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In Conversation with Grace Beverley

Sasha Mills
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In Conversation with Grace Beverley

Grace Beverley is possibly one of the busiest people I’ve ever met. The day of our interview, she posted a photo of the day’s schedule, and I was wedged in amongst almost non-stop meetings. It’s not hard to see why her schedule is so packed. Currently, she holds the CEO and Founder role of two companies: TALA, a sustainable fitness-wear brand, and Shreddy, a fitness app and equipment brand. This means that her main day-to-day job is making executive, top-level decisions. 

“It’s quite a traditional CEO role while having the untraditional, unorthodox version of being CEO of two companies.” She sees her main role, however, as being an entrepreneur; “That is what I spend 90% of my time doing.” Both companies have seen enormous success, and a report in Forbes earlier this year suggested that TALA has already generated a turnover of over £5.2 million (and counting). Only a year after graduating, she’d already made it onto the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Retail and Ecommerce. 

Given that she started her two businesses while still studying for her degree at Oxford, she’s clearly no stranger to time-management, which features heavily in her new book, scheduled to come out next year: “The book is aiming to provide a productivity blueprint for the next generation.” 

Still, it aims to go beyond just self-help. Burnout has become a debated topic of conversation over the last few years, and last year, Anne Petersen’s essay for Buzzfeed, “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation” went viral. In it, Petersen describes the experience of internalizing “the idea that I should be working all the time,” an experience that she categorises as a distinctly generational one. 

While Beverley falls just on the edge of being a Millenial, her new book takes on some of the ideas that Petersen mentions in her essay. “The book was inspired by two different ideas of our generation as both the snowflake generation and the burn-out generation. So from one side we’re seen as, we like to cut corners, we don’t want to be in a corporation for 40 years before we live the life that we desire. But then on the other side, we’re this burn-out generation because we monetise everything we do, and every free hour is kind of a side hustle; we’re always working.”

“How we can be seen as two different things, and how we can identify with two different things at the same time when the idea of success is not necessarily changing that much with the times, even if we think it is, and it’s leaving us feeling lost.” Throughout her new book, Beverley wants to tackle these contradictions.

If anyone’s qualified to talk about this, I think Grace Beverley might be. Writing a book alongside holding a CEO role in two fairly new companies is certainly no easy feat. When I asked her how she managed it, she gave me quite a simple answer: “I plan to the minute, is life at the moment.” “I find that planning is one of the biggest benefits of even just stress relieving, and being able to even see yourself being able to complete what you want to complete.”

She also credits the support of her teams, who appear like a close-knit family in the occasional Instagram posts they feature in. Scaling up has been essential to managing the load, and while the businesses’ teams are still small, they’re growing at a fast rate. 

Although her achievements so far are monumental, that doesn’t mean that Beverley hasn’t struggled with self-doubt. “I think that one of the most important things is knocking down your own self-doubt first and working out if that’s bleeding through into what you think other people’s perceptions of you are.”

“What I realised after a while […] was that actually the most overarching kind of challenge, and obstacle for that [being taken seriously] was actually with myself. And I was very much creating this feeling for myself because I was so preoccupied with that.” 

“I find that the best way to combat these things is just to do. You can doubt yourself, or think that people think something of you all you want, or you can just get on with the work, and kind of let the success of it speak for itself.” 

One focus that has been key to Beverley has been hiring women, and creating safe spaces for them to develop professionally. She highlighted funding as a key issue for women in entrepreneurship: a study by Beauhurst suggested that in 2018, only 16% of equity deals went to female-founded companies, and the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship noted that only 13% of senior people in investment teams are women. Despite this, she also thinks that entrepreneurship creates opportunities for women in business that traditional roles may not, such as the ability to forge your own path.  

In spite of the difficulties that face many female founders, Beverley remains insistently positive. I was curious to learn more about the challenges that having a significant online presence alongside her businesses may have posed, but for Beverley, this is a source of opportunity more than anything else. 

“I think if I were to say it’s made my current job harder, I would be very much looking at the negatives, considering I’ve also been able to lead on a huge amount of pre-existing audience spaces with potential customers.” She also pointed out that despite the challenges of being a female founder, “I’m also an Oxford-educated white woman, so I’m going to have huge privileges elsewhere.”

While her businesses may have sprung from her previous status as an influencer, Beverley has taken a notable step back from her social channels and Youtube over the last year, moving to the occasional Instagram post, with a heavier focus on entrepreneurship than previously.

“I realised that actually I didn’t have any place in my life that I wanted to be highly publicised. And I kind of just wanted to focus on growing the companies, and that being my job, and that is my job.”

“I think what’s interesting is that in any other job you’d be able to change your job, and there’s very little ‘oh, you owe it to this to stay,’ whereas with social media that can be slightly imposed based on how much people supported you.” 

To Beverley, stepping back from social media is nothing more than a career change. “We are not even necessarily used to influencer culture yet, and so of course we are going to perceive it differently when it comes to people reinventing themselves in any way.” 

She also credits stepping back from social media to other positive changes, including being more sustainable in her personal life. “There’s this idea that this militant sustainability is the way forward, which actually creates a huge barrier for entry and gatekeeping for people who want to be a bit more sustainable. So I think for everyone, it should very much just be about making sustainable choices, especially in areas that you can maintain.” 

Being offline, she says, has taken the focus away from living up to these standards, and instead she’s able to focus on her own decision-making: “How can I make the best decision here? If there’s a trade-off, how do I make that work?”

Sustainability is also at the heart of Beverley’s businesses. Most of the products produced by TALA focus on up-cycling fabrics that would otherwise go to waste, their Zinnia leggings, for example, are produced with 92% up-cycled Polyamide, and purport to “save over 40 litres of water and 2kg of CO2 compared to non up-cycled Polyamide.” The brand is admirably transparent, and in a video released last year, Beverley even took her followers into one of the factories that they use. 

She emphasised, however, the complexity of this sustainable approach. “Sustainability isn’t just about, for example, recycled clothing; it’s about everything, from how you dye fabrics, to how you ship things over, there are so many different aspects of it. And I think that it is really, really important for the consumer to be aware of that.” Some fabrics, such as elastane, can only be recycled a certain number of times, so each decision that Beverley and her team make involves weighing up the balance between sustainability and maintaining the quality of the garment. 

On the other hand, an online product such as the Shreddy app doesn’t have any direct sustainability implications. Launched in 2019, Beverley told me that both of her businesses have seen steady growth through the pandemic, which she partially credits to their online-only, direct-to-consumer model. 

This model has seen enormous growth over the last year, with one study suggesting that sales for D2C businesses in the US has seen a 24.3% increase from 2019 to 2020, likely in part due to the closure of physical shops, as well as the ease of online shopping.

This doesn’t mean that the pandemic hasn’t impacted Beverley’s two businesses. The sampling process for new products had to be pushed back for several months, as it requires high levels of international collaboration, which means that many of the TALA collections coming out over the next few months have been delayed from earlier in the year. 

Now, one of Beverley’s biggest priorities is working on crisis management to prepare for the future. “It’s quite interesting going into what might be seen as a second wave to look at how we change, how we act [in comparison to] the first time.” 

“Whether you’re making more money or not, crisis management is always going to take up a huge amount more time. So I feel particularly kind of heartbroken for the companies that are probably working above their heads.”

Still, it seems that Beverley’s companies are continuing to evolve, despite all the challenges they face. In the weeks after our interview, it was announced that she was merging two of her companies, rebranding her fitness equipment company B_ND to fall under the umbrella of Shreddy. In an Instagram post, she told her followers that “rebranding the rest of the business & reframing towards a tech-forward business model made sense.” It doesn’t seem like much is capable of stopping Grace Beverley from continuing to push forwards.

Slight drop in University COVID-19 cases to 126

David Tritsch
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Slight drop in University COVID-19 cases to 126

Oxford University’s testing service has confirmed 126 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff for the week 7th-13th November, with a positivity rate of 30%. This marks a slight drop in the number of new cases compared to last week’s 146, as well as in the test positivity rate compared to last week’s 34%.

Following a three-week period in which case numbers increased almost linearly (with about 200 new cases among students and staff per week), last week marked the first drop in the number of new cases reported. The numbers this week closely mirrored last week, indicating a substantial drop in the number of new cases per week. However, the number of tests conducted per week has fallen by about 50% since the week starting on October 17th and the high positivity rate of tests could be evidence for a significant number of unreported cases.

Current University guidance is that students and staff should not get tested unless they have been asked to or they display symptoms of COVID-19. The University’s white paper states that “one of the challenges the University faces is staff and students with no COVID-19 symptoms asking for tests unnecessarily”. The University of Cambridge, whose collegiate system mirrors that of Oxford, have set up a testing pod in the city for symptomatic cases, but have recently announced they will test all asymptomatic students in colleges.

The University’s Status and Response website also states that the figures released do not include positive test results received outside of the University testing service. It notes further that “due to the time interval between a test being done and the result becoming available, it is expected that there will be a mismatch between actual results and those confirmed to us on any given day”.

Image credit: Oxford University Status and Response website (https://www.ox.ac.uk/coronavirus/status)

This week, the University released a detailed breakdown of the past eight weeks for the first time. Daily numbers of positive tests are given and the data is split into results for students and University staff. The positive cases among students for the vast majority of positive tests, with a total of only 35 staff members having tested positive so far. The total number of positive cases within the University as of November 13th is 980.

The University has implemented a four-stage emergency response, depending on how wide the spread of Covid-19 is. The current status is Stage 2, which allows the University to operate “in line with social distancing restrictions with as full a student cohort as possible on site”, with teaching and assessment taking place “with the optimum combination of in-person teaching and online learning”. A Stage 3 response would imply “no public access to the University or College buildings” and “gatherings for staff and students only permitted where essential for teaching and assessment to take place”.

Damsels in distress? – The rise of the lesbian period drama

Natalie Vriend
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Damsels in distress? – The rise of the lesbian period drama

Kate Winslet catches Saoirse Ronan’s eye in the mirror, watching in the light of an oil lamp as she takes her corset off. Later, Ronan looks down at their held hands, petticoat layers concealing their secret. They kiss in an empty courtyard, cheeks flushing, a stolen moment of romance.

These scenes are from the recently released trailer for Ammonite, one of a wealth of lesbian period dramas that have suddenly occupied our screens. From Portrait of a Lady on Fire to The Favourite, filmmakers have discovered a formula that garners both critical acclaim and mainstream reverence, and are keen to make the most of its success. (The latter, for instance, was nominated for ten Oscars, five Golden Globes, won seven BAFTAs, and grossed $95 million at the box office.)

Set in the 18th-19th century, these period films usually follow the love story of two women, roaming the English countryside, the coast or the grounds of an expansive castle. Amidst the luscious backdrops and swathes of silk used for each costume, the dark days of women pillow-fighting for the straight man’s satisfaction seem miles away. After years of shunning and over-sexualisation in films, lesbians are at long last seeing their names in big, shining lights.

At first glance, this development seems only good news. The sapphic community has begged for on-screen representation for decades – studies show that only 18.2% of films from major studios and 28% of TV shows have LGBTQ representation. Even on the rare occasion they do exist, lesbian films are both in the minority here and typically sold based on their supposed “sex appeal”. The cliché lesbian film piles prejudice on top of prejudice on top of “hot girl-on-girl action!”, exasperating oppressive stereotypes. Exploring the romances between women in the past then, whether fictional or historical accounts, allows for the unearthing of an often forgotten or erased truth: a woman’s love for other women is in no way new or strange. This is a fact many need to feel reinforced. Women who are attracted to women have always existed: there have been generations and generations of women just like us, who have loved and been loved just like us.

The retelling of lesbian history through these films is undoubtedly a victory for the LGBTQ community – but as with any victory, there are some casualties. While plenty of antiquated tales have been re-established, significantly fewer contemporary lesbian love stories have gained traction in popular culture. Lesbians exist, but only, it seems, if they have no access to electricity or are burdened by the weight of a crown on their head. While these period dramas have certainly made a start in the right direction, a group as diverse as the LGBTQ community needs equally diverse representation. More must be done.

Yes, I’ll admit I enjoy watching the yearning gazes, the soft touches of the hand and the gentle undoing of corsets as much as the next person, but I can’t say I relate to it all. We may accept and enjoy crumbs, but they are still crumbs. The distance created by time can sometimes feel like a gaping abyss. The genre’s time period instils a solemn nature to the films, silence taking the place of friendship and laughter. In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the women constantly maintain a certain reticence, never really relaxing and only switching from the French “vous” to the informal “tu” when speaking to each other in the very final scene. While the formality may come with the genre, it is nevertheless alien to many of us today. Suitors are not hosted in stately mansions by family members, people do not meet at grand ballroom dances in powdered wigs, and lesbians are not merely damsels in distress.

Contemporary representation will always be needed, as entertaining as period dramas may be. It can make the difference between young women knowing their attraction is real and valid, and thinking it’s just a myth created for the male gaze. If a sapphic viewer finds themself thinking: “My attraction to women looks nothing like that and never will,” the film their viewing can hardly be considered real representation. It might be good cinema, but it is not the representation we crave. Would it really be so difficult to make a few cringey romcoms about two women falling in love? Or a high-speed car chase led by lesbians? A blockbuster horror film? The severe lack of variation suggests to me that society, for all its celebration of women in period dramas, is too scared to confront the existence of the modern lesbian.

Just as the characters in these films feel distant to young women searching for relatable representation, they are also distanced from today’s still-rampant homophobia. The women in these period dramas are ‘safe’ to watch: they live and love centuries away from us and are still constrained to dainty and the feminine behaviours. The then-revolutionary actions of these women would hardly be considered norms-shattering now; a little handholding here, a kiss on the cheek there – the films make the audience feel comfortably progressive while posing absolutely no threat to the current status quo. Viewers have no need to confront the discrimination raging on around them yet feel rewarded for pretending to do so by watching. The message is that lesbians can be tolerated and accepted as long as they cannot be interacted with or heard, as long as they do not disturb straight familiarity. There are certainly examples, such as The Handmaiden, which unabashedly and excellently combat many such important issues, but these are exceptions, not the overarching theme of the genre.

This is not to say that there isn’t a wide array of diverse, contemporary lesbian films already out there – there is. But it’s certainly telling that these films struggle to rise beyond the dingy corners of independent cinemas or the murky depths of a never-ending Netflix scroll.

If lesbians are reduced to two-dimensional characters, delicate and curious relics from the past, whose lives don’t intersect with today’s issues, can we really say that these films have benefited the LGBTQ community all that much? That these stories bring to light otherwise forgotten roots and histories is, no doubt, a win, but the battle is not yet over – women should be allowed to kiss on screen without petticoats weighing them down. To Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet: I see your romantic paradise in 1840s England and raise you a cheesy romcom with at least one phone and a semi-stable internet connection.

Image via Flickr

SU criticises colleges’ reduction of vacation residence

Imogen Duke
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SU criticises colleges’ reduction of vacation residence

Some colleges are reducing the availability of residence for students over the Michaelmas vacation. Oxford SU is lobbying to ensure international students are guaranteed accommodation for those who wish to remain, and has criticised the impact on care leavers, estranged students, and independent students.

Oxford SU passed a motion in 3rd week resolving to ask the University to guarantee all international student residence in Oxford over the vacation. The SU also resolves to push for vacation residence to be offered at 15% of usual vacation rent.

College policies do not currently fulfil Oxford SU’s requests. St John’s College has said that their vacation residence and grant scheme “will not operate as usual” during this vacation. All students have to leave, except international students whose home borders are closed and students with extended terms for their subjects.  

St John’s told students that this was to ensure staff get a break from a difficult term, and students get a break to spend some time in a “different environment” before next year.

Queen’s College emailed students saying they “strongly urge” and “expect” all UK-domiciled students to return, noting that for students with welfare concerns, the welfare services would be closed for a period over the vacation.  

They also told international students that the requirement to quarantine in their home country and in the UK is “unlikely” to be a “compelling reason” to be granted vacation residence. Queen’s said that, if borders for students’ home countries are closed, students should consider asking friends to stay at their homes. Queen’s reminded students that “there is no automatic right to stay in College”.

Oxford SU Class Act Campaign told Cherwell: “This is an issue not only for international students, but also for care leavers, estranged students, and independent students. Colleges consistently fail to provide these students with security, instead leaving individuals to negotiate with them for the right to have somewhere to stay. This is a difficult situation for everyone, but many students call Oxford their home, and must not be forgotten in this pandemic.”

One anonymous student told Cherwell: “The vacation residence policy email I received from my college was a disappointing read that placed unnecessary anxiety upon estranged students. For some of us, home life is not safe: it does not matter if this has always been the case, or if this is recent. Trinity Term lockdown was hard enough to suffer because students from other colleges were able to return – hopefully we can stay this time.

“I, like many other students, am incredibly grateful for my time at Oxford because of the freedom it gives me. It is also one of the reasons students take advantage of the vacation residence system: escape. To put it plainly, studying in college is better than working at home. We already try so hard to learn to live independently, study efficiently and strike that balance needed to be happy that if we are forced back into our older unhealthy environments no good will come of it.”

Oxford SU will further ask the University to ensure students who are required to quarantine upon return to Oxford get free accommodation, and receive food at the average price of their college’s home food.

Students who were required to quarantine upon arrival at the beginning of Michaelmas faced very varied college policies. Oxford SU’s motion stated that students were “in some cases charged extortionate rates for their accommodation”. 
Cherwell reported at the beginning of the term that Oriel College charged self-isolating international students over £700, including a nearly £30 per day food bill. Some colleges, including Hertford, Magdalen, Queen’s, and Worcester College, made accommodation free.

Image credit: Simononly/ Wikimedia Commons

The American Story, Part One: The Founding

Josh Self
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The American Story, Part One: The Founding

From America’s founding moments, convenient omissions and factual manipulation have acted in tandem to produce the ‘American story’. This story, that of America striving ever-closer to a liberal promised-land while mimicking the virtues of the ‘founding fathers’, is written into the hearts and minds of many Americans. It has been told and retold so consistently that the cunning machinations that constructed it are long-forgotten. Today, America’s ‘exceptionalism’ is assumed rather than investigated; America’s past is approached, in Carl Becker’s immortal phrase, ‘without fear and without research’. That the slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, can power a presidential candidate to victory underlines this. For conservatives, the American past remains a dependable ally in the face of societal trauma and, as we see in the ‘MAGA’ slogan, a model for building utopian futures. For many, however, a reexamination of America’s ‘greatness’ is long overdue. At the heart of America’s current identity crisis exists the debate over what America’s past means today. So, who is/was America? We begin in 1799.

Throughout American history, image-makers have crafted certain figures to symbolise the nation and shape its character. America’s first President, George Washington, was certainly subject to these practices and it was his death in 1799 that served as a catalyst. Every society seizes upon the death of a revered leader to express its greatest visions, and it was in Washington’s eulogies that America crafted her ‘representative man’. ‘When Washington lived’, exclaimed the Pennsylvania Gazette, ‘we had one common mind—one common head—we were united—we were safe’. ‘He had no child – but you’, another eulogist wrote, ‘HE WAS ALL YOUR OWN’. In this way, George Washington was created, transmitted and understood; as a model for Americans, this ‘Washington’ still reigns supreme. Rather than an ‘exemplification of the American character’, as his Vice-President John Adams described him, American society would construct itself in Washington’s image, an image more mythical than actual.

Like Washington, the revolutionary age as a whole assumed a sacred character; God was said to have exempted the United States from history itself. ‘If such is the youth of the Republic, what will be its old age?’, asked a French statesman, Senator Lewis Cass answered, ‘Sir, it will have no old age’. Likewise, the phrase ‘Novo Ordo Seclorum’, ‘a new order of the ages’, still features on the American dollar bill. Americans of old depicted their destiny in ahistorical terms and many Americans today believe themselves secured against time by divine covenant.

This understanding of a shared destiny provided a cohesive discourse for a young United States, rife with regional interests. This false unity was then reinforced by the political myth of shared origin centered around the ‘founding fathers’. The ‘founding fathers’—like the best myths—were real people, a community of those who signed the Declaration of Independence 1776 and/or were members of the Constitutional Convention 1787. Their significance moves far beyond their role as historical actors, however. The ‘founding fathers’ constitute an American master-narrative which has enshrined 99 statesmen as the architects of everything American. Using the allegory of family, the term ‘fathers’ implies tradition, legitimacy and, crucially, community. Under their undivided fathers, Americans, too, would form an illusory collectivity. Obsessed with the future and what it might bring, America’s founding generation told stories about itself so that future generations might preserve their memory and their nation. In his autobiography, leading founder Benjamin Franklin fashioned himself as a ‘good parent’ who ‘treats all Americans as his offspring’, and paternal language fills Washington’s eulogies. In this way, Americans made themselves one, and these myths of a shared origin and destiny are still very attractive today.

These myths, however, have come at the cost of two dual ideals, truth and justice. As Edmund Morgan relates, ‘George Washington led Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration, but the Constitution and its first ten amendments as well. They were all slaveholders’. Jefferson, the man who penned the phrase, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’, also argued that black people were ‘inferior to . . . whites in the endowments both of body and mind’. Indeed, despite the apparent anti-slavery imperative of the Declaration of Independence, the founding documents not only do not abolish slavery, but in fact the Constitution ultimately affirms it. For this reason, one leading abolitionist of the time labelled the Constitution ‘a pact with the devil’. Undoubtedly, the simultaneous development of slavery and ‘freedom’ is the central paradox of American history.

Despite the philosophical inconsistency of the ‘fathers’, it is no accident that 41 of the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence held slaves, nor is it surprising that Presidents Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor were all slaveholders. The great wealth that slavery produced allowed slaveholders to secure a central role in government and mould it in their image. More pertinently, America’s slave-owning ‘fathers’ understood ‘freedom’ because they denied it to others. The fathers considered society as a composition of free and unfree individuals; indeed, they frequently fashioned themselves as slaves to British tyranny. Slave-holder Thomas Jefferson was qualified to write the Declaration of Independence, in part, because it was he who understood ‘freedom’ and its denial best.

Perhaps it is tempting to defend Jefferson, who one historian describes as the ‘the foremost racist of his era’, as a ‘man of his time’, Jefferson’s philosophical inconsistency was known in his age. Slave descendant David Walker took Thomas Jefferson to task in 1829, ‘Do you understand your own language? … Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us’. Likewise, former slave Frederick Douglass in 1841 famously exposed the myth of American independence. ‘What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?… a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim’. Walker and Douglass dared America to live up to its self-proclaimed ideals and exposed the hollowness of America’s ‘exceptionalism’. Despite these powerful expositions of America’s founding myths, however, they were consolidated for generations to come.

All societies operate on the basis of myths, what is aberrant in the United States is that their working myths are intrinsically linked to racism and exclusionary politics. If we understand that slavery was crucial to America’s economic, social and political development, the United States ceases to be the ‘free society’ it is so often imagined to be. No one has put this better than Langston Hughes:

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free”.

Oxford University’s ties to nuclear weapons industry revealed

Ben Jacob
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Oxford University’s ties to nuclear weapons industry revealed

Freedom of Information requests submitted by Cherwell have revealed that Oxford University accepted at least £726,706 from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the designer and producer of the UK’s nuclear warheads, during the years 2017-19 alone.

The majority of this money was awarded to the Oxford Centre for High Energy Density Science (OxCHEDS), which advertises AWE as one of its “national partners” on its website.

AWE’s funding is mostly used by OxCHEDS to fund individual research projects and studentships, with a substantial portion (£82,863 in 2019) funding the department’s William Penney Fellowship, named after the head of the British delegation for the Manhattan Project and ‘father of the British atomic bomb’. According to the AWE website, William Penney Fellows “act as ambassadors for AWE in the scientific and technical communities in which they operate”.

This fellowship is currently shared by two professors, Justin Wark and Peter Norreys, both of whom collaborate closely with US state laboratories that develop nuclear weapons, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

AWE donations have also funded projects at the University’s Departments of Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics, a number of which are directly linked to the design of nuclear weapons. One AWE-funded paper, published in 2019, investigated fusion yield production, a vital way of testing the destructive power of a warhead prior to manufacturing, whilst another project researched methods used by nuclear weapons designers for simulating the interior of a detonating warhead.

This research also has civilian applications, and does not in itself point towards the development of nuclear weapons. A spokesperson from Oxford University stated: “Oxford University research is academically driven, with the ultimate aim of enhancing openly available scholarship and knowledge. All research projects with defence sector funding advance general scientific understanding, with a wide range of subsequent civilian applications, as well as potential application by the sector.”

However, AWE is not a civilian organisation. As Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade told Cherwell, “the AWE exists to promote the deadliest weaponry possible. It is not funding these projects because it cares about education, but because it wants to benefit from the research and association that goes with it”. Mr. Smith concluded: “Oxford University should be leading by example, not providing research and cheap labour for the arms industry”.

Responding to Cherwell’s findings, Dr Stuart Parkinson, Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, described Oxford University’s ties with AWE as “shocking” and called for the work to be “terminated immediately”. He said that the findings “point very clearly to Oxford University researchers being involved in the development of weapons of mass destruction”.

In the face of this criticism, the University spokesperson claimed: “All research funders must first pass ethical scrutiny and be approved by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding. This is a robust, independent system, which takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration.”

However, there are growing concerns over the ethics and efficacy of this process, which has seen controversial donations from the Sackler family, Wafic Saïd, and Stephen Schwarzman given the green light despite internal and public protests. The committee’s deliberations are frequently subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, meaning that they are not accountable to members of the University and to the wider public. Moreover, Freedom of Information requests submitted earlier this year revealed that the committee accepts over 95% of the funding it considers, with congregation members describing the committee as a “smokescreen” and a “fig leaf”.

In recent years, the University has faced increased opposition from student groups such as the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign and Oxford Against Schwarzman over the companies Oxford chooses to affiliate itself with through investments and donations. From this term onwards, a newly formed student group, Disarm Oxford, will be campaigning against the University’s numerous ties with the arms industry. Oxford Amnesty International is working with Disarm Oxford on the global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and to strive for the disarmament of the University more broadly.

Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Chair of the Trustees of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, told Cherwell: “The recent publicity around university divestment from fossil fuels has highlighted the need for university bodies to be transparent about the ethical standards they apply to their funding, and it is encouraging to see this crucial question being raised also in the context of armaments-related funds and research.”

The combination of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic has created a particularly difficult time for university research finances. In a marketised higher education system, seeking and welcoming money from industry partnerships seems like an inevitability. However, while some industries rely on academic research to save lives, others are predicated on taking them. With the UK confirmed this year as the world’s second biggest exporter of arms, the University’s significant ties to the development of weaponry has an alarming global significance which is now beginning to be called into question.

Student Council votes to ban beef and lamb

David Tritsch
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Student Council votes to ban beef and lamb

A motion mandating the Oxford SU executives to lobby for banning beef and lamb from University-operated canteens and events has passed with a two-thirds majority in this week’s Student Council. The motion does not extend to college butteries which have their own menus and food policies.

The motion mandates the Oxford SU Vice President Charities and Communities to “request fortnightly meetings with the university authorities to advocate for the adoption of a university policy surrounding meat reduction and removal, especially in respect of beef and lamb [and to campaign for] the University to issue advice to faculties, departments, and colleges on how they may follow suit in removing beef and lamb”. In addition, the SU executive is mandated to inform staff and students within the University as to Oxford SU’s support for banning beef and lamb and raising awareness of the policy’s benefits

The motion, proposed and co-written by Vihan Jain (Worcester), Daniel Grimmer (Pembroke) and Agatha Edevane (Wycliffe Hall) refers to the EAT Lancet report for sustaining planetary health. The report argues that in the Global North, consumption of red meat should be severely limited and the intake of fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes increased. 

The motion states: “As the UK’s premier university, the nation looks to Oxford for leadership, but Oxford has shown a lack of leadership in addressing climate change. The banning of beef and lamb at university-catered events and outlets is a feasible and effective strategy to help the university meet its revised 2030 goal. A change at the university level will open the gates for similar change at the college level.” 

Citing the University’s anti-racist efforts, the motion continues: “The university has a commitment to anti-racism, and this requires urgent action to minimise greenhouse emissions.” An item for discussion proposed by Jain to the Student Council’s 3rd Week meeting states: “The worst effects of human activity related climate change are felt by Black and Brown peoples in the Global South, with women and disabled peoples being disproportionately affected. The University has a duty to minimise its participation in human activity related climate change.” 

Some members of Student Council have voiced objections to the motion. As recorded in the Council’s minutes, one student argued that the motion would “either restrict what students are eating, or allow students to buy food elsewhere, which would decrease usage of University catering services be in the best interests of the University.” To this, the proposers of the motion responded that Cambridge actually saw an increase in sales after they stopped selling beef and lamb in canteens. 

The VP Women, Alex Foley, has spoken in support of the motion: “We should focus on the motion as it is and avoid slippery slope arguments. This is about changing people’s habits, not dictating what they can and can’t do.” Foley warned against “overestimating how hard-done-by people will feel if they’re not served beef at an event.”

Others believed the motion’s demand were too harsh. A student at St. Antony’s College suggested lobbying for a reduction, rather than a cessation in red meat sales.

The motion passed in its original wording, with 31 votes for, 9 against and 13 abstentions.

Ben Farmer, Oxford SU Vice President Charities and Communities, told Cherwell: “I welcome the mandate to engage the University on this important issue. However, it is important to recognise that food-based changes may not be possible for every student or staff member at the University. Further, food-based changes are just one part of changes we’d like to see the University make to tackle the Climate Crisis.

“We look forward to updating students at future Student Councils regarding the progress of this motion.”

In Hilary Term 2020, a motion to campaign for a ban of beef from college canteens was not passed after the Student Council meeting did not meet its required quorum. Although motions that fail a quorum are rolled over to the next meeting, the motion was subsequently referred to the Council’s Steering Committee after Student Council members voted to refer the motion to an all-student consultation. Some Student Council members raised concerns over the policy’s effect on students with eating disorders.

Earlier this year, the London School of Economics Students’ Union passed a similar motion to “ban beef” from campus. Last year, Cambridge and Goldsmiths University both removed beef from all university menus.

‘Because I’m His Daughter’: Fathers and Daughters in cinema

Lily Down
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‘Because I’m His Daughter’: Fathers and Daughters in cinema

My stepdad is my best friend. He made me fall in love with reading when I was six. He home-schooled me when I was ten. He has been there for me as long as I can remember. We talk about everything from relationships to politics, from food to our place in the world. I can tell him anything, and he will always listen.

When I describe my equally loving relationship with my mother, I have many cinematic and television parallels, from Mrs March to Lorelai Gilmore. But I can never find a father-daughter relationship that explains how my stepdad and I are just as close.

Sofia Coppola is tackling this rarely-explored relationship in On the Rocks, in which Laura and her father Felix try to find out if Laura’s husband is having an affair. The pair struggle seeing eye to eye; Felix is an ageing womaniser, while Laura is a young writer and mother. Their relationship is one that feels familiar in film and in life; a father and daughter who don’t really understand each other. But they are on the same team. Maybe this says something about family, who we don’t choose, but who back us up all the same, even if we don’t always get along.

In Your Name, a body-swap romance about Japanese teenagers Mitsuha and Taki, the fraught relationship between Mitsuha and her father, Mayor Miyamizu, is understated, but integral. Near the beginning, we see Mitsuha’s best friends sitting on a bench by the roadside vending machine, looking up the mountain to her house. “She’s on centre stage”, they say, with her father running for re-election. Like Laura and Felix, they have different worldviews; Mitsuha belongs more to her grandmother’s traditional Japan, while her father is caught up in small-town politics. Miyamizu is an absent father, having left his children with their grandmother after his wife’s death. But it is only through their bond that their town, Itomori, can be saved. When Taki tries to convince him of the danger, he won’t listen. Taki wonders, “if it were Mitsuha, would she have been able to convince him?” The answer comes later in the film, where she walks into her father’s office, a determined look in her eyes. He has to listen to his daughter, and believe her, and it is only through this that the people of Itomori survive.

In teen classic Clueless, Cher and her father have a charming relationship. Their bickering is a fun game. He’s impressed with her when she argues her way from a C+ to an A, saying that he “couldn’t be happier than if they were based on real grades”. While he has raised her to be determined, driven, and independent, he has also raised her in a bubble of privilege which she does not begin to poke her head out of until nearly the end of the film. But, as in On the Rocks, it is still her father she turns to when it comes to matters of the heart. This feels closer to me and my stepdad; we argue a lot, but at the core of our relationship, is love.

Love is what Life Itself is all about. Dylan, orphaned as a baby, is raised by her grandfather, Irwin. While Irwin is an old man, and my stepdad is in his mid-thirties, it is still this relationship I feel comes closest to ours. Irwin is protective, and loving, and you feel it in every scene. He wants to make Dylan happy in spite of all the losses she suffers. That’s what parents are meant to do; protect you from the world, and prepare you for it. Maybe we see this in On the Rocks, too. When Felix tells Laura that it’s “nature” for men to have affairs, he is trying to explain the world to her. But Irwin is not preparing Dylan for the pain of cheating husbands, he’s trying to give her hope in spite of grief. The film explores the profundity of this unconventional father-daughter relationship, and shows us that the powerful love between parent and child is not reserved for the nuclear family, but is broader than that, and more beautiful because of it.

In each of these films, I can see an aspect of my relationship with my stepdad. In On the Rocks, I see his weirdness, and the way he has my back. In Clueless, I see our playful bickering. In Your Name, I see the way he trusts me. In Life Itself, I see his determination to protect me, and to love me. These films explore a relationship which is often confusing. The relationships are imperfect, but this is what makes them true to life; rather than an idealised, Hallmark-movie version of father-daughter bonds, these films show messy, but real love.

Image via Pixaby

COVID immunity wanes within months, Oxford study says

Sonya Ribner
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COVID immunity wanes within months, Oxford study says

Researchers with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have found antibody responses to COVID-19 decrease by half in less than 90 days. The report published this month, ‘The duration, dynamics and determinants of SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses in individual healthcare workers,’ revealed that antibody levels peak lower and fall faster in younger adults.

Additionally, antibodies to the virus last longer in those who have experienced symptoms and lose their strength faster in those who are asymptomatic. The study found that “increasing age, Asian ethnicity, and prior self-reported systems were independently associated with higher maximum antibody levels”.

The ongoing study of antibody levels in staff members at Oxford University Hospitals NHS is a collaboration between Oxford University Hospitals and Oxford University, with support from the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. The report presents six months of data from a study of over 3,000 Oxford University Hospital workers who have been tested more than once for antibodies.

Those who tested positive were asked to take part in further research to understand their immunity to the virus. They were among the almost 10,000 staff who were tested for presence of COVID-19 and antibodies to the virus.

While there have been many reports on COVID-19 in healthcare workers, this ongoing study is the first to comprehensively investigate all staff groups across an institution and combine data from both symptomatic and asymptomatic staff testing programs. Researchers conclude that further research will be required to track the long-term duration of antibody levels and their association with COVID immunity.

The findings will likely influence the approach of governments and businesses to post-lockdown life in the period between the release and widespread distribution of a vaccine.

The data will also be used by Professor Sarah Walker at Oxford University who currently works with the Office for National Statistics on the COVID-19 Infection Survey to provide the United Kingdom with the most accurate incidence and prevalence data.

Professor David Stuart told Cherwell: “Our recent work is an important part of understanding how long antibodies last. However immunity to infection is multifactorial and so even if antibodies fall it is possible that immune memory and other cellular immunity may still provide some protection.

“This is something we will be able to study over the coming months. It will obviously be important too to understand how long protection following vaccination lasts, which may be different to responses to infection.”

The investigation showed antibodies faded faster in young adults and those who are asymptomatic, however, the reasons for this are not yet known.

Stuart added: “For asymptomatic individuals it is possible to hypothesise that as the original exposure was less significant the original responses may be weaker. It is interesting but not yet explained why levels fell faster in young adults.”

Image credit: Felipe Esquivel Reed, Wikimedia Commons

A message for non-Jews

Leah Mitchell
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A message for non-Jews

TW: antisemitism

At the time of writing it’s past midnight and, instead of working on my Roman history essay and then winding down for bed as I had intended, I’ve spent my evening arguing with strangers on the internet. Before you jump to conclusions, I don’t make a habit of doing that. But in this particular instance, I couldn’t help myself.

My fifteen-year-old brother writes short articles for a student-run progressive online news platform (@intersect_news on Instagram). His writing is mature, thoughtful, well-researched, and at the same time uncompromisingly personal – in recent months, he has made it his business to write about modern-day antisemitism. In fact, his knowledge of Jewish history and culture and ability to articulately explain tropes and dogwhistles used in antisemitic discourse has often put me, his older sister, to shame.

We come from a Jewish family, and growing up I was proud of the legacy of my great-grandparents. For a school history project in Year 9, I wrote about how they escaped the Holocaust but, like almost all Jews, suffered from antisemitism nonetheless – I vividly remember my grandmother telling me how hurt her father was when the Nazi government portrayed Jewish WW1 soldiers as traitors to Germany, despite his and his family’s personal sacrifice to fight for their country during that war.

Nonetheless, I would always tell people that I wasn’t ‘really Jewish’ or a ‘proper Jew’, because I’m not religious. Thanks in part to my brother, and in part to my own self-education, I am now embarrassed at the sheer laissez-faire ignorance of such statements. Judaism is not just a religion, but an ethnicity and a culture, and one which forms an important part of my heritage. And sadly, whether I call myself a ‘real Jew’ or not, that won’t prevent my family and I from experiencing ‘casual’ antisemitism or microaggressions.

For years I brushed off comments implying that I was ‘pretending’ to be Jewish by wearing the star of David necklace that my grandmother had given me, or asking for my hot take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply because I was the only Jewish person they knew, or telling me that Jews were fine, they just had a problem with the existence of Israel. Accordingly, when my grandmother told me that her father had insisted that if he and her mother fled Germany after Hitler’s ascension to power, it would be to Palestine, because he was a Zionist, I was surprised and a little embarrassed – I had come to believe that ‘Zionist’ was a dirty word.

It is only in recent months – again, thanks in large part to my brother – that I have started engaging with Jewish-created educational resources about the history and culture of our own people, and realised how wrong I was.

For a start, Zionism is the belief in the right of Jewish people to self-determination; a human right protected by the UN in international law. It is emphatically not the belief that Palestinians do not also have the same right; most Jews believe that the two groups have an equal right to self-determination, and support a peace process which would allow the two nations to co-exist. This should not be a zero-sum game; Zionism in its true form – as defined by the general consensus of the Jewish community – simply protects the human rights of Jews,  and does not seek to undermine the rights of Palestinians or other groups. Therefore, warping the definition of Zionism, as ‘Western’ media tends to do, to portray it as a movement which is inherently aggressive and even xenophobic, is simply wrong. Not only is it factually inaccurate, it is hugely harmful to Jews everywhere; it demonises a self-protective Jewish movement, and therefore the Jewish people, for no reason other than latent antisemitic biases. Therefore, saying that one is “anti-Zionist” is pretty clearly an antisemitic dogwhistle; it either condones and reinforces the twisting of the definition of Zionism to suit antisemitic agendas, or, if the true definition is intended, denies Jews the same human right granted to all other groups.

Secondly, Jews are ethnically and historically indigenous to the Levant, just as much as Palestinians are. It is a land for both of us. However critical you are of the actions of the Israeli government (and believe me, I’m highly critical), questioning the right of Israel to exist is a fundamentally antisemitic viewpoint. Israel’s right to exist and the actions of Israeli government are not remotely synonymous; and it is worth bearing in mind that double standards are at play here. For no other country do we equate critiquing their government’s policies with stating that that country should cease to exist, but once again Israel – the only Jewish country in the world – is singled out for delegitimisation. Questioning Israel’s right to exist denies Jews the right to self-determination, gaslights us about our own ethnic and cultural history, and delegitimises the existence of the only safe haven for Jews in the entire world, given that we’ve been ejected from or harassed within pretty much everywhere else we’ve existed. 

I have plenty more to say on the subject of modern-day antisemitism, but those are a couple of the major points that I think everybody ought to know – and yet a worrying number do not. This was illustrated to me all too painfully when my brother wrote a short article on the subject of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s antisemitism. I won’t go into the details of that topic here, because it is summarised well within the article. Similarly, you’ll be able to find plenty of information about the subject just by following Jewish content creators on social media, such as @rootsmetals, @evebarlow, @girl.with.a.hamsa.earring, and @progressivejews.

After a quick read of the article and a flush of pride for my brother for raising an awareness about such a difficult and personal topic, what first caught my attention was that there were already, only shortly after the first half of the article was posted on Instagram, 86 comments under it. I started reading through them and was instantly struck by the blatant antisemitism and wilful ignorance displayed – which, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed by now, is what prompted me to stay up too late arguing with people who don’t know me and, frankly, don’t care what I have to say.

There was constant gaslighting. Pro tip: a non-Jewish person doesn’t get to tell a Jewish person what is and what is not antisemitism, and whether our intergenerational trauma (in particular, the Holocaust) can be appropriated and tokenised to make a political point. There were also frequent dogwhistles of the usual “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” type, which I debunked above. Even when my brother reiterated again and again in replies to these comments the actual definition of Zionism – which is after all a Jewish movement and so can only be defined by Jews – they persisted in their blinkered determination to insist that he was wrong.

However, what was most alarming to me was how so many people immediately jumped on a fifteen-year-old Jewish boy’s pointing out of antisemitic behaviour in a well-researched and fact-checked manner to attack him, and placed him under enormous burdens of proof – despite the long list of sources he listed in the comments – rather than just listening and considering modifying their opinions. Defending their own biases seemed to be more important than listening to what marginalised people have to say about their own marginalisation. Why is the default assumption that we are wrong about something which we alone experience?

Antisemitism is already so little talked about apart from when it’s time to bring out the kneejerk Holocaust or Nazi comparisons to score a political point; one problem is that it’s very little mentioned in our news or media (hence no doubt why so few non-Jewish people are even aware of AOC’s track record of antisemitism). Another issue is that of discussion and awareness on an interpersonal level; I don’t remember a non-Jewish person, even friends who know that I am Jewish, ever talking to me unprompted about antisemitism, or so much as sharing a post about it. Frankly, it feels like non-Jewish people just don’t care, and it hurts.

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons for this; one is no doubt the general lack of information or news about antisemitism from non-Jewish sources, which is why I encourage everyone to seek out some Jewish educational resources or content creators, such as those I mentioned above. Another is likely that non-Jews often see Jews as privileged rather than oppressed, due to – you guessed it – age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories, as well as the fact that many (but importantly, not all) Jews are white-passing.

However, that doesn’t stop us from being subject to hate crimes – in England and Wales, Jews made up 19% of the total victims of hate crimes in the year from March 2019 to March 2020, despite comprising under 0.44% of the UK’s population. It also doesn’t prevent more covert and insidious forms of antisemitism, exhibited through social exclusion or microaggressive behaviour. Antisemitism may be distinct in some ways from other forms of racism – for example, many (though importantly not all) Jews are white-passing and therefore benefit from white privilege at the same time as being discriminated against for their Jewishness. However, antisemitism is racism nonetheless, and the prevailing implicit attitude that it’s “not as big a deal” as other forms of oppression is hurtful and misguided.

Please, non-Jews who are reading this: step up and show you care, even a little. Educate yourselves, and do some of the work for us. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting having to deal with this and then taking it upon ourselves to educate others. I don’t want to spend more evenings arguing with strangers on the internet, on my own.

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