Sunday 13th July 2025
Blog Page 78

Oxford can win on both free speech and EDI

Tim Soutphommasane
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Oxford can win on both free speech and EDI

Author note: Professor Tim Soutphommasane is the University’s Chief Diversity Officer, and was the Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner from 2013-2018. 

Summers in Britain are increasingly becoming a season of discontent: think train, airport, doctor and nurse strikes. This year, the discontent created more than mere disruption. The riots that broke out across many parts of the country were terrifying in their violence.

It is, sadly, a sign of the times. Across the West, anti-immigrant populism and xenophobia have surged. Extremist activity has grown more slippery and social media platforms are enabling disinformation and radicalisation. 

Many members of our collegiate University community were understandably unnerved by the summer’s racist violence. Which is why, in the days following the riots, the University stood with other institutions in Oxford city and Oxfordshire to condemn racism and discrimination. Bigotry and hatred have no place in Oxford.

We recognise that many in our student community have experienced a challenging time, given the war in the Middle East. Last academic year, the Vice-Chancellor, senior colleagues and I heard from Jewish students and staff about experiences of antisemitism. We have heard from Muslim students about episodes of Islamophobia encountered on Oxford’s streets.

 As we start Michaelmas, it is essential that everyone in our University understands that we do not tolerate any form of racism. We unequivocally reject and condemn any discrimination or harassment based on ethnicity, race or faith – including antisemitism and Islamophobia.  And we expect all members of the University – students, staff, visitors and contractors – to treat others with respect, courtesy and consideration.

This commitment goes hand in hand with our position on freedom of speech and protest. We believe that, within the limits of the law, all views should be given the chance of a hearing. It is part of being a vibrant intellectual community that we hear different views, and be prepared not only to challenge others’ ideas but also our own. Protest is something that you can also engage in – provided it is done lawfully, peacefully and in line with our Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech. 

We can be proud of our record on free speech. In last year’s Office for Students National Student Survey, students were asked, “During your studies, how free did you feel to express your ideas, opinions, and beliefs?” Our score – 90.8% – was the highest in the Russell Group. 

On global issues of significance, there will be many in our community who hold passionate views and commitments. Many of you will want to get involved in political causes, or be parts of movements for social change. Universities are, naturally, a place for you to be involved in this, alongside your studies. But our university must also be a place where every student and member can feel safe and welcomed. As we reminded you in a recent all-student communication you – as a student here – have an important part in ensuring we have an inclusive environment.

As Chief Diversity Officer, I appreciate the importance of striking the right balance, especially when matters of diversity and identity are involved.

There is a cultural challenge here. Earlier this year, partnering with UCL Policy Lab and More in Common, we conducted research on British public opinion about EDI. We found that across British society there is strong support for equality and diversity. But there’s also nervousness about how to talk about matters the right way. According to our findings, 73% of Britons believe that people are made to feel stupid about not knowing how to talk about diversity using the latest language. And 50% personally worry about saying the wrong thing. How, then, can we go about talking about issues?

Answering this goes to the heart of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, which the collegiate University is launching this Michaelmas. The plan brings together the vast range of efforts taking place across colleges, departments and divisions in Oxford that relate to EDI. Our aspiration: for Oxford to be a collegiate university where everyone belongs and is supported to succeed, and for us to be a leader on EDI in society.

The student experience and voice are central to our agenda. During 0th week, we ran EDI inductions at 17 colleges to support freshers in having an inclusive student experience. Later this term, through a new training initiative, we will be supporting JCR and MCR presidents on how they navigate challenges around EDI and leadership.

We will also be establishing a racial and religious inclusion task and finish group this term, bringing together staff and students (including the Student Union president and representatives drawn from JCRs and MCRs). It will be tasked with considering student experiences relating to racial and religious inclusion, and how we can strengthen our institutional responses to discrimination.

There is, of course, more that we can do on EDI. And we will. I hope that students in Oxford will join us.

SU perspective: 

It may sound cliché but the reason I ran for the role of SU President is because I love the student movement and the vibrant student community of Oxford in particular.

Over the past three years, as a trans and Jewish student, I have been a witness to the amazing things the Oxford community can achieve as a collective force for good, and I am proud to represent students here at Oxford – and for that, I have to thank fellow students for their fierce commitment to fighting for everyone to feel included, and the passion of many for political activism in support of what they see as right. This ability and eagerness to speak up continue to be my favourite feature of Oxford.

The past year, particularly Trinity term, has been incredibly hard for so many students. I have been horrified to see cases of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism increasing in the city and university that we call home. 

We bear a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of free expression and peaceful protest in the fight against injustice but to also balance this with the rights of all students at Oxford to co-exist in an environment that is safe, inclusive and welcoming. When disruption becomes harmful, we must also bear the responsibility for that collective failure and strive to do better. 

I have spent the past three years – and will spend the coming year – advocating for a better University, with the continuing development of policies and processes that truly support EDI efforts. But the reality is that often the threats to inclusion start closer to us than we’d like – it is incumbent on us as students to lead the way in making sure Oxford is free of prejudice and as your President, I am committed to supporting all students of Oxford to do just that.

Lord Hague: “Oxford made a huge difference to my own life. I believe in helping other people have the same transformative experience.”

Oliver Hall
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Lord Hague: “Oxford made a huge difference to my own life. I believe in helping other people have the same transformative experience.”
Watch the full conversation!

Lord William Hague is certain that we are headed for a “decade of change” and is convinced that he is the person to steer the University of Oxford through it. He is keen to place Oxford at the centre of the next technological explosion, to continue growing access to the University, and has many thoughts on the financial situation of the UK higher education sector. In our conversation in the Oscar Wilde Room at his old college, Magdalen, he speaks on all of these and more.

Hague has a remarkable CV: MP for 26 years, Leader of the Opposition, Foreign Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons, author, columnist, and now even podcaster. First came Oxford, and that is where his drive to become Chancellor originates. “Oxford transformed my life.”, he says, “I came here from a comprehensive school in South Yorkshire. I didn’t know a single person in the whole city and university when I came and when I left, I was ready to go on to be all the things that I became. Oxford made a huge difference to my own life and I believe in helping other people have the same transformative experience.”

The curious position of being the Chancellor allows little scope to make concrete changes to the running of the university but during this even more curious campaign all of the candidates have outlined their views on how it could be done. Hague is no different and his vision again comes back to what he sees as “a decade in which human civilization is going to change more quickly than ever before in the entirety of our history.”.

The financial crisis facing UK universities is the issue of the day in education with nearly 70 already carrying out redundancy and restructuring programmes. On that, Hague concedes that fees may have to rise but that it “certainly shouldn’t be by more than inflation and that there needs to be more help with people to be able to come to university.”

A key part of that is growing the endowment at Oxford, something which Hague believes he can help with through his links with the United States. He also praises such initiatives as the Crankstart Scholarship, saying: “Bringing the best people here irrespective of background, that has to be the objective. We are going to need to keep expanding those sorts of things [scholarships], particularly in an environment where fees are probably going up.”

At the moment, international students are vital for the survival of many UK universities because of the higher fees they are charged. Like many, Hague questions the wisdom of including student numbers in immigration figures altogether, but he is wary of the sector becoming completely dependent on learners from abroad: “It is also true”, he says, “that you can’t have universities become so dependent on students from overseas that then they are in a fragile financial position whenever that changes, because then what happens when there is a future pandemic?”.

In recent years many politicians have expressed the view that 38.5% of UK students going into full-time higher education is too high, but Hague is keen to counter that narrative, one which stems primarily from the Conservative Party that he once led. “I think that over time we probably need a higher proportion of the population to go to university because human capital is the key ingredient of this decade of change that I’m talking about. That’s why it’s only going to get more important and we are going to be competing with nations where it will be reaching up to 65 or 70%.

“In the world of highly intelligent machines that is coming, humans are going to have to make sure that they can work in a kind of co-intelligence with those machines. That is going to require more and more education.”

Freedom of speech on campus and the University’s handling of pro-Palestinian encampments have proved controversial in the last year, and here Hague aligns himself broadly with the rest of the major candidates. He sets out that “the right to protest is well established and quite right in our society, but it can’t be a right to protest that stops other people going about lawful or necessary business. … That is where you draw the line. It’s very understandable at a time of conflict around the globe that people have extremely strong feelings, emotions, reasons, and deep concerns about what’s going on in the world … but it is best debated in all the many forums that we have for debate in a place like Oxford.”

One of the notable things about Hague is that he went into politics at such a young age. He was famously thrust onto the national stage after addressing Conservative party conference aged just 16 and became Leader of the Opposition at the age of 36. Now, he is desperate to encourage highly achieving young people into politics: “Look how we’re struggling across the world with political leaders. It seems like the problems have bigger and the leaders have got smaller… We cannot possibly do without that small cadre of people who’s there to take the plunge (into politics).

On current politics, Hague made a pitch for the Conservative Party to return to the centre, advising that “We should not be a right-wing pressure group that competes with Reform,” and not “to charge off to the right and ignore all those Labour and Liberal people.”. Minutes after our interview, James Cleverly was eliminated from the Conservative Party leadership race.

As has been the case during this election campaign, Hague declined to comment on any other candidates other than to say that there “are other good ones”. He did, however, make a closing pitch as to why he should be elected:

“It is because we need to articulate to the world how critical Oxford is to the next decade in the UK, and we need to raise that bigger endowment for the future that I was talking about. For that, you need somebody who is used to explaining things to the whole country and the whole world, and who is connected to people in business and philanthropy and politics all over the world, particularly in America.”

Stockholm syndrome: Reversed 

Carla Hollier
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Stockholm syndrome: Reversed 

Stockholm syndrome (noun): feelings of trust or affection felt by a victim towards a captor in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking.

Education folklore has it that for many years, students at MIT have scrawled the acronym ‘IHTFP’ (I hate this fucking place) around campus in an attempt to express disdain for their university. After two years at Oxford, I can now report that students here often experience similar feelings. It makes sense, though. After all, when so many of us grow up with idealised dreams and expectations – of wandering the cobbled streets, eating in the grand dining halls, and experiencing some of the best teaching the world has to offer – it’s no wonder that we can end up feeling disappointed or disillusioned with our actual experience in the ‘city of dreaming spires’.

Personally, I had envisioned myself studying at Oxford for so long and I held it to such high esteem in my mind that perhaps it was inevitable it did not meet my expectations. In my first Michaelmas, I quickly discovered that the hours were long and hard, and the volume of work too much to bear. I felt stuck between two equally bleak options – spend all my time in the library, trying desperately to understand the content and complete the endless list of work – or risk failing my exams. I felt, and I know that many others still feel, an overwhelming sense of stupidity. Whether I was sitting in the library, explaining work in a tutorial, or measuring and testing in the lab, I felt completely inadequate and utterly convinced I should never have been offered a place; perhaps my acceptance email had been an admin error my college felt too guilty to reverse. This feeling followed me around, and no matter how much I tried to ignore it, it felt impossible to get rid of. I was completely trapped in a city I had once loved. 

Then there is the social side of Oxford. I have met many fantastic people here, but have still experienced my fair share of alienating experiences. There was the time when, at a crew date with another college, the first sconces included “I sconce anyone who compared the homeless people on Cornmarket street to rats”. The group erupted in shouts and jeers, while a few of us laughed in a state of shock. There was no evidence of anyone feeling embarrassed or ashamed, perhaps a slight sheepishness at best, maybe only at revealing too much in front of the wrong crowd. This was normal to them – they had their own culture, their own traditions, their own punchlines, running alongside our own. This vicious underbelly, this poorly-kept Oxford secret which rears its ugly head once in a while (often only when fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol) was suddenly illuminated, right there, standing on chairs towering above us in Jamal’s. This is something I found difficult from my arrival – the pretence that institutions like Oxford are no longer dominated by circles of students from elite backgrounds. There are only so many times that you can watch the light leave someone’s eyes when you inform them that there are no mutual private school acquaintances to bond over, because you did in fact attend a state school in the middle of nowhere. This is another reason I often feel trapped in Oxford, and even though I have met many lovely people, I regularly find myself longing to be back at home.

Oxford is an interesting place to go to university. The highs are incredibly high, the lows devastatingly low. There is possibly no better feeling than being sat in the pub after finally completing a problem sheet or feeling the sun on your face in Christ Church Meadow after a long library session. At Oxford, I think we are all oscillating between being entirely alone and entirely connected – terrified one minute, hopeful the next. We all have our own ways of coping, of dealing with the relentless work and convincing ourselves that it will all be worth it in the end. For many of us, it often feels like too much to withstand. I suppose, in a way, we are experiencing a reverse-order Stockholm syndrome – after longing to achieve a place and finally making it, we find ourselves desperate to escape.

Is the prestige of institutions like Oxford always inextricably tied to a high-stress environment? Or can it reconcile a world-class education with a more enjoyable student experience?

Imran Khan not on Oxford Chancellor candidates list

Cherwell News and Investigations Section Editors
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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!

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