Dennis Sewell

Assault on the ivory tower

Plum positions once reserved for academics are now being shared out among the liberal elite

Look down the list of the masters, wardens and principals of Oxford colleges and you’ll soon see that The Spectator’s contributing editor Peter Oborne was on to something with his theory of the inexorable rise of the media and political classes. At high tables across the university, former journalists, broadcasting executives and quangocrats are increasingly occupying places of honour once reserved for scholars of great renown.

Ensconced in the master’s chair at St Peter’s College is the former controller of BBC Radio 4, Mark Damazer. The principal of St Anne’s is former Newsnight editor and Channel 4 executive Tim Gardam. Ex-Guardian and Economist writer Frances Cairncross is the rector of Exeter College.

‘There’s foul weather ahead for all universities, but particularly for Oxford colleges,’ warned the senior fellow as he welcomed the appointment of the former Observer editor Will Hutton as Hertford College’s principal last year.

But if Will Hutton is the solution, what is the problem? It’s a fair bet that the author of The State We’re In wasn’t drafted in to rescue the institution’s finances. Hutton took up his position only a short time after the Work Foundation, the London think-tank he’d been running for a number of years, went spectacularly insolvent. A clue is perhaps offered by the senior fellow’s confidence that the appointee would enhance Hertford’s reputation for ‘innovation, open access… and intellectual distinction’ (note the order of priorities) and his identification of Hutton’s ‘experience of public life’ as grounds for optimism that the college will weather the impending storm.

Oxford has always been shamelessly quick on the uptake when it comes to spotting and adapting to changes in the nation’s power structure and enlisting men who represent whatever is currently on the rise. In the 1640s, after the city had fallen to Parliamentary forces, Wadham College elected John Wilkins as its warden, despite the fact that he was only 34 years old at the time.

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