I have spent the past couple of weeks in Oxford rediscovering the art of conversation while campaigning for election as the university’s chancellor. I have sung for my supper in Christ Church Cathedral before being questioned in the SCR on my fitness for the role, and I performed again at evensong at Univ before debating postcolonial reparations over vegetable broth and venison. I have been gifted cyclamens following visits to St Hilda’s and Corpus. At St Hugh’s my understanding of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was taken apart by the law don, while at Worcester I was challenged on the state of Britain’s naval hard power and the FCDO’s soft power. I debated ethics and AI at Balliol and health data anonymity at Reuben, while at LMH I was reminded of my overnight occupation of the Examination Schools in my first term at St Catherine’s in 1973.
The race for the chancellorship is a strange, atomised, largely virtual experience in which it is almost impossible to identify, let alone communicate with, anyone who has a vote. Student encounters, high-table dinners and visits to science labs have been rewarding, and thankfully the race has been remarkably free of mudslinging by the candidates. An early portrayal of me as a partisan figure compared with William Hague by the retiring chancellor, Lord Patten, did not go down well in the university. Charles Moore went further in last week’s Spectator, likening me to Xi Jinping in my desire to ‘project Chinese power’ – a curious claim given my public view that the West needs to combine deterrence with dialogue towards China.
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