Friday 4th July 2025
Blog Page 78

Imran Khan not on Oxford Chancellor candidates list

Cherwell News and Investigations Section Editors
-
0
Imran Khan not on Oxford Chancellor candidates list

Imran Khan is not on the list of 38 candidates for Chancellor, according to a press release from Oxford University, despite Khan’s intention to run.

The University stated that applicants were considered solely on four exclusion criteria. Three of them – cannot be a student of the University, cannot be an employee of the University, cannot be a member or candidate for an elected legislature – do not apply to Khan. The fourth criteria states that the candidate must not be “disqualified from being a charity trustee by virtue of section 178 of the Charities Act 2011” and must be a “fit and proper person” as determined by His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.

The Charities Act disqualified persons convicted of “an offence, not specified in section 178A, that involves dishonesty or deception”. Khan has not been convicted of any offences in section 178A, which include bribery and terrorism offences. 

Khan’s advisor Sayed Bukhari told Cherwell: “It’s extremely disappointed to see Oxford University come to this unwarranted decision. Imran khan is legally eligible to run for the election. Oxford University has missed a trick to be a global trend setter. Lawyers have asked the university for its reasons. On behalf of Imran Khan, I wish all the candidates the best of luck with their campaign and election.”

When Cherwell contacted the University regarding which exclusion criteria Khan was disqualified for, the spokesperson declined to comment.

The former prime minister of Pakistan, Khan is currently in prison on remand due to a corruption charge relating to his time in office. 

The list of candidates:

Aftab, Sidra

Ahmad, Hasanat

Ammora, Ayham

Angiolini, Elish

Baig, Anwar

Bhandari, Ankur Shiv

Bhangal, Nirpal Singh Paul

Bilal, Kashif

Bruce, Alastair

Callaghan, George

Casely-Hayford, Margaret

Catlin, Graham

Connor, Mei Rose

Dandy, Emma

Farooqi, Azeem

Firth, Matthew

Grieve, Dominic

Hague, William

Heiming, Lyn Michelle

Ivatts, Benjamin

Kay, Simon

Mandelson, Peter

Miake-Lye, Ryn

Moxham, Angie

Muhammad Hafiz Shaikh, Shaikh Aftab Ahmad Javaid

Parr-Reid, Maxim

Pasha, Alam

Pethiyagoda, Kadira

Rauf, Kashmaila

Royall, Jan

Shah, Talha

Shapoo, Abrar ul Hassan

Stratton, Harry

Tajik, Tanya

Tarvadi, Pratik

Vladovici Poplauschi, Francisc

Wang, Xingang

Willetts, David

Students split on latest UCAS changes

Florence Wolter
-
0
Students split on latest UCAS changes

The one-page personal statement has long been a staple of the UCAS undergraduate application process. Readers will likely remember their own drafts and redrafts, and hope that their tutors do not. But this rite of passage is to be replaced from 2026. Aspiring students will instead be faced with three focused questions:

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject?

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

UCAS’ reform comes despite acknowledgement that 72% of respondents to a 2022 applicant survey felt positive about the personal statement in its current format, while 89% found its purpose either “extremely clear” or “clear”. The organisation noted, however, that 83% found the writing process to be stressful, with 79% agreeing that “the statement is difficult to complete without support”. This survey identifies the two key issues targeted by the reform: students’ stress and resource inequity. 

The reform attempts to combat this through “scaffolding questions [which] offer students a roadmap, breaking them down into manageable parts.” Among a sample group of Year 12 students surveyed for Cherwell, 69% agreed with UCAS’ assessment, suggesting that this “roadmap” might indeed give students a clearer vision of the end product. 

Implied is that resolving students’ apprehension towards the daunting prospect of staring at a blank A4 page should encourage more students to write with confidence. Students might also be less reliant on the wildly varying resources of their home, and crucially school, support systems. Access Fellow Dr Matthew Williams told Cherwell that “the statement contents are difficult to verify, and there is a correlation between impressive statements and relative economic advantage.” The hope, as UCAS phrases with its apt schoolground metaphor, is that “the new scaffolding questions level the playing field”.

Tight structure, though, comes at the cost of creativity and individuality. UCAS itself quoted one anonymous student saying that “I felt [the old format] made my application more personal and about more than my grades because I am so much more than just my grades!” The sample group expressed similar views. One student offered a two sided reaction, demonstrating confidence that “being able to answer more specific questions feels like I can definitely answer what the universities want to know about me.”

This was balanced by concerns that “I also do want to have the creativity that you get in a personal statement because I like the idea of being able to … talk about who I am as a person”. Another student agreed, describing the “zoomed in” questions as “restricting” and lacking the flexibility to give adequate weight to “other things I probably would have said in a personal statement” which she felt would have given universities “an insight into who they’re taking on.”

For Oxford, one insight that the reform may enable is “what else [applicants] have done to prepare outside of education”. Dr Williams suggested that this “will be especially useful to us in Oxford” as it “will capture data on supercurricular work.” Though he cautioned that Oxford “ will continue to read the personal statements, but in conjunction with other, more verifiable, data.”

This change comes in the wake of broader UCAS reform. In 2022, widening participation questions were added; in 2023, the academic reference was changed to three contextualising questions, complemented by new “entry grade reports” of universities’ “historical grades on entry data” for students to better understand offer flexibility.

These were not, however, the radical overhaul of the application process that UCAS had wanted to make. UCAS’ 2021 Reimagining UK Admissions report called for the adoption of a post-qualification admissions (PQA) system. This means that the university application process would only begin after students had already completed their qualifications and received their grades. 

In its response, the Department for Education (under the 2019-2022 Johnson Conservative government) admitted that many “felt that PQA would promote social mobility, remove concerns about the unfairness of predicted grades, or encourage more aspirational choices”. Predicted grades – whose inaccuracies disproportionately impact disadvantaged students – would be made redundant. Meanwhile, exam confidence would no longer hinder ambition as applicants could apply to institutions according to their results.

However, the Department for Education (DfE) recorded that there were also concerns that PQA would negatively impact engagement in schools’ support systems for the duration of the application process if it were undertaken after students had already effectively completed their education there. It listed this concern among its reasons in its decision not to move to PQA despite UCAS’ advice and a two-thirds majority of support during consultation. 

Rather than redressing resource imbalances, which fundamentally undermine fairness under any admissions system, the DfE hopes to mitigate these effects through small-scale reform: syphoning the personal statement into strict categories. Whether this simplification will meaningfully impact admissions equality remains to be seen, though in the meantime applicants can progress with more confidence than creativity. 

Which raises the question… DfE, why do you want to pursue this course?

The ‘cult’ that recruited Oxbridge students… including me

Laurence Cooke
-
0
The ‘cult’ that recruited Oxbridge students… including me

“So, do you think it’s really a cult?” 

This question was met with nods of assent among the group I was sitting with, as we sipped our coffees on the 2nd floor of a Berlin conference centre. It had been barely a month since I was introduced to the movement known as Effective Altruism (EA). Thousands of dollars of crypto money later, I was chatting with Oxford finalists, civil servants, and researchers – most of whom cheerfully admitted that there was a quasi-religious fanaticism about the organisation that was hosting us. I was barely seventeen at the time. 

I’ll slow down. Effective Altruism defines itself as “an intellectual project, using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible.” It then seeks to take action on this basis to build a “radically better world”. Its adherents, EAs, endorse the guiding principles of a utilitarian commitment to others, openness (including to potentially strange or neglected ideas), a scientific mindset, a collaborative spirit, and integrity. And yet unfortunately on this last point, I’m willing to bet that if you’d heard of Effective Altruism coming into this article, it was quite possibly because of convicted crypto fraudster and former EA donor Sam Bankman-Fried who has now been sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

In 2022, I participated in the Leaf programme. This was an all-inclusive 10-day summer school hosted at Lady Margaret Hall. Its goal was to direct some young minds towards a career that would produce the most good and so help alleviate suffering. Effective Altruism, through Leaf, spent a large amount of money – over £2,000 per participant – to target promising future Oxbridge students. We were lavished with job advice, a free residential in Oxford, restaurant meals each night, outings to escape rooms, evenings at bowling alleys, and the like. In exchange, we attended sessions on prioritising causes, identifying neglected suffering, and planning our impactful careers. We chose between helping agonised farm animals and stopping the creation of potent bioweapons. We weighed up whether a malign artificial intelligence and the “lock in” of techno-dictatorship was the biggest threat of all. 

We had been chosen, it was rumoured, out of a highly competitive pool of potential future decision-makers. The cost of gathering us in Oxford in this way was outweighed by our potential to do good in our lives. If even one of us could do something really impactful, it would all be worth it. Leaf knew we were probably going to Oxbridge and it knew that this was something that could be leveraged. Indeed, its website now uses this foresight as an advertising tool. We are the alumni – the website proudly declares alongside our glossy photographs – who are now at LSE, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge. I’m even in their promotional video. This might seem fairly standard among private schools and for-profit application academies. But Leaf was different. I was struck by the overriding ambition of the project: an earnest, secular dedication to producing the most good. 

This kind of talk – like the phrase “producing the most good” – will start to sound quite familiar to philosophy students. Effective Altruism, after all, is just a movement that seeks to apply utilitarianism to one’s career choices. The greatest happiness and the least suffering – whoever feels it, and crucially whenever they feel it. When we arrived at Leaf – not yet inducted into EA’s manner of consequentialist, calculating ratiocination – we were struck by the unintuitive conclusions we were at times led to. I don’t believe we were all convinced that we ought to deprioritise global poverty and climate change over ‘x risks’ – potential extinction events such as an asteroid strike, AI overlord, or nuclear winter that could irreversibly curtail humanity’s happiness. Yet this was exactly the direction in which discussion was headed. 

One graduate from Leaf’s comments to Cherwell about their experiences highlight the mental training required to adopt an Effective Altruist mindset. “I feel I ultimately came away from Leaf thinking that the EA approach is far too numerical and lacks the human empathy needed to solve the world’s most pressing problems.” Required reading prior to the programme included Julia Galef’s acclaimed book The Scout Mindset, which seeks to encourage people to objectively survey the intellectual terrain as “scouts” rather than ferociously defend a pre-existing point of view as “soldiers”. Yet this does not – or ought not – to extend to a sense – even if only among some within the Leaf cohort –  that human empathy was sidelined. We were 17 year olds, assessing problems whose magnitude many would spend their whole lives unable to comprehend, in one hour sessions and group presentations. 

Yet we learnt the terminology, the rules of the game. Part of the reason I believe people compare EA’s internal architecture to that of a cult of sorts is because it comes with its own metalanguage and distinct way of making decisions. Cause prioritisation, diminishing marginal utility, expected value: this logic is useful (I may even say vital) in working out where charity money should go. It always boils down to how much suffering can be avoided, and how quickly and cheaply. Give money to fund malaria nets, not expand the donkey sanctuary. But where EA took all this further was by inviting it into our conception of what would make our lives worthwhile. Dedicate all your efforts to tackling the biggest problems, leave everything else behind.

Where this had the potential to go astray was when the pursuit of reducing suffering led to an attitude in which the end justified the means. At Leaf, we were shown promotional videos of Sam Bankman-Fried that presented him as nothing short of a saint. We found his “earning to give” strategy – work in finance to earn as much as possible, then donate it all to charity – blindingly shortsighted. It made no mention of the unsustainable future of cryptocurrencies. Nor of the fact that getting rich quick in the Global North may be reinforcing a highly unequal political system that most ethics – including utilitarianism – will usually condemn. That Bankman-Fried still had pennies left over for a villa in the Bahamas didn’t help convince us either. I think this – one of our first interactions with the movement – would now be acknowledged as a mistake. 

Furthermore, EA stunned us with its political neutrality. It was as though we just needed to apply a logical, centrist/social democratic algorithm and our problems would disappear. In some ways, this is very convincing. I do believe that politics neglects issues that lead to a large amount of suffering, not least that of animals in factory farms. Short electoral cycles mean that we never look to the longer term. The problem many people had here, however, was in practice, not principle. By assuming that problems could be magicked away by a sufficient amount of money, I recall a Leaf friend insisting to me, no questions were asked of the systems that produced these problems in the first place. Perhaps in contrast to most centre-left cultural movements, discussions of colonialism, gender, and class were not the order of the day. They made way for galling talk of species, weapons, and robots. 

The political blindness of EA’s cool-headed utilitarianism may ring some alarm bells when we look at adjacent movements and offshoots. Amongst these is pronatalism, a practice among some Effective Altruist couples to have as many children as possible, doing their bit to avert ageing populations and a subsequent demographic collapse. The most fervent pronatalists are allies of Elon Musk and JD Vance. Others may oppose birth control, and resort to parenting practices that are tantamount to abuse. The overwhelming negative utility of adopting such a Gileadean setup seems to be ignored in the race for more people. More people, more potential for maximised pleasure. 

Another, far more influential strand, is that of longtermism. It’s the view that taking steps now to affect the distant future is a moral priority. This is because future people, due to their sheer number, are at least as (and probably more) important than people alive today. If you think 8 billion can suffer now, just wait till you see the trillions deprived of existence should an extinction event come to pass. Many find that this kind of ‘strong’ longtermism – distinct from general concern regarding the environmental legacy left to our children and grand-children –  could pose some pretty serious risks for individual liberty, democracy, and people living in poverty today. 

Yet this is not a philosophy article: I’d refer you to my half-baked 1am tutorial essays for that. So I won’t say any more on pronatalism or longtermism. The examples serve to demonstrate that Effective Altruism requires some significant moral courage, and a willingness to endorse ideas that many would term controversial, to say the least. Returning to my original anecdote, you can imagine my shock that these ‘edgy’ ideas were not only endorsed by Oxford students – the people my 16 year old self aspired to be – but also by alumni in walks of life as varied as business, tech, the NGO sector, and government. And they all were happy to consider – and perhaps agree – that the vehicle behind all of this may well be quite odd, and actually – some would have it – a cult where basic principles could not be questioned. 

Perhaps this comes most clearly to the fore in the supposed ‘cause area’ of ‘community building’. Considered on a similar scale of importance to addressing global risks, it refers to growing the Effective Altruism community with chapters and cause area groups in cities and university campuses across the world. According to the EA website 80,000 Hours, “We think work on building effective altruism has the potential for a very large positive impact. It seems plausible that the effective altruism community could eventually save 100–1,000 million quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) per year by causing $10–100 billion per year to be spent on much more effective projects. As an alternative measure, it seems plausible that the effective altruism community could do good equivalent to reducing the risk of human extinction by between 1% and 10%. These estimates are extremely rough and uncertain.”

In other words, Effective Altruism believes, or even knows (although through “rough and uncertain estimates”) that it is potentially an extremely significant force on the survival or extinction of humanity. Defined like this, it seems unsurprising that zealous expansion of the organisation’s inner functions would be seen as a priority. Maybe it’s here that things go off track. A Leaf alumnus told me: “[t]he core concept of EA is a noble one, but as an organisation it has become far too preoccupied with expanding its membership, rather than actually seeking to help the most people.” The fear, it seems, is that a movement that began to try and address global poverty more effectively becomes far too self-absorbed. 

Effective Altruism, since it did have  some very rich donors, had lots of money to spend in 2022. It was their (likely honest) generosity in trying to help people come together to do good that was arguably exploited by others. I noticed this on a personal level too. Leaf taught us how to be EAs, yet I fear that too many of my zealous new co-converts actually had their eyes on essay prizes (which could run into thousands of pounds of spending money) and fully-funded trips to European capitals.

In their urge to get the best people closer to the levers of power in order to do good, Effective Altruism had accidentally allowed itself, in some cases, to be exploited by Oxbridge-bound careerists and free-riders who did not care about the question of if a pea plant could suffer, and were not planning on giving their performance bonus to charity. At a personal level, this is my worry when I wonder how many of my fellow Leaf alumni have internalised what I consider to be one of the most positive upshots of the whole thing: a desire to help others and not just be a useless corporate spreadsheet-filler. 

In boasting of its Oxbridge alumni, Leaf may have  simply come to reflect the normal career destinations of most Oxbridge students, which typically do not include selfless donations of the majority of one’s wages to charity nor life as an animal rights charity entrepreneur. Instead, my experience was in many ways a portent of my life at St John’s College, with its free or highly subsidised trips, the sense of self-importance it gives its students, the idyllic setting, and perhaps most interestingly, the sense that I was mixing with people from a new social milieu.

I remember arriving at Leaf and realising that several participants already seemed to know each other: they had gone to the same group of aspirational, LinkedIn-able grammar schools. Leaf alumni now are thriving across Oxbridge: they achieve high grades, study a range of subjects, and help lead student societies like the Oxford Union, Cherwell, and [Cambridge student newspaper] Varsity. 

The experiences of Leaf brought benefits for the students present who had not necessarily been destined for such a schooling and career trajectory. “Leaf was the first time I had been exposed to the Oxbridge style of learning, both in the sessions and with the other participants. The intense debates about how best to do good have stuck with me, and continued to influence my thinking about how to do good with my career.”, a working class alumnus tells me. 

This article has discussed numerous criticisms of Effective Altruism. However, it is undeniable that it has also influenced me very profoundly. While I am no longer formally involved in any way, it is still a priority of mine to have a career that has a positive impact. At the very least I don’t want to ‘sell out’ and contribute to a negative system, all just to earn money that I don’t really need. I stop short at quantifying to exactitude the sector in which I must work. Broadly speaking, EA may have done its job for me. However, I fear that for too many of Leaf’s alumni, this was just a stepping stone towards other things. The moral lesson was never truly internalised. 

This being said, there is evidence that some Leaf alumni have been directed towards meaningful, moral careers. Jamie Harris, Director of Leaf, when approached by Cherwell for comment, remarked: “Leaf often reminds me of many young people’s vast potential to help others. We have Leaf alumni still at school researching ambitious questions like how they can improve government decision-making, taking actions that directly make a difference like fundraising for cost-effective charities to help people in poverty, and continuing to explore how they can best help others over the course of their career.” 

Since Leaf, I have been vegetarian on the basis of trying to fight industrial factory farming and its colossal toll on the billions of animals who suffer in the most atrocious conditions. I take non-human consciousnesses more seriously. I stress about the meaningfulness of my career far more than I probably would have. I met my girlfriend whom I have been with ever since. If I had not met Effective Altruism, it is unclear whether these things would have happened to me. 

Effective Altruism has struggled to shake off negative media attention and nagging worries about its cult-like status. Yet perhaps in the world we live in, to attack movements that seek to demand a higher standard of altruism from us is to play a dangerous game. I still bump into Leaf alumni all around Oxford, and only time will tell whether EA’s attempt to change the futures of a generation of Oxbridge’s best and brightest will be successful. 


EA Oxford were approached for comment. 

Why get up? Why keep going?

Roy Shinar Cohen
-
0
Why get up? Why keep going?

At Oxford, and maybe also elsewhere, I am weird. I am a mature, international student, which means my Oxford experience is quite different from the 18-year-old, ‘classic Oxford experience’ – I am probably missing out on many house parties and the vibe of Atik on a Wednesday, but coming to Oxford later I can better experience the joy of university life.

Before coming to Oxford I worked as a research analyst for four years, both as part of my mandatory national service and at a private think tank. These experiences showed me what some at university may refer to as ‘the real world’, and let me tell you, that world is not pretty. 

I started my first grown-up office job at 19 years old, and, as I’m sure many still do, I imagined office life entirely wrong. Hopeful thinking and sitcoms led me to believe an office would be entertaining, full of friends, nice, and even fun. Of course, it can be all of that if you’re lucky, but I quickly learned it usually isn’t. I found myself in a social setting I had never experienced before, and that was neither nice nor fun.

By now I have worked as an analyst at four different places that are quite different from one another. Unfortunately, however, the things which are common to all are not positive. For instance, coming from uni or school, one may expect a workplace to be full of young people who are eager to inject some fun into their day and even make some new friends. Instead, you are likely to make small talk and hear about what your co-workers’ children are doing in middle school. Additionally, you will find that even the best bosses often assign irrelevant work and are reluctant to change their minds.

You may be thinking that work isn’t supposed to be fun, and an older person may complain about my ‘Gen-Z work ethic’. Both could be true, but both also miss the point. The reason I am telling you about my office experience is not to complain, but to explain what keeps me going today as an Oxford student. We all know studying at Oxford is hard and tiring – to be honest, Oxford is more demanding than any of my former employers. But at every late library session or rainy walk back to college, I think back to my days in fluorescent-lit, outdated offices. I think of riding a busy bus, an hour each way. I think of pointless, drawn-out meetings. And I think of all the time I wasted for no good reason. 

These memories turn Oxford’s grey sky and gothic buildings positively refreshing; too-long reading lists useful; libraries homey; and tutorials meaningful. Of course, Oxford has its shortcomings, but they pale in the face of ‘the real world’.

So, aside from coffee, what gets me up every morning and keeps me going is remembering office life and knowing it awaits me the day after finals. Faced with this reality, Oxford is a breath of fresh air that I will cherish my whole life and an ideal I will strive to recreate down the road. 

If at any point you find yourself sick of Oxford and anxious to ‘get on with life’, come talk to me. I have endless stories about what it’s like working at a boring office, and they will be sure to send you running to apply for a DPhil. If you don’t know me, I recommend watching the show The Office; in my experience it is, sadly, pretty accurate. Enjoy your time at Oxford – I promise you’ll look back at it from your office chair and think it was magical.

Lord Peter Mandelson on New Labour, his time at Oxford, and why he is running to be University Chancellor

Hassan Akram
-
0
Lord Peter Mandelson on New Labour, his time at Oxford, and why he is running to be University Chancellor

Lord Peter Mandelson was an architect of the New Labour movement, serving in various governmental and party political roles from 1985 until 2010. Most notably, he was the Labour Party’s Director of Communications from 1985 until 1990. He remains a Labour peer in the House of Lords, with links to the current Labour government. He is currently running for the Chancellorship of Oxford University, Having read PPE at St. Catherine’s College, matriculating in 1973.

Cherwell: What stands out to you from your student life?

Mandelson: I was very happy as a student. I was more a college person than a university person, with two exceptions. One was Cherwell, for which I wrote a column. I enjoyed journalism and writing but I never wanted to be a journalist. The second exception was a branch-off Labour association – the Oxford Labour Students Association – with links to the city party, which I helped to form because I felt the mainstream Labour Club had become a dining/speaker club, essentially an extension of the Union. 

Cherwell: What do you think of the Union?

Mandelson: I regret not joining it. It would have developed my debating and public speaking skills which would have been useful in my later career. But I loved the college and I loved studying and I was elected JCR president. 

One of the first things I had to do was to lead an occupation of the senior common room over the level of rents. Some issues never change. After lunch, I led the JCR into the SCR where we proceeded to occupy – except that we weren’t quite sure how to occupy it. We didn’t know whether to sit in the chairs, remain standing, crouch on the floor or what. And we stayed there for a few hours. SCR members came in and had tea, picking their way between us and over us, all in very good humour. And as dinner time approached, I realized that we hadn’t actually decided how to conclude the occupation and we were all getting a bit hungry.  But having voted to occupy in the first place, I didn’t know whether it required a vote to disoccupy so that we could all get to dinner. I made a short set of remarks, said it had been a tremendous success, led everyone out and went to the hall where we all ate ravenously. And then a compromise was found over rents, which I negotiated with the master Alan Bullock. 

I was also active in the United Nations youth and student association. My interest in the rest of the world paved the way for my political career, a lot of which was spent in the rest of the world, as Trade and Industry Secretary, later Business Secretary, four and a half years as Europe’s trade commissioner. I have spent basically the last thirty years of my political life in the rest of the world. I feel I can draw on that experience in supporting the University if I’m lucky enough to become Chancellor.

Cherwell: Which political figure influenced you most at that time? 

Mandelson: Roy Jenkins [the Labour and later Liberal Democrat statesman who was Oxford Chancellor between 1987 and 2003]. After I was elected to Parliament in 1992, I met Jenkins and he became a great mentor to me. I miss him to this day. 

Cherwell: I imagine your family background, as the grandson of one-time Labour Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison, factored into your political views.

Mandelson: Yes. It meant that as a student my politics had already been formed. Politically, I’ve always been Labour. I suppose the other aspect of my time as a student here was coming to terms with my sexuality. As a teenager, I knew I was gay, my parents were completely cool about that, and I was very settled. But when I came to the University, social life seemed so straight and in this atmosphere it made me think it would be much simpler not to be gay. This was the 1970s, when in society it was a lot harder to be gay. Even harder in the 1980s when the Thatcher government was actively anti-gay. But by the time I left university, I realized that I was happy being gay, and I left more confident and settled. I mean, the University was a good, respectful environment in which to come to terms with your sexuality. By the time I left, there was no more wrestling and I resumed what I regarded as normal life. 

Cherwell: And normal life then became politics. In your political career you were instrumental in the creation of New Labour. What impact did New Labour have on you?

Mandelson: Nobody has ever asked me that before. Usually, I’m asked why I was instrumental in creating New Labour rather than the other way around. The process of creating of New Labour shaped all my political thinking and my political career. I was both a founder and a product of New Labour. People describe me as an ‘architect’ of New Labour, but actually I started working on the modernisation and reform and change of the Labour party in the 1980s, before Tony Blair became leader, when I was Labour Party Director of Campaigns and Communications aged 30, after I had been working in London Weekend Television. The impact New Labour had on me was nothing compared to the impact it had on the country. It changed the direction of the country after we were elected in 1997. It made so many things possible – the strengthening of the economy, investment in public services and reform of our health and education systems, the whole interest in climate change was turbo-charged by New Labour, in so many ways people were able to live differently together, through civil partnerships for example. The atmosphere and the culture of the country changed.

Cherwell:  Blair once said to you “I think there are only two people who are genuinely New Labour – me, you, that’s about it.”
  
Mandelson: I think Tony was exaggerating because there were others who were New Labour. But I think the point he was making is that, in the Labour Party, there were some who thought that New Labour was useful in order to get elected, but once in office, you could revert. You could do something different, or you could be half New Labour and half traditional Labour in your policies. And I never believed that. I thought that just to be, you know, half New Labour and half Old Labour, you were unlikely to be successful Labour. It didn’t always make for a comfortable existence for me in the Labour Party, because I had to be at the cutting edge the whole time. I found myself at the sharp end in the 80s, onwards through the 90s, when Blair was turbocharging the modernization of the Labour Party and the government, I was always unerringly on the New Labour side. And for some people in the Labour Party, New Labour was like questioning their very identity or their religion – for example when we proposed to change the party’s constitution, and notably rewriting Clause Four. For some it seemed tantamount to taking Genesis out of the Bible. So it was always a struggle, but I didn’t shrink, I didn’t shy away from it, because I had strong values and strong convictions, and I never wobbled in those, but I knew we had to modernise Labour and be clearer for what it stood for. 

Cherwell: One of the criticisms that was made of New Labour, and of your relationship with Blair and Brown especially, was that power struggles overshadowed ideological purpose. What would be your response to critics who say that and who might say that that might affect your Chancellorship? 

Mandelson: Look we always had clear ends, clear objectives. We wanted to build out from those. We wanted to fulfill a vision of modern social democracy. That’s what united us. Yes, there were differences over the means to adopt in some of the policies, but this didn’t affect our broad direction or underlying purpose as a party.

I think you’ll find the same reflected in this University, its principles, its values, its purpose, are very clear. Everyone is united behind those. People will have different views on whether to modernise or reform the University. But its foundation, its collegiate system, gives the University its foundational character and above all enables it to fulfill its basic teaching purpose. I feel that strongly.

Cherwell: Why do you want to be Oxford Chancellor? It’s a very long-term and unique job. It’s usually a retirement gig, or do you view it as the next step in your career?

Mandelson: I am just finishing two terms as Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University and I see this as a contribution I can make to higher education. I don’t see becoming Oxford’s Chancellor as a career step, but as something further and important to do in the last decade of my working life. It’s not a job so much as a role, which is an important distinction. It’s very important that the Chancellor doesn’t try to do the Vice-Chancellor’s job, second guessing or trying to be the Vice-Chancellor. The position is a ceremonial figurehead, to give guidance and advice to the University when asked and to be available to the colleges. This is how I see the role, as well as projecting the University internationally to attract academic talent, students, resources, and philanthropy. 

Cherwell: What do you think of the way the Oxford Chancellorship is being framed as a party contest between you and William Hague?

Mandelson: I don’t know if people are doing that, I’m certainly not doing that. It’s certainly not a Conservative-Labour contest. The only big difference in policy between me and William Hague is Brexit and the EU. I regret the referendum, I feel strongly that we should have stayed in the EU and I think we have to rebuild the relationship. I’m putting myself forward because Oxford is a global university and I believe it needs a global Chancellor. My experience, knowledge, connections and network from the last thirty years are in the rest of the world. That’s what I want to bring to the University, to help strengthen and project the University globally. 

I’ve also had huge experience as a strategist and an advisor to two Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and I think I can act as a trusted adviser for the University and the Vice-Chancellor in particular. As I have said, I don’t think the job of the chancellor is to be another Vice-Chancellor.  I want to bring something different and additional to the University, supporting Irene Tracey in her role. To be fair, I think William Hague sees it in the same way. I want to be a good figurehead, lend dignity to the University, to support it internationally as well as offering a good bridge from the University to the present UK Labour government where inevitably I have a good relationship.

I want the new government to recommit to higher education in this country. Universities are the source of social mobility, opportunity, as well as a driver of economic growth. Our universities have been undermined over the last ten years. I want the new government to recommit to higher education and rebuild the finances of our universities. The present financing of universities is placing too great a burden on individual students. Universities are a public investment. The government should increase the teaching grant as well as offer maintenance grants to students from less advantaged backgrounds. They’ve got to put more money into research and science at universities as well as the humanities. The funding of universities must reflect their public value.

Cherwell: Do you support the increase of tuition fees to £10,500?

Mandelson: The proposal is to increase them slightly to reflect inflation. In the long term there has to be more public funding of our universities because I don’t think you can just keep heaping financial burden on the individual shoulders of our students.

Cherwell: What do you think of the 16% decrease in the numbers of international students last year?

Mandelson: This was the policy of the last government. It’s now growing, I’m glad to say because the government has now sent a good signal to foreign students and I hope they sustain this. Foreign students – undergraduates, postgraduates – have a lot to contribute to our universities. Nobody gains – either the universities or the country – from excluding them from UK higher education.

Cherwell: What is the biggest challenge for students today and how would you champion that?

Mandelson: I think there are two big sources of pressure. One is financial, which is much greater than when I was at the University, and it needs to be eased. The second pressure is social, all of which is magnified by the bombardment and occasional bullying you find on social media. We didn’t have that when I was a student. I think that there is more stress amongst the student population and this in turn puts pressure and demands on tutors and the university faculty who have to respond to this. But it is also necessary to bring the University back to its core academic purpose, and to bring students back to the reasons why they’re in this university, which is to pursue and generate knowledge.  

Cherwell: As someone pro-EU, what is your stance on Brexit, and what do you make of recent discussions about freedom of movement for young people?

Mandelson: I regarded Brexit as a betrayal of Britain’s national interest, as a European country, as a country that believes in collaboration between sovereign countries and knows that many of the problems we have in the world are only going to be found in cross border solutions. Look at what’s happening in Ukraine. Look at the threat to Europe posed by Putin. Are we going to stand up and see off that threat by standing separately and apart as European countries? No, we have to show unity of resolve and action. Are we going to deal with the challenge of climate change separately and apart as European nations or by acting together? 

There are so many areas of policy where we can only fulfill our true potential by acting together. I remain pro-European. And we’ve got to rebuild our relationship with the European Union. We’ve got to reduce the price we pay for being out of the European Union, we’ve got to mitigate the cost to the country’s trade and investment through discussion with the EU. I feel deeply that Brexit betrayed the future of our younger generation. They can travel less, work less, live less freely in their own continent, as a result of Brexit. Although it’s not reversible in the foreseeable future, we’ve got to look at different ways in which we blunt its negative impact. Allowing greater mobility of young people across Europe is something I would like to see.

Cherwell: What is your stance on free speech? That includes both academic freedom and student protest.

Mandelson: Academic freedom is absolutely fundamental. A university like Oxford can only function with the freedom to develop, express, and exchange ideas. I really dislike cancel culture, but equally I don’t believe in freedom of hate speech. I don’t believe in people being harmed or undermined by the actions and speeches of others. That balance is already protected by law, and the law should be upheld.

Cherwell: As Chancellor, what would have been your stance on, say, the Pro-Palestine encampment?

Mandelson: I supported the approach of the University which was one of tolerance and respect. What I didn’t support was an invasion of the Examination Schools which inflicted disruption and harm on students. I did not like the invasion of the University offices, the pushing of that young female receptionist to the floor as they swept in. That’s not how anyone in a university should conduct themselves. That’s not freedom of expression, it’s nasty bullying violence, and I don’t like it. Freedom of speech must respect everyone’s freedom including the freedom to sit final examinations without them being disrupted.

Cherwell: You’ve been called the ‘prince of darkness’ for your media relationships…

Mandelson: That was a long time ago. I’m now the dark lord! I still have the spirit of good journalism, of Cherwell, alive inside me. 

Cherwell: …Is the media stance something you aim to change when you become Chancellor? 

Mandelson: Any liberal democracy has to be supported by free media. Look, I’ve been on the receiving end of a free media which has been a threat to my freedom when, in 1987, the News of the World, during the first week of the general election campaign which I was directing for Labour, had on its front page an attack on my sexuality. I was very young, it was very destabilising. So, when some people talk about freedom of the press, that’s not the sort of freedom I support, to attack people and try to destroy their lives.

Cherwell: How are you running this Chancellor election campaign? It’s unique in that you have no policy platform and cannot say anything against other candidates.

Mandelson: It’s an election campaign like no other. It’s difficult to know or contact the electorate or to find out what their questions are. Perhaps Cherwell can help with this.

Cherwell: Final question: Why are you better than the other main candidates?

Mandelson: What we all have in common is a belief in and love of Oxford University. I will be a global Chancellor, I have a good track record of being a strategist and giving advice to two Prime Ministers, and I have networks both overseas and in the UK which can extent the University’s influence and increase its impact. This is my aim.

In photos: 13,000 compete at Oxford Half Marathon

Cherwell News and Investigations Section Editors
-
0
In photos: 13,000 compete at Oxford Half Marathon

Thousands raced through Oxford’s streets this morning for the Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile route that took them from Broad Street to Summertown and University Parks before finishing at Parks Road.

Oxford Half Marathon 2024. Image Credit: David Hays

Runners can fundraise for one of many charities. Corpus Christi College student Grace Wong, who ran for Alzheimer’s research, told Cherwell: “As I ran I tried to enjoy seeing the surroundings and not to feel pressured to run faster because everyone has their own pace. When I crossed the finishing line I was exhausted but I was happy I’d done it despite being under the weather.”

Oxford Half Marathon 2024. Image Credit: David Hays

Spectators crowded around the fences to cheer on runners, so did live bands and DJs. All finishers received a medal and a T-shirt to celebrate their accomplishment.

Books you can’t sink your teeth into: A brief look into unsolvable manuscripts

Caitlyn Tan
-
0
Books you can’t sink your teeth into: A brief look into unsolvable manuscripts

If there’s one thing that most people appreciate, it’s a good mystery with a clever solution. It is no accident that Agatha Christie is listed as the Guinness World Records’ best-selling fiction writer of all time. A genuine mystery that disorientates, befuddles and demands unsatisfied obsession, however, is more of an acquired taste. A brief look into the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphiniananus will prove this.

The idiom ‘sink one’s teeth into’ originates from a 1832 Belfast News letter to describe an animal literally biting a stick and then in 1935 in Magazine Women’s City Club (Detroit) to refer to a woman reading Europa. It means to tackle something ‘energetically’ as well as ‘productively’. Both manuscripts (I use ‘book’ liberally in the title of the article), can be ‘energetically’ but not ‘productively’ attended to. Though both leave tantalising aromas, they remain inedible and unsolvable.

How to write a baffling manuscript (with the Voynich manuscript as an example):

First, be completely obscure. The manuscript has been carbon dated back to the early 15th century (between 1404-1438). It was written in an unknown language, by an unknown author, in an unknown place. It is especially useful if you get someone who is excitingly secretive to find it. Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish Socialist revolutionary-turned-bookseller found the manuscript, which was then named after him. He was famously cagey about the exact details about its acquisition, but it has since been confirmed he acquired it from Villa Mondragone, outside of Rome, sometime in 1910-1911.

Next, make the manuscript seem like a hoax but then rip the rug under your reader by actually making the language coherent. With its strange language and bizarre plant drawings, it comes as no surprise that many think that the manuscript may be a hoax. Linguists Claire Bowen and Luke Lindemann say it cannot be gibberish, because the word and line level metrics show it to be ‘regular natural language’, although potentially ciphered. They argue that it is ‘natural’, as in occurring without premeditation, and ‘unlikely to be manufactured’ because of its predictability, sequence and structure. They mention that linguist WR Bennett shows that character sequences are more predictable in the Voynich text than European languages, and are comparable to Polynesian languages. The manuscript also contains ‘Voynichese’ but also a little Latin script at the end. 

Once you have made your reader believe you, confuse them with your strange, scientific-seeming diagrams. Bring together what look like protocols, analyses, and conclusions together. Add illustrations that make it seem like you are studying something. Already on the third page, there is a picture with red lines that connect its flowers and roots that look like some kind of primitive vascular system, or maybe just a connect-the-dots.  The Voynich manuscript has 112 folios of herbal drawings, 21 astronomical ones, 20 balneological (study of medicinal springs and their therapeutic effect), 12 cosmological, 34 pharmaceutical and 22 recipe folios. 232 pages and 116 folios in total, some pictures overlap in the same folio. Most seem to function like normal plants but are not like anything on earth. This has likely given it the name ‘extraterresterial’s travel diary’ by the more extreme conspiracy theorists. The zodiac charts have stars on the peripheries and faces and goats in the middle. There are also, naturally, many drawings of naked women. 

Finally, just be indecipherable. Egyptologist Rainer Hannig suggested he cracked the code and that the manuscript was written in a Semitic language in 2020. Dr Gerard Cheshire of Bristol University also suggested that he broke it before and that it was a proto-Romance language. Neither have actually translated the text and any identification is unsubstantiated. The researchers themselves agree.

Embrace the gibberish with Luigi Serafini:

The Codex Seraphinianus is much less mysterious, although no less weird. It is an encyclopaedia depicting an imaginary world, written and illustrated by Luigi Serafini in 1981. The writing is also in an imaginary language which is cursive, accented and asemic, basically meaningless. ‘Asemic’ was coined by philologist Frederic W. H. Myers (1843-1901) to mean unable to communicate. One originator of this writing style was the Tang dynasty’s ‘drunk’ monk Huaisu (737-799), who drank to ensure uninhibited calligraphy and shone at illegible calligraphy (‘grass style’ writing). Serafini continues this trend, and the words are more ornament than substance. In an interview for Bird in Flight in 2015, Serafini said that there was no hidden meaning to the text, that he ‘wanted an understanding without the text, a more profound and personal understanding’. Indeed, the words in Serafini’s text are not as important as its illustrations. The most famous picture from the book is likely the couple who turn into a crocodile, but it is filled with even stranger illustrations. For example, the mechanical creature that looks like two chickens stuck together going backwards and forwards at the same time, or the creature that is part bat, part ice cream cone, part screw.

Although created hundreds of years apart, this document can be compared to the Voynich manuscript, because it also looks scientific (although in this case we definitely know it is not) and immediately invests the imagination. The lines measuring creature’s diameters, various arrows that point out specifics in diagrams and pages of writing ensure that it looks like an encyclopaedia. Serafini worked on it in a ‘feverish state’ with the attempt to convey his emotions, perhaps also the excitement of an imaginary world or the way a child would see the world.

The Codex Seraphinianus wins most satisfying read between the two. Not just because we know where it comes from because it successfully portrays wonder. The creatures move surprisingly or are in vibrant colours. The pages that act as imaginary analyses look complete and confident. The Voynich manuscript leaves much to be desired. It cannot decide if it’s an encyclopaedia or a work of art. It looks more like a mishmash of information rather than the standardised, though strange, imaginary encyclopaedia. Of course, this is just based on appearance.

In the spirit of nonsense (or at least bafflement, as the Voynich manuscript may one day make sense), I end with a line from Edward Lear’s ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’:

‘And all were happy as happy could be,

With the Quangle Wangle Quee.’

Have a look at the Voynich manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus!

Review: Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective

Morien Robertson
-
0
Review: Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective

Will Heaven Fall on Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective, which aired in cinemas this summer, confirms the status of the Hungarian director as an auteur with a monumental vision. 

Watching the five films of the retrospective, with a total run time of 981 minutes (16.4 hours), is not an easy task: Tarr is a demanding director, with infamously long shots which can test even the most seasoned cinephile. But the test is a deeply rewarding one, offering profound meditations which go beyond the particular social environment he portrays to something intrinsic to human nature.

Tarr, born in Hungary in 1955, is best known for his magnum opus, Sátántangó, which enjoys the status of the cinematic equivalent of Ulysses. Running for nearly seven and a half hours and based on the structure of a tango (six moves forwards, six back), it’s a vast work which pushes the limits of film. Yet the retrospective shows that there is far more to Tarr than Sátántangó: each film is worth watching in its own right, and viewing the five over the course of a month allows you to notice the threads and motifs which run throughout his work.

Visually, Tarr is spectacular. Klassiki writes that ‘few filmmakers are as distinct as Béla Tarr’, and it’s not hard to see why. There are breathtaking pans across barren, muddy fields which stretch endlessly into the distance, and stark shots of nameless Hungarian towns. Central to Tarr’s style is the combination of long tracking shots and leading lines which extend orthogonally to the direction of the camera. This creates a sense of depth basically unique to Tarr, with groups or individuals slowly walking away from the camera down paths which seem interminable.

The openings of his films are always stunning. Damnation begins with a typically desolate landscape, over which a cable car track extends into the distance: the empty cabins hopelessly chug onwards, immediately establishing the Sisyphean ennui that so effectively haunts his work. The Man from London, a noirish thriller, starts with an abstract vertical pan of a boat, the bow bisecting the screen, with a faded grey on one half, almost total darkness on the other.

Other openings start with animals, as if humans are just one species amongst many doing their best to survive the unforgiving natural world. Sátántangó begins in a dilapidated farm completely devoid of human life. Later in the film, a group of horses flood another nameless town: the clatter of their hooves a jarring contrast with the silent suffering.

However, humans are not always so absent. The stunning opening to The Turin Horse tracks a beaten horse pulling a merciless old man. As the camera flies through mist, Mihály Víg’s soundtrack blares over their journey. It seems for a moment that humanity has tamed the wild environment. Yet the following two and a half hours portray the suffering of the old man and his daughter during a biblical windstorm. As the two of them go about their tasks with monotonous regularity, it becomes clear that they are just as subjugated to the landscape as their tortured horse is to them.

Not everything is so despondent, though. Each film features moments of absurd humour: there are extended scenes of dance and singing – in Sátántangó a man balances a stick of bread on his nose, whilst in The Man from London it is a snooker ball; Damnation has a bizarre parody of Singing in the Rain. And even during the moments of most intense pain, the beauty of his cinematography is a bewitching, lamentable sight.

Having vowed not to make any more films, what we have already must suffice – and it certainly does. His works can be watched and rewatched ad infinitum, or rather, for as long as humankind exists, which, Tarr reminds us, is not going to be forever.

Has the romantic comedy lost its charm?

Lara Machado
-
0
Has the romantic comedy lost its charm?

The romantic comedy genre is often criticised for its overreliance on tropes. The romcom is, after all by, designed to be light and fun. Though today we often take that to mean derivative and corny, entertaining has not always meant unserious. A genre that began with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream must have more to it than the boy-meets-girl box office hits churned out today. ‘Golden age’ romcoms feel like a far cry from this year’s Anyone But You and The Idea of You. So, what’s changed?

It is difficult to discuss the trajectory of the romantic comedy without first considering Frank Capra’s 1934 hit, It Happened One Night. The film follows a young heiress (Claudette Colbert) and an unemployed reporter (Clark Gable) who meet on a bus to New York. The plot features all sorts of scenarios that are very familiar: the begrudging allies-to-lovers arc, forced proximity, and the classic third act conflict. However, at the time of its release, the film was subject to a critical acclaim – alongside its box office popularity – that we don’t associate with the romcom nowadays. It was the first film to collect all five of the main Oscar awards. Not only does the 90-year-old film still feel fresh and charming, but it offers an impressive artistic insight beyond its entertainment factor. 

The film’s shots are composed with a care and intricacy that is rare within contemporary big studio romances. The now famous ‘walls of Jericho’ scene is a prime example of this. Being forced to sleep in the same room, Gable hangs a blanket (the walls of Jericho) between him and Corbert. Not only does this highlight the tensions between them, but also reflects the tentative nature of their alliance. It is one of many similarly inspired moments, but the film is far from an escapist fantasy: class, the impacts of the Great Depression, and the divisions of 30s America underscore the plot, whilst still maintaining its lighter tone. Ultimately, It Happened One Night is a nuanced and character-focused film, in which we are given two flawed, three-dimensional human beings. This is not exclusive to It Happened One Night: later big studio films such as The Apartment,  Roman Holiday and To Be or Not to Be – to name a few – have the same appeal.

In contrast, Anyone But You, released in late 2023, made headlines not by a sweep at the Oscars, but by turning over eight times its $25 million budget at the box office. The picture was hailed as the return of the romcom, with its director stating that the film was “the last romcom in the history of cinema and theatricality.”. But if Anyone But You is supposed to revive the romcom, then the genre is doomed. Visually, the film is stale: there are few memorable shots, and between Sydney Sweeney’s monotonal delivery and Glen Powell’s unexplained shirtlessness, the chemistry between the two leads is equally sparse. The main issue, however, lies with the script, which contains pearls such as: “Trust me, bro. We’re all in seventh grade when it comes to this stuff [love].” Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) are already, at best, thin characters, and are further let down by the seemingly interchangeable supporting cast. We watch as the plot jumps from gimmick to gimmick – she runs away before he can explain, fake-dating, an ex-lover returns to the picture – without any kind of natural flow. This film just isn’t interested in love and its nuances in the same way its predecessors were. 

The difference, then, seems to lie in the modern approach to the genre and entertainment. At some point, the romantic comedy became less of a comedic exploration of love and human relationships and more about hedonistic fulfilment. In theory, perhaps there’s nothing wrong with this, but recently it has made much of mainstream, big-studio cinema deeply uninspiring. This isn’t to overly-romanticise the cinematic past, but there used to be space for films like It Happened One Night and The Apartment, which were extremely entertaining but also extremely well-crafted pieces of art. Increasingly we seem to want to separate entertainment from intellectual stimulation. But why can’t it be both? Why can’t we be entertained and provoked at the same time?

Palimpsest

Isobel Estibeiro
-
0
Palimpsest

This is a secular city, built on holy bones.

We’re on the edge of another fissure. Nothing so grand as a revolution. But the grey looming face of the clock, the ticks that cut up time into neat seconds, they belong to the old gods now.

Bodies fill the city, dreams fixed like hats to their heads.

This is a stalemate. The swollen library, gorged with books and words, looms at the city’s centre like a closed eye.

The air is thick with stagnation. Swarms of people clot the streets. They go so slowly. Words heavy and clumsy as bumble bees, flung out for anyone to hear. “It is! 24, it’s the general!” Or else, “Spare any change?”, like a hook that beds itself into people’s skin. Guiltily, they dig it out with their fingernails.

The past is bleeding through, like a scar that will not heel. The tarmac wears away, beneath our feet, eroding into Victorian cobblestone, so long covered up and forgotten. Days pile on top of each other, burying us beneath them, numb as falling snow. They build into terms, years, generations.

And we are caught, in the blistering moment. Time, condensed and frozen, in an innocuous sentence, in a leather bound book.

Could the words, so long left for dead, shed their hard black shells and come alive? Could the city shed the obligations of the past and expectations of the future… and reach into the present?

1...777879...2,515Page 78 of 2,515

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley