The Radcliffe Camera at the University of Oxford. About 26,000 alumni have registered to vote online to elect the next chancellor. Photo / Andy Haslam, The New York Times
The role of chancellor at the University of Oxford has been around for 800 years. This year, a particularly broad range of people have applied.
One is an Anglican clergyman who presents himself as the “anti-woke candidate”. Another is a left-wing activist who boasts that he has never “invaded any Middle Eastern countries”. Still another is a Zumba teacher who says her cardio training would help her face the rigours of the job.
These are three of the 38 people in the running to be the next chancellor of the University of Oxford, a largely symbolic, yet enduringly prestigious, post as the titular head of one of the world’s most ancient universities.
For the past 21 years, the job has been held by Chris Patten, a former Conservative Party chair and the last colonial governor of Hong Kong. Patten’s retirement in July kicked off a lively selection process that has drawn predictably high-flown public figures, but also several refreshingly earthbound candidates for a post at the pinnacle of Oxford’s dreaming spires.
“We’ve moved from the old-school approach of a tap on the shoulder to a far more open process,” said Jonathan Black, a fellow at New College, Oxford, who is director of the university’s career services. That makes sense, he said, because “the issues the university is facing are very different than when Chris Patten arrived”.
For the first time, voters will cast ballots online. About 26,000 alumni of Oxford have registered to vote, with an additional 5000 faculty and senior staff also eligible. That compares with roughly 8000 people who voted in the election won by Patten in 2003. The field of candidates will be culled to five in a first round of voting, with a winner selected in a second round in late November.
Putting the election online has not only expanded the candidate pool, but also made it more international. Several are of Indian or Pakistani heritage, although Oxford excluded a bid by Imran Khan, a champion cricket player and Oxford graduate who went on to become Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Oxford declined to say why it had barred Khan, who was ousted in 2022 and is in prison on much-questioned charges of corruption and leaking state secrets. A spokesperson for the university said it excluded a “small number” of applicants, citing requirements, including that the chancellor must be deemed “fit and proper” as the trustee of a charity, under the terms of Britain’s Charities Act.
With a history dating to 1224, Oxford has had a few divisive chancellors, not least Oliver Cromwell. But the post has remained ceremonial – leading lots of be-gowned processions – with scant authority over the university’s notoriously independent colleges and departments. Patten’s predecessor, Roy Jenkins, described the job as “impotence assuaged by magnificence”.
Still, like Britain’s constitutional monarch, Charles III, the chancellor is a lasting symbol of Oxford’s academic sovereignty. Some credit Patten with helping to keep Oxford at the top of the world’s academic league tables, despite having a far smaller endowment than American counterparts like Harvard or Stanford universities.
“As the king is worth a billionaire or two, a chancellor is worth an American fundraising campaign or two,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a British historian with positions at both Oxford and Stanford.
Certainly, the job’s magnificence has drawn an improbable array of hopefuls.
Tanya Tajik, the Zumba instructor, said in her candidate’s statement that she ran a business with more than 200 employees. But she highlighted pursuits like Indian classic vocals, art and outdoor activities. “There are many other things but these are the things that make me feel I’m suitable for the job,” she wrote.
Harry Stratton, the left-wing activist, said he would stand on picket lines with staff members demanding higher wages, or with students resisting tuition fee increases. He said he would campaign for a minimum wage of £15 ($32) an hour for all university employees.
Matthew Firth, the clergyman, pointed to his background in astrophysics, which he said had inspired him to seek the “transcendental values of truth, unity, beauty and goodness”. He promised a “strong public rebuke” to anyone who would “erode freedom of speech and academic inquiry” or lead Oxford the “way of wokery”.
That gets at issues that have vexed university leaders across the West, and especially in the United States. The drive for diversity, equity and inclusion has divided campuses, while protests over the war in the Gaza Strip have caused upheaval from Columbia University in New York to the University of Southern California.
Pro-Palestinian encampments sprouted at Oxford last spring, though the university, like other British schools, was spared the violence and arrests that occurred at Columbia and elsewhere, in part because police took a less confrontational approach with protesters. In any event, Patten, as chancellor, would have lacked the authority of an American university president to crack down.
That does not mean the chancellor cannot take a position on public debates, like those over academic freedom or financing higher education. Britain’s last Conservative Government passed a contentious law that it said would promote free speech at universities, but that critics said could be used to protect hate speech; the new Labour Government halted it. Several candidates have pledged to safeguard free speech, though none quite as bluntly as Firth.
For all the whimsy of the fringe candidates, the chancellor’s job is likely to go to one of a small circle of politically connected Oxonians – candidates not unlike Patten or his 158 or so predecessors.
Among the most prominent are Peter Mandelson, a former Labour Cabinet minister who is also in the running to be British ambassador to Washington; William Hague, a former Conservative foreign secretary and party leader; and Elish Angiolini, a lawyer and principal of St Hugh’s College, one of Oxford’s 43 constituent colleges. She is leading a public inquiry into the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old London woman, by a police officer.
Then there is Jan Royall, a Labour operative who served as leader of the House of Lords before becoming principal of Somerville College, Margaret Thatcher’s alma mater. Black, the career services director, pointed out that political affiliations can also cut against candidates. Oxford, after all, famously refused to bestow an honorary degree on Thatcher.
But Royall’s deep ties to Oxford make her one of the front-runners. She and Angiolini also represent an enticing opportunity to elect the first female chancellor in Oxford’s history. “There clearly is a strong argument for having a woman as chancellor for the first time,” Garton Ash said.
Patten, who declined to comment on the race, brought a mix of gravitas and political shrewdness to the job. Oxford, he once recalled, offered him a house when he first became chancellor. Envisioning the snarky headlines that might elicit in London’s tabloids, he asked for an apartment instead.
“You have to have a touch of magic, too,” Garton Ash said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of grandee. Magic comes in many forms.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mark Landler
Photographs by: Andy Haslam and Mary Turner
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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