Universities

Universities’ challenge Sir: I have spent more than three decades in academia and so Lara Brown (‘Alma madder’, 15 August) struck a chord. The craziness is not a new phenomenon. In the mid-1990s my employer, Thames Valley University, offered a half-module in kite-flying. Students spent half a day each week on Hampstead Heath, learning how to fly their silk and bamboo contraptions. I have often wondered how the students used the transferable skills they gained in later life. More recently, I was taken to task by a bureaucrat for not stating my preferred pronouns in my email signature block. When informed it was ‘university policy’, I capitulated. Thereafter, my preferred pronoun was ‘Dr’. I assumed this was acceptable, as I was troubled no further.

For decades, voices on the liberal and progressive left have invariably rolled out the terror-inducing accusation of “racism” in order to get their way and silence opponents. It’s thus unsurprising to see, in the wake of British academic Jason Arday’s death, that they're still resorting to this cynical tactic, and in this case, to absolve themselves of responsibility for having exploited this vulnerable man in the first place. To call it a ‘witch hunt’ is predictable and unfounded hyperbole In response to Arday’s death, Jo Grady, general secretary of Britain’s University and College Union, said the “level of harassment he suffered and the racism he was subjected to has been sickening.

Daniel Defoe observed that plague victims “never perceiv’d that they were infected” until they discovered the “tokens” on their skin. By that point, “nothing could follow but certain Death”. Something similar might be said of Britain’s universities. In recent days, the Jason Arday affair has captured the world’s attention because of its absurdity. But the humiliation of Cambridge is not an early sign of infection. It is just a particularly visible bubo. At one level, Arday’s fall reveals how, even in the most elite universities, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) dogma has warped intellectual standards to the point of madness.

The story of Jason Arday is so brilliantly illuminating of the rottenness of our Establishment that it seems – literally – fabulous. He seems to be almost too fantastic a figure for conventional fiction; rather, he is a character from fables of old – an archetype exposing the sins and hypocrisy of our times, a modern Till Eulenspiegel or Robin Goodfellow. In Arday’s frictionless ascent to academic eminence from a background of apparent disadvantage we see apparently elite institutions eagerly suspending their critical faculties in order to virtue-signal on race, disability and hardship. By studying Arday’s biography we can begin to understand just how in hock to progressive guilt our top universities are – and how damaging this is for real scholarship.

This week it became clear that almost none of the adults whose job it is to teach students the truth are much inclined to do it. Even the doziest vice-chancellor must by now have twigged that gender ideology is dangerous bunk and that it lures in the most vulnerable – yet still they can’t bring themselves to speak out. This goes not just for academics, but for politicians in the education business too. For anyone minded to understand how poisonous the atmosphere in universities is, the story of poor Professor David Gordon is horribly instructive. His ordeal began more than a year ago when he invited another professor, Alice Sullivan, to give a talk to his students at the University of Bristol.

Politicians, authors, priests and the occasional Spectator editor have all served as the Oxford Union’s president over its 200-year history. Few among them would know what to make of George Abaraonye. The debating society’s president-elect faces disciplinary proceedings for celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk. Upon hearing of the conservative activist’s assassination – some four months after the pair had debated in person – Abaraonye posted ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool’ on social media, along with other excited expletives in a WhatsApp group chat. He deleted the remarks but defended making them. Something is rotten in the state of Oxford when its chief debater celebrates the murder of a free speech advocate on another university campus.

Injury time England bowler Chris Woakes won a standing ovation for coming out to bat against India at the Oval with his arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder – although in the event he didn’t have to face a ball before England lost. Some other sportsmen who carried on while injured: — Franz Beckenbauer played out half an hour of extra time during the semi final of the 1970 football World Cup, also with his arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder. — Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann played the last quarter of an hour of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck after colliding with a Birmingham City player. His side won 3-1.

Behind the veil How many countries have banned the burqa? At least 24 have placed some restrictions around the wearing of full-face coverings in public, although in most cases it applies only in public buildings. Interestingly, they encompass liberal democracies and dictatorships, Muslim-dominated and non Muslim-dominated countries. They are: Algeria, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chad, China, Denmark, France (general ban in public), Gabon, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. In Afghanistan, the wearing of a burqa or niqab (which has a slit for the eyes) is compulsory for women. Degrees of separation Is it still worth going to university?

One of many reasons I felt blessed, seven years ago, to be offered a professorship at the private University of Buckingham to teach modern British history was that Buckingham appeared to reject the doctrinal horrors that were, and still are, poisoning many other universities. I, blissfully, had never heard the term ‘woke’, which certainly did not apply at Buckingham. This did not mean we all went around being gratuitously offensive about minorities, women, people who change their gender or any other traditional targets of so-called white male privilege. What it did mean was that we had freedom of speech and of discourse, and proper academic liberty to advance anything we felt it important that our students, to be properly educated, should consider and reflect upon.