Professor Eric Hobsbawm, CH, FBA
Degree of Doctor of Science
Praesento pauperum sospitatorem magnanimum, iustitiae fautorem providentem, pacis propugnatorem indefessum, virum excellentissimum Kofi Annan, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili.
[1] Virgil, Aeneid xii. 190f.
Return to text
[2] Ibid., 1.294f.
Return to text
The poet Virgil depicted his hero, the pious Aeneas, after the horrors of war, praying in such terms as these for peace and harmony for friends and foes alike. That was not so difficult for him; after all, he was the son of a goddess and favoured by Jupiter himself; but mere mortals can learn from the same great poet the further lesson that all too often ungodly Madness breaks its chains and ravages the world - and with weapons more deadly than when in his poem it "sat crouched upon its cruel armoury". It follows that there can be nothing which the human race should think as important as that they should all unite, that they should strengthen their unity with an organisation based on treaties, and that they should subordinate the special interests of individual nations to the common well- being of all mankind. Only in this way can we be delivered from the terrors which menace the world from every side and enjoy the prospect of a life of security and happiness. There has thus been an urgent need for a new body of international law and for new international institutions, the most important of which has been the United Nations. Mr Annan is the Secretary-General of that body, in which we all place so many hopes. Born in the Gold Coast when it was still part of the British Empire, educated in the United States and in Switzerland, he is a true citizen of the world, who for many years has worked for no single country but for them all, in such tasks as securing the liberation of hostages, arranging the purchase of food and medical supplies by Iraq, or working for peace and reconciliation in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia; and everywhere he has championed human rights. These have not been easy tasks. Mr Annan is not a man to shirk problems which are either arduous or dangerous; and he is conspicuous also for his readiness, if something goes wrong, not to take refuge in the all too familiar patterns of bureaucratic obfuscation, of evading responsibility, and of leaving any criticism to be faced by subordinates. He is outstandingly candid and sincere, and he has constantly encouraged his organisation to improve its performance. He is a most persuasive negotiator, vastly experienced in diplomacy; he has been active in assistance to his native continent of Africa, in so many ways the victim of poverty and want; and he has greatly increased the standing and the power of the United Nations.
I present a generous champion of the poor, a far-sighted partisan of justice, and a tireless advocate of peace, His Excellency Kofi Annan, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
Praesento virum discendi docendi res gerendi peritissimum, qui veram et incorruptam academiarum naturam verbis defendit opibus tuetur, Gulielmum Bowen, Fundationis Mellonianae Praesidem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili.
I present a man with a distinguished career as scholar, teacher, and administrator, a defender both in word and deed of the true purpose of Universities, William Bowen, President of the Mellon Foundation, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
ita parvi pendent, ut aequo animo exspectanda esse, omni anxietate in tempus nescio quid futurum dilata, prudentioribus frustra persuadere conentur; haec quae de futuro generis homini aevo libellum conscripsit saluberrimum meliora et ipsa intellegit et ceteris praecipit.
Praesento feminam et doctissimam et prudentissimam, patriae suae olim Praesidem impigerrimam, totius nunc orbis ministram eminentissimam, Gro Harlem Brundtland, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili.
[3] Virgil, Aeneid vi.276.f.
Return to text
There are still some who try to minimise them, urging us to go tranquilly on, pushing any attempt to deal with them into an indefinite future; Dr Harlem Brundtland is among the wiser spirits. She has written a book on the future of mankind, and she urges us all to join her in thinking seriously about these problems.
I present a high-powered scientist who is also a far sighted politician, formerly a dynamic leader of her country, now an eminent servant of the whole world, Gro Harlem Brundtland, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
Praesento annalium conditorem doctissimum ac facundissimum, qui nil humanum ab historico alienum esse existimat, Ericum Hobsbawm, inter Viros praecipue Honoratos Comitem, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
[4] Cicero, Orator 120.
Return to text
I present an historian as productive as he is learned, one who thinks nothing human alien to the historian's province, Eric Hobsbawm, CH, FBA, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
vir quem praesento, parentibus mathematicis natus, inter nos eruditus, cum ad rem physicam incumberet, adulescens admodum machinis computatricibus delectatus nuperrime tunc excogitatis ac ne perexiguam quidem adhuc particulam adeptis illarum quas nunc possident virium, hunc fere ad modum se interrogabat: quid tum, inquit, si istae machinae universae ita inter se coniungi possent, ut quidquid in quavis collectum ac cumulatum esset in omnibus praesto fieret, utque quisquis vellet inquirere universos illos scientiae thesauros in promptu simul haberet? cui hoc quoque subiunxit, illas machinas rem multo efficacius, multo potentius esse confecturas, si ita instrui possent ut res ordinarent atque componerent quae omni conligatione egere viderentur. his accessit quod quot erant machinarum genera, tot fere linguis erat utendum, nondum enim contigerat ut inter se intellegere ac conloqui possent. hic varios mentis humanae motus scrutatus eosdem ibi quoque prodesse repperit, ut intellegerent homines quomodo hoc novo telae genere uti deberent; non sibi tam bibliothecae imaginem debere proponere, singulos libros perlegendos, quam navigationem quandam qua
quaque lector sibi paginas fingeret imaginosas quas sine numero sine difficultate sine magistro adiret perlegeret collocaret. singula omitto temporis angustiis conclusus. hoc tamen addo, hunc amplissimum scientiae incrementum humano generi largitum nummorum se minime avidum praestitisse, ceteris opes illas quas coacervare potuisset reliquisse.
Praesento computatorem incomparabilem, telae infinitae inventorem ingeniosissimum, saeculi novi instauratorem praeclarissimum, Timotheum Berners-Lee, Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptum, Societatis Regiae Sodalem, Collegi Reginae Socium honoris causa adlectum, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia.
[5] Ovid, Metamorphoses vi.67.
Return to text
[6] Virgil, Aeneid vi.795f., adapted.
Return to text
Those imaginary pages could be accessed, consulted, and rearranged, without limit of number, without difficulty, and without the need for a teacher. There is much more that could be said, if time allowed. I can add only that in conferring on the world this immense new contribution to our knowledge he has shown himself the reverse of acquisitive for gain; he has left it to others to exploit the riches which he might have amassed for himself.
I present the incomparable master of computing, the brilliant inventor of the World Wide Web, the inaugurator of a new age, Timothy Berners-Lee, OBE, FRS, Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
sed ea ipsa primordia, atomos quae nuncupamus, nihilominus scindi posse cognovimus, subest enim etiam subtilior quaedam structura, quam hic cum primus intellexisset, totam rationem immutavit qua homines docti atomorum compagem et animo fingunt et usu tractant. quae ab hoc inventa utilissima sunt ac feracissima, aliter enim vires illas quae ab electro nomen duxerunt tarde tantum per fila transmitterentur, plurima quae hodie vitam cotidianam exornant nullo modo efficere possemus.
Praesento hominum physicorum praeclarissimum, chemicorum ingeniosissimum, qui et ipse res plurimas illuminavit et ceterorum ingenia prudentissime direxit, Gualterum Kohn, Societatis Regiae Sodalem, Praemio Nobeliano nobilitatum, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia.
[7] Lucretius v.500-2.
Return to text
But those first elements themselves, which we call atoms as if they were indivisible, have turned out to be capable of being split. Beneath them there lies a yet more minute structure. Professor Kohn was the first to shed light on it, and his insights have transformed the way in which physicists conceive of the structure of the atom and also the ways in which they use it. These discoveries have proved extremely fertile, leading to the transmission of energy at high speeds in electronic science, and so making possible many devices which nowadays form part of the comfort of all our lives.
I present Walter Kohn, FRS, Nobel Prizeman, an outstanding physicist who is also a brilliant chemist, a man who has made important discoveries himself, and who has directed the research of others with accomplished skill, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
Praesento virum multis nominibus laudandum, Gustavum Nossal, Equitem Auratum, Australiae Comitem, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, Societatis Regiae nec non aliarum academiarum plurimarum Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia.
I present a man with many claims to distinction, Sir Gustav Nossal, AC, CBE, Fellow of the Royal Society and of many other learned academies, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
haec autem quam produco cum inter histriones tum inter cantatrices iam diu primarium locum obtinet, quae a patria nostra, musica olim scilicet carenti, Musas haudquaquam alienas esse demonstrat;
quin etiam ceterarum nationum carmina, Germanorum ac nescio an praecipue Francogallorum, tam exquisite repraesentat ut nemo fere vernaculus, nam et linguam perfecte pronuntiat et ipsam vocem tanta dulcedine modulatur ut auditorum et mentes et aures vinculis gratissimis teneat captas atque devinctas. in istius modi carminibus lis quaedam exstat vetustissima, alii enim verbis, alii modis magis atque musicae volunt plus inesse momenti; causam spinosissimam vix inveneritis qui melius diiudicet quam haec, quae quotiens Comitissae partes sustinuit, totiens audientibus proclamavit laborem esse ineptum, si quis huc verba, huc modos, artes gemellas, velit diiungere, cum ambas inter se interfusas ita misceri consociarique videamus ut novum quiddam atque inauditum oboriatur. sed hoc cum sit valde optandum, summum enim est artis fastigium, tamen sine amplissimis et ingeni et disciplinae dotibus frustra temptatur; quare huic ex animo gratiam referre debemus.
Praesento aurium delectamentum, animorum refectionem, temporum nostrorum Sirena canorissimam, Felicitatem Lott, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, Academiae Regiae Musicae Sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Musica.
[8]Cicero, Somnium Scipionis 5.
Return to text
[9] Virgil, Aeneid 1.567f.
Return to text
Dame Felicity Lott, whom I now present, has long occupied a leading position both for her musical and for her dramatic talents, and we may say that she has showed that "the country without music", as this was once called, is nowadays by no means a stranger to the Muses. In the words of Dido, Queen of Carthage, "Our hearts in Carthage aren't so Philistine". Dame Felicity goes further, and performs the music of other countries, German and perhaps especially French, with a sympathy so complete that few if any natives can rival it. Her pronunciation of the languages is perfect, and her voice is so exquisitely modulated that she captivates the ears and minds of her audiences and holds them in delicious bondage. There is a long-standing dispute: Which comes first, or which is more important - the words or the music? The difficult question could not find a better solver than Dame Felicity, who has so often sung the role of the Countess in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, always concluding "Fruitless effort, to separate the two! Words and Music are fused into one, bound in a new synthesis". The arts are twins, and in their fusion they produce a new and especial delight. That is the ideal, and it is what we all desire; but it is not to be achieved without the highest level both of talent and of training. So our gratitude to Dame Felicity should be all the greater.
I present the refreshment of our ears and the delight of our minds, the melodious Siren of our generation, Dame Felicity Lott, DBE, FRAM, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
Honoratissime Domine Cancellarie – but let us leave the languorous labyrinths of the learned language for the vividness of the vernacular. The work of the Orator has in one respect been made easier by the invention of a publication both new and newsy, Blueprint, appearing three times a term and recording events and achievements; and not only in sport, either. It is also (of course) made more difficult. Those who are keenly interested in the identity of the new Warden of Judas, or the opening of the new Centre for Palindromic Studies, have generally read the news already elsewhere; while the University's Annual Review goes over much of the same ground yet again. And the audience of the Creweian Oration, I fear, contains many whose lot it is to listen also to some repeated material in the Senior Proctor's Oration and once more in the Vice-Chancellor's annual speech in October. Fortunately, Heads of House and University grandees generally are characterised by an insatiable, a voracious appetite for oratory. And the doors of the Sheldonian (I add) are locked and guarded.
The chief function of this Oration has always been the commemoration of our benefactors. Money matters must loom large. It is a matter for pride that our income from research grants and contracts leapt last year by 10 per cent. Oxford in fact claims to have achieved the greatest income of any British University in the last year from external research grants and contracts. More money came in, it is worth remarking, from charities than from the research councils.
But what do we read, none the less, in the Budget for 2000–1? `The University finds itself facing substantial financial constraints following the grant settlement announced by HEFCE, which represents a 2 per cent cut in real terms.... After much discussion, a balanced budget has been agreed for 2000–1' (Gazette, 20 July 2000, p. 1490). After much discussion: those who are experienced in interpreting bureaucratic language will guess that behind such a statement lie sacrifices and struggles (`After discussion, the report was referred back ...'—and three members of the Committee were treated for cuts and bruises).
In the words of the Senior Proctor's Oration, which in 2001 maintained the high standard of Orations given on that occasion in recent years, `This year it has seemed frequently that we are living in an institution under siege...the requirement for [Government] control became unstoppable... It is particularly galling to observe the attempt to use universities as proxy instruments of the social engineering which the government itself has so signally failed to deliver... We are least happy at the situation of Humanities...'. But we in the Humanities are hardly less concerned to hear of the cuts that are being imposed on some of our Science departments. All our hearts, surely, must sink, when we hear talk of cuts, in some of the Life Sciences, of the order of fifty per cent. Nor were any of us cheered to observe that in the general election campaign the word `education' seemed to refer exclusively to schools. The crisis in which higher education is struggling has not succeeded, it appears, in attracting the interest of politicians.
It has become a sad but unremarkable fact of life that, at a time when the nation is said to be flourishing, and huge financial surpluses are being amassed, our leading Universities cannot fill the vacancies created when members of staff leave, and vital academic positions must, as a matter of routine, remain vacant for years, until gradually the money accumulates to pay for them. And it becomes clearer that increasingly money will be forthcoming for special projects, but not for—and indeed at the cost of—such boring and humdrum purposes as teaching, research, buying books for our libraries, or repairing our buildings. No glamour in any of that, for a headline-hungry government department, or for a publicity-conscious quango. The importance to the nation in our teaching is obvious; the importance of some of the new projects, which increasingly divert money and staff away from our central duties, is much less so. Yet the one set is being forced by constant interference to devour the other.
And still—despite all the efforts of moral exhortation on the one hand, and of satirical denunciation on the other—still wealthy colleges and healthy departments are advertising teaching appointments, not for a year, but for nine stingy months. The Orator would like to think that if he achieves nothing else in a dozen years of delivering these annual homilies, he may at least be able, one day, to bring the deep blush of shame to the saurian and leathery cheeks of these bodies, as they reflect on the income-less summer months of their young: the months in which alone they could hope to write the articles and books which are vital for getting the next academic job. Next year we may start naming the bodies which do this. Victims are invited to let the Orator know about them.
There was a great debate this year on salaries and differentials for academics in the University. The figures at stake are put soberingly into perspective by the news that graduates of the Saïd Business School, three years after graduation, are earning on average £70,000 a year. Well, I suppose it's nice that someone is.
All that makes us even more aware of our debt to our benefactors, and of our gratitude to them. We have many generous friends. Not all of them can be mentioned in this speech, and I hope that everyone will read and meditate upon the names listed in the back of the Encaenia programme.
Work has begun on the construction of a grand new Chemistry Laboratory, in which the three branches of Oxford Chemistry will be able to work even more closely together. It is to cost £60,000,000. A third of this sum is to be provided by a joint venture with the investment bank Beeson Gregory. A grant of £30,000,000 was received from the Joint Infrastructure Fund; other grants were made by the E.P. Abraham Research Fund, Thomas Swan & Co., the Wolfson Foundation, and the Salters Company. The E.P.Abraham Research Fund has also endowed a Chair of Cell Biology and made important contributions to a Chair in Molecular Biology and the upgrading of a Readership in Microbiology to a Professorship.
An anonymous donation has established a Chair in Psychiatry, with special focus on the problems associated with autism. Another anonymous donor has given a substantial benefaction, intended for the establishment of scholarships. The Andrew W.Mellon Foundation has made important benefactions to the Refugee Studies Centre and to the Bodleian Library; we may perhaps discern here the fine Italian hand of Dr Bowen. The late Ursula M.Casswell has left more than a million pounds to the Oxford colleges and the Bodleian. The Library also reports a timely grant from the Getty Foundation, for the Library elements of the Michael Aris Fund for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, and for an on-line catalogue of illuminated manuscripts—which promises hours of innocent delight. And the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies has given a substantial grant to construct a new third floor at the Oriental Institute, for teaching and research in those subjects.
A very substantial grant has been received from the Leverhulme Trust, to make possible four new posts in contemporary Chinese studies, including urbanisation, demography, the environment, and the modernisation of society. This is especially welcome as a mark of recognition of the strength of Chinese studies in Oxford, and of the importance which the University and the Trust attach to understanding the impact of China on the world. The Indian Government has enabled us to establish a Professorship of Indian History and Culture. Mr Rivington Winant has permanently endowed the John G.Winant Visiting Professorship in American Government. The Rhodes Trust has made very substantial benefactions to the Saïd Business School and to the Sackler Library. That Library is nearly completed and soon to be opened. It will be a fine building and a notable addition to our facilities for the study of the Ancient World. The Miller Family Foundation has made a generous grant to St Edmund Hall and for a fellowship in Management Studies. KPMG has funded for five years the KPMG Professorship of Taxation Law. The Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education has funded the Uehiro Chair in Applied Ethics.
The Sub-department of Particle Physics has been awarded a grant of more than £9,000,000 by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. There were two successful bids for support from the Joint Infrastructure Fund, or JIF: £3,000,000 each to Dr Iain Campbell, of the Department of Biochemistry, and to Professor Tony Monaco, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. Ten bids were successful to the 2000 Joint Research Equipment Initiative for projects ranging from a new cardiac and brain imaging research centre to the quest for dark matter in space, left over from the Big Bang.
The Ashmolean has acquired a splendid portrait by Titian of a Genoese grandee, bought in memory of Professor Francis Haskell, with the aid of grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Art Collections Fund, the Friends of the Ashmolean, and other sources. The picture hangs in the Fox-Strangways Gallery, newly refurbished with a donation from Mr Daniel Katz of the Daniel Katz Gallery.
The University Museum of Natural History claims that Oxford now has `the largest display of dinosaurs outside London'; confirming an impression formed, over the years, by so many undergraduates, and almost a cliché with our fearless media, with whom it has long been an article of faith that in Oxford dinosaurs sit in panelled Common Rooms sipping port. And elsewhere in the Museum other researchers, who regard dinosaurs as rather vulgarly recent, are creating 3-D `virtual fossils', images of molluscs and the like which died 425,000,000 years ago, the distant ancestors of today's mussels, snails, and octopods.
But Oxford, Janus-faced, looks to the future at least as much as to the past. Innovative ventures are in the air, and in cyberspace, too. The University has taken its first steps towards the establishment of distance learning, on the internet, in combination with Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. It has also broken new ground by setting up, with Balliol, the Oxford Internet Institute, a pioneering multidisciplinary Institution which will help us to understand the effects of the Internet on society. That has been made possible by a major donation from the Shirley Foundation, and a large one from HEFCE.
In the Ashmolean HE the Chinese Ambassador opened the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Gallery of Chinese Painting, funded by a generous benefaction from the Christensen Fund and an anonymous benefactor; while today, this very day, Sir Howard Hodgkin, whom we honoured at Encaenia last year, comes back to Oxford to open the Sands Gallery of Early Twentieth Century Art, sponsored by the invaluable Lottery Fund. It is to house, among other goodies, ten works by Walter Sickert, a gift from the Christopher Sands Trust. And a previously unknown lover of the Ashmolean, the late John Walden Taft, has left it a substantial bequest of property and shares.
The swimming pool, to be called the Rosenblatt Pool in recognition of the splendid gift of Mr Lief D.Rosenblatt, former Rhodes Scholar, should be open by the end of 2001. The OU Swimming Club, thus heartened, has beaten Cambridge in the second Varsity swimming race across the Channel (the first having been a dead heat).
We continue to attract the attentions of the political world. The University's admissions policy was examined by what is appropriately known as `a cross parliamentary group'. The TQA, the RAE: these malign acronyms continued to impose some tiresomeness on us all, and on a few of us very heavy burdens indeed. The Research Assessment Exercise has taken an interesting step beyond its past record of imperiousness. Its members are now so sure that we real academics tell them lies, that they think it not enough to require us to report the titles of the books we claim to have written; not enough even to require their ISBN numbers. No, we must have an actual copy in the hands of our faculty representatives, ready to be produced for inspection, and to be produced instantly (no question, of course, of anyone going to a library), in case a bureaucrat of the RAE should take the whim of demanding to be shown it. The little dogs who run with the big dogs delight to show us their teeth. Such is the atmosphere of mutual suspicion and contempt which is now to be taken as normal in a learned profession.
The Faculty of English has decided that Beowulf shall no longer be compulsory. In many minds the immediate question arose, Is Oxford English still vibrant? Fortunately an official statement from the Faculty assures us, in so many words, that it is: `English at Oxford is diverse and vibrant and thoroughly relevant to the modern world'. Be still, my beating heart! Be calm, my racing pulse! How could we have doubted it?
A blue plaque has been affixed to 20 Northmoor Road, home of J.R.R. Tolkien, charmingly described in Blueprint as `the former Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, perhaps best known as author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings'. Well, just possibly, I suppose. Another blue plaque is to be displayed on the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, to commemorate the work of Dorothy Hodgkin, Fellow of Somerville, and her work on the structure of insulin.
The Astrophysicists here are co-operating in the enquiry into the origins if the Universe. Rather closer to home, and on a different scale, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit has made Wytham Wood `one of the best-known and most intensively studied woods in the world'. The squirrels there are beginning to give themselves the airs of artists' models.
As usual, we have this year welcomed a number of very grand and very interesting visitors. Oriel College received the honour of a visit from HM the Queen, who opened the college's new building, the James Mellon Hall. HE Kofi Annan, who we delight to honour today, gave us a powerful lecture yesterday in this very Theatre, entitled `Why democracy is an international issue'. Another visitor in the course of the year was HIH the Crown Prince of Japan. Ex-President Bill Clinton opened the Vere Harmsworth Library, part of the Rothermere American Institute, established with the aid of a number of generous contributions as an international centre of excellence for the interdisciplinary and comparative study of the United States and the colonial territories that preceded it. Some of us caught a glimpse of Mr Clinton as he dashed in running kit out of the Randolph Hotel and across St Giles', pursued by his retinue, their breath coming in short pants. The experience resembled that of sighting, on a lonely stretch of river, a sudden darting kingfisher. In some ways, that is; to some extent.
HE Mr Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, came and gave a lecture on `Globalisation and diversity'. Senator Gary Hart gave the second Chatham Lecture, on `The future of Anglo- American relations'. Mr Wole Soyinka gave the Olof Palme Lecture, on `The scars of memory and the scales of Justice'. Mr David Blunkett, MP, who was then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, delivered a lecture on `Learning, citizenship, and equality in the twenty-first century'. There was an interesting and well supported series of Oxford Amnesty Lectures.
All Souls enacted its centennial chivvying of the swapping swapping medieval mallard, provoking the Head of another college to ask, in the correspondence columns of The Times, whether that was quite the way to encourage applications from the underprivileged. It is believed that the college plans to devote the next hundred years to a fundamental consideration of the question from all angles, pedagogic, sociological, scholastic, ornithological, journalistic, political, venatory, historical, environmental, and gustatory, before harrying that pesky mallard again in 2101. Meanwhile, the Warden has given a public lecture on the suggestive topic of `Founder's Kin'.
Balliol has elected a new Master in succession to Dr Colin Lucas, snatched from us by the University. He is Mr Andrew Graham, economist, for many years a Fellow of the college, and not without experience of Whitehall. Dr Lucas has been elected to the Board of what was the CVCP, now happily christened UUK (Yu-Yuk). Let us hope that that will be some consolation to him, as he is, in the words of the hymn, changed from glory into glory, till in Heaven he takes his place. To put it in a more prosaic style, he leaves Balliol and has been elected to a Fellowship of All Souls. Pembroke has elected a new Master in succession to Dr Robert Stevens; he is Mr Giles Henderson, Senior Partner in the law firm of Slaughter and May. St Hilda's has elected a new Principal to succeed Miss Elizabeth Llewellyn- Smith; she is Dr Judith Milne, currently Chief of Staff of the VA Boston Healthcare System.
The Honours Lists, it seems, no longer contain many academic names. As the Independent put it in its front page headline on January the first, `Showbusiness, media, and sport dominate New Year Honours'. These (to be sure), these—who can quarrel with it?—these are your gods, O Israel. Our congratulations are thus all the heartier to those colleagues who, even in this Philistine setting, are singled out for well- deserved recognition. Two of our eminent scientists have received life peerages: Professor Susan Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Royal Institution, and Sir Robert May, Professor of Zoology and President of the Royal Society. Professor Christopher White, lately Director of the Ashmolean Museum and Fellow of Worcester, has received a knighthood, and Professor Anna Morpurgo Davies, Professor of Comparative Philology and Fellow of Somerville, has become an honorary DBE. Mr Eric Hotung, Fellow of St Antony's and member of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors, has been made CBE, as have Mr John Flemming, Warden of Wadham, and Professor Graham Richards, Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of BNC. Mr Michael Noble, Fellow of Green College, has received the OBE for his research into poverty and deprivation. Ms Jeanette Franklin, Director of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre/Orthotics Appeal, has been awarded an MBE; so has Mr John Ashdown, for many years Conservation Officer for the city, on whom we conferred an honorary MA last term. Congratulations to them all. And, of course, to the six Oxford alumni who won medals at the Sydney Olympic Games.
Other prizes, honours, and distinctions have been, in the familiar phrase, as numerous as wrinkles in an elephant's trunk. I make no pretence of arranging those which follow in order of importance, or indeed of anything else.
Sir Peter Morris, Nuffield Professor of Surgery, has been elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons. Dr Martin West, of All Souls, has been awarded a Balzan Prize for his work on Classical Antiquity. Canon Arthur Peacocke, of Exeter, has been awarded the Templeton Prize for having `substantially advanced the relationship between religion and the natural sciences'. Professor Malcolm Bowie has been awarded the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism for his book Proust among the Stars. Professor Terry J. Lyons, Wallis Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded the 2000 Polya Prize of the London Mathematical Society. Professor Alain Townsend has been awarded the International Gairdner Award. Professor Stuart Ferguson has been awarded the Keilin Medal of the Biochemical Society. Professor John Woodhouse has been awarded the Inge Lehmann Medal by the American Geophysical Union. Professor Gerry Smith has been awarded the Alec Nove Prize 2000 for his book on D.S. Mirsky. And the magazine Isis has been named `Student Magazine of the Year' in the Guardian Student Media Awards.
The Royal Society has elected seven of our number to Fellowships: Professor Keith Burnett, Professor Richard Dawkins, Dr Brian Eyre, Professor John Hunt, Professor Frances Kirwan, Professor Paul Madden, and Professor Alex Wilkie. The British Academy elected to Fellowships, some fifty weeks ago now, but too late (as ever) for last year's Oration, five of us: Professor John Broome, White's Professor-elect of Moral Philosophy; Dr Diego Gambetta, Reader in Sociology; Professor James Malcolmson, Professor of Economics; Professor Oliver O'Donovan, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology; and Dr Avner Offer, Chichele Professor-elect of Economic and Social History. The Royal Academy of Engineering has elected to Fellowships Dr Richard Darton, Shell Visiting Fellow of Keble; Professor Terence Jones, Donald Schultz Professor of Turbo-Machinery; and Professor Lionel Tarassenko, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Six of us were awarded British Academy Readerships: Dr Suzanne Bobzien, Professor Helen Cooper, Dr Diego Gambetta, Professor Paul Harris, Professor Desmond King, and Dr Adam Swift. Five young colleagues were awarded Leverhulme Prizes: Dr Katherine Clarke, Dr Steve Elston, Dr Gideon Henderson, Dr Matthew Leigh, and Dr Ian Rumfitt.
A team from the Centre for Tropical Medicine has won the Queen's Anniversary Prize 2000 for Higher and Further Education. The AHRB has given £472,000 to a team in the Oriental Institute which is creating a universally available textual corpus of literature in Sumerian. But some of the University's research has been devoted to problems hardly (perhaps) less vibrant, but (if possible) even more relevant to our everyday lives. Professor Nick Trefethen, of the Computing Laboratory, has been at work on an interesting problem: how many times does a pack of cards need to be shuffled in order to achieve randomness? (six riffle shuffles, it seems). Relevant indeed; and the Department of Experimental Psychology, not to be outdone, has proved that in cricket it is best not to keep your eye on the ball. Nor should it pass uncelebrated that a team of four Oxford students in Ecuador has identified three new and hitherto unknown species of frog.
The Alumni Relations Office and the Oxford Society have merged into the new Oxford University Society. It is sad to hear that Mr Tim Lewis is retiring from the Secretaryship of the Oxford Society. We wish the new body, and its new Secretary, all success.
The Creweian Oration takes all University life as its province; it aims to give a glimpse of our multitudinous activities; and it yields to no Oxford organ or oration in its unresting search for signs of vibrancy. This year the quest has led me to scan the lists of lectures which have been given here. Lectures advertised in the Gazette have included the following: `The development of amphibious warfare'; `What makes theatre theatrical?'; `Le partage de la parole'; `The search for lovers, friends, and workmates who are not bores' (now there's a question to which every bosom returns an echo, and a jolly vibrant one: who denies our relevance now?); `Use of a cauterising laparoscopic linear stapler in intestinal anastomoses'; `Monopolies and nuisances in Victorian cities'; `Stone deposition—from pyramids to pelvises'; `Super rotation in the Earth's thermosphere?' `Fuzzy legality in regulation'; `The tort of wrongful living: a wrong without a remedy?' `Buddhism—some mistranslations, misconceptions, and unexplored territory'; `Co-ordinated swarming in social spiders'; `Sex, sheep, and statutes'; `Some beneficial aspects of inflammation of the nervous system', rather a comforting title; `Sprachgeschichtsschreibung' (remarkable for possessing eight consecutive consonants; how different must be the experience of playing Scrabble in German).
Some titles are comparatively narrow in scope; thus for instance `Julio Medem, Lovers of the Arctic Circle, and the place of the auteur in a global film industry', or `Time and the fourth dimension of language in the novels of Clarice Lispector'. Others by contrast impress by their breadth; thus the title of the inaugural lecture by the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion was `Of scientists and their gods'. We have also had `Literature, science, and human nature', and `Divine action and chaos theory'. When we seem to have reached the utmost point in ambitiousness, we find it is still possible to go further: `Valuing the earth', for instance, or indeed `Interpreting the outcome'—a subject which perhaps recurs, more apocalyptically phrased, as `How will it all end?' (the Tanner Lecture on Human Values). That more plangent tone reminds us that we must not overlook that perennial cry of despair by hard-pressed organisers: the eternal `To be announced'.
There have also been some eye-catching titles this year of D.Phil. theses. They included: `Cadaverous narratives: the displaced corpse in Victorian fiction', and `The right of children to be loved'. On a different note, there was `The Nidanavagga of the Saratthappakasini'; different again was `Modelling crustal earthquakes as propagating shear faults in a layered earth'. Suggestively ambitious was `The solar neighbourhood and centre of the Milky Way'.
I conclude these glimpses of the Oxford which the tourist does not see with a glance at a few of the University Prizes on offer to stimulate the aspiring among our student body. There is the Carlos de Sola Wright Memorial Fund (`priority will be given to research or study concerning San Salvador'), and the Varley- Gradwell Travelling Fellowship in Insect Ecology; there is the Chancellor's English Essay Prize: subject this year, `An intellectual hatred is the worst', and the Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Prize, worth £880, for `the best sonnet or other poem written in English and in strict rhyming metre'. Intriguing is the Shelley-Mills Prize, `the purpose of which is to promote the study of the works of William Shakespeare', as this year the prescribed essay topic was `Shakespeare and blood'.
Then there is the Sidney Truelove Prize for essays related to diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract; and the John Betts Travelling Scholarships, `for visits to particular places to see organs' (a touch there, possibly, of voyeurism, even of sex tourism?), and the Dasturzada Dr Jal Pavry Memorial Prize for a thesis in the area of international peace and understanding. Nor must we forget, in that favoured discipline, the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Prize for a thesis on international relations. The Laurence Binyon Prize will be awarded to enable the prize winner to travel to Asia, the Far East, or another area outside Europe, to extend knowledge and appreciation of the visual arts, while the Egerton Coghill Landscape Prize is awarded for the best landscape painting in oils... [it] must not exceed four feet square unframed; I see that `the winning entry each year will be exhibited in the Divinity School during the week of the Encaenia'. So now is our chance to enjoy it.
Some of us, of course, will not be able to enjoy that spectacle, nor the Luncheon so splendidly provided each year after this ceremony by All Souls, nor the lunch (I feel that the distinction is only right) so generously served by Rhodes House. Every year we have to remember not only achievements, honours, prizes, benefactions, new opportunities. We must also feel the loss of colleagues whom we loved, and who in their lives made their contribution to the high purposes of this great and ancient institution. This year I record the deaths of Elizabeth Anscombe, Fellow of Somerville; Gerald Aylmer, Master of St Peter's; John Backhouse, Fellow of Linacre; John Christian, Fellow of St Edmund Hall; William Davies, Fellow of St Cross; Oliver Gurney, Fellow of Magdalen; Geoffrey Lewis, Fellow of Kellogg; James MacGregor, Fellow of St Cross; Kathleen Major, Principal of St Hilda's; Brian Miller, Fellow of Brasenose; Freda Newcombe, Fellow of Linacre; Alastair Parker, Fellow of Queen's; Mervyn Popham, Fellow of Linacre; Mary Proudfoot, Fellow of Somerville; Robert Runcie, Fellow of Brasenose and Visitor of Merton and of All Souls; Robert Sherlaw Johnson, Fellow of Worcester; Richard Southern, President of St John's; Anthony Storr, Fellow of Green College; Alan Tyson, Fellow of All Souls; Peter Whalley, Fellow of Balliol. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Each year the ageing Orator recognises in that list the names of more and more of the departed with a personal, not merely an institutional, sense of loss. They die, as we shall all die, but their work lives on; and what is mortal strives towards immortality. May we be their worthy successors.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement
Vice-Chancellor, distinguished guests,
it's been repeatedly impressed
upon me that, of the two chief
stipulations here, my main brief
is mainly brevity itself
while, since we've had details of wealth
given in such wealth of detail,
I'm meant to turn to the large-scale.
That's why I'm holding forth on how
a benefactor may endow
a university with much
more than money, how going dutch
with Princeton (as we've done this year),
may afford all of us a clear
idea of our obligations
to our own, and to all nations,
and how (at the risk of seeming crude),
ample funds lend an amplitude
of vision, freeing us to do
(as it did the third Baron Crewe),
what we know to be the right thing.
This Baron Crewe of whom I sing
in verse (`that which flies on one wing'),
had been a favourite of King
James II, James who'd yet join
at Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne
with the Prince of Orange and Nassau,
James who'd snatch defeat from the jaws
of victory. It's from that same
Prince of Orange and Nassau the name
Princeton derives, if you recall,
and it's a matter of no small
joy to me that we've honoured here
William Bowen, whom I hold dear
as Princeton's former president.
By the time Bill Bowen had spent
fifteen years at 1, Nassau Hall,
he'd helped to raise the wherewithal
that gives a university
the chance to declare itself free
of at least some of the constraints
that now seem to tarnish and taint
schools on this side of the ocean,
this kingdom of time and motion
run by those time and motion men
who rate academics by when
and where (but not why), they put pen
to paper. I'm glad, yet again,
that this has been the year Oxford
and Princeton are of one accord,
agreeing to collaborate
on twelve research projects—two great,
grounded (two great, groundbreaking), schools
prepared to piggyback, to pool
resources, widening the range
of options for student exchange.
Now that we're gathered to give thanks
for piggybacks from piggybanks,
the trend for alums to scatter
some alms on their Alma Mater
(a tendency much less innate
here than in the United States),
I need to go carefully lest
I'm thought to spurn such grand bequests
as all those establishing chairs
to which our heirs will be the heirs,
that allowing us to enter
the Refugee Studies Centre's
new portal on forced migration
from nation to warring nation,
here a tithe-bond, there a Titian,
when I say that the ambition
to keep Oxford on level terms
may be most powerfully affirmed
by that anonymous bequest
for scholarships. For Oxford's best
interests may not be best served
by governments who have the nerve
to ever-so-coolly insist
on their still being `socialist'
while letting all the social gains
we've cherished go right down the drain,
or governments in their glory
who've forgotten the word `Tory'
is the Gaelic for `highwayman'.
Since daylight robbery's the plan
of governments of every cast,
I look askance and stand aghast
(the very day I turn fifty),
thinking of my parents' thrifty,
threadbare flying, seat-of-the-pants,
relying on those local grants
to educate us, how they'd find
themselves in a much greater bind
fifty years on. So I'm inclined
to think of all these caring, kind,
benefactors for whom we bless
and thank our lucky stars much less
as kind, or caring (though they're both),
but crucial, crucial to the growth
of this great university,
allowing us to be quite free
to pursue a social vision,
including need-blind admissions
and (something in which Princeton's shown
the way), replacing student-loans
with grants for those who can't afford
to pay for tuition and board
but are, in other senses, rich.
It's an initiative with which
I've been repeatedly impressed,
Vice-Chancellor, distinguished guests,
and all of every other rank
on whose behalf I offer thanks
to those who've, this year, seen their way
to hastening that happy day.
Return to List of Contents of the supplement