Rufus’ first column of the term reviews All-Purpose Poem for State Occasions by Wendy Cope. He will be introducing a different poem to readers alongside each edition of Cherwell.
Known predominantly for The Orange, a heart-warming poem that celebrates life’s simple pleasures, Wendy Cope’s warmth and wit shine throughout her first collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, though especially in this week’s poem All-Purpose Poem for State Occasions.
The nation rejoices or mourns
As this happy or sombre day dawns.
Our eyes will be wet
As we sit round the set,
Neglecting our flowerbeds and lawns.
As Her Majesty rides past the crowd
They’ll be silent or cheer very loud
But whatever they do
It’s undoubtedly true
That they’ll feel patriotic and proud.
In Dundee and Penzance and Ealing
We’re imbued with appropriate feeling:
We’re British and loyal
And love every royal
And tonight we shall drink till we’re reeling.
This poem’s brilliance lies in how it has succinctly captured how a good majority of the British public feel about the monarchy. While it isn’t perfect and it does have a lot of fusty traditions, they’re uniquely British ones which unite us all (usually at the pub).
The poem’s message isn’t that simple, though, and I doubt Cope herself holds such a rosy view. The necessity of an ‘all-purpose’ poem is hardly a compliment: what’s unspoken is that we’d be drowning in (probably quite dull) poems if every minor royal holiday, gala or celebration warranted an ode. Why do you think it is the Poet Laureate only unholsters their pen at suitably momentous events like a birth or death? I’m sure even the monarchy’s staunchest defenders could admit that ‘Ode on His Majesty’s Visit to the Clockmaker’s Guild of Plymouth’ would hardly incite the nation’s royal fervour.
Not adoration, not denunciation… Cope’s poem is warmly nestled in-between. Along with its clean rhyme-scheme and deceptive simplicity, it’s the poem’s abundance of good-humour that makes it so good.
The infamous image of Donald Trump standing, with a Bible, in front of St John’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC in June 2020, was the perfect embodiment of the 45th President’s commitment to reactionary politics in the midst of nationwide racial justice protests. Yet it also pointed to the importance of an often-overlooked component of Trump’s 2016 victory and the modern Republican party– white evangelicals – whose ultra-right-wing social policies have found an enthusiastic home in the GOP.
Crucially, while other constituent groups of Republican voters are motivated by a desire to ‘react’ against modernity or globalisation, the relationship between Trump and evangelicals demonstrates the extent to which the latter group has been transformed. That is, a modern American evangelical movement now seemingly prepared to put right-wing politics above all else, including, it seems, religious integrity.
In the man of Trump this trade-off becomes clear: as a twice-divorced, casino tycoon, his Christian credentials are severly lacking. But crucially, this was also the man who elevated Supreme Court justices in pursuit of an end to federal abortions, among other pro-Christian priorities. Evangelicals’ support for Trump has unsurprisingly been described as ‘largely transactional’. For both sides the opportunity provides a means to an end that involves shunning traditional Christian morality in the name of getting what they want.
But what is this end? It is the political opposition to what evangelicals perceive as a government persecuting them. Governor of California Gavin Newsom’s decision to shut down houses of worship during the Covid pandemic, for them represented the fulfilment of a government-led anti-church prophecy. This is the very idea that Trump invoked at a recent primary rally in Waterloo, Iowa, in which he cast Christians as a group persecuted by an administration “weaponized against them”.
This is but one strand of the ‘Make America Great Again’ philosophy; framed within the context of secular Democrats leading an anti-Christian inquisition, it assumes a particular potency for religious evangelicals. In this sense the GOP has quite literally been preaching to the choir. Yet in Trump seeking to link himself to evangelicals, it’s the so-called ‘nominal’ evangelicals who form the crucial contingent. The nomination of Trump as the 2016 GOP presidential candidate was in large part due to a new sort of evangelical voter; one for whom it is a political and cultural identity, rather than a reason to attend church or promote salvation.
It is in this discrepancy – where according to a 2023 HarrisX poll, Trump is seen as a ‘person of faith’ by more than half of Republicans despite his highly dubious moral record – that encapsulates the ‘politicisation’ of American evangelicalism. Non-attendance at church doesn’t stop evangelicals being guided in their voting by a deep sense of religious imperative. But, the motivation is more likely to come from the political doomsday predictions of David Barton, leader of the ‘American Restoration Tour’, rather than the moral lessons of the Bible.
Evangelicalism has historically emphasised the power of the individual to connect with God, without needing the church. But the correlation between irregular or non-churchgoers and support for Trump in the Republican primaries corresponds with Trump’s national ‘silent majority’. Those of which are formed of voters disconnected from and losing trust in civic institutions, which includes the local church.
Increasingly removed from churches, evangelicalism has become somewhat of a political identity which is synonymous with Trump and Trumpism. Studies such as the 2021 investigation by the Pew Research Centre demonstrates just how powerful this association has become. The study claims that those who were ‘warm’ to Trump were much more likely to convert to ‘evangelicalism’ during Trump’s presidency compared to those who did ‘not [feel] warm’ to him. Evangelicisms part in Reublican politics doesn’t simply lie in terms of voters, but we’re also increasingly witnessing evangelicals and Republican’s identity becoming more and more inseparable. It’s the most extreme believers who would put Christians in charge of the media and education system. And to achieve their goals, they’ve had to dance with the devil (figuratively and literally) to have any chance at political power.
Prominent figures in the evangelical movement have long sought to influence American politics and bring conservative social and religious policies into the mainstream: the 1950s saw the emergence of a ‘fundamentalist’ branch of political evangelicalism, embodied by men such as Jerry Falwell, who sought to oppose racial desegregation and ‘reclaim the nation’. By the 1970s this had evolved into the ‘New Christian Right’, which embraced Nixon’s call for ‘law and order’ and was central to Reagan’s 1980 election victory.
It was during this process, when the evangelicals came to dominate the Republican party, that its candidates were forced to sing from their conservative social and religious hymn sheet, that bound evangelical political fortunes so tightly with those of the GOP. Crucially, Trump has been able to mobilise the same fears of secularism that produced the fundamentalist movement, tying it to a prophecy of secular Democrat apocalypse, in an evangelical movement increasingly likely to prioritise political goals over religious tradition.
There isn’t a better indication of the future of evangelical Republicans aims to re-establish Christianity as the main driver of politics than that of a mid-seventeeth century England. The year 1653 saw the ‘Parliament of Saints’, an assembly of ‘godly men’ designed to accelerate the coming of Christ’s kingdom, which was the shortest political experiment after the civil war and led to Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.
It was an experiment in theocracy that failed miserably. In that case, the religious radicalism espoused by millenarian groups was sidelined, as Cromwell was forced to adapt to the political exigencies of ruling post-civil war England. Providing that America doesn’t just fall into a civil war, the danger with Trump is that he has proven himself to be bound by few, if any, such political or moral constraints. And, American evangelicalism is much the worse for it.
Image credit: Haxorjoe/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
2023 was very much the year of AI. After the birth of ChatGPT, Google Bard, and countless other large-language model (LLM) chatbots, artificial intelligence entered the public consciousness meaningfully for the first time. This year, though, things are set to turn up a notch. As The New York Times kicks off the year with a landmark copyright lawsuit, 2024 could very much be the year that the internet landscape and journalism change forever.
Firstly, it’s worth outlining just what aspects of artificial intelligence are having the most significant impact. For years, machine learning has been a huge part of how the internet works, with everything from advertising to concert tickets learning from user behaviours to improve and personalise online experiences. Last year, though, all of that changed. The release of ChatGPT to the public on the 30th November 2022 revolutionised how the public and businesses saw the technology. All of a sudden, LLMs went from being ‘helpful add-ons’ to potential job stealers and doomsday causers. Microsoft quickly acquired large stakes in OpenAI and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai vowed to “make the competition dance” with the release of its competitor, Google Bard.
These LLMs are a significant change from what went before. Their transformer models have the capability to learn from far larger data sets than was previously the case, ‘tokenise’ that data, and respond to queries in increasingly human-like ways. Without going into too much technical detail, these models rake huge amounts of data from millions of websites, train themselves on that data, and use it to respond to user queries and questions.
Inevitably, after an initial surge in popularity and excitement, publishers, content creators, and basically anyone producing content on the internet became quickly concerned with how copyright might be jeopardised in this scenario. The billions of dollars so far invested in the industry have been almost entirely predicated on the argument of OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman and others that the use of this data falls under ‘fair use’ exemptions from copyright law. In the United States, though, outcomes in cases like these are famously hard to predict, and almost identical cases often have inconsistent results depending on judges and states.
The ‘fair use’ argument that AI bosses use is based on a series of factors. Primarily, the idea is that although these models are trained off millions of websites and articles written by others and covered by copyright law, they are not directly reproducing it. OpenAI and others argue that their use is ‘transformative’, much like a parody of a song or a book review.
A common case referenced here is when Google Books was sued by The Authors Guild in September 2005. In that case, the judges sided with Google. The decision was based on the idea that the company was not building a ‘book substitute’ but instead a search engine and database for different publications.
As you might have guessed by now, many publishers wholly disagree with OpenAI’s reading of the law and on the 27th of December, The New York Times made the first legal move after months of attempted negotiations. The NYT said that those negotiations “had not produced a resolution”, whilst OpenAI said that it was “surprised and disappointed”.
It’s almost impossible to predict an outcome in this specific case. OpenAI and Microsoft are, by all accounts, extremely reluctant to settle with TheNew York Times for fear of thousands of different publishers following suit and queuing up for pay-outs. More likely, it seems, is the eventual establishment of some long-term model to repay writers and publishers.
Already, times are tougher than they have ever been for news sites and journalists. The New York Times is one of the few organisations that has managed to establish a sustainable subscription model in the industry, and other newspapers from around the world have experimented with different models to try to survive. Some, such as The Independent, went online only as early as 2016, but most established similar online subscription models.
Clearly, then, a world in which users can ask chatbots for a summary of the news or even to reproduce entire articles that would otherwise be behind a paywall is extremely problematic for the industry. In this sense, ChatGPT and others are producing clear alternatives to news products and not falling under ‘fair use’ exemptions.
This is just one way in which natural language models are set to transform the internet as we know it in the coming months and years. An entire industry that has been built on search engine optimisation and referral links is about to be shaken up more than could have been imagined just 18 months ago. If users are simply interacting with chatbots, they will no longer have to use search engines such as Google to find information.
It is also true that there are still more questions than answers. If those language models continue to produce the same amount of content for websites as they are at the moment, will their training data be compromised? How will advertising adapt? How are these chatbots even monetisable?
So, the outcome of this particular lawsuit is up in the air and is likely to remain so for months. What is sure, though, is that 2024 will see the internet change in the most significant way since the advent of social media.
It is very easy to extrapolate from the ‘bubbles’ that we live in and assume that most of society thinks just like the people around you. We can mislead ourselves into believing we are witnessing objective reality from our subjective points of view. I have often thought about how I form my understanding of public opinion and sentiment in the two countries I have called home: the UK and Bahrain. Often, my understanding conforms with that of my friends and network. For example, my impression for a long time was that Rishi Sunak’s persona appeals less to the British public than the dry wit and humour of Boris Johnson. That may be stemming from the views of some of my British peers. Some of my other ‘international’ friends disagree, as they think the British public may respond better to the coherent and slick nature of Mr. Sunak. Still, all of us are basing our opinions on our impressions of our differing British friends.
Similarly, back in Bahrain, I have often thought that the public responds well to cosmopolitan parliamentarians, but other friends believe that the politicians that are divisive are actually more popular. Again, we are basing our conceptions off our own individual social circles, and perhaps the comments and engagement we witness on our social media feeds.
This habit is clearly flawed, given one of the best ways of exploring public opinion is through science. Surveys and polls that ground themselves in the scientific method paint a different picture of society that is often overlooked by the general public. However, it is much easier to form our perspective from the experiences and opinions of our network, than it is to research the findings of surveys that we deem credible.
Perhaps that is the problem: is trust in surveys low? Does the criticism of survey sampling methods and analytical models confuse us to think they are less credible than anecdotal evidence? I am not sure, but Pew Research Center asked that very same question: can we still trust polls? For good reason, they concluded yes, but they did acknowledge that polls have rightly come under scrutiny for having failed to predict the results of the consequential in the 2016 US Presidential Election and ‘Brexit’ Referendum.
With that said, the onus of popularizing surveys does not fall only on us, the consumers; it also falls on the producers of these surveys. Apart from a few well-known companies, such as YouGov, most polling organizations do not regularly release the results of their surveys to the general public. They are hidden behind pay walls and are often only accessed through contracts with those with heavy pockets.
It is about time for open survey results to become the norm. At the very least, if detailed analysis is deemed too valuable and time-consuming to share for free, then high-level summaries of the findings would be a step in the right direction.
Data points have social value, and though comparisons have been made between data with other valuable materials such gold and oil, the latter should not be treated as a commodity. Just like the landowners above oil wells received their share of the profits globally, the owners of datums should be able to extract value from the information gathered about them. That value could lie in the social good produced from data analysis. If shared appropriately, the ‘bubbles’ we find ourselves constrained within may well burst.
Moreover, given their social value, why are governments not doing more to improve access to survey data? Through financing via grants, and marketing via government open data portals, governments can play an integral part in providing clarity over the sentiments and opinions of the population on various issues. Furthermore, International organizations, could use their immense leverage over governments on matters of credibility and governance, to incentivize survey provision by ranking countries based on the availability of public opinion survey results.
Perhaps the easiest solution to implement is for media organizations, the most accessible distributors of information, to commission surveys more regularly, and to purchase distribution rights from scientific papers and polling organizations. Understandably, the media tends to ‘self-censor’ when it comes to technical readings, as graphs or numbers may scare away readers, or bore them to another subscription. That is understandable, but if these media companies do not take a bet on even trying to pierce the bubbles each and every one of us exists within, then the future of surveys is insecure and our ability to garner more represnative data will remain limited.
Individuals, governments, and companies can play their part to ensure our societies understand the distribution of opinions across the communities they care about and are part of. It is essential we are aware of the of the diversity around us; surveys help us do just that.
Oxford students have been no strangers to ChatGPT since its much-hyped launch in late 2022. Squabbles about the ethics of its use in research or essay-writing – balancing the potential for efficiency that it offers with the obvious problem of cheating – has acted somewhat like a microcosm of broader debates about A.I. over the last year. Its applications can be incredibly beneficial (as ‘work-hard-not-smart’ types can attest) but they are matched by risks and problems which, until now, countries worldwide have not been confident enough to regulate. But this is beginning to change; and whether you’re a keen ChatGPT user or not, the regulatory future of A.I. will affect you.
It was certainly a long time coming: the European Union’s much-awaited A.I. Act was agreed in the early hours of Saturday 9th December, after days of marathon trilogues (three-way meetings between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission) which spanned 22-hour sessions at a time, with the occasional break for the legislators to sleep. Critics understandably objected to this essay-crisis approach to one of the most important regulatory advancements of the century. But the regulators were racing to surmount objections from powerful opponents which could have delayed the Act by several years, as both member states and tech companies lobbied to limit the regulation. A landmark agreement was finally reached.
This surreal episode, live-tweeted throughout by those in the room, was itself only the final step in a legislative process which began in 2018, when EU regulators began working on the A.I. Act. Of course, this was long before the introduction of general-purpose A.I. models like ChatGPT, whose launch in November 2022 brought both generative A.I. and fears about its applications into the mainstream. The 2021 draft was torn up and re-written to address these developments. Consequently, the new act claims to be ‘future-proof’; whether or not we believe that laws which could take two years to enforce can govern the unknown developments to come, one thing is certain: the A.I. Act is a huge regulatory landmark. It is the beginning of a governance process that will determine the global future of technology, and the future of our society, altogether.
Oxford itself is at the forefront of these legal and philosophical debates, not only because its researchers pioneer crucial technological advancements, but because the Philosophy Faculty now includes an Institute for the Ethics of A.I., which launched in 2021 to conduct independently research into ethics and governance too often undertaken by the companies themselves. John Tasioulas and Caroline Green of Oxford’s Institute for the Ethics of A.I. explain, the Act “strives to avoid the twin perils of under-regulation (failing to protect rights and other values) and over-regulation (stifling technological innovation and the efficient operation of the single market)” by taking a tiered approach. Different A.I. models will be treated very differently: ‘minimal risk’ applications get a free pass, but ‘general-purpose’ models like ChatGPT will have to provide full transparency about everything, from the content used to train the systems, to cybersecurity measures and energy efficiency. The use of A.I. for surveillance purposes (using machine vision for facial recognition, monitoring behaviours, and even predicting future behaviours, Minority Report-style) has largely been banned, except when it’s exceptionally required for a member state’s national security. These last two measures provided serious sticking points: law-makers disagreed about how far surveillance measures should go, and how much general-purpose models should be regulated (they were nearly excluded from the regulation altogether). But the result is on the stricter side, taking a strikingly bold position. The hope is that this won’t preclude innovation: EU Commissioner Thierry Breton called it ‘much more than a rulebook – it’s a launch pad for EU start-ups and researchers to lead the global A.I. race’. Only time will tell if this ambition is realistic.
The road to regulation has been a long and fraught one. This is partly because its progress is so much more fast-moving than democratic legislation can ever be, and partly because of the obvious knowledge deficit. Technological entrepreneurs don’t understand the law, and law-makers don’t understand technology, so each thinks the other is missing the point, and leaves the two at a stalemate. The solution so far has been to let Big Tech just regulate itself – but the various privacy scandals in which the major companies have found themselves over the last decade have shown how little they can be trusted to hold to the rule of law. Think of Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal around the 2016 elections, AT&T’s role in Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA surveillance programmes in 2013, and the antitrust cases (abuses of their market dominance) that Apple, Amazon and Google have all faced in recent months.
Combine this with the existential worries which have followed the release of general-purpose A.I. models, from fears of deepfakes and job losses to a vision of a future dominated by A.I. overlords, and the need for law-makers to step in is clear. These fears were only exacerbated by the recent chaos at OpenAI, which saw CEO Sam Altman deposed and reinstated within a week as the board divided over the importance of A.I. safety. Earlier this year, a group of AI scientists called for a six-month moratorium on developing the technology while regulation was worked out. This certainly seems like a good idea on paper, but how realistic it is has proved another question. After all, profit-driven entrepreneurs are unlikely to stop thinking or planning for a good-faith pact; and the bureaucracy around regulation, as the five-years-and-counting progress of the A.I. Act makes clear, means it is far more than a six-month process.
Rigorous legislation is needed – this much is no longer in question. Countries have avoided being first to take the jump, fearing both the hit to innovation and the disadvantage to national security that restricting A.I. would create. Not for nothing has it been compared to the nuclear arms race: whatever a nation’s leaders might think of its risks, they are unmistakably more vulnerable without it. After all, protecting jobs is crucial, but if rival superpowers use outlawed A.I. to develop biological weaponry, it could become a moot point. The regulatory advances of the USA and UK remain embryonic compared with the AI Act. The US currently has an A.I. Bill of Rights but is unlikely to go much further given the current political gridlock. Rishi Sunak, meanwhile, somewhat modified his pro-innovation attitude by hosting a headline-grabbing A.I. Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023, which produced a collective agreement to protect A.I. safety worldwide. But these nascent efforts have been firmly overshadowed by the EU, which has become the first jurisdiction to not just state but legislate. This is the world’s first proper attempt to do so.
It’s no surprise that this approach has come from the EU. Historically, the US’ market-driven foundation has led to a laissez-faire legislative approach which promotes innovation and technological development above all else, while the EU’s rights-driven model prioritises the rights of users, market fairness and upholding democracy over economic progress. This is borne out in recent EU acts, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which caused a worldwide headache for tech companies and users alike. This was the first proper attempt at protecting data worldwide. Each approach has its pitfalls: the US outstrips the rest of the world in technology, but is arguably responsible for all the dangers that come with it, while the EU protects its citizens far more successfully, but remains on the back foot in terms of what it actually creates. President Macron has publicly attacked the A.I. Act, complaining that “we can decide to regulate much faster and much stronger than our major competitors. But we will regulate things that we will no longer produce or invent. This is never a good idea.” Fears that the EU is becoming an unattractive environment for start-ups are rife, not least because it is far easier for cash-rich incumbent companies to get around the regulations.
What does this mean for the rest of us? It’s fairly likely that the rest of the world will follow suit: Breton claims that “Europe has positioned itself as a pioneer, understanding the importance of its role as global standard setter”. This acknowledges the so-called ‘Brussels Effect’, whereby EU legislation often becomes global practice, partly because of its ideological influence, and partly because it’s easier for tech companies to comply with EU demands worldwide than to adapt for different jurisdictions; hence Apple’s new iPhone has a standard USB-C charger, not its distinctive lightning adaptor, because of a newly enforced EU law. If the effects of the legislation are detrimental enough to Big Tech, however, this might change, and the EU becomes a strikingly different technological climate to the rest of the world. Even enforcing the regulations is likely to be tricky, given cash-rich tech companies’ abilities to appeal court cases indefinitely (or, indeed, to pay the fines required without much of a hit). There’s a long road ahead, even before we anticipate how A.I. itself might have changed by the time the Act is enforced in 2025, let alone in the decades to come, and how the law might have to change to govern it accordingly. This Act is one of landmark significance, and an encouraging step in the right direction; but it’s only the very first step.
Image Credits: Julian Herzog via Wikimedia Commons
Less than ten years ago, Oxford University came under fire for its lack of diversity. The former Minister for Higher Education David Lammy accused the University of “social apartheid” after Freedom of Information requests revealed that nearly one in three Oxford colleges failed to make a single undergraduate offer to a black British A-level student in every year between 2010 and 2015.
Since those remarks, the number of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students at Oxford has risen by nearly ten percent. The last seven years have seen an increased University focus on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) with new targets, new policies, and new committees. The situation has certainly changed, but exactly how much progress has been made? And how much more needs to be done?
Oxford’s EDI policies
All EDI policies and strategies are overseen by Oxford University’s Equality and Diversity Unit (EDU). The Unit is headed by Vernal Scott, who was recently appointed to the role in October after previously leading Diversity and Inclusion for the Essex police. The EDU works to create an inclusive culture and a respectful environment for both students and staff alike. Professor Tim Soutphommasane, the University’s chief diversity officer, told Cherwell: “Our efforts on this are about ensuring we attract and retain the very best students and staff, from all backgrounds and from all parts of the world.”
The University’s EDI policies are rooted in the 2010 Equality Act, which protects identified groups from discrimination, harassment or victimisation. In accordance with the act, Oxford University holds five Equality Objectives:
Diversify the University’s governance structures
Increase the proportions of women and minority ethnic staff in senior roles
Promote the visibility and inclusion of LGBT+ staff and students
Widen undergraduate access and admissions
Eliminate attainment gaps
In July 2018, a strategic plan was developed to improve attainment of these objectives over the next five years, but its execution time was extended by an additional year due to pandemic-related delays in funding and resources.
The Strategic Plan includes 17 commitments and 29 priorities in the themes of education, research, people, engagement and partnership, and resources. Increasing the numbers of students from underrepresented groups, reducing gaps in attainment relating to gender and ethnicity, and achieving a more diverse staffing profile are just a few of the Plan’s aims.
The achievement of these commitments and priorities has been the responsibility of various committees and bodies, made up of the University’s most senior officers, including Pro-Vice-Chancellors and Proctors.
Have EDI policies been a success?
In many ways, Oxford’s EDI policies have achieved a lot. The proportion of admitted UK-domiciled students who identify as BME has risen from 18% to 28%, falling in line with the nationwide student population.
The makeup of the University’s staff has also diversified. Since 2011, the number of women in the most senior academic grade, Statutory Professor, nearly doubled, and there was a 2% increase in the proportion of BME senior researchers between 2020 and 2022.
The proportion of students from different ethnic groups at other UK universities and at Oxford do mostly line up: 12% of all UK students come from Asian backgrounds and 14% of Oxford students do as well. Much of this progress can be credited to the development access programmes, such as Opportunity Oxford and UNIQ.
However, there is no doubt that extensive attainment gaps still remain. For example, only 3.3% of Oxford’s undergraduate admissions are of Black African or Black Caribbean heritage, while the nationwide average across all universities is 9%. Furthermore, TheTimes Good University Guide ranked Oxford as the 13th “whitest university” out of the 24 Russell Group universities.
The proportion of disabled students at Oxford also continues to lag behind the rest of the country. While 17% of UK students have a disability, only 12.8% of Oxford students do.
The University’s Equality Objective to increase the presence of women and ethnic minorities in senior roles has only been partially achieved, falling short of its original goals. As of 2022, 10% of academic staff were BME, compared to a target of 15%. Similarly, women only compose 39% of governance structures, which falls short of the 40% to 60% goal.
While the Strategic Plan has made progress on many of the Equality Objectives – a University Staff experience survey found that 83% of staff felt they were “able to be themselves” at work – some still have a long way to go. The lack of progress on many issues can be explained by difficulties posed by the pandemic and a lack of finance. The progress report in 2019 noted: “Securing funding for planned activities is the major challenge across the Strategic Plan priorities.”
Some have also wondered whether the disjointed and broad nature of the Plan, with numerous priorities covering issues from student diversity to research investments, complicated its implementation and fulfilment of objectives.
When asked if the aims of the Strategic Plan were realistic, Professor Soutphommasane told Cherwell: “We are resolved to build on our progress. That is why we are developing a new collegiate University Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategic plan that will guide the next state of our institutional efforts.”
What do students think?
A recent Cherwell survey found that 74% of students do not think Oxford is an inclusive environment. When asked whether the University’s approach to EDI was effective, only 11% voted “yes,” with 53% voting “only partially.” So despite convergence in admissions statistics and near completion of most objectives, overwhelming student opinion suggests Oxford still has a long way to go toward total Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
One issue seems to be the lack of engagement with students in the implementation of many EDI policies and commitments. All college JCRs have BME or Ethnic Minority representatives, who might be interested in communicating about and providing feedback on the University’s EDI policies as the spokespeople for the students of colour in their colleges.
The University of Oxford seems to agree. It told Cherwell: “Students are central to the University’s EDI approach and Equality Objectives.” Yet only half of surveyed college representatives had heard of the Equality and Diversity Unit, and none of them said they had received any contact from this committee, which is responsible for fostering an inclusive environment at Oxford.
One BME representative told Cherwell: “Our work as BAME Reps is often isolating…I receive no dedicated support or resources from the University or my college.”
The LGBTQ+ Society President had a different perspective. She told Cherwell that, although she had once been a harsh critic of the University’s approach to EDI, she has “since worked with them and realised there is a lot of goodwill and desire to do better.” She further stated the EDU helped facilitate three meetings with the VC which led to tangible results.
The broader difficulty of achieving a unified policy partly stems from Oxford’s collegiate system. With 39 different colleges that each have their own independent governing body, it often seems impossible to expect uniform change.
To combat this, a University Joint Committee on EDI has been established, about which the University told Cherwell: “There are efforts to join-up the work that students and staff are doing across colleges, departments and divisions.”
Over the last decade there has been a concerted effort to improve Oxford’s EDI policies, which has led to undeniable progress. The success of new access schemes and increased attention given to improving this area of University life have led to statistically significant growth in diversity among staff and students.
However, equality, diversity, and inclusion do not just lie in the numbers. Diversity is a step in the right direction but our investigation confirms that there is still a lot of work to do to make Oxford a fully equal and inclusive place for all.
The emails I exchanged with Mark Ford had the paw prints of a poet: frequent ellipses and the sparing sign-off ‘M’, like our interview, only leaves one wanting more.
In conversation, his answers were vibrant, and full-bodied. They took us everywhere from a backpacker’s unwitting exchange of Reeboks for ‘tatty Adidas’, to Twitter’s role in the election of Oxford’s Professor of Poetry, to Bob Dylan.
So, I asked what label he would give himself – podcaster or poet, academic or author? “They’re all connected in various ways. I don’t really consider myself any one thing foremost except when I’m doing that thing.” At any given moment he might be “writing my book on Thomas Hardy so I feel I’m a Hardy critic” – the app I recorded our conversation on had transcribed that to be “hearty critic”, which would arguably be another fitting label – at another point when “I’m tinkering with a poem, I feel like I’m a poet.”
With such freedom, Ford exists multiform in the ether, that place where podcasts will float forever more. For this reason, writing down his ideas will reign supreme over recording them through the foam of a microphone. Ford related: “writing is my raison d’être. No, I wasn’t put on Earth to write but writing is the thing I find most gratifying. And there’s a sense that something that gets published does exist. And in a library, potentially forever.” Even if the rolling waves of a riffed conversation is fun – especially with someone you’ve been through seminars with as Ford did with Perry – “podcasts will disappear into the ether in however many years time.”
As for the writer, inspiration exists in their mind in the abundance of metaverse podcasts. “[Written literary] criticism you can get going on almost any time. Poetry’s a bit more difficult to access. The process of waiting and getting going on a poem is in the lap of the gods.” Poetry, Ford told me, has its own ether: “it all comes from a dreamy, less professional state of mind.” As such, there is an unparalleled “kick” from the so-decided end of a poem against the soft press of the stop-recording button.
And, of course, there ain’t no Keats nor Tennyson to rival in the podcasting world. I sense from Ford relief that “you’re always conscious, as a poet, that it’s not as good as ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ or ‘Ulysses’.” But, as he assures me, it doesn’t matter when you’re writing poetry for poetry’s sake.
If poetry is written for the sake of its words, where does the poet and their biography fit into all of that? To this, Mark Ford spectacularly scrutinises, in awesome succession, the ideas of Paul Muldoon, I.A. Richards, and D.H. Lawrence who all willingly stand for the separation of art from artist. Though, as Lawrence posits, we may not be able to trust the teller, Ford believes in “creating and communicating with a more general audience” which has an enthusiasm for a “contextualised poetic narrative” as opposed to focusing on the “internal patterning” of granular poetic technique.
Where it all gets a bit psychedelic, then, is when the poet deliberately merges the real and unreal. And Mark Ford has palpable fun with this. “I suppose that most people who enjoy poetry see little point in calling it real or unreal. And they are surely right,” writes John Bayley in the 1962 lecture that Ford referred to as the reason he reads Keats the way he does now. For Ford, sometimes it can be “criticism which is the most powerful”. It can be conflicting perceptions of reality – a critic’s interpretation will never be the same as the poet’s own – which make “experiencing life and literature invigorating, original and fresh.”
But nothing would be as powerful, it seems, as the dubious tea leaves that appeared at the bottom of a bottle of wine shared with strangers on a train from Barcelona to Madrid. This, as I was informed, is behind his poem ‘Unreal’.
“Your poem, ‘Unreal’,” I asked incredulously, “was it in fact unreal?”
And, unlike the poems which come to him in his dreams, he said, “No, that one is completely true.”
On this train, “I was 21. I was in a carriage with two guys who were very friendly and gave me some wine to drink. [A few beats…] When I woke up, I was in Madrid and the train had been stopped for a couple of hours. And the weird thing was [though this already seems a bit strange], these people took my new Reeboks and left me with a pair of quite tatty Adidas shoes. So I was padding around Madrid for the next four days trying to get my passport and some money.”
Much of ‘Unreal’ does take place in Ford’s dream state – just when the tea leaves hit. It is “a catalogue of cities whose name derives from Adidas shoes and I was slightly parodying T.S. Eliot’s use of cities in The Waste Land,” an equally unreal poem. Yet, attaching it to a poet-past makes the poem more real even if that is to recount a state of unreality. You see, you get intriguingly “topsy turvy”, a phrase which Ford made multiple use of throughout the interview.
Just as Ford attended Bayley’s seminars with future co-host, Seamus Perry, these metaphysics must have rung prophetically real. Unreality paves the way to Ford’s current reality.
Last year, Ford was in the running for Oxford’s Professor of Poetry. It’s apparently a piece of cake: “you just write a brief blurb and then you contact your friends and ask them to vote for you.” Ford modestly forgets to mention that you must have a substantial inventory of Auden (Professor of Poetry 1956)-tier poetry to be nominated. And a relatively small number of enemies to be elected. Ford told me “there were about 300 votes cast for Auden. Now, I think about 900 people vote. But there must have been 100,000 more who might have voted.” I think he leans towards suggesting the position has become about who you know, rather than what.
Ford said: “It was a lark and it was good for me really. I plotted out the lectures I would have written. I listened to Alice Oswald’s lectures which came from a rigorously, mystically almost, poetic kind of perspective. But I’m an academic, I give lectures on academic subjects and that’s what I feel comfortable talking about.” So all in all, “it would have been fun.”
In the sphere of unreality, I wondered if the incumbent Professor of Poetry, A.E. Stallings’ Twitter activity could have had anything to do with her recent success. Ford, who is not active on social media, proposed that “social media alters much of what gets picked up and becomes current. But, I’m a bit fuddy-duddy that way and I suppose I feel I don’t quite have time for it. But that could be a foolish thing to say because there’s no point in writing lots of things if no one hears about them.” If social media were the only way to get readership, Ford would get involved. For now, it’s not. For now, you can toy with the belief and disbelief, reality and unreality of Mark Ford’s work in libraries and with ‘tatty’ copies passed thoughtfully between friends.
Mark Ford and Seamus Perry are releasing a new series of podcasts with the London Review of Books on the politics of and political literature later this year.
With enormous thanks to Mark Ford for giving his time for this interview.
A team led by Professor Patrick Irwin of Oxford University’s Department of Physics found that Neptune and Uranus are both pale blue-green, not deep navy blue as is commonly believed. The main purpose of their study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was to explain why Uranus’s colour changes throughout its year.
Scientists have also long been puzzled by why Uranus is greener during its summer and winter but takes on a blue tinge during its spring and autumn. The planet’s spin patterns – with one of its poles pointing toward the Earth and the Sun continuously during its solstices – contributes to differences in its reflectivity.
Through comparing the spectra of Uranus’s poles to its equatorial regions, the Oxford researchers found that poles appear greener during solstices because of a lower concentration of methane and increased reflection from methane ice particles. Their study settles the question of why Uranus’s colour shifts over its 84-year orbit around the Sun.
In order to figure this out, two clashing observations about the colour similarity between Neptune and Uranus had to be sorted out. Irwin said that this endeavour ”opened up a complete rabbit hole for me as I learnt how the eye perceives colour and how sRGB monitors reproduce colour images on a screen.”
It turns out that photos showing a blue Neptune had been edited to make dark features easier to see, a fact which “became increasingly overlooked with time, and gave rise to a long-standing misunderstanding on what the true colours of these two planets actually are” according to Irwin.
Rebalancing old images using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the researchers found that both ice giants are similar in shade. Compared to Uranus, Neptune is slightly bluer due to “a thinner haze layer.”
When asked about what remains to be discovered about these two planets, Irwin pointed to our inability to explain the overall variation in absolute reflectivity depending on Uranus’s distance from the Sun. However he is hopeful about the new high-precision data from the JWST: “As soon as we’ve figured out the best interpretation of the observations we’ll let everyone know!”
Image Credits: Richard Vince via Wikimedia Commons
Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital has announced increased levels of pressure in the midst of junior doctor strikes lasting six days. An Operational Pressure Escalation Level (OPEL) 4 has been declared, the highest level on the framework, signalling an increased risk of compromised patient care and safety.
Junior doctors have taken part in over 30 days of strikes since March 2023, demanding a 35% pay increase. Last month, negotiations broke down between the British Medical Association and the government, leading to a three-day strike in December and the subsequent action this year. The six-day strike is the longest industrial action in NHS history, lasting from the the third to the ninth of January.
Alongside Horton General Hospital, John Radcliffe has asked staff to take steps to ease pressures on services, including discharging patients as soon as they are ready to leave and rescheduling some elective procedures. In line with national aims, accident and emergency departments are being prioritised over non-urgent needs. Chief Operating Officer Sara Randall said: “We are working with our systems partners to ensure that patients who are ready to continue their recovery at home and leave our hospitals are able to do so in a timely manner. This frees up beds for patients who need to be admitted.”
Oxfordshire hospitals have been under increasing strain, with only 62% of A&E patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within the four hour target. Last winter, Oxfordshire went into OPEL 4 for one day, while remaining in OPEL 3 across the season. Ms Randall observed: “As is often the case at this time of year, the Trust is under a lot of pressure with high numbers of patients attending our hospitals and many of those needing to be admitted. Increased attendance at A&E departments, staff shortages, and reduced patient discharge have contributed to the increased pressure, accompanying the industrial action.”
Ms Randall commented on the strikes: “This industrial action is going to be very challenging for us because the beginning of January is always a particularly busy time for the NHS. We are working hard to ensure the safety of all our patients, and the wellbeing of our staff.
“It is highly likely that waiting times for our urgent and emergency care services will be longer. Our Emergency Department colleagues are working exceptionally hard, and have to prioritise patients who genuinely need emergency care.”
An employment tribunal will be convened in Reading this January to look into problems associated with short-term and casual employment contracts at Oxford University, identified by the UCU (University and College Union) as significant causes of poverty.
The tribunal has been organised in light of a survey conducted in Trinity term of 2023 by the UCU, which later led to an October 2023 report written by the UCU in conjunction with academic staff currently working within the university.
The report drew attention to the prevalence of poverty among Oxford University’s academic staff employed either by colleges or by the OUDCE (Oxford University Department for Continuing Education) – in the report, hundreds were said to be affected. This high risk of poverty is both caused and compounded by the fact that staff find themselves in a precarious ongoing cycle of short-term job contracts which, for some, has reportedly lasted for decades. 44.9% of those surveyed reported feeling “very bad” about their job security.
The report found that those paid by the hour often have an overall pay which amounts to less than the National Minimum Wage, while those who have a set wage tend to be on “casual” short-term contracts with an income 60% less than the average UK annual household income.
The UCU laid out their aim in writing the report: “First… to raise awareness in Oxford… for the staff employed by the Collegiate University, it specifically aims to produce useful knowledge for local campaigns. Secondly… [the report] is intended for Senior Management at the University and its constituent Colleges.”
A spokesperson for the UCU has stated that, though the subject of the report is largely a systemic issue, employers still have the power to make change.
Oxford academics Rebecca Abrams and Alice Jolly spoke out about the “inappropriate precarious casual contracts for teaching staff” almost a year ago. They have since spoken at the Watford employment tribunal on 16 November 2023. Their complaints will continue to be addressed at the tribunal taking place in January.
The report also refers to the unmanageable workloads faced by academic staff who occupy casualised roles and must juggle multiple roles which “together amount to far more than full-time equivalent hours.” Women, who, according to the survey, are more likely to occupy casual roles, are particularly impacted.
The lack of longer-term contracts helps uphold a lack of diversity at the University, according to the UCU.
An Oxford student told Cherwell: “It is shameful to see reports of these contracts employees are made to suffer. Being a student at this world class institution I want to feel pride in my time here but instead I feel disgusted at how the university treats its staff. Demands for fair working conditions and pay are nothing more than reasonable and I hope the University takes a New Year’s resolution to guarantee this.”
In light of the information released in the Union’s report, a spokesperson for Oxford University has said that the OUDCE is currently in the process of reforming its structure following an external review. Changes to the employment structure of the OUDCE are set to be implemented in the academic year of 2024-2025.
What Trump tells us about modern American evangelicalism
The infamous image of Donald Trump standing, with a Bible, in front of St John’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC in June 2020, was the perfect embodiment of the 45th President’s commitment to reactionary politics in the midst of nationwide racial justice protests. Yet it also pointed to the importance of an often-overlooked component of Trump’s 2016 victory and the modern Republican party– white evangelicals – whose ultra-right-wing social policies have found an enthusiastic home in the GOP.
Crucially, while other constituent groups of Republican voters are motivated by a desire to ‘react’ against modernity or globalisation, the relationship between Trump and evangelicals demonstrates the extent to which the latter group has been transformed. That is, a modern American evangelical movement now seemingly prepared to put right-wing politics above all else, including, it seems, religious integrity.
In the man of Trump this trade-off becomes clear: as a twice-divorced, casino tycoon, his Christian credentials are severly lacking. But crucially, this was also the man who elevated Supreme Court justices in pursuit of an end to federal abortions, among other pro-Christian priorities. Evangelicals’ support for Trump has unsurprisingly been described as ‘largely transactional’. For both sides the opportunity provides a means to an end that involves shunning traditional Christian morality in the name of getting what they want.
But what is this end? It is the political opposition to what evangelicals perceive as a government persecuting them. Governor of California Gavin Newsom’s decision to shut down houses of worship during the Covid pandemic, for them represented the fulfilment of a government-led anti-church prophecy. This is the very idea that Trump invoked at a recent primary rally in Waterloo, Iowa, in which he cast Christians as a group persecuted by an administration “weaponized against them”.
This is but one strand of the ‘Make America Great Again’ philosophy; framed within the context of secular Democrats leading an anti-Christian inquisition, it assumes a particular potency for religious evangelicals. In this sense the GOP has quite literally been preaching to the choir. Yet in Trump seeking to link himself to evangelicals, it’s the so-called ‘nominal’ evangelicals who form the crucial contingent. The nomination of Trump as the 2016 GOP presidential candidate was in large part due to a new sort of evangelical voter; one for whom it is a political and cultural identity, rather than a reason to attend church or promote salvation.
It is in this discrepancy – where according to a 2023 HarrisX poll, Trump is seen as a ‘person of faith’ by more than half of Republicans despite his highly dubious moral record – that encapsulates the ‘politicisation’ of American evangelicalism. Non-attendance at church doesn’t stop evangelicals being guided in their voting by a deep sense of religious imperative. But, the motivation is more likely to come from the political doomsday predictions of David Barton, leader of the ‘American Restoration Tour’, rather than the moral lessons of the Bible.
Evangelicalism has historically emphasised the power of the individual to connect with God, without needing the church. But the correlation between irregular or non-churchgoers and support for Trump in the Republican primaries corresponds with Trump’s national ‘silent majority’. Those of which are formed of voters disconnected from and losing trust in civic institutions, which includes the local church.
Increasingly removed from churches, evangelicalism has become somewhat of a political identity which is synonymous with Trump and Trumpism. Studies such as the 2021 investigation by the Pew Research Centre demonstrates just how powerful this association has become. The study claims that those who were ‘warm’ to Trump were much more likely to convert to ‘evangelicalism’ during Trump’s presidency compared to those who did ‘not [feel] warm’ to him. Evangelicisms part in Reublican politics doesn’t simply lie in terms of voters, but we’re also increasingly witnessing evangelicals and Republican’s identity becoming more and more inseparable. It’s the most extreme believers who would put Christians in charge of the media and education system. And to achieve their goals, they’ve had to dance with the devil (figuratively and literally) to have any chance at political power.
Prominent figures in the evangelical movement have long sought to influence American politics and bring conservative social and religious policies into the mainstream: the 1950s saw the emergence of a ‘fundamentalist’ branch of political evangelicalism, embodied by men such as Jerry Falwell, who sought to oppose racial desegregation and ‘reclaim the nation’. By the 1970s this had evolved into the ‘New Christian Right’, which embraced Nixon’s call for ‘law and order’ and was central to Reagan’s 1980 election victory.
It was during this process, when the evangelicals came to dominate the Republican party, that its candidates were forced to sing from their conservative social and religious hymn sheet, that bound evangelical political fortunes so tightly with those of the GOP. Crucially, Trump has been able to mobilise the same fears of secularism that produced the fundamentalist movement, tying it to a prophecy of secular Democrat apocalypse, in an evangelical movement increasingly likely to prioritise political goals over religious tradition.
There isn’t a better indication of the future of evangelical Republicans aims to re-establish Christianity as the main driver of politics than that of a mid-seventeeth century England. The year 1653 saw the ‘Parliament of Saints’, an assembly of ‘godly men’ designed to accelerate the coming of Christ’s kingdom, which was the shortest political experiment after the civil war and led to Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.
It was an experiment in theocracy that failed miserably. In that case, the religious radicalism espoused by millenarian groups was sidelined, as Cromwell was forced to adapt to the political exigencies of ruling post-civil war England. Providing that America doesn’t just fall into a civil war, the danger with Trump is that he has proven himself to be bound by few, if any, such political or moral constraints. And, American evangelicalism is much the worse for it.