London Diary: Oxbridge in the news for all the wrong reasons

These days, Oxford and Cambridge universities are in the news mostly for extra-academic reasons: rows over “no-platforming” controversial speakers; protests against appointments and sackings; politically motivated campaigns that frequently descend into vandalism.

And it’s not only Oxbridge. Most leading British universities have become ideological battlegrounds amid an increasingly acrimonious debate over their colonial past, and often racist links. At least some have started to crack under relentless pressure to confront and atone for their historic “sins”.

Cambridge and Bristol universities have announced research into their links with slave trade and how they benefited from it in the form of generous financial bequests to fund libraries, departments and museums. The Cambridge inquiry will also look into how its academics “reinforced and validated race-based thinking between the 18th and early 20th Century”.

The inquiries will recommend appropriate ways to publicly acknowledge their unflattering past. There have been calls for the descendants of the victims of slave trade to be compensated but others say it’s political correctness gone mad. Take your pick.

Devalued honour

Once it was regarded as one of the most coveted literary honour. To be appointed a Poet Laureate was big deal and poets fell over each other to grab it. But apparently no more.

The search to find a successor to the incumbent Carol Ann Duffy whose ten-year tenure is about to end has proved rather frustrating. Though finally one has been found, it was not before the front-runner for the job, Pakistan-born Imtiaz Dharker who had been touted as the first likely Asian Poet Laureate said “no” because it would interfere with her privacy and her own work.

“I had to weigh the privacy I need to write poems against the demands of a public role. The poems won,” she said prompting officials to claim that no formal offer had been made and that the selection process was still on.

Two other potential contenders —Wendy Cope and Benjamin Zephaniah —also ruled themselves out saying they had no interest. Finally, Simon Armitage, currently professor of poetry at the University of Leeds, has accepted the role that a former Laureate, Andrew Motion, described as “very, very damaging to my work”.

“I dried up completely about five years ago and can’t write anything except to commission.”

Good luck, Mr Armitage.

Right to clean air

In a first case of its kind in Britain, a woman has won the right to challenge the government for failing to provide clean air to citizens. She is demanding a special inquest into the death of her nine-year-old daughter which she blames on poor air quality in the area where she lives.

Rosamund Kissi-Debrah holds the government accountable for her daughter Ella’s premature death from respiratory problems.

Ella lived close to a heavily polluted motorway in South London. She died in February 2013 after a series of asthma attacks. Her mother said she had been a healthy and active girl until she caught infection because of dangerously high levels of pollution caused by heavy traffic in the area. A previous inquest which failed to establish a link between her death and pollution has been quashed by a court.

“Now I hope a new inquest will make those in power realise that our children are dying as a result of the air that they breathe. This cannot go on. Why is this not being taken more seriously by the government? What do we need to do to make them prioritise our children’s lives over convenience and the rights of people to pollute?” she asked.

If the verdict goes in her favour, it will set a new precedent in government accountability opening, it is feared, floodgates of compensation claims on all sorts of grounds.

Westminster Wives

It is said that there are only two occasions when a male politician feels the need to flaunt his wife in public. It’s either when he is in trouble over another woman (remember Bill Clinton?) and wheels out his spouse to demonstrate her support for him. Or when he is bidding for high office and wants to project himself as a “family man”.

In Britain, these days it’s the season for the latter with politicians using their wives as a crutch aid to their leadership bids. With Theresa May’s departure now more a matter of “when” than “if” , potential candidates are busy laying out their stalls to replace her as prime minister with soft-focus interviews in weekend glossies. And wives feature heavily in these interviews as their husbands’ muse.

Among them is Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt who —in a joint interview—hailed his Chinese wife Lucia as the “perfect partner” whose “toughness” helped build relationships with foreigners. Meanwhile, wife of a senior Tory MP has set up a “Wives of Westminster” website celebrating “women with brains, hearts and style”. That presumably includes herself.

And, lastly, guess who the new British royal baby shares his birthday with Tony Blair and George Clooney, themselves royalties of sorts.