Universities
Red-brick revolutionaries
Labour was once the clever party. Under Jeremy Corbyn, its front bench is purged of Oxbridge intellectuals
The fine art of talking bunkum
At the last minute, a friend invited me to a ‘Distinguished Speakers Dinner’ at the Oxford and Cambridge Club earlier…
What Scottish professors have to fear from Nicola Sturgeon’s power grab
What Scotland’s professors have to fear from the SNP’s latest bright idea
Edmund de Waal’s diary: Selling nothing, and why writers need ping-pong
On the top landing of the Royal Academy is the Sackler Sculpture Corridor, a long stony shelf of torsos of…
How to build a school
Lessons from the first year of our specialist maths school
Diary
There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music…
Degrees in disaster
From Greece to Kenya, the worst economic ideas come from alumni of British universities
Aristotle on the Lego chair
So Cambridge University has accepted £4 million from the makers of Lego (snort) to fund a Lego chair (Argos sells…
The best way to end the ‘poshness test’
There’s a warning buried in the detail of the new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission on…
Degrees of bureaucracy
At Oxford and elsewhere, university administration is out of control
My part in a masterpiece of political correctness
Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, James Delingpole: all winners of major art prizes. I was awarded mine last week by Anglia…
A toast to Spain
Towards the chimes at midnight, a few of us left a — respectable — establishment near Leicester Square. Eight or…
The Charles problem
The Prince of Wales has shown himself too vain to accept the limits of constitutional monarchy
The war on fraternities
An unruly American tradition may be coming to an end
A story of vile, stupid lefties – and dodgy statistics
Thoroughly cheering news emerged this week that left-handed people are likely to earn between 10 and 12 per cent less…
Want an argument against positive discrimination? Just look at me
I read with some interest the proposal for Oxford and Cambridge to set up state-school-only colleges in the Guardian this…
Students of dogma
Free speech is so last century. Today’s undergraduates demand the ‘right to be comfortable’
Lab test
I believe in animal research. But is there really a justification for using animals in biology lessons?
Letters
Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support…
Tread carefully: your garden’s saturated with race
Is your life saturated with racial meaning? The most common answer to this question, when I ask friends and acquaintances,…
New York notebook
Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…
Rome’s student politics
Foreign students getting on to courses under false pretences, overstaying their welcome and so on are nothing new. Ask the Romans.…
