Surely Cambridge can do better than Gina Miller?

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4 days ago

The opportunity not to vote for Sandi Toksvig should never be lightly passed over, so I shall be casting a ballot in the elections for the chancellor of Cambridge. Excitingly, you can do so online, though I'd prefer to be obliged to turn up in person.
Browsing through the manifestos is a dispiriting experience. It's not just Sandi whose mission is to further diversity and inclusion; everyone is determined to engage in outreach and brag about being at a state school. But the former host of the News Quiz also makes quite a thing about being a woman:
'The first known chancellor of Cambridge was Richard of Wetheringsett who served sometime between 1215 and 1232. After that we have had a plethora of other Richards, many Johns and an awful lot of Stephens. After over 800 years I wonder if it isn't time for a change?' No, Sandi. Not if it means having a really annoying broadcaster representing the university.
Another candidate not to vote for is Gina Miller. She'll go down well in some bits of Cambridge on account of Brexit, but the notion of having someone at the helm who says 'I have spent my life speaking truth to power' is not inviting. I mean, one previous chancellor who really did speak truth to power was Bishop John Fisher and he had his head chopped off.
His successor, Thomas Cromwell, was a good fundraiser (another big issue), though unfortunately at other people's expense; he too was quite a name to reckon with.
But that's the thing. The list is gloomily unimpressive, from the bloke who wants to 'champion inclusive excellence' (which is either meaningless or contradictory) to the one who declares that 'the university's powerful brand enables it to generate significant income, which ought to be reinvested into its core mission'. Brand? Mission? It's a university, not a business; at least, not wholly, not yet.
Or there's the candidate who wants 'flourishment'. Is flourishment a thing? What, exactly, is it? Or how about the one who declares: 'Cambridge is more than a university – it is a living idea. It speaks through the rustle of books in dawn-lit libraries, in the quiet authority of our porters, the resilience of our cleaners and caterers, the curiosity of our students'.
Dawn-lit libraries? No undergraduate I know has ever seen a library at dawn. The 'quiet authority' of the porters is funny, and I remember when half had been in the military.
Lord (John) Browne, ex-BP, tells us about being a closet homosexual. Do we really need to know? If this selection is indicative of the quality of our public life, let alone our academic life, we have a problem.
Hardly anyone on the list is an individual of real substance. I remember when the chancellor was Prince Philip (he was very good at it) and the vice-chancellor was a formidable scientist, Rosemary Murray (who would have been a brilliant chancellor herself). That was more like it.
By comparison with past chancellors, from Prince Albert to Stanley Baldwin, our lot are dire. In fact, the Cambridge chancellorship is quite a good way of estimating the kind of establishment we have, and it looks to me like a collection of unfascinating technocrats or media showoffs.
It looks then like I shall have to vote for Chris Smith, who pushed it a bit when he said that as Culture Secretary he made all the national galleries and museums free (quite a few were free already) but at least he cared about culture and can write English.
But it's a single transferable vote system…Lord knows whom I should pick for the rest of the selection. At least I know whom I'm not voting for; that's a start. Looking at the competition, I have to ask myself...what stopped me throwing my hat in the ring?
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