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OK, you voted, and I listened, and dug out the flyer. It was at the bottom and this task served as a handy reminder that I need to give the box a good clean. So... (1/x) https://twitter.com/OU_Williams/status/1312703356369022978
It's important to note that the Hertford fundraising is nearly always couched in terms of funding bursaries to widen access, and this is something that the college has been consistent with over the decades. It's not 'Fund the Basil Zaharoff School of Bastardary', although (2/x)
as one much worse and entirely separate college (Oriel) demonstrated a couple of years ago, once you're in hock to your donors, it's them that call the tune, including the ability to veto college governing body decisions at will. (3/x)
It's the liberal, meritocratic establishment that Hutton and Hertford are connected to, not the conservative culture-wars establishment. Although the latter tend to have more money, and Oxford and other HEIs are very happy to pick up that also. (4/x)
Normally when I get rung up I have a chat to the polite, interesting student on the phone and explain that Hertford is not the only HEI I've had experience of, and I would rather give any spare cash to one that's got a radically different, better, comprehensive vision. (5/x)
What I don't tell them, because they don't need to hear it, is that I also think that if a worthwhile institution needs to rely on charity to carry out its mission, it's useful to wonder whether or not that effort would be better pointed at changing the system (6/x)
NB in these cases the system is not _always_ broken: I do give cash to the RNLI, who do a brilliant job, not least because they haven't been 'N' since 1922. (7/x)
So that's all the caveats out the way: I don't want this to be read as me slagging off people I know and like, who are trying to do their best within a system that they probably don't like either (<- my attitude here is how establishments work: who else gets these caveats?) (8/x)
Drumroll, for the flyer, but as suspected, it couches the appeal in terms of Hertford's response to the pandemic. Odds-on that WH helped set this up when he was still Principal, so it was also a handy topic for a swift column with bad fact-checking. (9/x)
Here is the relevant bit (10/x)
My take on what this has to do with the way that UK HE is funded is available from the rest of this thread:
https://twitter.com/OU_Williams/status/1312706706275733504?s=20
It's not just one lazy columnist that's the problem (except maybe the one in Downing Street): the issue is what it reveals about a system. (11/x)
https://twitter.com/OU_Williams/status/1312706706275733504?s=20
It's not just one lazy columnist that's the problem (except maybe the one in Downing Street): the issue is what it reveals about a system. (11/x)
PS Don't get me started on what this reveals about the liberal press. For one thing: The Observer needs to apologise for its murderous C21st warmongering record, much of which came straight out of the liberal wing of the UK establishment. (12/12)
PPS The C19th history of Hertford College, founded with a High Church bequest which was wrestled from the original trustees by a wily low church clique and spent accordingly, is one of the liberal establishment triumphing over the conservative. But that's another thread.
