory of father 

Oxford History graduate Archie Johnston and his family have attempted to break the Guinness World Record for “fastest half marathon by a mother and three children” at the Worcester Half Marathon. Johnston, his mother and two brothers ran the race on September 13th in memory of Johnston’s father, Rob, who died ten years ago.

The previous record was set by a Swansea family in 2024, with a combined time of 8 hours and 8 minutes.  

The Johnstons’ combined time of 6 hours and 27 minutes beats the previous record by more than an hour and a half, subject to Guinness World Records verification. 

Johnston told Cherwell that running has always been a family pastime. Rob was a keen runner, completing nine marathons across four countries during his life. Yet the training for the Worcester half marathon was especially difficult in the summer heat. 

“The grief that comes with losing a parent is unspeakable, but our record attempt is a testament to the way it has drawn us together,” Johnston told Cherwell. “This race is a celebration of my dad’s memory and an effort to further the values he inspired in us.” 

The Johnstons set up a JustGiving page on 22nd July to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians. The charity provides critical health and humanitarian support to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, working with local partners to provide access to essential health services and build local knowledge. The family hoped to raise £5,000 – £100 for every year of Rob’s life – but have already raised more than £10,000.

After the race, Johnston told Cherwell: “The run was tough, as expected, but having the fire of what we were running for made it all the easier. I’m enormously proud of the four of us, and especially my younger brothers, who were racing across this distance for the first time.”

A midsummer nightmare: Our warming world

Minnie Mertz
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A midsummer nightmare: Our warming world

It feels like only days ago that I was walking through the University Parks, ringed by waves of the greenest grass, the shiniest puddles, and the healthiest plants. Despite the occasional shower or muddy shoe, everything in the world seemed in order. That oh-so-familiar smell of dampened greenery was always a comfort to a countryside girl like me. The knowledge that all growing things could thrive was something that, only now, in hindsight, I feel unbelievably nostalgic for. The early spring sun marked a warm greeting to what I thought would be another hot but usual year in the UK.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The summer of 2026 was set to be, according to the Met Office, the hottest since records began, primed to beat the already record-breaking heat of 2025. That statement feels like gospel truth. Sticky, sweaty, endless nights of useless fans, gaping windows, and ice-cold flannels are just a small testament to the intense annoyance of what is likely to become an everyday occurrence in summers to come.

There has always been a national obsession with the weather for us Brits, as it does make a fantastic icebreaker for small talk. But like the Old Man in Aesop’s Fables, in our constant wishes for a hotter and less rainy climate, we’ve been lumped with the very extreme of our desires. Air-con-less buildings, hosepipe bans, and unprepared UK infrastructure have proven, this year much more than others, that we are currently unequipped to handle this rapidly changing climate.

Those daily walks through the parks, meticulously cared for by the University’s groundskeepers, became, over July and August, a stark warning of a bleak and barren world, dulled by crusted, broken ground. I keep being reminded of the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, which so brilliantly depicts a future devoid of the very things we are losing in this daily heat. It has never been clearer that the climate crisis is a very real and very present threat to the structure and upkeep of our lives.

But not all is doom and gloom. Just like WALL-E, there is a silver lining to be found within the lack of clouds. No year has been more powerful in showing individuals how a changing climate affects us daily. Our farming industry has taken a huge beating, visible in the rising prices of supermarket essentials such as meat, grains, and produce. Our transport industry has been thrown into disarray, with the growing heat torching rail tracks and softening road surfaces. Even our retail industry has been hit, as higher temperatures deter the ‘mooch’ culture we, as Brits, so love. As these changes become non-negotiable and so clear to the pedestrian eye, a new wave of discussion and fresh ideas for change are inevitable. A drive from individuals and local councils that filters all the way up to government and global schemes is a clear necessity now in our fight for a safe and sustainable climate. 

Bicycle rides down Broad Street, afternoons in the Radcliffe Camera, and punting trips down the Cherwell have never felt quite so anxiety-inducing. At the student level, these changes are already altering daily life. I have never experienced heat like this. While trying to get my hard-earned beauty sleep, I found myself constantly between my bed and the sofa in the living area. Although the rest of my house felt very much the same, the sauna upstairs proved to be beyond taxing. It was the most surreal and clammy game of musical chairs I’ve ever played. Top-floor rooms in student accommodation or houses bake like ovens long past midnight; our moods begin to drop, our energy drains and our bills rise. It shapes how we study, how we sleep, and how we move through the term. Eco-stress is far less a twee turn of phrase than an imminent reality. Fearmongering is not my game, but when your senses are this attuned to the problem, you feel compelled to act.

At Oxford University, we are surrounded by the smartest minds from across the globe. There is no better place to experience and take part in the momentum of grassroots campaigns and student-run organisations. The Oxford Climate Society, led by students sitting next to you in lectures or halls, is the central hub for making real and lasting change at personal and systemic scales. One of my oldest friends is a key committee member, focusing her time on the education section. It was through her passion for the society and her captivating debates that I knew I wanted to get involved. Through campaigns, events, workshops, and courses, the society offers an inclusive and student-led space ready to challenge, educate, and inspire. Not only that, but they are also warm, kind friends to make whilst at Oxford, who, unlike our current climate, are always steady. 

Small, seemingly trivial choices can absolutely build into lasting differences. We can demand smarter and more environmentally conscious food options in college dining halls. We can push for green initiatives, better energy investments, and stronger funding opportunities in JCR and MCR meetings. We can build our moods back up, recharge our energy supplies, and get those bills back to a level of mutual comfort. Despite feeling like a needle in a haystack, a student amongst many, we truly do have the power to create enduring effects. And we can hold institutions accountable and make a real difference within our university walls. 

WALL-E was ultimately a love story, not just between two robots, but between humanity and the earth. The course of true love never did run smooth. But with education, understanding, and active engagement with our changing environment, there is always hope. We don’t have to settle for enduring the summer heat; together, we can build a future where we don’t just survive, but we live.

In conversation with John Kennedy, “one of the most trusted voices in music”

Emma Heagney
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In conversation with John Kennedy, “one of the most trusted voices in music”

John Kennedy, like any great radio presenter, is endlessly curious. Joining me for a chat online, we discover that we’re sat just a mile apart, a coincidence only unearthed by John’s curiosity. This fascination with the world, its people, and fundamentally, its music, has guided John through his long career as a radio DJ. As “one of the most trusted voices in music” and now the host of the popular Tape Notes podcast, John has a wealth of hard-earned knowledge to be shared with us students.

John’s first foray into DJing occurred while studying at the University of East Anglia. Like many of us, he was no stranger to a student club night, even going so far as to start his own in Norwich. His experience is reminiscent of the recent resurgence in Oxford’s own student DJ scene, pioneered by Nightschool in 2024. Whether it’s the 1980s or the 2020s, students ultimately want to have fun, even if it means taking matters into their own hands.

But club nights never satisfied John’s curiosity. “They attract people who want to dance to what they heard the last time,” he tells me. “There’s no problem with that, but I wanted to vary my taste and discover new artists as much as I could.” This feeling, combined with sporadic contributions to his university magazine’s music section, drew him to the firm conclusion that he would, one day, work in radio. “It’s different each week. That’s why it’s so great.”

However, the start to John’s career as a radio DJ came by chance. “I applied to a course at Radio Thamesmead and a job at Tower Records. The interviews were scheduled for the exact same time! I ultimately tried my luck at Radio Thamesmead, and I managed to get in.” From there, John persevered to make radio a long-term job, rather than simply a story of his time at university. “You have to put yourself out there, and most importantly, dare to dream – I would give this advice to anyone trying to work in the media.”

After moving between several jobs, including a stint at the BBC Gramophone Library, John landed a full-time show at a new station, XFM (now known as Radio X). With the station geared towards rock music, and particularly indie rock, John gained notoriety for his deep, expansive interview style. On his show, X-Posure, John sits down with artists to break down an album, track by track, a methodical and attentive approach that will crop up again in his work on Tape Notes. X-Posure is the longest running show on Radio X, and John remains the only original presenter on the station.

Through X-Posure, John has been credited with discovering the likes of Adele, The xx, and Mumford & Sons – supporting new talent is one of John’s greatest joys. For several years, he hosted the In the Woods Festival in Kent, a curated lineup of up-and-coming artists, many of whom were yet to release their first record before performing.

Perhaps the greatest outcome of the In the Woods Festival, however, was Tape Notes. Co-founders Tim Adam-Smith and Will Brown wanted to increase the impact of the festival beyond one weekend a year, and with funding from the Arts Council, they were able to develop their idea, partly inspired by the music breakdowns in The Beatles Anthology. The festival ended in 2017, but Tape Notes continued to grow. John, with his years of radio experience, ended up as the host.

Much like X-Posure, Tape Notes is, first and foremost, about the intricacies of music production. Every fortnight, John sits down with a different artist to delve into their creative process – including visual demonstrations. Each artist represents something different, from the electronic flair of Fred Again… and Charli xcx to rock titans like Damon Albarn and Foo Fighters. Underpinning each episode is John’s natural curiosity for music, a curiosity shared by his guests. “Music is often a collaborative process. I think that artists are sometimes more comfortable talking about their work in a podcast format precisely because of this. It’s a real honour and privilege to be able to learn from them.”

Learn from them, we do. Tape Notes offers its viewers some of the most in-depth introductions to music production that money can buy, and John tells me that Tape Notes hopes to reach more students through its discounted student offer. “Creativity is born through exploration,” he says. “A subscription means access to gear lists, the full archive of episodes, and the opportunity to ask questions to the artists – a musical education in a time when such learning isn’t accessible to everyone. Young people are the next generation of music makers, and we want to foster that as much as possible.”

John still believes in the power of radio, as well. “Naturally, a spike is created by anything new,” he tells me, acknowledging that podcasts are becoming increasingly popular. So popular, in fact, that 27% of adults now listen to a podcast weekly. “The medium has changed the broadcasting landscape, particularly the standard of recording. While radio may sometimes be seen as overproduced, podcasts can be as simple as two people and a microphone.” But he stands firm in his conviction that radio is too often taken for granted.

His advice for young musicians extends to those looking to become radio presenters. “Commercial radio is always looking for more talent, and broadcasting is much more democratic now than it was in the past.” In many ways, he is right – with better technology at our fingertips, it is easier than ever to create our own opportunities, even if it means simply posting videos online. University radio stations are also a great way for students to become familiar with the ins and outs of broadcasting. Oxford’s own Oxide Radio is a free, beginner-friendly way to get involved with student radio, and who could forget about Cherwell Spoken?

Speaking about some of his favourite guests, John is once again endlessly curious. “Charli xcx is just a force of nature. Jack Antonoff, as well, his episode was really a masterclass in songwriting.” As Tape Notes continues to grow in 2026, John is just as huge of a fan of music as he was in the 80s, DJing in Norwich for his fellow students. “Radio, live gigs, buying records – that’s how I became a music fan.” In a media landscape often dominated by gossip, rumours, and sometimes pure hate, it’s undeniably refreshing to listen to John, a man who never lost sight of what really matters.

Oxford’s new Reform UK society puts students like me at risk

Saba Ahmadzadeh Noughani
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Oxford’s new Reform UK society puts students like me at risk

“Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me”

-Excerpt from ‘First They Came’ by Pastor Martin Niemöller

I was too mentally exhausted to write this article, but I grew up watching my mother respond to every verbal harassment we faced on the street. When I once told her she could ignore it, she told me that they are relying on stereotypes surrounding Muslim women: they rely on us to be what they want us to be, silent and meek. It is our silence that emboldens them.

My heart dropped when I saw Cherwell’s headline: “Oxford Reform Society registers for Michaelmas”. This comes after Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, Nigel Biggar, defended the use of the N-word, and a few months after the Oxford Union hosted a debate on the motion “This House believes the West is right to be suspicious of Islam”. In the term prior, the former Oxford Union Librarian, Brayden Lee, was recorded making a string of comments targeting ethnic minorities, particularly those from Muslim-majority nations.

It’s clear that anti-Muslim hostility has not only passed the dinner table test, but has further infiltrated our student societies. But even at a time when a mosque in the UK is attacked every five days, I still refuse to make this article about my feelings or the British Muslim community’s fears about Reform UK. I am reminded of Muslim poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s poem ‘This is not a humanising poem’, and I too refuse to defend my humanity or plead for empathy before my fellow Oxford students. To see us in this undignified position has been the cause of entertainment for many Oxford students, and has motivated many recent debates about our faith and background at the Oxford Union.

I do argue, however, that the Oxford Reform UK society will invite a breeding ground for anti-Muslim and anti-BME rhetoric on University grounds. Its existence only makes students like myself feel more at risk in our own University. Reform’s record of targeting Muslims and minorities speaks for itself.

In May 2024, Reform leader Nigel Farage said that “a growing number” of British Muslims “do not share British values”. In March 2025, the then-Reform Business and Agriculture Spokesman, Rupert Lowe (who has since been suspended after allegations of bullying and now leads the Restore Party), asked the government whether it would prohibit slaughter without stunning in order to ban halal meat, despite such a prohibition also applying to Kosher slaughter, which he did not call for banning. In January 2026, Sarah Pochin questioned the UK government’s definition of anti-Muslim hostility.

Reform also embraced Lee Anderson in March 2024, who was suspended by the Conservative Party for saying: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sadiq] Khan and they’ve got control of London.” 

Another Reform candidate, Paul Harrison, backed mass deportations and retweeted an AI-generated caricature of Muslim men with Pakistani flags. A post on candidate Howard Raymond Din’s social media called for the mass shooting of Muslims, and candidate Leo Fruhman adopted the slogan “Every Muslim Out of Europe” under his tweets, which include “don’t f**king bring your barbarism tho or we’ll kick you to where you came from”, and “yes I do have a problem with Muslims”.

Many articles in the national press argue that Reform is racist, misogynistic, and Islamophobic. I need not write to convince you of this. I simply argue that a political party with a record of anti-Muslim hostility should not be active, promoted, and legitimised, least of all at institutions where many Muslims like myself live and study.

Every student has the right to feel safe and welcomed in their university, especially when university grounds are where they call home. It is not unreasonable for a student from any vulnerable group to feel unsafe around other students who openly support a political party that repeatedly targets them. It is also not unreasonable for them to feel unsafe on college grounds that may be hosting a politician for a society event who holds such views.

While unregistered, the Oxon Universities’ Reform Society hosted a Restore/Reform debate as well as inviting David Starkey to give a talk – the very same David Starkey who said “so many damn blacks survived during slavery”.

Reform has had to address extremist views spiralling out of control in its own party. During the 2024 general elections, it was made to remove more than a dozen candidates over their racist comments. This included campaigner Andrew Parker, who described Islam, rather than organised religion in general, as ‘a cult’. He suggested that the army should “F**king just shoot them”, referring to asylum seekers, and said of Rishi Sunak: “I’ve always been a Tory voter, but what annoys me is that f**king [P-word] we’ve got in.”

A 2026 investigation found many more Reform candidates making Islamophobic and racist comments, only some of whom were suspended. Former candidate Caspar Thomas tweeted that we should “kick Muslims out of our country”. He has written that “Black peoples have such a cringe victim complex”, and that “Indians are nasty”. While some of these individuals have been removed by Reform, it begs the question: what is it about Reform’s policies that keeps, time and time again, attracting these circles to begin with? 

If one truly studies Reform beyond the few examples mentioned in this article, they will quickly realise that the party is not truly concerned about immigration, integration, or British values, but only cloaks its moral panics and hostilities against Muslims and ethnic minorities behind these talking points. I do not expect students from different backgrounds to fully understand our experience of life. Non-British Muslims will also never understand the fears that dominate our lives. But it is further isolating to know that nobody will speak up or stand up for us, even outside the Reform event rooms. 

Students at the University of York protested their Restore student society. But I don’t feel confident that Oxford students would react the same way to the newly formed Reform society. It is not only the society that worries me, but also other students’ indifference towards it. I grew up in Britain where an anti-Muslim rally is described as a “an amazing day out with the family” and men who spew hatred against Muslims are called “activists”. Unsurprisingly, I have not always felt safe walking down the road as someone who is visibly Muslim. 

But now, with the new Oxford Reform society, I cannot say that I will always feel safe walking on college grounds, outside my dorm, in the JCR kitchen, or in any other shared space. Muslim and ethnic minority students should not have to navigate these spaces worried that the people close to us feel the same sentiments towards us that the student political society they belong to does.

Oxon Universites’ Reform Society was contacted for comment and told Cherwell that they share “concerns for the safety of all in Oxford”, with reference to a BBC News article from 2020 about grooming gangs in Oxford.

The legacy of the caricature

Ruya Oral
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The legacy of the caricature

Hollywood has had a tough year so far. That the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the 2026 Academy Awards is going to be a serious tear-jerker was solidified by the passing of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry over two consecutive days. Both legends in their own right, one can scarcely imagine Parton and Curry in the same room, the former a peroxide-blonde, rhinestone-clad country singer and the latter the ultimate black-comedy villain typecast – but their successive deaths have brought to light the many ways in which the two stars embodied the same, distinctive strangeness in the celebrity scene. 

The current cultural landscape requires that every celebrity also be an influencer. Since the start of the millennium, stardom has been undergoing a perhaps uncalled-for yet inevitable co-mingling with the rise of social media. It is no longer possible to be celebrated simply for, say, your acting skills – you must also cultivate a persona with which to engage with your fans. This means that ultimately what celebrities profit off most is normalcy. To appeal to the largest group of people, they must appear quirky whilst actually being anything but. The ‘niches’ they sign their names to are of no use if they are not easily applicable to anybody who has an Instagram account. Hence the mass hysteria surrounding what I term ‘nothing aesthetics’: clean girl. Quiet luxury. No-makeup makeup look. The most sought-after manicure? Funny bunny (milky white), or if that is sold out, bubble bath (pinkish white). Pantone’s colour of the year? Cloud dancer (cloudy…white?). Disturbing political implications aside – we are still living in the aftermath of Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad, after all – we are somehow witnessing the death of both individuality and community formed around unique and marginal traits at the hands of inoffensiveness.

One of the biggest perpetrators of the monochrome and monotone-ification of everything is Kylie Jenner. In an effort to keep up her quirky appearances, she has momentarily set the nude lip-kits aside to start a trend of putting gem stickers on everything – including the lip-kits. She’s so crazy, love her! Since Jenner launched the bedazzled editions of her makeup line, every social media platform has been flooded with images of people covering their journals, bedsheets, and pickle jars with gem stickers, no doubt to be removed as soon as the photo has been taken. It’s both devastating and embarrassing, then, to hear Dolly Parton’s nephew Bryan Seaver announce that before her death Parton told him that she wanted “to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest”. Not even the most committed “whimsy-maxxer” will ever get to make such a bittersweet statement.

Largely acknowledged as the most universally beloved public figure, dead or alive, Dolly Parton spent much of the first few decades of her 70-year career facing ridicule for the way she presented herself. Infamously modeling her look after the ‘town tramp’, Parton sported blonde wigs piled up to the high heavens, blood-red acrylic nails, and tight, rhinestone-studded clothes that accented her figure all the way until her final public appearance. “I’ve often made the statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable”, she said in a 1977 interview with Barbara Walters, where she also acknowledged that many people’s initial reaction to “the ridiculous way I look” was either shock or mockery. However, she knew that the real joke was always on those who made fun of her: “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time.” Hers was a costume that was designed to be abnormal, and she chose to put it on every day. She reveled in the caricature that she made of herself, and by never once folding under the pressures of those who thought her ‘trashy’, she eventually brought everybody over to her side. 

Though even Donald Trump joined in on the national mourning period, Parton lived as a decided non-conformist until the end. She never had children; she never made public appearances with her husband, and often talked about how their relationship thrived because she was often away from home and free to do whatever she wanted; she supported LGBTQ+ causes, and even went on record many times to say that if she were born a man, she would have been a drag queen. Indeed, many of her queer fans think of her as the first cisgender woman to do drag on the global stage on account of her campy, ultra-feminine persona, performance skills, and witty, self-effacing humour. Beyond her branding, her philanthropy was also consistently aimed at enabling social and cultural progress. She supported new artists, both financially and morally; she started one of the biggest and most successful literacy programmes in history with her Imagination Library; she funded COVID-19 vaccine research, and offered herself up for their trial. She used the glitz and glamour which once made her strange, different, and alienated her from her people to foster happiness, mobility, and freedom in communities like her own. 

Unlike Parton, Tim Curry revealed little to nothing about his personal life throughout his lengthy career on both screen and stage. He also didn’t have a consistent persona like Parton’s, rather walking through a revolving door of increasingly freakish and subversive characters. Similar to Parton, though, his embrace of the caricature was a force that created community, even in the absence of any discernible shared traits. Best known for his performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – described by Peter Bradshaw as a “sonorous and feline… vampirically queer alien sex god” – Curry’s lasting influence in the role is showcased by the millions who attend showings of the film in full costume every year. A self-proclaimed “sweet transvestite”, Dr. Frank is a figure of unintelligible sexuality and gender who violates both scientific and ethical codes to satisfy his desires. He is also not altogether human, hailing from the planet “Transsexual” in the galaxy of “Transylvania”. By playing into these stereotypes about queer people, Curry’s performance emphasises their ridiculousness and forces the audience to reckon with the rigidity with which they treat those unlike them, and how their bigotry ultimately reflects on how they govern themselves. For 50 years, Curry’s Frank-N-Furter has brought people together and allowed them to leave the binaries that rule their lives at home. That is the power of kitsch: it invites you to laugh with, not at, the strange and unfamiliar.  

We are living through a watershed period of conservatism and regression. What conservatism does, as well as actively infringe on our rights and livelihoods, is inspire fear and shame surrounding behaviours that might provoke those in charge to infringe on our rights and livelihoods. It also turns us against people who are in truth no different from us, but we see them as stepping over some arbitrary line we have drawn, fearing that it might endanger us too. The weekly ‘cancellation’ of Chappell Roan, who is more like both Parton and Curry than not, proves it. The definition of ‘normal’ is becoming narrower by the day, and even if you currently believe yourself safe, come tomorrow you too might be strange and dangerous in the eyes of the law. Though their deaths have dimmed the sun in my world as well as many others, I rest easy knowing that Parton and Curry never once compromised the things that made them happy in fear of being perceived as strange, and the art that they have left behind means that they will be remembered forever. Few of us will get to be so lucky.

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