Jesus college

During the past two years Jesus College has been a regular in the newspaper headlines. The Cambridge University college was last month found to have accepted cash from a ‘very high risk’ Chinese university for research into China’s prime tool of foreign influence. It came after a string of stories which contrasted the willingness of Jesus to accept donations from controversial Chinese sources with its efforts to remove a historic memorial linked to the slave trade from its chapel. Now though, it seems that the college has been moved to act. According to an email seen by The Spectator, ‘following a detailed review by a panel of Fellows, the college has

In a lecture I recently gave to mark the approaching 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, one of the questions I asked was whether Argentina would have another go. I concluded it would not, because the military protection of the islands, neglected in 1982, was now strong. In passing, though, I did note that China now has a close relationship with Argentina, over arms trading, the hog industry, soybeans, help with the pandemic etc. Argentina, I said, was now likelier to support China, not the West, in international forums. This week, Xi Jinping has declared his support for Argentina’s claim to ‘the full exercise of sovereignty’ over the islands. This

Jesus College Cambridge can claim a world first. It is the first institution, at least in the twenty-first century, to return a so-called Benin Bronze because it was looted in a British punitive raid in 1897 on the historic Kingdom of Benin, now part of the territory of Nigeria. The College’s Master Sonita Alleyne has today handed over its Okukor – a brass statue of a cockerel that took pride of place in the college’s dining hall peering over generations of students – to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Germany announced in May that its public museums would return their hundreds of Benin artefacts; Dan Hicks — Curator

Having only recently entered the House of Lords, I must tread with caution, but I had always understood that it is chiefly a revising chamber. By strong convention, it does not reject legislation arising from the election manifesto of the party victorious in the House of Commons. Yet on Monday night, faced with the Internal Market Bill (which helps provide for a full Brexit), it attempted no revision at all. The House was sitting in committee, whose very purpose is revision, but the anti-government majority was on such a high horse that it happily let an amendment from critics of the government fall. It refused to engage. A key feature

Although Stephen Toope, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, is committed to openness, it is a struggle to get information out of him about his university’s dealings with the Chinese Communist party. He has declined an interview, and when I raised questions about Jesus College’s China Centre and other China links, which he has publicly backed, he replied that ‘You cited one very specific initiative, organised by one of our 31 colleges, with a very narrow thematic focus’. I wrote back with further questions, but he says he is ‘not able to add anything to my earlier remark about Jesus College’. I also wrote to Sonita Alleyne, the Master of Jesus, who