Universities
Why universities are bad for the arts
Members of the arts establishment have spent the past week outraged, following news that for the upcoming academic year funding…
Do spelling and grammar still matter?
Some universities have announced that spelling and grammar (i.e. morphology and syntax) are not all that important, but quality of…
In defence of Flannery O’Connor
I have a thought for the students of Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland: this Easter, why not resurrect Flannery O’Connor?…
University challenge: conservatives are now the radicals on campus
Conservatives are now the radicals on campus
The secret code of the ruling class
I naively hoped that last year’s statement by the Equalities Minister explaining why unconscious bias training was being phased out…
My advice for the next ‘free speech champion’
I was delighted to hear the government plans to appoint a ‘free speech champion’ to the board of the Office…
Of course there's a free speech crisis on campus
A free speech crisis on campus? Apparently, it’s a myth, concocted by right-wing commentators and latched on to by a…
Where would politics be without fighting talk?
‘Tencent Wykeham’ has a ring to it. It captures how easily British universities can be bought. It is the new…
How to be ‘liberal’, according to the ancients
Certain parts of academia seem to wish to turn the study of classics away from a historical, language- and evidence-based…
It isn’t always easy to give money away
I always felt sorry for my father, then president of a chronically strapped educational institution, for having ceaselessly to approach…
University challenge: the next education crisis
Many institutions face the fight of their lives
The proof that free speech in universities is in peril
About 18 months ago, I attended a debate at Policy Exchange, the think tank founded by Nick Boles, Francis Maude…
Why do we still struggle to see Xi’s China as a threat?
Why do we still struggle to see Xi’s China as a threat?
Open letters have become ransom notes
In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary…
The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind
Britain’s forgotten demographic
What would it mean to ‘decolonise’ the Classics?
Can the Classics escape the grip of their past?
What should you charge for a virtual conference?
From time to time, every industry must adapt to some inconvenient technological advance. Suddenly, some part of what you offer…
The perils of owning an erotic Nazi toy
My parents told me that their wartime childhoods were punctuated by the expression: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’…
Six weeks is too long for an election campaign
The number of parties represented in national election debate multiplies. There are now seven crowding on to television podiums and…
Campus free speech is a thing of the past
Not that long ago, the sorts of views that were verboten on a university campus were genuinely out-there and nasty:…
Universities don’t need to be lectured about racism
I’ve been contacted by a professor at a leading Russell Group university who is worried about the spread of progressive…
Adversity is the new diversity – and it disadvantages everyone
To clear up any confusion, American SATs are closer to A-levels than to British primary-school SATs. In my day, this…
Men are playing with fire by having drunken sex
It is late, on a wet Tuesday evening in November, and I am driving home, listening to endless talk of…
Why I hate ‘the n-word’
One of the depressing aspects of writing a column attuned to social hypocrisy is so rarely running short of new…
Free speech is officially dead in British universities
When I first read about plans for a new academic periodical called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, I got the…
