Floreat DomusISSUE No.16 Apr i l 2 0 1 0 balliol college news

Weaning Britain off fossil fuels » Innovating medical education

Transforming natural resources into fuels » An interview with Christopher Ricks Balliol and the East End » Balliol in business » Can we succeed in Afghanistan? Architects of the European Union » Toby Ord and the science of morals KT Bruce Contents Page 9 Welcome to the 2010 edition of Floreat Domus.

p age 26 n Balliol i business News Bo Meng surveys some recent p1age College news start-ups p6age Student news p age 28 Weaning Britain off fossil fuels Pages 30-31 Professor and Priest p9age Doireann Lalor interviews two alumni David Vines on p age 10 Some thought the global financial crisis p age 30 Pages 26-27 Page 20-23 for food p age 11 New Year Honours Matthew Fraser considers global food issues p age 12 A Balliol genius Architects of the Balliol’s sixth p age 32 p age 13 European Union Reith Lecturer Tom Rowley discovers some Balliol pioneers Features p age 36 Toby Ord and the science of morals p age 14 Curious and Owain Williams in conversation compassionate with ‘Giving What We Can’ founder Jacqueline Smith talks to two Balliol novelists p age 37 Bookshelf p age 16 Transforming natural resources into fuels Development news Chris Record interviews Andrew Ashley p age 38 Towards Balliol’s Muller Sean 750th Anniversary Pages 46-47 p age 17 Innovating medical education p age 39 The Annual Fund - Elizabeth Mumford investigates A Record Year spaced education p age 40 Historic Collections p age 18 Balliol and the Centre at St. Cross Church East End p age 41 Secularism and the state: Jacqueline Smith goes to the 2010 Master’s Seminar Toynbee Hall p age 42 Benefactors to Balliol p age 20 e Can w succeed in Afghanistan? p age 42 Calendar of Events Michael Webb reviews his p age 46 Buried treasure trip and talks to alumni p age 48 The establishment of the An interview p age 24 Arthur and Miriam Levitan Fund with Christopher Ricks Jacqueline Smith meets the p age 49 Generous support outgoing Professor of Poetry for prizes at Balliol

group does not meet in person; members simply Publication details Editorial respond to one or two emails a year which ask for W elcome to the 2010 issue of Floreat Domus. specific input or advice. Editor: Jacqueline Smith, Publications The magazine is being published slightly earlier In this issue, as well as welcoming some new & Web Officer this year, partly because the Annual Record faces we are also celebrating student success in Design: Richard Boxall Design Associates comes out in September, and we wanted to debating, judo, and journalism; we continue to Print: Hunts distribute the two publications more evenly mark the thirtieth anniversary of the admission across the year. of women to Balliol with a report on the first of Contact details I am grateful to the informal editorial two special women’s lunches; and we also find out advisory group which has provided advice what just a handful of the thousands of talented Balliol College, on the content of this issue. Vice-Master Balliol alumni are doing today in fields as diverse Broad Street, Seamus Perry, postgraduate Jennifer Robinson, as cake-baking, sustainable energy, novel-writing, Oxford OX1 3BJ undergraduate Tom Rowley, Tutor in Politics and counter-insurgency, to name but a few. Telephone: +44(0)1865 277768 Adam Swift, and Senior Tutor Nicola Trott As always, please do not hesitate to write to Email: [email protected] have all been helpful in this regard. If there is me with your thoughts and comments on the Website: www.balliol.ox.ac.uk any Old Member with a particular interest in magazine. publications who is willing to join this group Cover picture: ‘Collections’ (exams) in Balliol Hall, I would be pleased to hear from you. The Jacqueline Smith, Editor by Piers Nye

fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Appointments 2009 David Professor Doug’s Judo Women college news and honours Pathfinders Vines and Priest Lunches Champion at Balliol Jacqueline Smith she certainly has a well-functioning sense of humour, which is one of New the skills she identifies as important for a Domestic Bursar, along with diplomacy, and remembering what it Domestic was like to be a student. It was in the air force that Jo began her career, as an officer, before taking Bursar time out to have her three children. She then resumed work, this time for British Airways, where she managed In July 2009, Jo Roadknight took an cabin services across fleets including opportunity ‘too good to miss’ and Concorde. moved from Hertford College to Balliol’s new Domestic Bursar has Balliol as Domestic Bursar, filling the been charged with cutting costs and vacancy left by Carl Woodall when he increasing revenue in this difficult went to work at the financial climate, and Jo intends to earlier in the year. do this while continuing to improve Jo’s first impression of Balliol was services for students, Fellows, and that it had an ‘extraordinary family visitors to the College, whether they feel’, and that there was a sense of be tourists, parents, or conference people belonging to the College, from guests. the scouts to the fellowship. In one I ask Jo what she likes best about of her previous roles she managed a her role here at Balliol, and without group of care homes for the elderly, hesitation she explains that it is the and she jokes that this experience variety that she enjoys: ‘One minute of looking after the old and slightly I could be head to head with the city mad might stand her in good stead council, and the next minute I’m for overseeing the efficient running taking the maintenance team out for of an Oxford college! It is clear that a pint on a Friday’. Jo Roadknight

Professor Tom Melham, the new more graduate scholarship funding incumbent, sees his role as being than does any other Oxford college. New Praefectus an ‘advocate for Balliol’s graduates, I asked Tom what aspects of the in College and the University,’ role he was most looking forward to. In September 2010 Holywell committed to the well-being of He was enthusiastic about working Manor will be welcoming a new the students and the success of the with the individuals who make up Praefectus. The Praefectus is the centre. Having been an international the graduate student community at Fellow responsible for overseeing graduate student at Cambridge in the Balliol. ‘It really is an extraordinary the College’s graduate centre based 1980s, Tom knows first-hand how a group of very clever people. It will around Holywell Manor and for strong college community can provide be exciting to get to know these pastoral care of Balliol’s outstanding a ‘delightful and uniquely valuable young scholars and researchers, full community of graduate students. Professor Tom Melham intellectual and social home’ to of energy and interest, and working graduates. He wants to make sure that across many disciplines.’ Holywell Manor remains the premier Tom will also be involved with collegiate graduate facility in Oxford. some of the more practical aspects After Cambridge, Tom went of life at the Manor. The MCR have to Glasgow University, where he already used some of their own served as Faculty Vice-Dean for budget to clear the old kitchens in the Graduates, coming to Balliol as basement to make way for a sound- Tutor in Computation in 2002. He proof music practice space. Tom is is Professor of Computer Science in keen to help ensure this proposed the University and does research on development becomes a reality. He machine-assisted logical reasoning is also ‘delighted to be working with about computation. Tom has just the new Domestic Bursar, who has come to the end of four years as Tutor already started making important for Graduate Admissions at Balliol, improvements to facilities and during which time he oversaw a staffing at the Manor’. significant expansion in the College’s Balliol wishes the new Praefectus graduate numbers and in Balliol’s all the best in his aim to offer our provision of graduate scholarships. graduate students ‘dedicated graduate Thanks to the generosity of our facilities and a scholarly community donors and supporters, we now offer unmatched in Oxford’.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 1 New Fellows András Schiff Andras Schiff is a Hungarian-born classical pianist. He emigrated from Balliol is pleased to welcome Hungary to Britain in 1979, and is seven new Fellows. a British citizen. Schiff is one of the most renowned interpreters of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. He is a Special Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol, a post to which he was Gretchen Gerzina elected in 2009 for five years. G retchen is a Supernumerary Fellow, George Eastman Visiting Professor (English). She is the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth College. Gretchen Nicola Trott has published widely on such diverse topics as Nicola took up the post of Senior Tutor and Bloomsbury, Frances Hodgson Burnett (author Academic Registrar at Balliol in Trinity Term of The Secret Garden), and slavery. Since 1997 2007. Previously she was Head of English Gretchen has hosted the US radio programme Literature at the University of Glasgow, where ‘The Book Show’. she also undertook research in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. Before moving to Glasgow in 1995 she had been a Fellow by Special Election at St Catherine’s College Oxford and a Lecturer both in Oxford and at the Univeristy of . Toby Ord T oby returns to Balliol as a Junior Research Fellow in the Humanities (Philosophy), Laure having studied Philosophy here as a graduate. His Zanna research interests encompass L aure Zanna is the James both theoretical and practi- Martin Junior Research Joseph Conlon cal ethics. He will focus on Fellow (Oceanography). Joseph joins Balliol as a Junior Research Fellow ‘moral uncertainty’: the She is based in the in the Sciences (Physics). Previously he was study of how we are to act University’s Departments at the Department of Applied Mathematics when we are uncertain about of Physics and Earth Sciences. and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. He is a the relevant moral issues. Her research focuses on ocean particle physicist and specializes in string theory, He is also working on the dynamics and climate. She which postulates that all particles are vibrating ethics of global poverty studies physical mechanisms strings. His research studies and global catastrophic risk related to large-scale ocean the consequences of (see page 36). circulation variability. the extremely small- scale physics of string theory for the merely very small scales of Marika Youni particle physics. M arika (Maria) is a Supernumerary Visiting He is particularly Fellow and Oliver Smithies Lecturer 2009-2010. interested in She is Associate Professor of Legal History in the supersymmetry Department of Law at Democritus University of and the mass Thrace (Greece). Her speciality is ancient Greek patterns of law and institutions, Roman law and institutions, supersymmetric and the interaction between Roman and Greek particles that may law in the Greek provinces of the Roman Empire. be discovered at While at Balliol she intends to complete her the Large Hadron research on legal inscriptions from Ancient Crete Collider. (7th – 4th centuries BC).

2 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s John Jones’ Ian Taylor retirement dinner By Rachel Quarrell (Chemistry Lecturer)

Contrary to popular opinion, chemists love nothing better than a good knees-up. Fortunately Saturday 17 October 2009 offered the generations of Balliol chemists a very good party excuse indeed.

T he occasion was a celebratory din- O’Hare’s change from pupil to fellow ner held to mark the 48-year Oxford tutor, and finding in John a supportive career of Dr John Jones, the College’s and encouraging mentor. quondam Head of Chemistry, Dean, Dermot also explained, for those Vice-Master, Vice-Gerent, and Hero of who might not be aware, how in recent the JCR, finally becoming an Emeritus years the Balliol archivist has attracted Fellow. (We can hardly say it’s a true something of a cult following among retirement, since he is remaining as students. A Facebook fan-group called Balliol’s Fellow Archivist, and has taken ‘John Jones is God’, started by three charge of the project to convert St former students, now has 262 mem- Cross Church to Balliol’s Historic bers. A sample ‘fact’: ‘Fume hoods are Collections Centre [see p XX].) not used to protect John Jones from a O ne hundred and thirty people gath- reaction, they protect the reaction from ered on the night, first overflowing from John Jones…’. the Senior Common Room, then in The evening was an acclaimed Ian Taylor Balliol’s Hall. Former colleagues includ- success, with 124 chemists from 41 ing Professor David Logan and Profes- different Balliol years seizing the sor were joined by opportunity to meet up and grow nos- students from nearly every year taught talgic over their shared experiences. by JHJ, including some who now have Wine flowed, conversation sparkled, chairs of chemistry of their own. The and most of us have never seen John kitchen staff did us proud with a menu himself so close to being speechless, including beef Wellington, one of John’s almost overwhelmed by the affection in favourite dishes, as those who have which so many clearly hold him. attended his schools’ dinners will know. Our thanks to everyone who helped What John and his wife Pat did not to organize the evening. at first know was that on the way through to the back quad, those Emma Windham, Anne Hammerstein, attending the dinner had been quietly Amy Mullock (née Rawlings), and diverted into the Old Common Room, Sarah Gowrie (all 2002) to add their signatures to a picture John Jones, Andrea Sella (1986), which was presented to John during and Geoffrey Cloke (1971) the speeches. The photograph was a stunning 360° panorama of Balliol’s Ian Taylor front quad turned into a circular picture, including a view of staircase 2 where John taught chemistry to 41 years’ worth of undergraduates. The image was created by Karl Harrison, the Oxford Chemistry Department’s IT officer. D uring the dinner the Master spoke about John’s many contributions to Balliol, not only as a Tutor, but as every- thing from Dean to Senior Fellow and Vice-Gerent. Then Professor Dermot O’Hare, John’s successor as College Head of Chemistry, sang the guest of honour’s praises at greater length. Der- mot spoke of the impact John has had on the international peptide chemistry community, on generations of students, and on the College which has been his focus for nearly half a century. There were reminiscences of studying as an undergraduate chemist, the typically intense Jones tutorials, and side-step- ping decanal wrath, then memories of

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 3 French Sculpture at the Manor catering

In 2009 Holywell manor received two artworks four months later, in September, a bronze cast of teams visit to add to its impressive collection. raymond petit an orginal piece entitled ‘molusco’ by feliciano béjar Balliol (1975) donated a piece of his own work: a sculpture arrived at Holywell manor. this piece was kindly Balliol’s former Domestic entitled ‘Icarus’. Even as an undergraduate reading donated by martin foley (1951). (See Floreat Domus Bursar Carl Woodall has been ppE, petit combined his studies with sculpture, 2009.) making the most of new staging an exhibition at the oxford Union Society. balliol is very grateful to ramond petit and to contacts formed as a result He continued with his art alongside his diplomatic martin foley for their generous contributions to of his job at the House of career, exhibiting in various countries and achieving Holywell manor’s beautiful grounds. Lords. In September 2009 he international recognition as a sculptor. arranged for catering teams ‘Icarus’ was unveiled in may by the artist at a from the House of Lords and drinks reception presided over by the praefectus the French Parliament (the diego Zancani, at which the master Andrew French Senate and Assemblée graham gave a speech. the guests included current Nationale) to visit Balliol to and old members of the college as well as members learn about the catering func- of the artist’s family and a representative from the tion at an Oxford College. luxembourg embassy in london. Before arriving at Balliol the visitors went to see Raymond Wojtek Szymczak Blanc’s famous Oxfordshire restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. At Balliol they were welcomed with drinks in the Fellows’ Garden, fol- lowed by lunch in the OCR. Balliol’s Domestic Bursar Jo Roadknight, Conference and Catering Manager Howard Chirgwin, Head Chef Bertrand Faucheux, and Head Butler Jacqueline Fossey took the visitors on a tour of the the Hall, SCR, and Buttery, where ‘Molusco’ by there was a display of some of Feliciano Béjar the College silver. The Head Butler took them ‘Icarus’ by on an impromptu guided tour Raymond Petit of the Covered Market (where they enjoyed watching staff decorating cakes in the shop where Balliol’s former Pastry Chef now works). peter Stein was leonard’s elder son. In December the House Rory Stewart to give 2010 At rugby School he was awarded the of Lords returned the favour. King’s gold medal for History, and The Balliol staff enjoyed a tour Stein Lectures at Balliol at balliol (he matriculated in 1952) of the buildings and catering took a first in modern History. outlets, and lunch in one of the leonard Stein lectureship was of the college. the lectureship He suffered from ill-health for much the formal dining rooms. established in 2001 in honour of covers the fields of International of his life, and died, aged only 39, leonard Jacques Stein (1887–1973) relations, politics, or modern History in 1971. Ian Taylor and his son peter philip Kitay Stein with special reference to the study of the college is pleased to (1932–1971), who were both members these subjects in relation to the announce that in 2010 rory Stewart modern middle East. the (1992) will be giving the leonard Ian Taylor lecturer is responsible for Stein lectures. rory is ryan family giving a small number of professor of the practice of Human lectures open to any rights and director of the carr member of the University. center for Human rights policy at leonard Stein had been . He is the associated with the cause of ’s prospective liberalism in british politics parliamentary candidate for penrith since his student days. He and the border. He is well-known was active in the league of for having walked 6000 miles across Nations Union, being a Afghanistan and its neighbouring member of the mandates countries in 2000–2002 (see Floreat and other committees, and Domus 2008). In 2006 he founded was a founder member of the turquoise mountain foundation, the council of christians a charity designed to revive Kabul’s and Jews. In 1953 he was historic commercial centre. See page awarded an obE for 20 for more from rory on the Rory Stewart political and public services. current situation in Afghanistan. Balliol chefs at work

4 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS Women at Balliol: images: IanAll Taylor celebrating thirty years

By Jaya caRRieR (2007, history) and signy gutnicK allen (2007, history & enGLish)

Two of Balliol JCR’s former Women’s Officers record their impressions of the first of two lunches celebrating women’s admission to Balliol. looking around balliol Hall in the one of the most enjoyable aspects early afternoon of 21 Novemeber 2009, of the day was the opportunity to speak we could hardly believe our eyes. gone to some of the extraordinary women were the rows of suits punctuated with that comprise balliol’s alumni. we were the occasional dress so common at privy to two old friends both cringing formal college dinners. Instead, the while remembering their sartorial room was filled with women moving choices – shaved heads, in hindsight, between tables to meet with old friends, were not such a good look – and planning their day in oxford, or simply fondly reminiscing about their Jcr Mary Prior, widow of Balliol Fellow Arthur Prior going over all that had happened since days of rent strikes, rowing, and lots of graduation. It was hard to believe that laughter. Suzanna Taverne; Tea at Holywell Manor among this group were the very first what was particularly memorable women ever admitted into the college, was the continued reiteration of what the class of 1979. these women believe is the balliol this lunch, celebrating thirty years ethos: to use one’s skills as well as of women being admitted to balliol, possible to serve others across the was a chance not only to meet up world. for finalists in the haze of fast- with old friends or, in our case, to approaching exams, this was not only learn about what life was like from reassuring, but positively encouraging previous generations of students. It when thinking about what having was also a way to celebrate how the studied at balliol might entry of women changed college life actually be all about. and culture forever. two speeches, by that these women cressida dick (1979) and Anna lewis could communicate the (2003; currently a postgraduate student significance of having at balliol) made the point well. they studied at balliol so reflected on what had changed over the affectionately, and with past decades, and what had remained so many joyful memories, the same. It was obvious that from the was for us the highlight of very beginning these students, from the celebration. In years 1979 onwards, had made an impact, to come, when celebrating whether in shockingly good rowing, forty years of women at taking on student politics, or achieving balliol, we can only hope academic brilliance. to do the same.

The next women’s lunch is on Saturday 15 May 2010 at Balliol. All women who matriculated between 2004 and 2008 have received an invitation.

Women’s

Anniversary Booklet Reliving the rowing experience: Cressida Dick, Many thanks to all the women who have responded to our calls for memories and pictures from their time at Rebecca Hardy, Janet Edmondson, Sarah Balliol. A booklet to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of women being admitted to Balliol is to be published in Harnett, Margaret Quinn, and Cathy Milsum May 2010. You will be able to view this as a pdf on the College website (www.balliol.ox.ac.uk), but if you would Anna Lewis and Rebecca Hardy cut the cake like to receive a print copy, please contact Janet Hazelton (Development Office, Balliol College, Oxford, OX1 3BJ; tel: + 44 (0)1865 277690; fax: + 44 (0)1865 202472; email: [email protected] Rachel Evans, Kitty Stewart, and Katie Hodgson

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 5 Appointments 2009 David Professor Doug’s Judo Women sTUDenT news and honours Pathfinders Vines and Priest Lunches Champion at Balliol

work Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854). It was thoreau and philosophers like him who helped The 2009 William to develop an understanding of the importance of conservation in America, and flora set out to discover whether the culture of conservation is Westerman Pathfinders still alive and well, by visiting botanic gardens and parks across the States. The Pathfinders Programme, from America’. She visited a liberal arts college the pathfinders skilfully combined their inaugurated by benefactor Bill and was convinced of the benefit of students not research activities with plenty of adventure, Coolidge in 1955, funds up to eight having to specialize too early, concluding that as Henry cullen recounts: ‘this week [a road studying a wider variety of subjects for longer trip across the south-west] provided some final-year students to travel to the makes for more well-rounded individuals. unforgettable moments: the first view of the USA each summer. The successful charlotte Heard investigated attitudes to canyon; cruising down the old route 66; gazing applicants stay for six to eight weeks, public and private education, and learnt about in awe at the Hoover dam; seeing not a single mainly hosted by Balliol Old Members. different ways of handling admissions to higher soul when looking around us in death Valley; The purpose is to encourage better education. She says: ‘I really learnt a lot about star-gazing under the dark desert sky in central education during my trip, from educational Nevada; and surviving close encounters with a understanding between non-US citizens policy ideas in washington, to observing forest fire and a black bear in Yosemite’. and US citizens, as well as allowing Old lessons in the bronx!’ roisin watson enjoyed climbing mt Evans Members to keep in touch with Balliol. lucy Kellett also found herself exploring in the rocky mountain National park, and American educational institutions. Her project experiencing Niagara falls on the Maid of Mist was about feminism on university campuses. boat. maya bahoshy’s various hosts took her to She found that she benefited from exposure to tennis and baseball sporting events as well as American confidence, and is frank about what to musical concerts and a labor day barbecue. she personally got out of the experience: ‘As Indeed, food featured prominently in most of the for what this trip taught me about myself: I am pathfinders’ reports, with fine steakhouses and much more capable than I thought.’ traditional ice cream parlours getting frequent mentions. The great American wilderness on their return from the USA, the 2009 flora malein has a background in botany, so it pathfinders dined in london with matthew is no surprise that for her, ‘one of the greatest westerman (1983), whose generous benefaction lures of the pathfinders programme was the currently funds the programme in memory of opportunity to experience the great American his father, william westerman (1947). they wilderness with my very own eyes.’ She visited were joined by master Andrew graham, dean & walden pond in concord, massachussetts, chaplain douglas dupree, development director Flora, Maya, and Henry at the Golden Gate Bridge the setting of Henry david thoreau’s classic Alastair James, and old member Jon moynihan. three of the 2009 pathfinders were entertained overnight by Kitty lastavica (bill coolidge’s Maya on Mount Evans niece) and her husband John. A dinner was held at their beach club in manchester, massachusetts, and the next morning breakfast was taken at their house, located on the estate which belonged formerly to bill coolidge. It was a chance for the pathfinders to find out about the history of the programme and to enjoy some of the generous hospitality for which the programme is renowned. As Henry cullen was soon to realize, ‘one remarkable aspect of the pathfinder programme is the manner in which you are welcomed, often with extraordinary kindness, into the fulness of hosts’ daily lives’. Comparing education systems the pathfinders each propose a research project that they will work on during their stay. In 2009, two pathfinders displayed an interest in learning about the American education system. Helen lochead concluded that ‘the UK higher education system has a lot to learn

The 2009 Maya Bahoshy (2006, Charlotte Heard (2006, Hannah Kuchler Flora Malein (2006, Pathfinders Physiological Sciences) Physiological Sciences) (2006, History) Biological Sciences) Henry Cullen Lucy Kellett Helen Lochead Roisin Watson (2005, Classics) (2006, English) (2005, Chemistry) (2006, History)

6 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS Judo More Balliol champion debating success over the last fifteen years, rebecca bayliss (2009) has devoted much of her Readers of Floreat Domus The 2009 William time to judo. In January, she represented may remember that, last year, at the 2010 commonwealth Balliol’s Will Jones (2004) Judo championships in Singapore. She helped Oxford win the 2009 Westerman Pathfinders won the bronze medal in the senior 63 World Universities Debating kgs category. She says: ‘If someone had Championships in Cork. told me six months ago I would have a This year, another Balliol bronze medal from the commonwealth man was ranked top debater championships I would probably have at the 2010 Championships, laughed.’ beating 700 others during rebecca is reading for a dphil in the event at Koç University in physiology, Anatomy and genetics, and Turkey. Balliol’s Shengwu Li is grateful to the people in her lab who (2006) spoke for the motion ‘frequently put up with me running out ‘The media should show the at 6pm sharp to catch a train, and then horrors of war’. The pressure crawling in aching the following day.’ at such tournaments is not She is also thankful to her boyfriend insignificant; debaters are who follows her ‘through all the highs informed of the motion only and lows, despite the pressures of fifteen minutes before they training and competing for himself’. have to speak. Shengwu rebecca travelled to Singapore using says: ‘There are few debates a grant from balliol’s cadle fund. She that three years of reading says: ‘I am extremely grateful to don PPE do not equip you to cadle for his generous endowment and argue…It felt great to be love of balliol sport, and to the fund’s ranked the top speaker, but current managers, for the support debating is a team sport, and I received. I am very proud to have my individual ranking owes travelled with balliol college behind a lot to my partner (Jonathan me and am delighted to have been Leader Maynard of University able to return with a medal.’ College).’ rebecca aims to represent great Shengwu has previous britain in judo within the next two years. Rebecca winning her varsity fight in 2009 successes under his belt: in the summer of 2009 he took part in the European Universities Debating Competition in Newcastle, Thomas Phipps Balliol scoops Guardian and his team, Oxford A, won the competition. He was Student Media Awards also voted the second best speaker of the tournament. balliol is proud of two current students for their success in the recent His performance there guardian Student media Awards. allowed Oxford to retain thomas phipps (2007), a third-year English student, edits the that particular trophy for the humourous magazine Oxymoron, which won the guardian Student second year in succession. media Award for magazine of the Year. At the awards ceremony tom So what is the quality and the other Oxymoron editors informed everyone around them that that enables Balliol students there was no way their magazine was going to win: ‘we said the whole to stand out from the concept of victory for the Oxymoron was ridiculous, we were talentless crowd in debating circles? hacks, etc. then a video clip was shown of all of the editors of the According to Shengwu, Guardian, Grazia, and others reading the magazine and laughing, it is ‘imagination, which, which was awesome. the result was announced and we went up and as Einstein said, is more got the award. we were all glowing for days afterwards.’ important than knowledge.’ tom rowley (2008), a second-year History & politics student, was runner-up for Student Journalist of the Year. tom lost no time in Shengwu Li becoming involved in student journalism when he arrived at balliol, starting work as a reporter on The Oxford Student in Hilary term of his first year. then he progressed to news editor, and eventually to overall editor in michaelmas 2009, which must make him one of the youngest ever editors of the paper. He is part of the editorial advisory group for Floreat Domus, and he is the author of an article on balliol and the European Union in this issue (page 32). tom says: ‘Naturally, I was honoured to be named runner-up. I’m hoping to go into journalism or marketing in the future. I’ve reached the end of my term editing the student paper, so although Tom Rowley I will continue contributing articles, I should have a bit more time for academic work, which my tutors should be pleased about!’

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 7 Doug’s Lunches

By yuan yang (2008)

‘If you like free food, you’ll love this!’ I have spent my last three terms at Balliol happily disseminating slogans such as this (with the help of Catherine Willbery, Secretary to the Dean and Chaplain), in order to encourage people to come to the weekly Doug’s Lunch. In case you’re not familiar with this most nutritious of Balliol institutions, Doug’s Lunch is a meeting open to all members of College, in which we listen to an invited speaker talk on a topic, and then engage in discussion together, while enjoying the free sandwiches, coffee, and biscuits Doug provides every Thursday.

Felicity Cooke, head we students spend much of our time easy conversation between graduates of the University’s at oxford focusing on the subject of and undergraduates, and students who Equality & Diversity our study, alongside colleagues in our otherwise would not meet one another. Unit particular fields. this is why those this is a weekly commitment you don’t who come to doug’s lunches find it have to commit to – although many feel so refreshing to listen to a variety of compelled to do so! speakers, who all assume that their In the last year as doug’s lunch audience has no previous knowledge of convenor I’ve had great fun introducing their subject. our audience is diverse a wide range of speakers and ideas to and fluctuating – around ten to thirty this community within college. many undergraduates and graduates, and speakers have been visiting professors at sometimes a few members of staff. No balliol, or long-established fellows: we matter the make-up of the audience have heard david wallace on parallel for a particular talk, the discussion that universes, and lynn margulis on the follows is consistently imaginative and evolution of sex; Stephen tapscott has thought-provoking. because the meeting recited translations of Neruda’s love is open to all, and informally cosy in poetry, and daniel burns showed photos the recognisably dupree way, there is of the children in Helmand, Afghanistan, where he was stationed. we have made many speculations about the future, aided by the Institute of Ageing and by Balliol online If you have any the oxford Internet Institute next door questions, comments to balliol. doug’s lunches have also provided Balliol is pleased to announce that or suggestions relating a valuable platform for gathering the the College website (www.balliol. to the website, please awareness of students on issues we ox.ac.uk) has been redesigned. contact: can change. felicity cooke (head of The new site contains a wealth of webmaster@ the University’s Equality & diversity information for prospective students, balliol.ox.ac.uk. Unit) talked to us on the hidden current members, and other visitors, gender prejudices that lead to discreet and we hope that you will find the discrimination; toby ord explained website easy to use and informative. the ethical foundations of his thriving At the time of writing, a brand charity, giving what we can; and new section of the site for Balliol’s dialogue between balliol students and Old Members and friends is being rose Hill primary School was recently constructed. This will include an set up as the result of a doug’s lunch. interactive, password-protected, most of all, I have made friends with area where Old Members will be a wonderful range of graduates and able to stay in touch with each other, undergraduates whom I would never locate others living in particular parts otherwise come across in our busy and of the world or working in specific divergent daily schedules. many others fields, find out about forthcoming have done so as well. If you can – you events at Balliol, and even discuss company, Kinship Networking said: ‘It is exciting to witness Balliol should definitely come! subjects of topical interest with (www.kinshipnetworking.com/), is leading the Oxford colleges in fellow alumni. generously donating to the College innovation and embracing the social Doug’s Lunches are from 1–2pm in room 8, Richard Rowley and Tom Wrobel the development of the interactive web. Through this new tool members staircase 21, every Thursday during term- have designed and built our new area of the ‘Alumni and Friends’ site. old and new will be able to connect time. The termcard is published online and website. We are extremely grateful Commenting on this imaginative and be involved in shaping the through the JCR, MCR, and staff mailing to Charlie Wells (1999), whose way of supporting Balliol, Charlie thinking and vision of the College.’ lists. If you would like to suggest a speaker for Trinity Term or later, please email yuan. [email protected]

8 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS KT Bruce It was in the summer of 2007, when Judith’s new life combining her dual Judith attended a friend’s ordination at roles of Professor and Priest is one that Professor Winchester Cathedral, that she realised requires careful organization. The two that she should actively pursue the idea roles are not without overlap. Academics’ of training to become a Priest. She was work involves pastoral care, which is also and Priest accepted at Ripon College Cuddesdon, central to the ordained ministry. Moreover, just outside Oxford. People entering the she has found that her academic training Balliol Fellow Judith Brown describes her faith as being ministry later in life are able to follow as a historian migrates easily to another ‘at her core’ and asserts that it has to be ‘all or nothing’. tailor-made courses, which take into discipline: for example it means that she account the knowledge, training and finds it natural approaching the Bible as a Perhaps it is this sense of conviction and determination experience they already have. So Judith historical text, or, as a historian of Asian that has led her along the obstacle-filled but ultimately was able to take a course during two history and culture, studying rites such rewarding path to ordination. terms of sabbatical leave due to her. She as marriages and funerals in a historical says: ‘it was a remarkable experience framework across different religious going back to being a student, attending traditions. Judith first knew she wanted to Judith Brown in Balliol lectures, writing essays and having In fact many of Judith’s students are become a Priest in the early 1970s Chapel, wearing a stole tutorials’. from Muslim and Hindu traditions, when she was teaching at Manchester given to her by the Chapel community Judith was ordained as a Deacon and she recounts how she discussed University. She talked it over with the at Christ Church Cathedral on 4 her ordination with them: ‘I thought University Chaplain, who advised O ctober 2009. She will be ordained as it was important to reassure them that her, given the Church of England’s a Priest in June 2010. In the interim my relationship with them wasn’t about policy on the ordination of women, she is ‘apprenticed’ to a Priest in a to change – I wasn’t going to try and to ‘put the idea on the shelf and hope large benefice between Oxford railway convert them!’ It is telling that some of the it goes away’. Twenty years later, in station and the ringroad. She is of most enthusiastic supporters of Judith’s 1992, the Church decided to allow course also involved with the Balliol becoming a Priest have in fact been from women to become ordained. Judith Chapel community, working with faith traditions other than Christianity. was by this time two years into a new Chaplain Douglas Dupree. Among Her understanding of other cultures and post at Oxford, and deeply involved other things, she has instituted, with religious traditions means that she can in the academic life of the University fellow Pastoral Associate Alex Popescu, observe and value ‘how different people see as well as bringing up a young family. a Tuesday evening service, which reality and pursue the good and the true’ – She simply couldn’t see how she could alternates between Choral Evensong an insight that will surely come in useful as also fit in training for the ministry. and a quiet meditative service. she embarks upon this new stage of her life.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 9 which was originally started by Ben Bernanke, now Governor of the David Vines on the US Federal Reserve System. In November I gave a paper called ‘Thinking about Globalisation global financial crisis in the Very Long Run’, in which I argued that Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Maynard Keynes all understood Balliol Fellow David Vines is a work on aspects of this question, that globalisation of the economy Professor of Economics. He is one component of which concerns leads to changes in the international interested in macroeconomic how a small shock (trouble in the distribution of political power. sub-prime mortgage market in Keynes, in particular, understood theory and policy. His research the US) can cause a large outcome that after bearing the burdens of is gathered around three main (the near collapse of the entire two world wars, the UK would no strands: fiscal and monetary global financial system and a longer remain the global hegemon. policy within the European global recession). Interestingly one He saw that a genuinely new system Monetary Union and its non-economist has entered the of global governance was necessary fray in a revealing way. Bob May, a – a multilateral system – at least implications for the reform of biologist, and former President of in part to protect the UK from the the Stability and Growth Pact in the Royal Society, has introduced depredations of the new hegemon, Europe; international financial economists to models taken from the US. It is becoming clear that the crises, and the implication of David Vines epidemiology, and his ideas have US will not remain in the global these crises for reform of the been taken up in a big way by Andy hegemon for much longer, and that Haldane, the leader of the Financial a new sort of multilateral system is crisis-management process at Stability Section at the Bank of necessary – at least in part to protect the International Monetary England. My own paper with the rest of us from a struggle for

A remote spot in graduate student Paul Luk provides global supremacy between the US Fund; and the implications the Flinders Ranges, of the fall of the dollar, and Australia, where one answer to this ‘small shock/big and China. My paper on this topic of Chinese exchange-rate David and some of outcome’ question. In doing this will become a chapter in a Festschrift his family camped it uses insights from the ‘financial for Ross Garnaut, a prominent policy, for the reform of the during his sabbatical accelerator’ literature, something policy economist in Australia.’ international monetary system. Professor Vines took sabbatical leave in Michalemas Term 2009, and here Floreat Domus publishes an extract from his report:

‘This has been a rewarding term. I spent it at the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, in the Research School of Economics at National University, where I have an Adjunct Professorship. I have been working on the macro- economics of the global financial crisis. I am editing a double-issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on the crisis with Christopher Adam, of the Department for International Development and St Cross College. I spent much of my sabbatical leave discussing the issue’s papers with their authors as they, Chris, and I all gradually put together an understanding of how to think about the crisis. Chris and I are writing a long introductory essay for the issue. I have also been working with a graduate student on a formal, analytical piece about the financial crisis, tentatively called ‘On getting Finance properly into Macroeconomics’. This has involved technical analysis of how a financial sector of the economy, in which there are highly-leveraged firms (such as Goldman Sachs and the late Lehman Bros), can cause there to be wild oscillations in asset prices. Many macro-economists are at present at

10 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Kim Beazley appointed Australia’s US Ambassador In September 2009 the Australian Government announced that Kim Beazley (1973), a former Australian Defence Minister, and more recently Chancellor of Edward Mortimer the Australian National University, would be James Fairfax Cressida Dick the new Ambassador in Washington. Speaking on organizations, and building future political, economic, and Australian radio, Professor programmes for medical research business leaders from around the Beazley said: ‘This is New Year and educational facilities. His world. Its mission is ‘to challenge just about the toughest interest in medical research, present and future leaders to ambassadorial job that particularly pediatrics, stems from solve issues of global concern’. we have…I look forward Honours the fact that he was diagnosed previously Edward mortimer to it.’ with a very serious life-threatening worked in communications roles Five Balliol alumni have condition called pyloric stenosis in the Executive office of the received Honours in the British when he was three months old. Secretary-general of the United He survived and went on to Nations. and Australian Honours Lists combine his illustrious media Lieutenant General Simon for 2010. career with the philanthropy for Mayall (1975) has been which he has now been twice appointed cb (companion of the James Fairfax (1952, and honoured. most Honourable order of the Honorary Fellow) has been Edward Mortimer (1962, bath). He has served in the army elevated from Ao (officer of and Honorary Fellow) has been for over thirty years, in germany, the order of Australia) to Ac awarded the cmg (companion cyprus, Northern Ireland, oman, (companion of the order of of the order of St michael belgium, and Afghanistan. Australia) in the 2010 Australia and St george) for services to Cressida Dick (1979), day Honours list. He received in ternational communications Assistant commissioner in the his original honour in the Queen’s and journalism. He is Senior metropolitan police force, has birthday Honours in 1993, for Vice-president and chief program been awarded the Queen’s medal his service to the arts and to the officer of the Salzburg global for distinguished Service.

community. this second honour Seminar, Austria. this institution Hugh Powell (1985), lately TomicDavid recognizes his continued service to is a non-profit organization that UK Senior representative in the community through support holds seminars on economics, Helmand, Afghanistan, has been for the visual arts, conservation politics, and other issues for awarded the cmg.

Jane Singaporean Stapleton Policeman’s success

balliol Emeritus fellow peter Joo Hee Ng (1985) took professor Jane Stapleton over as the commissioner (1981) has been elected of police in Singapore on 1 Honorary bencher of gray’s february 2010. forty-three Inn. Jane Stapleton is Ernest year-old peter Joo Hee read E. Smith professor of law Engineering and Economics at the University of texas at balliol. He has worked with School of law, a professor the Singapore police force for at the Australian National 24 years. He helped set up and University college of law, lead the police’s elite Special and a Statutory Visiting tactics and rescue (Star) unit, professor and member of which specialises in hostage rescue, the law faculty at oxford and was the former central police University. She received a division commander. His most doctorate of civil law from recent role in Singapore was as oxford in may 2009. director of prisons.

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 11 A Balliol genius By Peiling Li (2006, History) John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Beth Shapiro’s (1999) career proves that life as a Her efforts have earned substantial and rhinos – and using computational bioinformatics junkie requires equal parts lab work, praise. In September 2009, she analysis to test specific hypotheses about globetrotting, survival instincts, brains, and sangfroid. received the highly coveted MacArthur evolution and biodiversity. Focusing on Fellowship. Commonly referred to gene sequences with long, traceable She has trekked through the Yukon Territory, Alaska, as the ‘Genius Grant’, the five-year, histories can help scientists identify and Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula to hunt for the remains $500,000 award encourages recipients to trends in the present day. Studying the of extinct animals. A 2008 woolly mammoth expedition ‘pursue their own creative, intellectual, genetics of fast-evolving RNA viruses brought her face-to-face with curious, shotgun-toting and professional inclinations’. This enhances our knowledge of existing Dolgans, a local nomadic people of Siberia. As a Balliol immense honour comes early in Beth’s human pathogens, such as AIDS, and career. While she has published more lends insight into the development of graduate student, Beth managed to convince Oxford’s than forty scientific papers, undertaken emerging threats. Ancient DNA can Museum of Natural History to let her take a drill to numerous fellowships, and acted as explain why an external stimulus – rare, irreplaceable dodo bones. Her willingness to go to director of Oxford’s Ancient like the last ice age or global Biomolecules Centre, she has warming – can elicit drastically such great lengths in the name of science has made her My time at a leading scholar in the field of evolutionary biology. held her current post as an different responses across Assistant Professor of Biology Balliol was species. Examining these at Pennsylvania State inspirational phenomena will help us University only since 2007. understand ‘how habitat ‘It’s a wonderful feeling to changes imposed by our own know that my colleagues think species will influence biodiversity,’ Beth sufficiently highly of my work to have explains, ‘and hopefully help us make made this possible’, she says of the more informed decisions about our fellowship. ‘At the same time it is a future’. little bit intimidating. I hope I can Beth’s time at Balliol – first as a live up to the expectations of the Rhodes Scholar reading for a DPhil in award’. The fellowship will fund Biology, and later as a Junior and Senior Beth’s wide-ranging research in Research Fellow – heavily influenced evolution, genetics, and her professional development. ‘My time bioinformatics. Her work at Balliol was inspirational’, she says. involves isolating genetic ‘The experience helped me to open my data from a variety of eyes to new ideas, and to become more sources through time – comfortable taking risks. Balliol has been RNA viruses, polar crucial in my successes so far, and will bears, and extinct continue to shape my career and my life’. dodos, mammoths, As Beth begins her MacArthur Fellowship, new innovations are changing the landscape of genetic research. Ongoing development of high-throughput, inexpensive DNA sequencing platforms is producing enormous amounts of genetic data that bioinformatics specialists are incorporating into their studies of genomes and population genetics. ‘I think we’re on the verge of some major new insights’, she comments, ‘and I hope that I can get in on the game’. Given her impressive record so far, Beth will undoubtedly emerge from the impending bioinformatics revolution as one of its foremost luminaries.

Beth Shapiro

12 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Balliol’s sixth Reith Lecturer By Peiling Li (2006, History) Kiku Adatto Is it acceptable to put a monetary value on life? If you could select your unborn child’s included within economic analysis,’ sex, eye colour, or even IQ or sexual orientation, would you do so? Michael Sandel he says. ‘Balliol was the perfect place (1975), the Anne T and Robert M Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, to wrestle with these questions’. After giving his second Reith has posed these questions to more than 15,000 students as a part of his course, ‘Justice: Lecture at Rhodes House, he A Journey in Moral Reasoning’. The class is Harvard’s most popular and stands as a experienced what he described as testament to Michael’s appeal within and beyond the academy. It has spawned a book, a ‘nostalgic return’ to Balliol. He Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, a twelve-part series, and a website dined with Master Andrew Graham, (www.justiceharvard.org). who was a young economist at Balliol when Michael was a student. While their conversation remains M ichael Sandel’s reputation for the creation of a just society. In Michael Sandel between friends, one must wonder making philosophical arguments genetics, re-engineering ourselves whether Michael asked the Master accessible by drawing on concrete to perfection undermines civic life. the question he has posed to so examples and contemporary By replacing chance with choice many before: ‘What is the right political controversies attracted the we diminish our ability to envision thing to do?’ attention of the BBC, who named a common fate with the rest of him the sixty-first annual Reith mankind. Lecturer. The Reith Lectures are Michael suggests that salvation renowned for connecting the world lies in replacing market-driven of ideas with the larger public, politics with a new politics for the and Michael delivered his in May common good. Acting principally and June 2009 in London, Oxford, as citizens, we can rejuvenate Newcastle, and Washington, D.C.. our civic infrastructure by Michael, who is the sixth person re-incorporating moral and with a Balliol connection to receive even spiritual questions into this honour, spoke on the theme of our public discourse and by ‘A New Citizenship’. imposing moral limits on His lectures drew together markets. several themes: the moral limits Michael’s tenure as a of markets, the role of morality in Rhodes Scholar at Balliol politics, and the ethical implications heavily influenced his of genetics and biotechnology. lectures. ‘It’s fair to say He argues that our reliance on my Reith Lectures are markets as a way of life – which an elaboration of the prompts us to act primarily as themes that preoccupied consumers – has created an me during my time at atmosphere conspicuously devoid Balliol’, he remarks. He of engagement with the moral and switched from PPE to spiritual questions that underpin political philosophy after our value system and our definition reading treatises by Immanuel of the good life. According to Kant, John Rawls, Robert Michael, the absence of moral Nozick, and Hannah Arendt. argument in public life is highly Studying under Charles Taylor, corrosive to the democratic project. Alan Montefiore, and Ronald In politics, he believes that Dworkin, Michael investigated ignoring or superficially discussing the connection between moral and religious beliefs leads economics, political philosophy, to the suppression of moral and ethics. ‘I wanted to see disagreement. Simmering beneath whether considerations the surface, this provokes backlash of equality and and resentment, hindering justice could be

Other 1952 1973 1975 1998 2000 Balliol Reith Lecturers Arnold J. Toynbee Alastair Francis Daniel J. Boorstin John Keegan (1953) (1962) (1907) ‘The World and Buchan (Fellow 1972) (1934) ‘America and ‘War in Our World’ ‘Respect for the Earth’ the West’ ‘Change Without War’ the World Experience’

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 13 Curious Transforming Balliol Can we An interview Weaning Some Architects of FeATURes and natural resources and the succeed in with Christopher Britain off thought the European compassionate into fuels East End Afghanistan? Ricks fossil fuels for food Union

a boy falling through the surface perhaps reading English at balliol of the earth, down a tunnel ringed was what really sowed the seed Curious and with golden ladders and speckled in Harriet’s mind that she could with green algae. fortunately for her be a writer? In fact she got rather publisher (Stripes publishing) and for frustrated by what she described compassionate borders (where her book, at the time as the ‘factory style’ of teaching; of writing, is book of the month), for focusing on browning for only a By JacQueline sMith the thousands of 8–12-year-olds who week, followed hot on the heels by will probably read the book, and not tennyson the next. So she switched least for Harriet herself, the first thing from straight English to medieval Balliol has produced a great many novelists, of all she did in the morning was take a English, reasoning that she personally genres, and so writing an article about them was few minutes to jot down the details. would find the concentration on one And it didn’t stop there. for the next period of time more satisfying. Under always going to be an exercise in unfair selection. nine months (a gestation period with tutor lynda mugglestone (pembroke; A quick trawl revealed the astonishing fact, for which she was by now very familiar) Harriet had to be taught outside example, that thirty published crime writers have she wrote (in longhand) for ten to balliol for some of her papers), either been educated or have taught at Balliol, of fifteen minutes every day, in secret. Harriet studied Sutton Hoo, which whom more in a subsequent edition of Floreat Domus. Neither her husband nor her children has since formed the inspiration for had any idea what she was up to. the second novel in her two-book For now, two contemporary novelists stand out: Seven A4 notebooks later, and deal, thereby quelling a lurking fear Harriet Goodwin (1988) and Chris Cleave (1991). she had a novel. She sent it to literary that she might have to rely on the This article tracks these two novelists’ paths to consultancy cornerstones and paid unpredictability of vivid dreams. She publication and asks what, from their Balliol days, for a first report. by summer 2007 did, however, tell me that the idea for has been useful to them in their writing. she had written a second draft, and her third book came to her while she was all set to send it off for further was standing under the light bulb in comment. then, just before the her bathroom; so at least we can be ‘I had a dream’, said professional Harriet Goodwin family summer holiday, an email sure that the magic continues and mezzo-soprano Harriet goodwin in popped into Harriet’s more tales will follow. answer to my first question ‘what inbox advertising an And so what about Harriet’s made you turn to writing?’. And she anthology competition fellow balliolite, novelist chris wasn’t referring grandly to some long- run by the Society cleave? How did a 21-year-old cherished ambition. one summer for children’s book psychology graduate become a world- night in 2005, two and a half weeks writers and Illustrators. famous author with Nicole Kidman after the birth of her fourth child, She hastily sent off the clamouring for a part in the film of she went to sleep and dreamt about required first 4000 words his most successful book to date, The of her novel and set off on Other Hand? holiday without a further like Harriet, chris switched thought. Not only did she courses while at balliol, but his was a become one of the winners more dramatic step – from chemistry of that competition; she to psychology. He cites John Jones’ also caught the attention recommendation to read primo levi of one of the women on as a deciding factor in his change of the panel, who is now her direction. In his psychology tutorials literary agent, and who got with the late mike woodin (‘one of her a two-book publishing the greatest human beings I ever deal. met’), chris found himself being with such success under allowed to write his essays in song her belt, what are Harriet’s form and perform them to guitar tips for aspiring novelists? accompaniment. when I asked him Aside from reading things other whether reading psychology at oxford people write (her favourite novelist was of any help to him as a novelist, is E.m.forster), Harriet’s top tip is to he said only in that it brought him to keep a diary. She kept one every day realize ‘that the human mind is still during her first two terms at balliol, mysterious, and that little is known and although she assures me that about it. the human mind is still the none of it merits reprinting here, it wild west for novelists’. contains some of her predominant Anyone who has read The memories of the college: helping Other Hand may beg to differ. this with the event celebrating ten years of unsentimental and surprising story of women at balliol (which included a an encounter between a young female disco in the Jcr); singing good King Nigerian asylum seeker stranded in wenceslas one christmas-time with london and the british editor of a Jasper griffin and baruch blumberg; women’s magazine, two figures whose and enjoying the welcoming lives have collided once before, is a community of the chapel choir. compelling and sensitive study in

14 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS Niall McDiarmid awareness about social issues with his says: ‘I believe that the good-humoured The Boy Who Fell Down novels? His answer is a resounding and effortful struggle to understand Exit 43, by Harriet yes: ‘I think that’s a novelist’s job. I one another’s lives is at worst a good Goodwin, was published am convinced that the contemporary way to pass long journeys, and at best in 2009 by Stripes culture is becoming increasingly an antidote to violence.’ Publishing. It was narcissistic and self-referential, Chris is currently writing a novel shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award 2009 whereas novels can dig down through about women in sport and a non- in the ‘book I couldn’t our mores to deliver an experience fiction book about his own decision, put down’ category. that is rooted in the underlying at the age of 36, to get a year younger; Her second book, reality: namely, that the untamed he also writes a weekly column The Extraordinary human heart is adrift in a perilous about his family for the Guardian. Legacy of Elvira Phoenix, and unequal world where a billion At the time of writing, he is looking is due out in January people every night go to bed hungry.’ forward to when filming starts on 2011. Visit Harriet’s website at www. His first novel Incendiary (made The Other Hand: ‘When they filmed harrietgoodwinbooks. into a film starring Ewan McGregor my first novel, Incendiary, they had com/. in 2008) certainly played to pull me off the set with its part in digging down pliers.’ But he claims it is The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave, was first to the underlying perilous When they filmed not really the glory that published in 2008 by reality. It is an epistolary my first novel, motivates him. These Sceptre (and under the Chris Cleave novel written to Osama days he measures success title Little Bee in the US). Bin Laden by a woman they had to pull in terms of emails from In December 2009 it human compassion and empathy, whose child dies in a me off the set readers who explain why won the first Oxford exploring motivation, desire, and bomb attack in London. his work is important to Mail/Waterstones survival. The strange circumstances with pliers them. And perhaps it was Book Award. Incendiary was published in 2005 And yet the book manages to of its publication in 2005 the people he encountered by Random House. be so much more than a thrilling send a shiver down one’s at Balliol who first enabled You can read Chris’s page-turner (although it certainly spine: on the morning after its launch and inspired him to write hard-hitting column in the is that). It gives an insight into the party, London awoke to the 7th July novels with an explicit social agenda: Guardian here: harsh reality for those seeking asylum terrorist bombings that killed fifty ‘My abiding memory of Balliol is of www.guardian.co.uk/ in the UK today, and provokes the people. curious and compassionate people profile/chris-cleave, and reader into imagining the contrast Chris makes no claims that his who inclined not to let rules or visit his website at www. chriscleave.com/main/. between this and the protected lives novels will single-handedly alter the conventions get in the way of doing of more privileged sectors of London course of history and prevent bad something that was worthwhile or society. So does Chris set out to raise things from happening. Instead, he interesting.’ The Oxford Mail

Chris Cleave picking up the first Oxford Mail/ Waterstone’s Oxford Book of the Year Award in December 2009 (with Colin Shone of Waterstones and Andy Ffrench of the Oxford Mail)

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 15 problems is that methanol is not the most likely product from the starting materials, and Transforming natural often a mixture is obtained. Many approaches have been explored (both homogeneous and heterogeneous), including using solid state resources into fuels systems to bind CO2 and reduce it to carbon monoxide (CO) and formic acid (HCO2H). By Chris Record (2006, Chemistry) Incorporating strategies that had been used with hydrogen before, Ashley’s idea was to develop further the concept of frustrated Dr Andrew Ashley is currently leading the pack in pursuit of transforming Lewis Pairs (FLPs). These systems consist natural resources into fuels, via a man-made carbon cycle. As one of Balliol’s of a pair of molecules which are prevented from bonding strongly to each other due to Junior Research Fellows in the Sciences, he has successfully discovered an their sheer size. However, the small nature of environmentally friendly method for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen allows it to react with the FLP; the hydrogen (H2) into methanol, a liquid fuel. crucial and ingenious step that enables the reaction to take place. When asked how the His recent publication ‘Non-Metal-Mediated C urrent concerns regarding climate change idea of FLPs arose, he said: ‘You had to activate Homogeneous Hydrogenation of CO2 to are largely due to the growing atmospheric hydrogen in order for it to react with CO2, and CH3OH’ with Balliol’s Professor Dermot O’Hare, quantities of the greenhouse gas, CO . Ashley’s a lot of biochemists work on proton/electron 2 coupled transfer. I thought that if I could has attracted so much interest that it has been approach will utilise the abundance of CO2 highlighted in Nature Chemistry and deemed a as a starting material for the production of cleave hydrogen to hydride, which had already ‘Hot Paper’in Angewandte Chemie. This highly methanol. A process that could be considered been documented for FLPs, that would be the respected journal reserves this accolade for as ‘the reverse of combustion’, it may provide a starting point. It was literally the first reaction rapidly evolving fields of high current interest. source of man-made fuel while consuming one I did in the lab at the start of my JRF.’ Andrew Ashley clearly has instinctive of the main contributors to global warming. The Eureka moment foresight as to the direction in which current In addition, these hydrocarbons are also needed L argely gone are the days, especially in an research is heading, highlighting this area as as feedstock chemicals, the basic resource from experimental science, when breakthrough a one to watch at the beginning of his Junior which synthetic molecules are made. Ashley discoveries happen during a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Research Fellowship. He says: ‘the realisation explains: ‘When all the oil runs out what are It is normally over months of carefully that converting carbon dioxide to fuels is a you going to do, say, for the pharmaceutical monitored experiments that the ‘answers’ very attractive thing, as well as making a closed industry? Using one source like CO kills two 2 slowly emerge. Ashley’s discovery certainly was man-made carbon cycle, is where the inspiration birds with one stone’. an exception to the rule: ‘Commonly people for the current research stemmed from.’ The inherent difficulty with the reaction don’t tend to heat sealed glass tubes to 160˚C of CO with hydrogen is that CO is so The reverse of combustion 2 2 when they contain solvent that boils at 110˚C, thermodynamically and kinetically stable. which is what I did!’ This unconventional T he beauty of what Ashley is This hydrogenation process effectively uses practice, coupled with the fact that he developing is that it tackles CO as a hydrogen store, but until now this 2 subsequently isotopically labelled the CO , led more than one of today’s seemingly simple process has proved to be 2 to the breakthrough. On examination of the global problems. very difficult to execute. One of the main NMR spectrum, used to discern an atom’s local

environment, he saw that the CO2 had reacted to form a precursor to methanol. Ashley has now developed the first example of a selective production of methanol using homogeneous, low pressure conditions. Currently the process is metal-free and utilises boron, a non-metal, as the reactive part of the molecule. The benefits are obvious: ‘No toxicity or disposal concerns, and they’re cheap.’ Ashley aspires to improve this novel process: ‘It’s not catalytic but the key is if we know the step that’s killing it – in this case it turned out to be water – then there’s massive room for future development. We are working now at making more water tolerant systems.’ Even with a patent and a groundbreaking paper, there is still further scope for this project: ‘The current process can only give methanol, but as soon as I get funding, I hope to use transition metals in tandem with this system. We simultaneously activate hydrogen and carbon dioxide and then use metals to get long chain hydrocarbons selectively. That’s the Andrew Ashley end goal and even if you have to use mercury, it doesn’t matter as long as it works!’ Chris RecordChris

There’s massive See www.newscientist.com/article/dn18387-co2- room for future in-the-air-could-be-green-fuel-feedstock.html for an article in the New Scientist featuring Dermot development O’Hare and Andrew Ashley and their work in this area.

16 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s effect shows that ‘when you present Kerfoot’s developments have and repeat information over been backed up by more than ten Innovating intervals of time, you can increase randomized controlled trials over the uptake of knowledge’, while the last three years, the largest of the testing effect shows that ‘when which involved 1470 physicians medical you present information in a “test” in 63 countries. At its best, spaced format, rather than just reading it, education can increase knowledge long-term retention is dramatically by 50 per cent and strengthen education improved’. retention for up to two years. Importantly – and unlike many Spaced education By Elizabeth Mumford (2008, Medical Sciences) ‘traditional’ e-learning modules – Spaced education presents the it is also ‘extremely well accepted material to be learned entirely by students and physicians’. in a test-question format; upon Kerfoot himself admits that submitting their answer the ‘in medical education, improving students receive immediate clinicians’ practice patterns and feedback on their performance. ultimately patients’ health outcomes New information is introduced is much more important than when the correct answer is achieved just generating learning’. Spaced in order to elaborate on important education has been shown to points. A key feature of the be successful in this regard. For technique is a proprietary algorithm example, inappropriate cancer While numerous features of an Oxford education may which then adapts the content and screenings decreased by 26 per have changed since many readers of Floreat Domus spacing of future questions to the cent in 95 primary care providers graduated, I’m sure that one aspect has not: the late- individual’s response. For example, where clinicians had participated an incorrectly answered question in a spaced education course. night cramming of information before exams, only might repeat after a week whereas Not only does this save money, it for it to be forgotten a few weeks later. Or, as the correct responses will elicit the also significantly reduces patient Americans would say, ‘binge and purge’ learning. repeat of that question after several anxiety. However, this culture might be set to change thanks weeks. Each module typically A social learning to the efforts of Dr B Price Kerfoot (1989, Human contains 20 to 40 questions, and community runs over one to two months. The Sciences): according to the CEO of the company he questions are delivered by email in a G iven that the spaced education set up, ‘Dr Kerfoot’s work will fundamentally change multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank or methodology is content-neutral, the way the world learns’. multiple-correct-answer format. it has an enourmous potential to be applied across a huge range of Kerfoot’s early interest in education subjects. SpacedEd launched a was stimulated by his experiences public website in May 2009 (www. with the tutorial system at Oxford, spaceded.com) with the tagline and later developed when he ‘addictive learning that sticks’. took part in Harvard Medical Here it is possible not only for School’s New Pathway curriculum individuals to enrol on courses, but (problem-based learning). In his also for them to deliver their own fourth year of surgical training, course in a subject of their choice. rather than perform basic science ‘Tutors’ are able to charge their research he decided to pursue ‘students’ to participate, but many formal training in education choose to post their course for free. (‘definitely a strange research topic There are already dozens of courses for a surgeon’). ranging from bartending to music theory to trigonometry. The aim of Web-based learning the site? To create a ‘social learning Intrigued by the ‘unproven frontier’ community’ where learners and of educational research which the course authors can interact and internet provided, after finishing engage in discussion on current his residency Kerfoot chose to issues. investigate online learning. He Kerfoot’s personal research is admits ‘it has been a tough slog … now returning to the medical field since educational research does not to focus on how online spaced get much respect, let alone funding’. education can best be applied In his initial trials of web-based to improve the health outcomes teaching modules at four medical of patients, which he views as ‘a schools he found that although critical downstream outcome- ‘they were effective at increasing measure’. knowledge … retention from this He cites as the keys to his success learning was poor’. ‘persistent hard work, fantastic Using two principles which mentorship, great support from he picked up from psychological Harvard Medical School and the literature on learning and memory, Veterans Affairs Boston healthcare Kerfoot went about designing an system, and a willingness to “jump entirely new method of delivering off the cliff” into a research area the necessary factual information which is not typically valued within to medical students. The spacing Dr B Price Kerfoot the surgical community’.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 17 Exective graham fisher, the 400 volunteers who lend their services to toynbee Hall every year Balliol are ‘the lifeblood’ of the organization. currently there and the are sixteen residential volunteers staying for one or two years, East usually combining their work with further study. their End contribution not only distinguishes them from the herd of graduates By JacQueline sMith applying for jobs, but also gives them a unique understanding of the issues In the summer of 1994 that need to be addressed. they are one week changed 20-year- in good company: british prime minister spent two old Ben Rowland’s life. years as warden of toynbee Hall in An undergraduate at Balliol the 1920s, and it has been argued that reading Classics, he was seeking his experience there contributed to the ‘something macho’ to do in the development of the National Health long vacation. He decided to Service and the modern welfare state. volunteer at a summer camp in Financial inclusion, legal Kent for damaged and often violent advice, and aspirations children, run by London-based So what does toynbee Hall actually organization Toynbee Hall. do today, and why is ben still so passionate about its work? tower Hamlets continues to be one of the most deprived areas in the country, the ensuing week of intense 18–20 The Aspire Programme He is carrying on a long balliol and a key issue is ‘financial inclusion’. hour days, where the ratio of adults association with the organization. It many people in the area do not have to children had to be one to one, Arnold Toynbee was in 1884 that Samuel and Henrietta bank accounts or access to credit. ben certainly met his criteria. In fact he barnett first opened the doors of explains that one of toynbee Hall’s was so transformed by the experience toynbee Hall, so named after their strengths is getting down to what the that he persuaded fellow-students friend Arnold toynbee, a issues really are. why do some to join him, and in 1996 there were political economist who people ‘choose’ not to have a 15 balliol volunteers. ben himself studied and taught at bank account? perhaps they continued to volunteer every summer balliol before his early have had a bad experience for seven years, and today, at the age death in 1883. the with bank staff, or they of 35, he is chair of the trustees of barnetts’ vision for are not confident about toynbee Hall, which he describes as social reform, inspired filling in the application a ‘humbling, daunting and incredibly by toynbee, was to form because English is exciting honour and challenge’. Toynbee Hall bring upper- and middle- not their first language. class students to live and once the real reasons are work together with people in unearthed, obstacles can be deprived neighbourhoods. In this way tackled and poverty addressed. one the future elite would be exposed to residential volunteer is looking at the reality of poor living conditions ‘financial inclusion indicators’. He is and class divisions in british society. mapping Atms in the borough which this pioneering work in the borough charge a fee to take money out; it is known today as tower Hamlets gave thought that there are over 200. this rise to a worldwide movement of such makes little sense in one of the poorest ‘university settlements’. areas of london. In the footsteps of Clement Another part of toynbee Hall’s work is the free legal advice centre, where Attlee qualified and trainee lawyers volunteer one of the original rooms at toynbee throughout the week. It is the oldest Hall (which still occupies the same site such centre in the country, having between liverpool Street and brick been open since 1898. this continuity lane as it did 125 years ago) contains is one of the most impressive things an impressive array of oxbridge about toynbee Hall. And yet other college arms above the picture rail, areas of its work are completely new, The volunteers representing all the colleges which responding to the changing needs in are ‘the have sent students to volunteer there. society. for example, ‘dignify’ is a pilot Although the summer camps no project looking at how to tackle the lifeblood’ of the longer run, there are many projects phenomenon of elder abuse, which can organization in which volunteers can become range from basic neglect to emotional involved; in fact, according to chief blackmail relating to finances. comic

18 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS increasingly important role in helping to transform its local programmes into national solutions. Not only does it make sure that local elderly people get a hot meal and assistance coping with dementia; it also helps the government to work out what kind of programmes need to be delivered nationally. Toynbee Hall is not only out on the streets counting the number of fee-paying ATMs in the area; it is also an adviser to the government about its financial inclusion policy and part of a task force working with the banking industry to develop a code of practice on financial inclusion. Starting with the end As well as being Chair of the Trustees of this remarkable organization, Ben has a day job working for Tribal Group, a public services consultancy company. He works primarily with local authorities to cut costs, which he achieves largely by making sure that R elief funds the project, which raises C hief Executive Graham Fisher those in charge always start with a real awareness of the issue, and organizes believes that women are the key to a understanding of the the needs of the support and advocacy. And then there better future for Tower Hamlets. If end user, rather than the idea that they are new responses to old problems: women were given the opportunity should be ‘seen to be doing something’ based next to the street where Jack the to be educated, then households about a particular issue. Ripper’s first victim was killed, the Safe would be more likely to have dual This practical but passionate focus Exit project has brought police, courts, incomes. Toynbee Hall is engaged in on what people really need perhaps and social services together to help some informal adult literacy work, derives from something that Ben learnt on-street sex workers break the cycle mostly with women who are parents while volunteering at the children’s of ‘need to work – get fined – need of children at the local school. One camps: ‘I realised how similar we to work’. incredibly significant but hard-to- all are, really, and how easy it is to T he children’s camps that Ben fund part of this work is the Signature misinterpret the products of chance was involved in have evolved into project, an eight-week course in which and accident as something deeper’. It something called ‘Aspire’, a programme The Ashbee Room Bangladeshi and Somali women learn is clear that what makes him tick is a run in partnership with local schools, at Toynbee Hall to sign their own name. belief that we all have potential given which helps 120 young people every the right opportunities, which exist Local to national year. The young people in question Ben Rowland only if people get the services they have been described as those ‘excluded So Toynbee Hall is busy filling the need. If proof were needed, when Ben in school’, the ‘invisible’ low achievers gaps in services for the people in this arrived at the Treasury recently for a suffering from low self-esteem and community who would otherwise meeting, he was greeted by a familiar- limited aspirations. Twenty mentors slip through the net, and it helps 6000 looking receptionist. The young man work with them on citizenship, the arts, people every year. But one of the turned out to be one of the children and physical activity. The focus is on things that seems really to motivate who had attended a camp that Ben led achievement, recognition, and reward. Ben is that Toynbee Hall has an fifteen years ago. Two residential volunteers are looking at how progression can be measured: how can you tell whether aspiration and confidence have increased? One indicator of success is that some of the users of this programme have themselves gone on to become mentors. Looking forward So what is the outlook for the local community which has benefitted from Toynbee Hall for 125 years? In 1884, most of the poor people in the area were Jewish. Then came the Irish. And then after the Second World War the Bangladeshis. The problem is that people tend to move out of this area when they become more financially solvent; as Ben explains, the ‘trick’ to regeneration is to fix the problems of the people and of the place at the People at Toynbee same time. Hall’s Day Centre

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 19 students who are old enough, sports ing the Americans “we’re coming” an impressive beard. He leads us to and telling the Taliban “don’t worry Cane w an underground classroom where we we won’t be there too long”!’ It is this sit cross-legged in the gloom. A man tension, between the need to create more senior than the imam has been a perception of durability that will succeed in waiting for us. In contrast to the sea of encourage the Afghan people to sup- white prayer caps, this man wears a port the government, and the need for black turban: someone tells me he has a credible commitment to leave that Afghanistan? recently returned from Kandahar, the will force them to take responsibility province next to Helmand in southern for the fight, that animates much of Afghanistan. Nobody elaborates. We sit the current debate. With its focus on By Michael Webb (2008, PPE) and talk. transitioning to the Afghans, Obama’s ‘surge’ strategy attempts to manage Counterinsurgency is a difficult busi- the contradiction: ‘We need them In September 2009, Michael Webb travelled to ness. ‘If you wanted to do a pie chart to know that we will not leave them Pakistan, where he spent time in Peshawar and of what really matters,’ explains Hugh in the lurch,’ says Colonel Richard the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Powell (1985), UK Senior Repre- Iron, who is visiting Balliol to write Afghanistan, where he spent time in Kabul, Bamiyan, sentative in Helmand 2008–9; ‘it’s about his experiences directing a and Mazari Sharif. Drawing on his experiences, as security plus governance/informal counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, justice – everything else is icing.’ The ‘but they do need to step up to the well as interviews with Balliol fellows and alumni, problem is that creating security in a plate.’ Indeed, ‘what both sides are he asks: ‘can we succeed in Afghanistan?’ country with a determined insurgency really fighting for is to convince the spread among a population of 30 Afghan people to come off the fence Azam Khan, a local politician in million people requires an enormous on their side,’ says Chris Dell (1978), Peshawar, has agreed to take me to visit number of troops, for which there is formerly Deputy US Ambassador to the Taliban. ‘I take many journalists little public support. Hence Barack Afghanistan. around Peshawar,’ he says. ‘But never Obama’s announcement in Decem- to the Taliban. You are the first.’ A ber of a ‘surge’ that will ‘allow us to friend of his drives us to the outskirts accelerate handing over responsibil- of the city, and we hail a donkey taxi ity to Afghan forces, and allow us to to take us the final mile. The walls of begin the transfer of our forces out the madrassa are whitewashed, and I of Afghanistan in July of 2011’. These feel the force of the midday sun as we words caused some confusion, says stand in the courtyard. About forty Patrick Hennessey (2004), author young Taliban, fifteen to thirty years and former captain in the Grenadier old, quickly gather around us. They Michael Webb Guards: ‘he was trying to indicate to have been expecting us, they say. Azam A man and his son the Americans, “don’t worry we won’t introduces me to the imam, a cold man in Balkh, northern be there too long,” and to the Taliban, in his late forties who, like those of his Afghanistan “we’re coming,” and he ended up tell-

20 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s In theory this should not be too kindly hosted me in Kabul, agrees, difficult. ‘by all objective standards, we arguing that an effective Afghan gov- still have the overwhelming support ernment ‘shows little sign of emerging’. of the Afghan people,’ says Hennes- but Chris Alexander (1989), a former sey. ‘Unlike Iraq, where Joe Average canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan in basra or baghdad didn’t want you and former deputy head of the UN there and didn’t really mind that much mission there, rejects such assertions: if you got blown up, Joe Average in ‘the Afghan government remains Kabul and Kandahar and Herat doesn’t weak and in some cases corrupt, but want the taliban. they are a minority it is an order of magnitude stronger fringe element trying to impose some- than it was in 2001.’ much hinges on thing on an unwilling and unreceptive Hamid Karzai, the country’s president people.’ Yet, as Gerard Russell (1991), for the next five years, whom dell a fellow at Harvard’s carr center for knew well: ‘He would probably make Human rights, points out, the taliban a great king – sitting around with the ‘offer quick justice, and we don’t, and bearded ones, schmoozing, drinking it’s seen as being uncorrupt – gener- tea, reaching consensus on issues. but ally fairly brutal, but at least it’s a he just isn’t very good at actually run- resolution. And that’s what the Afghan ning the government: making deci- people want.’ Enabling the Afghan sions and seeing them implemented government to provide such justice and enforced.’ Some do have these has therefore been a key priority: pow- qualities: Hugh powell describes gulab ell spent his time in Helmand ‘creating mangal, governor of Helmand, as one and rolling out community councils, of ‘a large number of genuine patriots’ or district shuras, and using those dis- with ‘genuine administrative ability’ trict shuras to re-establish a system of and ‘core political skills’. this makes traditional justice.’ Lt Gen Simon Mayall (1975), deputy for some, though, this is not chief of the general Staff, cautiously enough. ‘It’s a fantasy to believe you optimistic: ‘I don’t think it is a given Kabul can base counterinsurgency around that between top-down pressure from the Afghan state when it doesn’t exist,’ ourselves and bottom-up pressure The madrassa classroom says Adam Roberts, an Emeritus fel- from the Afghan people, we can’t get low of balliol and expert on counterin- the government into the right place.’ A street in Peshawar surgency. Rory Stewart (1992), whose corresponding differences of turquoise mountain foundation opinion colour arguments about Taliban students the Afghan National Army (ANA). A Soviet tank Nobody disputes that Afghans make abandoned by the tough warriors: ‘there’s no respect for side of the road anything other than being right at the point of a bayonet,’ says Hennessey, who mentored ANA troops on his tour in 2007. this is consistent with my own experience: an ex-mujahideen general called

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 21 from serious people.’ The military concur: ‘a light footprint would give us a drip feed of casualty figures and would be much more likely to lose us public support,’ says Mayall; ‘the Afghans aren’t stupid, they can read between the lines and they’re not going to rally in support of the Afghan national government or the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] effort if they think it’s half hearted,’ says Hennessey; ‘the ANA would splinter along ethnic lines and you would see a civil war,’ says Daniel Marston (1998), a counterinsurgency expert and advisor to the British and American militaries. On Stewart’s proposals for counterterrorist operations, Powell is blunt: ‘Nobody seriously believes that special forces can do that. You need to be pretty close to the ground to have any effect at all; the effect of strikes is very limited; and just to get the intelligence you rely on the local population, who will only be prepared to feed you information if they believe that the Afghan government will endure. Frankly, most practitioners on the ground consider the light footprint me a ‘coward’ for refusing to walk Five of the young Stewart believes he has a better approach a bit of a fantasy.’ But Stewart through a hill-top fort that was heavily Taliban Michael met solution: reduce our own military stands firm: if the surge is able to defeat mined, before bounding into it himself; presence to a size that is sustainable in the Taliban and create stability, he Children in Samangan, another former Mujahid took off Afghanistan the long term, and use this lighter force promises me, ‘I would eat my hat.’ his shirt to reveal a chest and arms to assist with development operations O ne thing on which everybody so riddled with Soviet bullets that it in the north and centre, undertake agrees is that ‘success’, if it is ever seemed impossible he was still alive. counterterrorist operations, mainly achieved, will not be pretty. ‘We’re not As for the current generation, their with special forces, and facilitate a going to end up with Afghanistan as a progress has been ‘breathtaking’, political settlement, largely by ‘ensuring Garden of Eden,’ warns Mayall – nor according to Hennessey, who notes the Taliban don’t retake Kabul.’ This ‘Switzerland’ (Dell) – nor, indeed, that they are already able to defeat would leave large swathes of territory ‘Basingstoke’ (Iron’s utopia of choice). the Taliban in the field. Mayall in the south and east of the country ‘I think the Taliban will cease to be a points to new training camps, ‘outside our control’. But he believes direct, overwhelming security threat,’ arguing that ‘once you start offering that the reduced cost of such an continues Mayall. ‘There will be some better training, better pay, better status operation would be more proportionate parts of the country where the writ of and properly funded resettlement from to our ‘limited strategic interests’ in the government is pretty light, but we the Taliban, you begin to marginalize Afghanistan, and, more importantly, will have Kabul, Mazari Sharif, Herat, the extremist elements and more and that the surge risks intensifying Kandahar, and the Helmand Valley, more security starts to come from opposition to the war at home. and this will give people the chance to the Afghan government.’ Stewart, Alexander does not buy this, calling contrast life in our areas with that in however, remains unconvinced: ‘If you it ‘one of the most dishonourable Taliban-controlled areas. It will show imagine that you’re going to be able courses of action I have ever heard people that if you are secured by ISAF to transform them in 18 months [the peak of the surge] then you’re deluding yourself.’

The Taliban, I learn, study the Holy Koran here at this madrassa for eight years: some already have the 6,666 verses completely memorized. They support the jihadis who mount suicide attacks against coalition forces; indeed, some had friends who ended their lives this way. They tell me the Koran orders them to avenge the invasion of Muslim soil by infidels. They say they will be successful. In fact, 9/11 was a conspir- acy by the Americans, was it not, an excuse to invade Afghanistan? No, I cannot persuade them otherwise: have I not seen the documentaries, read the pamphlets? I have been indoctrinated by my own government. Now I am here, I will understand the truth. A street in Peshawar

22 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s and the ANA, wow doesn’t life get over.” But the Americans did not give the better.’ Hennessey gives an example: Taliban proof. So it is our duty to protect ‘You have the Taliban paying $10 him, as it is our duty to protect you.’ I a day and then you have a vibrant wonder how to respond to this, aware marketplace in a town that hasn’t of my predicament: defenceless, not had one for the last ten years because twenty miles from the lawless Afghan of the security threat. Most men are border areas. The wind has died down, going to say, “I’ll stick with the market but the moon is still shrouded in cloud. stall, thanks, rather than get killed in A solitary gas lamp hangs from a wall six months fighting for the Taliban fixture, and a boy stands in its eerie with my one rusty AK47.”’ All this is glow. He smiles at me encouragingly and part of a wider battle, notes Mayall: signals to me to answer. I smile back, ‘We’ve allowed the extremists to seize nervously. He looks away. ‘Well,’ I say the strategic narrative, to make it one at last, acutely conscious of the twenty of an attack on Islam rather than an Taliban who surround me, hanging on attempt to give the Afghans a better life my every word. ‘That sounds to me very within their own culture.’ A successful right, and honourable, and just.’ At this, strategy, he believes, must win this they smile. The imam holds up his hands battle of ideas. and begins to speak. ‘He is praying for Success will also require a managed you,’ says Azam. ‘He is praying that you withdrawal after the surge: Marston will go back to your homeland and tell believes that ‘in some areas the your countrymen this: that his people are Afghans can take over in the next five right, and honourable, and just.’ to six years’; Mayall talks of a ‘three- The road to Bamiyan down on some large mats. Many more to five-year military plan, plus a couple boy servants bustle about, preparing T he Taliban I met in that madrassa of decades of international tender The Blue Mosque in the feast to come. Their prayers offered, were Islamic extremists, but they Mazari Sharif loving care’; Dell suggests ‘we will twenty Taliban come up and join us on were not committed insurgents. Yet, probably have a significant presence the floor. As always the fast is broken when those young men finish their in Afghanistan for a generation.’ with dates, following the example of the studies, there will be no jobs waiting Iron explains what happens in the Prophet Mohammad, and water. After for them. One in three are orphans. It meantime: ‘Each brings to the fight everyone has taken their fill, the circle is possible that the boy who told me his what they do best. What we do best is falls silent. Someone I don’t recognize Muslim brothers would be victorious intelligence, special forces, fire power, from the morning leans forward: ‘Why over the infidels will soon himself be air power, logistics. What they do are your countrymen slaying our Muslim strapping explosives to his chest. Yes, best is boots on the ground: they can brothers? Why do they trespass on poverty and a lack of alternatives will generate far more people than we can Muslim soil?’ Suddenly, and with perfect have played a part. But ultimately it is and they are more acceptable as the timing, a cloud covers the moon; a faint Taliban ideology that motivates such face of the government. We must fight breeze begins to blow. The Taliban sit fighters. What happens in Afghanistan this together.’ very still. The boy servants stand silently will either give hope to men like him The question remains whether in the shadows. I begin to wonder and those who radicalize them the the public will continue to support whether I should have heeded Azam’s world over, evidence that the West can that fight. Mayall, who ‘owns a lot of advice. I tell them about 9/11, how be defeated and Islamic extremism this problem,’ believes they will: ‘We the Americans demanded the Taliban can triumph; or it will temper those now have a well thought through, hand over Osama bin Laden, how the illusions and show them an alternative comprehensive approach. American Taliban refused, and how we, with the that they might be persuaded to accept casualties in Iraq continued to rise in Americans, therefore had no choice. as right, and honourable, and just. If 2007, but American political support ‘Listen,’ says the young man, his the battle on the plains of Helmand for Iraq rose because they could see fierce, proud face framed by a short black and in the streets of Kabul is a battle there was a plan and they could see beard and a prayer cap of pure white. for the minds of the Afghan people, so progress being made against the plan.’ ‘We are Pashtun people. We live by the too is the battle for the minds of the The same now applies in Afghanistan, Pashtun code. If your enemy came’ – he Afghan people a battle for the minds he says. ‘The public will understand gestures towards the sky – ‘we would of the whole world. Can we succeed in because they will be able to link protect you, with our lives. It is our duty. Afghanistan? We have to. sacrifice back to purpose.’ This is a big So it was when the Americans came for ask. If voters do demand a withdrawal, bin Laden.’ The imam nods, smiling. says Russell, ‘it would send the very ‘The Taliban said, “Give us proof. If you dangerous signal that the West can be give us proof, then we shall hand him defeated through force.’ That’s a lot to put at stake.

It is Ramadan, and the Taliban invite Azam and me back to the madrassa that evening for Iftar, the breaking of the daily fast. Azam is reluctant to return, but I want to find out more about these people: many are teenagers, like me, and despite our obvious differences I feel a connection with them, if only because of our shared youth. A boy no older than twelve leads us up some stairs to the roof of the main structure and motions us to sit

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 23 the denigration of prose: ‘It’s like saying there is rhythm in dancing but none in An interview with walking.’ Another of his responsibilities was to help judge the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. The poems are of course submitted under Christopher Ricks pseudonyms, and it is a nice coincidence that the competition was won this year By Jacqueline Smith by Balliol’s Arabella Currie for her poem ‘Allotments’. Critical edition of Eliot’s poems It is with considerable excitement arrived for a tutorial and sit very close to, sometimes setting his tweed on fire. He used C hristopher may have achieved many that I approach my interview with distinctions in his career, but he is not taking Sir Christopher Ricks (Balliol 1953 to play nine holes of golf with two golf balls and maintain it was the same as playing 18 time out at the age of 76 to rest on his laurels. and Honorary Fellow), the most recent holes. He never knew the difference between He is still very much involved with teaching Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His me and the only other Balliol English and graduate supervisions at Boston works of literary criticism featured on undergraduate of my year, Barry Day.’ But University and is also working on a new full Christopher recalls that the people at Balliol critical edition of Eliot’s poems. my reading list as an undergraduate, He talks animatedly about a discovery and I am curious to know what the were genial and good, not brutishly rude or affectedly surly as was the case with some in made by his co-editor, Jim McCue. It man himself is like. Oxford at that time. concerns a poem called ‘The Cultivation of Christmas Trees’, written in 1954, twenty He accosts me gently in the foyer of the Journalism or academia? years after all the others. Christopher bought London Library where we have arranged to In light of his recently being awarded a a copy of it while he was an undergraduate at meet. Due to ongoing renovations we are knighthood for services to scholarship in the Balliol, and read it with disappointment. But led by a very circuitous route around the Queen’s Birthday Honours (2009), I wonder Jim has discovered an earlier draft, which block to the office of the Librarian, who has what, when he graduated in 1956, were his Christopher has found he ‘likes much better kindly loaned us her room. After a false start hopes and aspirations? What career path for its curious long-windedness. It’s like a in which I confess to ‘loving’ Virginia Woolf did he have mapped out before him in his studio out-take being better than the final (which elicits a pitying grimace), I manage to mind’s eye at the age of 23? Apparently it broadcast. Usually Eliot had an inerrancy redeem myself by avowing ‘love’ for Eliot in was a close-run thing between academia and of judgement when making revisions, but equal measure, which restores broad smiles journalism. I think in this case he got it wrong.’ This all round. And then we are off. Despite the Christopher was Literary Editor of Isis, earlier draft is touching because within the hiatus caused by a badly timed fire alarm, the longest-running independent student poem Eliot explains that he was asked to we talk non-stop firstly in this curiously magazine in England (established at Oxford write it by his publishers, and at the end he dark and modern office and University in 1892). In 1955 asks whether the poem is really the kind of subsequently in the Costa Coffee he wrote a piece about Samuel thing you would like to send or receive, at bar of the local Waterstone’s, It was a close-run Beckett’s fiction, which must Christmas. Christopher will be busy with the where Christopher solicitously Eliot edition over the next few years. thing between have been one of the earliest enquires whether I will let him critical pieces on this aspect of Favourite poems buy me a cup of tea. academia and Beckett’s achievement. He was I ask him to tell me something journalism also published several times So far we have skated through some about his memories of being in The Spectator, which had a highlights of Christopher’s academic an undergraduate at Balliol. He page devoted to undergraduate career. But I’m interested too in more banal explains that he was already writing. questions and, with the caveat that he might twenty years old when he came up, having He explains that he had to think hard find these a bit facile, I ask him what was the received advice to go into the army for two about whether it would be worth all the first poem that he remembers enjoying, and years before embarking on his studies (he work to try and become the Editor of Isis, does he have a favourite poem? went to Egypt with the Green Howards). I or whether he should instead concentrate M y questions naturally prompt wonder whether Christopher had the time his energies on getting a First, since he Christopher to reminisce about his school or inclination to read while in the army. For didn’t think it would be possible to do both. days at King Alfred’s School, Wantage. One practical reasons, he said, anthologies were In the end he decided that if of his teachers, Mr Swann, had the thing, offering as they do the chance to he got a First he would go on been a pupil of F. R. Leavis, read a complete piece of writing in one short to do graduate study, and if he and he introduced the boys sitting. So he dipped into The Penguin Book didn’t, he would go into literary The people at to Lawrence, Eliot, and Joyce. of Comic and Curious Verse edited by J. M. journalism. He put out various Balliol were The other English teacher, Mr Harrison, was more old Cohen, and John Hadfield’s The Saturday feelers, managing to get an genial and good Book, an illustrated annual miscellany of introduction to H. V. Hodson, school, and preferred Tennyson. essays, stories, and poetry. then Editor of the Sunday Times, Perhaps this early exposure to differing but well-reasoned Thrownn i at the deep end just in case that First proved elusive. Fortunately it did not, and he opinion is what instilled in Christopher C hristopher remembers being rather thrown went on to do a BLitt. After that he got the his keen appetite for criticism. But the in at the deep end when he got to Oxford, Andrew Bradley Research Fellowship at first poem he really remembers enjoying but believes it was good to have to find out Balliol, before being offered a Fellowship at is Paradise Lost: ‘I bought my own copy everything for yourself. His tutors were Worcester. And the rest is history. while I was at school – an H.C. Beeching John Bryson and Alistair Campbell, both Oxford Edition which cost half a crown. It idiosyncratic in different ways without, Professorf o Poetry was padded like a Bible.’ Christopher read according to Christopher, being actually O f course another honour bestowed on it with and for pleasure. He also read C.S. eccentric. John was warm and funny and Christopher was his election to the post Lewis’s preface to the poem, and thought his Alistair was severe and cold: ‘in fact he had of the Professor of Poetry at Oxford (2004­ approbation right, but his reasoning wrong. no heating in his room except an electric –2009). He says he was most pleased with It is surely no coincidence that Christopher’s fire which he used to turn on when he his inaugural lecture at which he deplored first book was about Milton.

24 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Peggotty Graham Newdigate Winner Arabella currie (2008) won the Newdigate prize in 2009, which puts her in the company of such illustrious names as John ruskin, matthew Arnold, oscar wilde, John buchan, Jon Stallworthy, Alan Hollinghurst, James fenton, and Andrew motion. In 1985 it was won by balliol alumnus robert twigger. this undergraduate prize for poetry was set up in the eighteenth century by Sir roger Newdigate. Arabella says: ‘my ambitions as far as poetry is concerned are really to learn and read more and so develop the scope of my poetry. I would also like to find a way successfully to combine my interest in poetry with my studies in classics, perhaps translations or perhaps interpretations of ancient poems.’ Allotment mrs moran found traces of rose petal on her nail scissors and a guilty look in her husband’s eye when she asked him for the truth. In fact she already knew that at night he left her bed for his allotment and trimmed his petals and sprayed the leaves with her scent, snatched from her drawer when he thought she wasn’t looking. Christopher Ricks She did not know that mr moran polished Arabella Currie his tomatoes and kept his shed as a sort of boudoir for his tools. Velvet pillows, incense, bead curtains at the door. or that every Sunday, mr moran As for a favourite poem, as predicted, christopher is not keen on the terms of put on hobnail boots the question: ‘I don’t like the notion of and trampled the flower beds “favourite” because it miniaturizes things and is somehow diminutive – it’s not a of other men. question about what I think is the best poem, but the one that most clicks with Until one Sunday he stopped. me.’ Having defined the question to his satisfaction, he plumps for tennyson’s He dug up his tomatoes and steadily, poem to his friend Edward fitzgerald, Jacqueline Smith one by one, he ate them. which is a 56-line single sentence by way of a birthday greeting. fitz never Now mr moran lies flat in his allotment received it because he died in the month bound by roses breathing damp air. of its writing. ‘It’s a lovable poem’, says christopher simply. As the sun moves he moves and bangs And then it is all over, as christopher his head on dragon fruit, fat needs to keep an appointment with Jim mccue. He brings him back with the seeds that swell them. for tea about ten minutes later, He tastes the resist and boil and spots me lingering with a book. ‘what are you of earth beneath his shoulders reading?’ he asks, and I and the tickle of the Venus shamefacedly display the cover of a small (and fly traps beside his earlobes. therefore, in my defence, the others, with their cricked necks, eminently portable) paperback by doris avert their eyes as they pass mr moran’s allotment. lessing about her cats. they whisper that mr moran’s wife I swear I hear a playful ‘miaow’ as the two men has left him to his green pleasures turn to join the queue. but he has not noticed.

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 25 on land, sea, and air, and allows the high quality, pro bono consultancy user to choose between the cheapest, service focusing on organizations Ballioln i fastest, or most carbon friendly that can’t afford the high rates of routes. Rachel’s better way to travel more traditional consultancies. We has caught the eye of investors and took the idea to Jonathan Black business travellers alike, winning awards from and Jennie Courtney in the careers Oxford Entrepreneurs, the Eye for office and pitched it as a way to help By Bo Meng (2009, Business administration) Travel Summit, and the Saïd Business the community while providing School Venture Fund. experience and skills to students. For others, the need was more Between the four of us we put Although Balliol is known primarily for leadership in personal; when asked why he chose together a scheme and now it’s going to start Explosive Science, Nick Zani extremely well, serving clients in politics and academia, business leadership has also been replied, ‘the job market was pretty Oxford and the greater London area.’ a part of the College’s history from its very foundation. terrible, and [Paddy and I] decided With Awfully Nice Cupcakes, we’d like to work for ourselves Holly Johnson wanted to change D ervorguilla, wife of John de Balliol, instead of working for free for more than just a community; was a shrewd investor, wise manager, someone for six months trying to she hoped to change society for and generous philanthropist who get a job.’ He added, ‘We’ve been to a the better, one cupcake at a time. established a permanent endowment few primary schools that don’t have ‘Co-founder Jennifer Dawson and for Balliol College after her husband’s science teachers; children don’t see I love holding vintage tea parties death. As the first of Oxford’s science until secondary school. We and want to bring people back to a colleges, Balliol was essentially a new just did a few simple experiments bygone era through our cupcakes,’ enterprise; today, her investment for the kids and they all agreed upon she said. To that end, Awfully Nice’s has grown into a storied institution what we knew already – science is cupcake collections are branded with which has produced world-shaping wicked!’ retro names like ‘Rizzo’ and ‘Dorothy’, graduates for nearly 750 years. For their part, Joerg Metzner and and the founders prefer to deliver The business world has changed Michael Strahlman hoped to effect their wares to customers personally quite a bit over the centuries: back change in the community while – another nod to a simpler time then, starting a business meant Rachel Armitage helping students by starting Oxford before mail order and megastores. joining a guild, globalization meant Student Consultancy. Michael More recently, Holly and Jennifer hopping on a camel and travelling recalls, ‘Joerg once mentioned a have begun to offer fully customized the Silk Road, and raising start-up system in some European countries vintage tea parties in a box, delivering capital generally involved waiting whereby students would take time not only cupcakes, sandwiches, and off from school to do paid but other treats but also sets of vintage around for a wealthy relative to catch Paddy (left) and Nick the plague. Today’s business world (right) do some big cheap consultancy stints. Based dishes and cutlery, tablecloths, is fast-paced, rife with risk, and flame tests in North on that idea, we came up with cupcake stands, and everything highly complex; however, that hasn’t Hinksey Primary the idea of leveraging the minds else needed to help their customers stopped a number of intrepid recent School in October 2009 of Oxford students to provide a experience the 1940s through food. Balliol graduates from following in Dervorguilla’s footsteps and thriving James Garford in the world of business. The variety of the businesses featured in this article reflects the diversity of Balliol graduates today: Awfully Nice Cupcakes, co-founded by Holly Johnson (2003); Explosive Science, established by Paddy Cullen (2005) and Nick Zani (2005); Oxford Student Consultancy, set up by Joerg Metzner (2005) and Michael Strahlman (2005); and Zoombu, co-founded by Rachel Armitage (2000) are all successful ventures in their own right, and have followed very different paths to get to where they are today. However, all four share some things in common, such as the motivation to address some sort of need. Addressing a need In the case of Zoombu, Rachel Armitage identified a problem that many of us share: ‘Sorting out travel in Europe can be very frustrating; nothing seems to work together, and we thought we could come up with a better way.’ Rachel, along with fellow Oxonian Alistair Hann, came up with Zoombu, an innovative website that aggregates combinations of travel components

26 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Team effort but also making steady progress merely coming up with a solution toward its goal of bringing us a little to a problem, however, does not a taste of yesteryear with every bite; successful enterprise make. Execution those interested in acquiring some can make or break a new business, tasty treats will only be further and successful execution almost tempted by the sumptuous pictures always requires a team effort. It is on the company’s website (www. no coincidence that all four of the awfullynice.co.uk). businesses profiled in this article Explosive Science has grown to were founded by partnerships; all of serve not only primary students but our founders attribute a great deal of also secondary schools, working their success to the quality of their in many gcSE topics to show how co-founders and other team members. science learned in the classroom In Zoombu’s case, each partner might be applied in real life, often brought specific vital skills to the table. with very exciting results. more rachel notes, ‘Alistair is the techy information about the company, one [Hann holds multiple advanced the science, and the founders is degrees in engineering and met rachel available on their website while both were pursuing engineering (http://explosivescience.com). degrees at oxford and then princeton] Zoombu is growing at breakneck and I have experience in business as pace, and the organization is looking a consultant and working in venture not only for partners and customers capital.’ At Zoombu, Alistair heads but also for new employees. rachel up the technical team while rachel is hopes that the site will move from in charge of developing the business. its current limited demo phase into this partnership has been extremely full deployment very soon, and fruitful, as Zoombu has managed individuals interested in using the to develop not only a unique and service or joining the team can find powerful search engine but also vital more information on the Zoombu partnerships with transportation website (www.zoombu.co.uk). providers and experienced the world of business has businesspeople who serve as the changed a lot since 1263, but it company’s advisory board. seems that one thing has remained Seeking advice from experienced constant; balliol graduates still have mentors has also paid off for the capability, the passion, and the Explosive Science. Nick states, ‘we talent to make waves and to change got in touch with an accountant the world, one volunteer, chemical who’s been really helpful to us and reaction, cupcake, or travel plan at put us in touch with useful contacts.’ An Awfully Nice vintage tea party a time. paddy adds, ‘He’s started up loads of companies before and has given us really sound advice about technical Stop Press: Plink Art things like the VAt and how to set Balliol’s Mark Cummins (2001) is the latest entrepreneur to up our accounts.’ thanks in part to dazzle the world of business with a technological innovation this advice, the business is off to an that has won a top Google prize. Mark and fellow DPhil student explosive start; the pair have already James Philbin (New College) have set up a company called Plink presented to over 200 students, and Search and developed a visual search engine called Plink Art. have received rave reviews from This software enables you to take a photograph of a picture in an teachers and students alike. Indeed, art gallery on your mobile phone, and then automatically find the all of the founders agree that selecting Wikipedia article relating to the picture. the right partners, from co-founders Art galleries are showing interest through to every employee and in the product, which is powered adviser, is vital to the success of any by cloud-based computer vision start-up business and should be a technology developed by Mark Photograph a painting focus of every aspiring entrepreneur. and James as a result of research The future’s bright undertaken with Professor Andrew Plink identifies the artwork Zisserman and Dr Paul Newman As for the future, things look bright (Balliol 1991) at the Department of ...and sends you the info! for all four ventures. Now part of Engineering Science. oxford University’s careers Service, Mark said: ‘We know we’ve got oxford Student consultancy has some pretty unique technology, but helped numerous organizations and winning the Google competition had its first set of student graduates in will give us the funding and the exposure december 2009; students interested to really make a go of it. We’re excited in volunteering, or organizations that people will finally get a chance For more interested in the group’s services, are to play with our image recognition information about encouraged to visit the website for system. We’ve got years of PhD Plink Search visit: more details (www.careers.ox.ac.uk). research in it, and it’s genuinely www.plinkart.com between its delicious cupcakes amazing technology, so it’s great to and innovative vintage tea parties, see it reaching real users’. Awfully Nice is not only serving up delicious treats for its customers

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 27 and vegetable box schemes, car pooling and ride sharing). we would create local, Weaning Britain community-based means of energy production. Alan’s present reality matches his vision of the future. He has set up and lives in a cohousing off fossil fuels project – the threshold centre in dorset – which operates precisely along these lines. And By doiReann laloR (2006, modern LanGuaGes) Alan has proved that this scenario can deliver the goods: his community has one of the lowest projected ecological footprints in the UK. When Alan Heeks was at Balliol in the late 1960s there was an ‘exciting blend A market solution? of swinging sixties socialism’, but, he says, this contained ‘pretty well zero environmental consciousness’. By the time Adam Bruce was a Balliol student in So do these two men believe that a market- based solution could bring about the low- the late 1980s, the JCR was making some effort to recycle, but environmental carbon future that they both envisage? Neither issues were at the bottom of most peoples’ agendas. Both Alan and Adam are now feels that a purely market-based solution is the working, in radically different ways, to bring about a low-carbon future for Britain. answer. for Adam, the market ‘has a significant role to play’, in that we are reliant on the market I ask each of them for their visions of britain’s at Scottish & Southern Energy, Adam is to deliver the investment needed to build energy future. Adam bruce (1986) replies that working to make this vision a reality. low-carbon infrastructure. but he asserts that ‘our dependence on hydrocarbons has led us to Alan Heeks (1966) foresees that by 2050 the this will not happen ‘without the appropriate make a series of pacts with the devil’, and that rising cost and unsteady supply of fossil fuels long-term policy signals from government’. we must now move to a low-carbon economy, will have forced us to reduce our consumption He underlines the need for the government to increase our energy security, and dramatically. for Alan, techno-fixes ‘get back into the power market and construct decrease our reliance on fossil fuels. are not the solution, and no amount a new policy framework’ to decarbonize the He sees us ‘moving, inexorably, to Climate change of scientific progress will allow us power sector, while praising the creation of the an electric society’, with transport, is not only an to carry on living as we do now. He department for Energy and climate change heat, and lighting becoming favours a different strategy, which last year as ‘a step in the right direction’. increasingly powered by electricity. environmental he dubs ‘collaborate, simplify, and Alan is much more reluctant to advocate by 2050, he predicts, over 50 per problem localize’. In this scenario, we would any reliance on market forces. for him, ‘the cent of the European Union’s make major cuts in domestic social and environmental implications of electricity will be generated from energy use by sharing resources and a purely market-based solution to energy renewables. As chairman of the british wind co-operating with neighbours (producing food shortages are too gruesome Energy Association and head of sustainability locally through community market gardens to imagine’. He pictures

Adam Bruce Read History at Balliol (1986) President of the Oxford Union Studied Law at Edinburgh Solicitor (1992–1995 McGrigor Donald; 1995–1997 Murray & Donald) Director of Public Policy (1998–2006 Mc Grigor Donald) UK Chief Executive of Airtricity (international developer and operator of wind farms) Head of Sustainable Development at Scottish and Southern (2008–present) Chairman of the British Wind Energy Association

28 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS whole nations being priced out of the energy market, and in the UK he anticipates ‘extreme social unrest arising if fossil fuel is only Alan Heeks affordable by the elite’. Alan suggests alternative Read English at Balliol (1966) models to a market solution (‘contraction and convergence’, and paul Hawken’s ‘the Harvard MBA Ecology of commerce’), but he insists that these will not come about without government Co-founded the FTSE 100 building materials intervention. we will need the government to group Caradon plc (1985) regulate, he says, so that we can ‘move from a free market in which environmental damage Worked in marketing in Proctor and Gamble, is largely free of cost, to a system which taxes for BP and GlaxoSmithKline, and for smaller resource depletion and carbon emissions, ethical businesses rather than profits and labour’. Non-executive chair of Abel & Cole So both Adam and Alan, in spite of the fact (major UK supplier of organic produce, Manages Hazel Hill Wood that they are approaching the energy crisis 2000–2003) (woodland nature reserve and retreat centre) from very different angles, are calling for large- scale government intervention. but what about Published the book The Natural Advantage Co-founded the Threshold Centre the individual? do we all have a role to play in in the UK (2000) and the US (2001) (cohousing project in Dorset, 2004) weaning britain off fossil fuels? Yes we do, they say. Adam bruce feels that ‘individual action Created The Magdalen Project Runs two sustainability consultancies (Working can be hugely powerful’ and that ‘people are (organic farm and educational charity) Vision and The Rural Renewal Company) encouraged to act through seeing others take action’. the first step that an individual can take, he says, is to reduce their own energy consumption. but he stresses that ‘this is change it’. He stresses that guilt or doomsday in environmental science. Has this been a not to advocate a hearty cold-showers-and- preaching are not good motivating forces for hindrance? Adam declares: ‘I am, and always chapel regime that might have been familiar change. rather, he believes that humans are will be, a balliol historian’. He still finds to benjamin Jowett’, but the kind of energy encouraged to act when they are presented comfort in his History textbooks – gibbon and efficiency programme that balliol is adopting with positive, sociable examples of living with braudel – which taught him that ‘mankind has in its campaign ‘balliol Unplugged’. low resource use. He seeks to achieve this with a habit of doing the right thing over the long Alan Heeks also believes that it is the three models of sustainable living that he term.’ He concludes that ‘whatever happens, ‘absolutely crucial for individuals to feel has founded: an organic farm (the magdalen it is clear that there will be a lot of work to be their accountability for resource use; and to project), a conservation woodland, and a done in transforming the way we power our cohousing community. lives, and there will always be space for balliol students in that.’ Civil disobedience Alan explains that his ‘apparently irrelevant’ Eminent climate experts and spokespeople, English degree has in no way been a hindrance such as Al gore and george monbiot, have to working in the sustainability sector, which been calling for people to take to the streets he describes as ‘interesting, satisfying, and and demand that politicians deliver the energy of huge public benefit’. He states: ‘while and climate future that we need, citing acts of environmental studies might be helpful for mass civil disobedience by the likes of gandhi, some of this, subjects like ppE or psychology martin luther King, Nelson mandela, and could be more relevant’. this is because as we the Suffragettes which have brought about come to understand more clearly that climate fundamental paradigm shifts throughout change is not only an environmental problem, history. I ask Adam and Alan for their views but one that is saturated in political, economic, on the role that civil disobedience has to play and human rights conundrums, there will in carving out the roadmap to britain’s low- be increasing need for engagement from carbon future. they both support it. people with a myriad of different academic Alan defines ‘peaceful mass public backgrounds. Indeed, Alan urges us to look engagement’ as ‘crucial in pushing beyond our academic training the politicians to act’. Adam believes as we prepare ourselves for the that the argument is no longer about Also needed radical changes that society will ‘why’ but is now about ‘How’ and are hundreds of undergo in order to cope with ‘How quickly’. ‘If we are to generate the climate and energy crises. 50 per cent of Europe’s electricity Balliol graduates Alan advises: ‘whatever subject from wind energy by 2050’, he says, people study, I’d urge them to ‘we require massive investment in combine this with some hands-on, new kit, including large-scale interconnection front-line experience, in vacations or gap across the North Sea. offshore wind will be the years, of organic agriculture, green building, UK’s North Sea oil of the twenty-first century’. permaculture or intermediate technologies. to ensure that this happens, ‘by all means bang Educating the heart and soul, and the ability to the drum to keep politicians on their toes’, he imagine a good future, are even more crucial says, but also needed are ‘hundreds of balliol than training one’s mind to fulfill the vision.’ graduates over the coming decades’ to come and So the lesson from these two alumni is actually ‘help build the future’. that not only will we need scores of engineers finally, I ask them both if they would and physicists to build our low-carbon future, encourage current balliol students to but we will also need balliol brains and The MCR vegetable patch, with, from left to right, consider following career paths in sustainable brawn of all kinds in order to re-imagine and Charne Lavery, Maike Kaufman, Doireann Lalor, development. In particular, I am interested reconstruct our society in a way that allows us Emily Mc Laughlin, Ed Latter, and Mike Urban in the fact that neither of them was trained to live within the resources of this one planet.

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 29 Some thought for food By MattheW fRaseR (2007, PPe)

Balliol alumni SashaAbramsky (1990) and Raj Patel (1992) have both recently brought out books about the politics of food, though from differing perspectives and homing in on separate, but related, issues. The politics of food is not an obviously pressing concern to affluent society. But the investigations of Abramsky and Patel bring it closer to home.

30 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS Sasha Abramsky and raj patel both received bAs inflation, home foreclosures (repossessions), fest inequality are the corporations who exploit in politics, philosophy, and Economics in the business insecurity, and financial instability. farmers with the ‘rock solid alibi of “consumer early 1990s. raj then went to lSE and cornell only the massive international intervention of freedom”’ and use their size to undermine new University and has worked with the United governments averted a deep depression. competition and bully governments into trade Nations, the world bank, and the world trade Sasha looks to the obama administration as settlements. the food system they have moulded organization. As well as writing, he is now the key determinant of the American future. He for themselves is fragile because of its ‘ecological a policy analyst at the Institute for food and believes that obama must introduce universal footprint’, which is huge due to the need for mas- development policy/food first. Sasha followed healthcare, a comprehensive unemployment sive international transport. his ppE degree with some time at the columbia insurance plan, measures to prevent foreclosure, Combating the system University graduate School of Journalism and and federal assistance to business investment in has lived in America ever since. Alongside low-income areas and public works programmes. what can be done about the injustice and increas- writing articles and books, he is also a teacher on Sasha’s hope for obama is checked by a grave ingly critical environmental degradation of the the Uc davis writing programme and a fellow at concern for the long-term consequences of current food system? raj’s guiding theme is that the New York city-based demos think-tank. ‘decades of deregulation and “trickle-down” there is hope to be found in the opposition and economics’. when obama took protest movements of those people who have Uncovering hidden scandals suffered. As individuals, we must ‘transform our combating the office ‘everything was in freefall’. As their book titles suggest, both Sasha thinks, at the end of 2009, tastes’ away from the processed junk we are hard- Sasha and raj seek to uncover world’s food that obama’s progress has been slow, wired to enjoy. we must start to grow and eat something that is ‘hidden’ from our system must be but that this is entirely justified given locally and seasonally, as well as give our support view. In the case of Sasha’s study the absolute disaster he inherited. for local produce, which helps cut transport costs. of America, the ‘hidden scandal’ a ‘ground-up Sasha’s latest book, Inside Obama’s raj also believes that we must resist the urge to is the ‘grinding permanence’ of process’ Brain, which came out in december be satisfied by the organic and fair trade revolu- the need to evade hunger that 2009, offers an in-depth study of tions that the corporations have co-opted into the plagues low-income families. raj’s the president and an analysis of his food system. He is critical of an over-appreciation ‘hidden battle’ concerns the global food system first year in office. In terms of the triggers of of fair trade because it only marginally increases and the devastating effects of multinational poverty that Sasha outlines – rising health costs, the price offered to the farmer. the price is still agribusinesses on third-world producers. He oscillating energy prices, and unemployment – far too low to sustain poor communities tied to a reveals that, as well as dominating the producers, he feels that obama has made some progress by mono-crop market. what is needed, he says, is a these corporations manipulate how we, the expanding the food stamp programme, raising radical recognition of the demands and rights of consumers, think about and eat food. benefits for the jobless, and increasing the what he terms the ‘global South’ – impoverished while both studies are predominantly minimum wage. but, with seven million jobs lost regions across the world. this can be brought negative critiques of contemporary food politics, in the last year, it’s necessarily ‘a game of catch up’. about by greater development assistance and they both provide positive plans of action. Sasha investment, the introduction of the living wage, represents all the struggling Americans and the cancellation of third-world debt. he interviews on his travels when he Alongside these suggestions is makes hopeful recommendations to the another radical move, this time against obama administration. raj’s proposals the big corporations. raj believes that hit at both the macro and the micro monopolies across the world must be level. He highlights the many movements aggressively policed, and environmental across the world that are campaigning for restrictions must ensure big food corpo- the changes that must take place nationally rations act to create a more sustainable and internationally, and shows that there food system. processed food should be are things that we, as individuals, can do to taxed to take into account the harm it help fix the broken food system. causes both people and the planet. Where will the next meal Although these proposals may sound utopian, raj is encouraged by the many come from? movements across the world that are lead- Sasha combines his interviewees’ narratives ing the way in educating and organising with his own personal low-income food opposition to the injustice of the food sys- experiments. this allows him to gain an Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden tem. Indeed, when asked about his views on insight into the reality for so many millions of Battle for the World’s Food System, by Raj Patel raj’s book, Sasha said that, despite disagreements Americans. In an interview, he explained to me on several points, he accepted raj’s core argument Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American that these experiments were a necessary exercise Hunger and How to Fix It, by Sasha Abramsky that combating the world’s food system must be in empathy, which enabled him to break down a ‘ground-up process’. Sasha, while hopeful of the stereotypes that people have about those who obama, doesn’t think that the president, with his struggle to make ends meet. many in America, The alibi of ‘consumer freedom’ connections to big agribusiness, will be introduc- a first-world country, still cannot believe that raj’s book takes the reader through the entire ing a revolutionary progressive agricultural policy daily hunger is a reality for millions and that global food system, starting from the pressures any time soon. obesity is caused by the desperate consumption felt by farmers and finishing on the supermarket these two books complement each other. of cheap unhealthy food, rather than gluttonous aisles where our tastes as consumers are sculpted Sasha provides insightful journalistic reportage wealth. the story of hunger in America is a to the liking of corporations. there are chapters combined with first-hand experience in low- psychological one, namely a constant anxiety on the importance of inter-governmental trade income food experiments. He then uses this to about where the next meal will come from. treaties, the history of the post-war food system, talk national politics and to urge people to recog- Sasha uses personal experience and the stories and an explanation as to why agribusiness nise the hidden scandal of American hunger. raj’s of the people he meets to inform his political corporations are the only agents to gain from study of the international politics of food covers analysis. the effect of federal cuts in financial today’s food system. the entire system, from soybeans to supermarkets. and food aid, and an unfair calculation of the most farmers suffer from a complete depend- It is a far-reaching and rigorous deconstruction of poverty level, mean that many deserving citizens ence on their low-priced produce and are the system, revealing its deficiencies and injustices have missed out on much-needed medicaid, food incapable of moving out of the market they find and advancing a multi-level strategy for repair. stamps, and free school lunches for children. It themselves in. the price of Ugandan coffee beans both books are invigorating and inspiring to any is, however, the economic crisis that catalyzes on the supermarket shelves is 200 times more current ambitious balliol student with, as Naomi these problems, increasing unemployment, than it is in Uganda. the architects of this mani- Klein would say, a ‘hunger for justice’.

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 31 Architects of Since then, several other Balliol stu- Richard Hay himself remembers the dents have gone on to be at the forefront ‘pioneering spirit’ that was at the heart the European of the development of the organization. of the European project in those early One was Julian Priestley (1969), Secre- days. ‘It was a group of people committed tary General of the European Parliament to building a European community – (see Floreat Domus 2007). Another was not necessarily a political structure of Union Graham Avery (1961), who played a key federalism, just getting on with what can role in the recent accession of a further sensibly be done together,’ he recalls. By Tom Rowley (2008, History & Politics) twelve countries to what is now called He remembers the difficulty of the European Union. communicating in the first few years: The pioneering spirit ‘Part of the deal politically between In the nineteenth century, Balliol sent out young men and the French was that of the early years to far-flung outposts of the British Empire. From British officials would cope in French. Canada to Cairo and Bermuda to Burma, Balliol’s G raham recalls the ‘extraordinarily My French was extremely ropey but we graduates took their places amid the administrative interesting’ early years of Britain’s learnt to cope...We sort of had to find the involvement with the Community. map references where two statements powerhouses of the world’s biggest empire. ‘The British political class was trying crossed and say things one way and then to come to terms with the EU – I’m another.’ It was, though, another Balliol A 1975 press conference not sure it has yet succeeded! But Michael Emerson (1959) completed alumnus, Prime Minister Harold given by Christopher those of us who went to Brussels the triumvirate of former Balliol Macmillan (1912), who foresaw the Tugendhat (second from realized that the European adventure members in Brussels, arriving at the ‘winds of change’ that signalled the right), with Richard was profoundly important for the Commission from the Organisation Hay next to him demise of Britain’s imperial ambitions. (second from left) future of British foreign policy,’ he says. for Economic Co-operation and It is not coincidental that Macmillan In 1973, having worked for Development (OECD) in 1973. Michael also filed Britain’s first (unsuccessful) Graham Avery the Ministry of Agriculture since was later to join the Cabinet of Balliol application to join the then fledgling graduating, Graham was invited alumnus (1938), alongside European Community in 1961. by to join his Graham Avery, where he helped Given that Balliol never was one of first Cabinet – the personal staff of formulate Jenkins’s policy on economic Oxford’s more regressive institutions, a – as its and monetary union, the precursor to it is perhaps unsurprising that many agricultural adviser. the Euro. Balliol alumni followed in Macmillan’s It was during this initial foray to Of the difference between Soames footsteps, believing that Britain’s future Brussels that Graham met Richard Hay and Jenkins, Graham notes: ‘Soames was lay not in empire-building but closer (1960), another Balliol alumnus, whom not an intellectual – he prided himself on relations with its European neighbours. Soames had recruited to his Cabinet being the only Commissioner without a Indeed, it was Macmillan’s successor- straight from the Treasury. Graham university degree. Roy was the complete but-two, former Balliol PPEist Edward recalls Richard’s ‘meteoric career’ in opposite – he was a very cerebral Heath (1935), who finally negotiated Europe, where he became Director- politician, and had extraordinary Britain’s entry to the European General for Personnel before leaving perspicacity – he could see further into Community in 1973. Brussels in 1992 to be ordained. the future than the others.’­

32 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s J Logan European Union 2010

R oy Jenkins, President of the Euro- pean Commission from 1977 to 1981, succeeded Macmillan as Chancellor Richard Hay witnessed the I would be very interested to go into of Oxford University in 1987, and was beginning of the process of digitization. a career in foreign affairs,’ he says. ‘I succeeded in 2003 by Chris Patten ‘Another revolution was the information would try to spend some time working (1962), yet another Balliol alumnus to revolution,’ he recalls. ‘I remember for the UK and some time working for have proved influential in Brussels. Soames had a great struggle over the Europe. I would hope to join the new Chris Patten was European Com- purchase of one computer for the European diplomatic service which is missioner for External Relations during Commission...Within ten years, we had being set up under the Lisbon treaty.’ Romano Prodi’s administration from many PCs in every department. It had He reflects on the future of the 2000 to 2004. By this time, Graham a great effect on every dimension of the EU: ‘It’s often been said that the had been appointed Director-General organization.’ initial mission of the European for External Affairs, and worked under However, Richard thinks, for all this Community was to stop wars between Chris. Graham emphasizes Chris change, the fundamental ethos of the European states. But young people Patten’s ‘very important contribution to institution remains the same: ‘What don’t consider that’s a particularly the development of EU foreign policy’. didn’t change was the pioneering spirit sexy mission for today, because it has and a considerable informality about succeeded so well. It is inconceivable Growth and change structures and relationships. What now that members of the EU would G raham was one of the architects of the matters is who you know – a lot is take up arms against each other. What enlargement of the EU to bring in the based on personal contacts, which cut the EU needs to do in the twenty-first countries of Central and Eastern Europe across formal hierarchies. It can make century is to be outward-looking, to – ‘Europe’s reunification’, as he calls it. As it difficult unless you’re a bit of a jungle project the values and interests of its well as growing in size, the community fighter.’ citizens worldwide.’ has also changed in other ways since Asked how much he felt Balliol Whether the current generation of those first pioneers were dispatched in had informed his subsequent career, Balliol students will follow Graham’s 1973. Graham led much of the reform Richard replied ‘it was a great time suggestion remains to be seen. What of the Common Agricultural Policy that of broadening horizons and meeting is abundantly clear is that, were they has taken place over the decades: people and learning about arguing to do so, they would be following and presentation’. He also notes that it in the footsteps of a long and very ‘The concept of the Common Roy Jenkins Agricultural Policy when I came to was a time ‘of making bricks without distinguished line of Old Members Brussels was support of farm prices. Now The Headquarters necessarily a great deal of straw,’ an who have played an important the accent is more on the environment of the European experience that today’s tutors would role in translating a pan-European as one of the main reasons for public Commission (The obviously not recognize. organization from an ambitious funds being involved in agriculture. One Berlaymont Building) pipe dream to a very present reality, of the things I’m most proud of having The EU today spanning twenty-seven nations and (images reproduced done was to write the EU’s first ‘Green with permission from the G raham, meanwhile, is convinced representing Europe’s interests on Paper’, in which the Commission said Audiovisual Library of the that Brussels still offers a plethora of a highly diverse range of policy. It is that environment and agriculture should European Commission, interesting careers for today’s Balliol an impact of which Balliol should work together,’ he reflects. © European Union 2010) men and women. ‘If I were your age, be justifiably proud.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 33 Renewed vision for Australia The case for an Saying ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations of indigenous Australians in 2008 signalled the beginning of renewed civic engagement with creating a better Australian bill of rights future for all Australians. Also in 2008, the new rudd government held By JennifeR Robinson (2006) the 20/20 ‘Ideas’ Summit, at which a thousand articulate Australians came down in favour of a republic, a treaty Jennifer Robinson makes the case for an Australian bill of rights, drawing on the of reconciliation with indigenous work of Balliol alumni and scholars and on her own work with Geoffrey Robertson Australians, and a charter of rights – QC on his latest book, Statute of Liberty: How to Give Australians Back Their Rights three ‘ideas’ that are only new in so (Random House, 2009). far as they can be related to each other as essential conditions for the final emergence of an Australian identity. It is a lamentable fact that Australia nation to the development of the In his recent book, UN judge and is out of step with the rest of the legal principles enshrined by the Universal Australian human rights barrister, world in safeguarding fundamental declaration of Human rights geoffrey robertson Qc, argues that human rights. Unlike the UK, the (UdHr). the Australian delegation a bill of rights will both improve US, canada, South Africa, India, and brokered the agreement and ensured Australia’s human rights record and New Zealand, Australia does not yet the inclusion of the rights to health, represent a statement of Australian have a national bill of rights. many welfare, and education. Australia values borne out of Australian history are working hard to change this state pushed for the creation of an that we should preserve and carry into of affairs. recent cases demonstrate international court to enforce the Jennifer Robinson the future. He argues that Australians severe deficiencies in human rights UdHr on the grounds that ‘a mere have ‘lodged in [their] consciousness, protection in Australia which, declaration of principles would not various beliefs about “the Australian considered in light of the experience offer assurance against the revival of way” to life, liberty and the pursuit of the Human rights Act in the oppression’. of happiness...that have not been UK, illustrates that this is a debate Ironically, Australia has taken synthesised or coherently articulated of great practical significance for all no ‘national’ measures to secure the as a set of moral or legal values’. Australians. effective recognition of these rights tim Soutphommasane (2004) The history of the struggle under Australian law. fifty years agrees, but asserts that any bill of rights after the establishment of the UdHr, must be part and parcel of the creation for human rights in Australia is one of the very few Australia of a republic. In his recent book, western countries without a national : Nation-Building those drafting the Australian Tim Soutphommasane bill of rights. for Australian Progressives (cambridge constitution borrowed heavily from University press, 2009), tim argues the US constitution save for three that ‘the establishment of the republic aspects: the federal commonwealth is an opportunity to put in place new was established under , the symbols and institutions of citizenship’ Executive would sit in parliament, and that this should include ‘a clear and there would be no bill of rights. statement of rights and responsibilities’. A bill of rights was rejected out of According to tim, a bill of rights will fear that a due process clause would ‘promote a more active and virtuous undermine the discriminatory citizenship’ and one that represents provisions of the law at the time, a more inclusive and multicultural including laws which disadvantaged notion of Australian identity. indigenous Australians and migrant chinese. Since federation, successive If it ain’t broke, attempts to create a bill of rights – don’t fix it whether constitutional or statutory despite renewed enthusiasm for civic – have failed. regeneration, the idea of a bill of rights but the concept of human rights remains extraordinarily controversial. is not foreign to Australia. In 1787 Vocal opponents argue that captain Arthur phillip enacted the Australia has an excellent human ‘first law’ for the penal colony that rights record and that Australians’ became Australia, which asserted rights are sufficiently protected ‘there will be no slavery’. this was by our westminster-style many years before wilberforce democracy and the common abolished the slave trade in britain. law. Not only is this claim the emancipists fought hard to panglossian, but it ignores the ensure trial by jury and the right to experience in the birthplace of vote: Australia pioneered the secret our legal and political systems, ballot and universal voting rights, where the Human rights and was among the first nations to Act has exposed numerous give women the vote (indigenous gaps in UK common law, Australians would have to wait especially for disadvantaged until 1967). groups and minorities. on the international level, there are cases in Eleanor roosevelt recognized that Australia where courts Australia contributed more than any have in fact found no

34 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS Balliol Fellow Jeff King (top left) at the workshop ‘A UK Bill of Social Rights?’ constitutional or legislative provision law. In his recent book, The Rule of students, and Ngo representatives Jennifer Robinson that allows them to prevent or put a Law (Allen lane, 2010), just as in his on the subject of ‘A UK bill of Social (2006) of Finers stop to human rights abuse. these judicial decisions under the Human rights?’. the workshop was convened Stephens Innocent LLP include the indefinite (and inhuman) rights Act striking down or curtailing to discuss the report of the Joint acted for the media in detention of asylum seekers in the most abrasive government anti- committee on Human rights on a recent human rights Al-Kateb v Godwin (2004) 219 clr terrorism powers, bingham illustrates bill of rights for the UK (10 August cases HM Treasury v Mohammed Jabar 562, and laws allowing the forcible his scrupulous respect for the limits 2008), which recommended the Ahmed and others (FC) removal of indigenous children of judicial function while vindicating introduction of constitutional social [2010] UKSC 1 and R from their families in Kruger v human rights against the excesses of rights in the UK. the workshop has ( Binyam Mohamed) v Commonwealth of Australia (1997) government action. developed into a more formal group Secretary of State for 190 clr 1. david Hicks, an Australian the committee’s simple finding is of interested parties seeking further Foreign and Common- held for many years in guantanamo that Australia’s wealthy and allegedly public engagement on the protection wealth Affairs [2009] bay, found no recourse in the egalitarian society disrespects and of social rights in the UK. EWHC 152. Australian courts to force or even discriminates against many classes concerning an Australian bill of Tim Soutphommasane pressure Australia to bring him home, of its citizens, rights the question is not a matter of (2004) is a Research such that he felt impelled to turn to the from indigenous if, but when. whatever Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne UK, applying for british citizenship in Australians who its final form, it must and a columnist the hope that the british government live in conditions include rights that reflect with The Australian might ask for his release as it had for of ‘third world the iconic moments newspaper. others such as binyam mohamed. disadvantage’, in our history: the After the 20/20 Summit, the to the mentally low points which we Attorney-general created the disabled and the want to protect against Australian Human rights consultative large numbers and say ‘never again’, committee to ‘conduct a nationwide of Australian such as the systematic consultation to examine protection workers who discrimination against and promotion of human rights and no longer have indigenous Australians and responsibilities in Australia’. Aruna sufficient the massacre of workers at Sathanapally (2006) coordinated a trade union Eureka Stockade; and the group of ten postgraduate lawyers who protection. high points that represent presented a briefing to this committee In short, the moments of moral vision on the UK’s Human rights Act and system is broke such as phillip’s first law the lessons it provides for Australia. and it needs against slavery. like the the committee adopted several fixing. UK’s Human rights Act, of the briefing’s suggestions in its Looking to the future an Australian bill of rights recommendations to the Australian will improve human rights government. the consultative process while the Australian debate protection, but should also provide a was assisted by lord bingham (1954 languishes a decade behind on the statement that Australian children can and Visitor) who spent time in question of whether or not to adopt a recite with pride, and give them an Australia speaking to judges and senior bill of rights, in the UK debate forges understanding of the unique history politicians about the UK experience. ahead to consider the protection of a that has influenced the Australian No-one could be more qualified to greater range of rights. balliol fellow definition of a free society. the have done so, as lord bingham led Jeff King has been working to foster Australian bill of rights must recognize the british judiciary through the this debate. In June 2009, he and the struggles and triumphs of the process of grafting the principles of the professor Sandy fredman hosted a past and welcome and rejoice in our Human rights Act onto UK common workshop attended by academics, multicultural present and future.

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 35 moral thinking could be improved if I ask Toby what he believes the we made decisions in light of fuller prospects are for moral philosophy to Toby Ord and and more precise information. If we become more scientific, and whether were forced to consider how much we can hope to reduce to empirical we could benefit others by using our disagreements what currently seem to the science of resources differently – how many be conflicts of ethical values. Echoing sight-saving operations could be the words of his mentor and fellow covered by the cost of a Savile Row moral philosopher Derek Parfit morals suit, for example – Toby believes that (Balliol 1961), Toby is hopeful that this would expose our bias towards progress in this direction is possible: our selves, and push us towards the ‘ultimately I’m very optimistic, but not Byw O ain Williams (2006, Politics) greater beneficence and impartiality on a short timescale.’ which, on his reading of morality, is Toby’s approach to moral required of us. philosophy is strikingly explicit Toby Ord is unusual: a philosopher whose work has For his British Academy- and clear, and he is unashamedly had a direct practical impact on the way he lives sponsored work, Toby has spent enthusiastic about the prospect of his own life. As his philosophical work led him to time thinking about how we should rationalizing our moral thought. respond to uncertainty in our Though a significant part of his consider the potential good consequences that would moral thought, seeking to apply the project is to show that, properly flow from a radical increase in charitable giving, Toby same techniques that are used for understood, consequentialism is found he could no longer continue as before. He has mathematical problems of uncertainty not as counter-intuitive as is often now pledged to donate a significant proportion of his to those ethical dilemmas where supposed, his remains a very special income to charity, and leads a campaign – Giving we feel the pull of both sides of the and distinctive way of looking at argument. ‘I believe that this is a very human life and the problems of What We Can – encouraging others to do the same. important question, and one that morality. Perhaps the issue for the rest has been overlooked in the study of of us is not so much whether we agree G iven the way in which his own ethics. There is a lot of focus on what with Toby’s answers, but whether we philosophical investigations are Toby is happy each ethical theory tells you to do, can accept his way of looking at the directly linked to one of the world’s to claim that but almost none on what to do when questions. most urgent moral problems, I am you are uncertain of which theory morality is a keen to know whether Toby finds is correct (as we all are, or should See www.givingwhatwecan.org/ to find it strange that most mainstream quantitative and rationally be).’ out more about Toby Ord’s campaign. academic moral philosophy fails to technical issue. engage with the urgent concerns of poverty, domination, exploitation, and oppression. He admits that ‘there is a disconnect’, and suggests that one explanation is that the problem of poverty is morally too obvious, meaning that it gets overlooked by philosophers, with some dangerous consequences. ‘What [mainstream moral philosophers usually like to talk about] gets used as a proxy for what we think is important. But actually, it’s more correlated to what we think is difficult.’ Having studied philosophy at Balliol as a graduate, Toby is now back at College as a Junior Research Fellow, aided by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. His undergraduate background, though, also takes in Mathematics and Computer Science – a fact that one suspects might in some way motivate his desire to bring quantitative calculation and precision to bear on moral philosophy, which is a theme that is evident in much of his work. ‘In terms of ethical theories, my view is that we should hold ourselves to the type of standards that theoretical physicists hold themselves to: if something looks ad-hoc or non- fundamental, then we should be suspicious of it.’ As a consequentialist, Toby is happy to claim that morality is, at some fundamental level, a quantitative and technical issue. To this end, he believes that a great deal of our Toby Ord

36 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s The Magnificent Mrs Tennant: Bookshelf The Adventurous Life of Gertrude Tennant, Victorian Grande Dame As well as the two novels featured on David Waller (1981, English) (Yale University Press, 2009) pages 14-15, the following titles by Balliol The salon established by Gertrude Tennant (1819–1918) alumni hit the headlines in 2009/10. attracted legions of celebrities, among them William Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, The Checklist Thomas Huxley, John Everett Millais, Henry James, and Manifesto Robert Browning. David Waller’s book recovers Gertrude’s Atul Gawande (1987, PPE) lost life, drawing on a treasure trove of recently discovered (Profile Books, 2010) family papers. ‘elegantly recreates a seething, death-haunted century’ Atul Gawande takes us Independent from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour A Gift to My Solo underwater, to Michigan, Children Rana Dasgupta (1990, where a cleanliness checklist Jim Rogers (1964, PPE) Modern Languages) in intensive care units (Random House, 2009) (Fourth Estate, 2009) virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. Jim Rogers is a world traveller This novel recounts the life He explains how checklists and legendary investor who and daydreams of a reclusive work to prompt striking The Junior Officers’ made his fortune before he one-hundred-year-old and immediate Reading Club: was forty. Now the bestselling man from Bulgaria. Ulrich improvements. And he Killing Time and author shares a heartfelt, embarks on an epic armchair journey through a century follows the checklist revolution Fighting Wars indispensable guide for his into fields well beyond daughters (and all young of violent politics, forbidden medicine, from disaster Patrick Hennessey (2000, investors) to find success and music, lost love and failed response to investment English) (Allen Lane, 2009) happiness. He offers advice chemistry, finding his way banking, skyscraper This is the story of how one of with candour and confidence, Inside Obama’s eventually to an astonishing construction, and Britain’s soldiers was made, but this time he adds paternal Brain epiphany of tenderness compassion, protectiveness, and enlightenment. Solo businesses of all kinds. through the testosterone-heavy Sasha Abramsky (1990, PPE) breeding ground of Sandhurst, and love. is a book about lost roots, ‘with this book, (Penguin, 2009) broken traditions, and wasted gawande inspires all into the war-pockmarked, gritty ‘a gentle piece, on how Inside Obama’s Brain isn’t ambitions – and the depths of us, doctor or not, Balkans, out into the nightmare to learn from triumphs a biography; rather, it’s a of lyricism by which human to be better’ of Iraq and Afghanistan’s and mistakes in order to psychological profile, perfect for beings overcome those The New York Times Helmand Province. It describes achieve a prosperous, anyone who hopes to model his failures. Book Review not only the frenetic violence of well-lived life’ a soldier’s life, but the periods thisismoney.co.uk astonishing success or simply ‘Solo is mannered in its of stifling and (sometimes) to understand him better. strangeness, but utterly comic boredom, living inside an Award-winning journalist Sasha unforgettable in its Army caught between a world Abramsky interviewed close to humanity’ that needs it and a society that 100 of Obama’s current and Guardian no longer understands it. former friends, colleagues, classmates, teachers, staff, ‘Soldiers who can write mentors, editors, and even his are as rare as writers who next-door neighbours. These can strip down a machine people each know pieces of gun in 40 seconds, Obama’s life and career, which but patrick Hennessey the author blends into is one of the few...a a uniquely detailed analysis. powerful, compelling and unapologetic memoir of a ‘breezy engaging book’ young soldier’s life’ Publisher’s Weekly The Sunday Times

Charles Dickens Michael Slater (1957, English) (Yale University Press, 2009) is remembered as one of the finest novelists in history. In this richly illustrated work, Michael Slater presents each of Dickens’s novels in the detailed and illuminating context of his personal and professional life. He highlights Dickens’s boundless energy, his passion for order and fascination with disorder, his organisational genius, his deep concern for the poor, If you would like your book his love of fairly tales, and his hatred of tyranny. to be featured on the Floreat Domus Bookshelf, please ‘shares a wealth of new material…and, gosh, does he know his stuff. send details to the Editor, this is a hugely impressive biography’ The Bookseller Jacqueline Smith (contact details on inside front cover)

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 37 Towards Balliol’s The Annual Fund Historic Collections Secularism Benefactors DeVeloPMenT news 750th anniversary – a record year Centre at St Cross Church and the state to Balliol

collections centre at St cross church (see page 40), some additions to Jowett walk for Towards Balliol’s student accommodation, and a new building planned for the garden Quad providing much-needed space for lectures, receptions, 750th anniversary musical performances, seminars, and tutorials. As readers of Floreat Domus will know, the College will be celebrating the 750th of the £17.5 million raised in gifts and anniversary of its foundation in 2013. There will be a series of events to mark pledges so far (since 2006/07 inclusive), £2.8 million has been given by hundreds of the occasion, and we are planning the programme now. To help strengthen donors worldwide to the Annual fund, and Balliol’s financial position for the future, the College is presently engaged in the report on the page alongside provides an ambitious campaign to raise over £30 million (and to double the number further information about how these gifts of people giving to Balliol) by 2013. Our campaign runs in parallel with the are helping students at the college today. ’s campaign, ‘Oxford Thinking’, and all donations given donations to the Annual fund are the primary way in which alumni, in particular, to Balliol during this period are included in the sums raised towards the are contributing to balliol, but, in the University’s overall target. coming years, we will be asking everyone also to consider making a gift to the college’s Since August last year, when the last edition fellowships), scholarships, and for our endowment. of Floreat Domus was published, balliol general educational activities. our present we are very grateful indeed to the old has received over £3.5 million more in gifts endowment stands at just over £60 million, members who serve on our numerous and pledges. this has taken us to the figure and it currently contributes about one- fundraising committees, and who are helping of £17.5 million towards our target. given third of balliol’s total income. this is us greatly at this time. our campaign board the difficulties of the present financial significantly less – in terms of endowment in the UK is co-chaired by Nicola Horlick and economic climate, this is a significant per student – than the college’s other (1979) and John colenutt (1981), and our achievement, and we have been extremely academic competitors in oxford, such as North American campaign board is chaired heartened by the response of old members and merton, magdalen, and St John’s, and we are by ben Heineman (1965) with donald gogel other friends of the college around the world. determined to increase it in the years ahead. (1971) as Vice-chair. their help, advice, A primary goal of the campaign is to Another goal of the campaign is to and support continue to be invaluable in increase considerably balliol’s endowment secure funds for some of the college’s major enabling the college to achieve its campaign for fellowships (including Junior research building projects, including the Historic goals.

The importance of the campaign

andReW gRahaM, master oF BaLLioL

‘Balliol is a remarkable place. And it is worth remembering that of reductions in funding from It is recognized by many, including the pool of Balliol people is miniscule Government, it needs, above all those outside the College, as the in comparison with the potential else, to have a higher level of foremost college in the University. number of individuals trying to reach endowment. With this endowment, What gave it this reputation? Three the top. The student body in Balliol Balliol will continue: factors predominate: its intellectual is a mere 700 or so, when there are, • to provide the best undergraduate power, its internationalism, and the for example, nearly 20,000 students education in the world. extraordinary impact of Balliol people in Oxford, around 2 million in the UK, • to generate the most exciting on the world at large. and over 14 million in the US. environment for graduate work Is the reputation still justified Even more impressive is that these and for research. today? Absolutely. Balliol continues results are achieved on a budget per • to foster people who have the (through the proposed Garden Quad to attract exceptional students student that is well below that of the capacity to be movers and Building, for instance). and academics from all over the other most famous Oxford colleges. shakers across the globe. Balliol’s very special contribution world, acting as the springboard to St John’s, Christ Church, Queen’s, One of the key goals of the College’s to education is that it encourages even greater achievement. Balliol Magdalen, Merton, and Jesus all have present campaign is to build up some of the most talented people in alumni, right now, hold the very top at least twice as much endowment Balliol’s endowment for the years the world to develop two important positions in countries across the per student as Balliol; and Oxford, ahead, while also funding more characteristics: they think for world in politics, the law, academia, as a whole, has an endowment that immediate projects including those themselves, but they do not just international relations, business, is less than half of that of the elite that benefit: current students think of themselves. To be brilliant law enforcement, non-profit universities of the US. (through the Annual Fund); the wider and iconoclastic is exceptional; to organizations, public administration, Today, Balliol continues to community of scholars (through combine brilliance with integrity and literature, religion, scientific and excel and to do so extraordinarily the Historic Collections Centre, for with generosity of spirit is a truly rare medical research, the media, and economically. To maintain this example); and our current junior achievement, and this is Balliol’s the arts. excellence, especially in the face members, Fellows, and alumni unique gift to the world.’

38 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS particular demand for more teaching. In fact, the ‘It has been a great privilege to help college spent almost £280,000 last year on providing with the Annual Fund campaign in The Annual this additional tutorial support, using not only our Gaudy year. Balliol has made Annual fund donations but also other resources. such a big impact in my life and furthermore, refurbishment work on rooms and career. College fostered the interest staircases throughout the college continues – with Fund – a in economics that became the basis the redecoration of Staircase II and the installation of my professional life. It is also of shower cubicles in twenty student rooms last impossible to understate the impact summer, for example – and our It facilities have record year of meeting my wife at College, as well seen significant improvement as well. In addition, as the lifelong friendships that we we were able to contribute over £100,000 to the Jcr, have made. Getting back in touch with In 2009, Balliol’s Annual Fund broke all mcr, and college societies last year. previous records – over £600,000 was friends through the 1978–1980 Gaudy Gaudy Campaigns Campaign was great fun and everyone received in cash gifts – thanks to the was very generous in return. Being continuing generosity of Old Members balliol’s gaudy campaigns play an important role in the success of the Annual fund by encouraging able to help the current generation and other supporters. The total given old members to make a special contribution in of students through the Annual Fund to the Annual Fund since its inception, their gaudy year, and the 2009 campaigns were no campaign was just one small way of in 1999, has now exceeded £5 million, exception. saying “Thank You” to all the people the 1965–1967 gaudy campaign in the connected with Balliol who have helped and over 36 per cent of Balliol’s Old shape my life.’ Members have contributed to it so far. spring, chaired by gordon Johns (1966), set a balliol record for the highest percentage of donors Ian Harnett (1979) from those approached personally by the gaudy given balliol’s limited endowment, money given committee – 56 per cent – and the gaudy years to the Annual fund, which is used for immediate contributed over £160,000 to the campaign. the expenditure, is particularly important. for example, 1978–1980 gaudy campaign in the summer, to have generated £600,000 in income would have co-chaired by former Jcr president catherine required the college to have had the equivalent of roe (1980) and Ian Harnett (1979), raised over £15 million extra in its endowment funds (based on £200,000 in gifts and pledges – a huge achievement drawing 4 per cent per annum in income). in this difficult economic climate. this unprecedented level of support has allowed we are extremely grateful to the gaudy us to continue to fund a number of areas of college committees for the time and effort they have life which directly benefit current undergraduates devoted to the college. and graduates, and it has had a real impact on many there are two gaudy campaigns in 2010, one aspects of our activities. for the 1988–1990 years in the spring, chaired by ‘Being part of the Gaudy Committee for example, last year, balliol was able to award david lewis (1989), and another for the 1994–1996 and talking to contemporaries was a lot more scholarships and bursaries than ever before, years in the summer, which will be chaired by caleb of fun. Whether I knew them well or not ensuring that we continue to attract and retain the wright (1995). talking about his involvement in at all, I never had a short conversation! most promising young men and women. Not all this year’s campaign, david lewis says: ‘balliol gave Everyone just wanted to talk about of the money given out last year for this purpose me a unique opportunity to meet extraordinary Balliol. People have happy memories (around £750,000) came from the Annual fund, of people – people from a multitude of backgrounds of their time at College but over the course: the college has, over the centuries, received and with a boundless energy and enthusiasm for years they have also developed a much benefactions in support of students in financial life – people who are now doing amazing things and deeper understanding of how Balliol – need, and we have also had several gifts over the last who will remain my lifelong friends. I am pleased to its standards, values, and aspirations decade, in particular, to fund graduate scholarships. be giving something back to college by helping with – has helped shape their futures. They the Annual fund also enables balliol to provide this campaign, and enabling future generations of appreciate that influence in their lives, additional tutorial support, especially in subjects students to enjoy the same kind of opportunities that and I am glad that the Annual Fund where there are gaps in supply or where there is a I had at balliol.’ exists, with our help, to make sure that the current generation of students has it too.’

Catherine Roe (1980)

1988–1990 Gaudy Committee

Chairman David Lewis (1989) Members Nick Delfas (1990) Adam Joy (1988) Clare Lewis (1989) Barry MacEvoy (1990) Anne Mackenzie (1990) Shukri Souri (1988) Jackie Surtani (1988)

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 39 Historic Collections Centre at St Cross Church

Balliol’s rich and diverse holdings of medieval manuscripts, early and rare printed books, archives, and modern literary and political papers are one step closer to having a new home. Work on converting the beautiful St Cross Church (next to Holywell Manor), one of the oldest buildings in Oxford, into a Historic Collections Centre, designed by architect Robert Montgomery, began in earnest on 4 January this year.

Everything was halted by snow three days later, but the Centre is on course for completion and availability in early 2011 as planned, after which we will begin moving our collections into the Church. Contractor Feltham Construction Ltd has recently undertaken projects for Wadham, St John’s, and Exeter Colleges very successfully. Our aim is for the Centre to be open for use well ahead of Balliol’s 750th anniversary in 2013. Here, in controlled state-of-the-art conditions, we will make accessible to scholars from around the world our outstanding collections – collections that have been acquired by gift, or in the case of our archives, through administrative process, over centuries. Our plan is to conserve the building, its memorials and glass; to install glass-fronted bookcases in the Nave; to have environmentally controlled self-contained storage units clad in oak panelling in the north and south aisles and former organ chamber; and to provide a working space for readers (and an exhibition area) in the Nave. Concern about the integrity of the eighteenth-century intramural burial vaults, which have precarious An artist’s impression of the new Centre, looking west

roofing, has led to a slight redesign of of £1 million from the Shirley Balliol anniversary book the flooring to minimize the risk of Foundation. Other generous donors collapse. The College is working with include Jon Moynihan (1967), Neil B alliol is heading towards an important anniversary in Oxford Archaeology on this aspect of Record (1972) and Julie Record, 2013, when the College will have been in continuous the project. David Kogan (1976), Nicola Horlick existence on its current site for 750 years, longer than any All the stained glass windows are (1979), Mark Storey (1981), Martin other college in Oxford can claim. to be removed by Chapel Studios Foley (1951), Jonathan Lowe (1978), B alliol is planning many events to mark this for cleaning and repair. They will be Ian Harnett (1979) and Sara Harnett extraordinary milestone, of which you will hear more in returned and installed with protection (1980), Charles Thacker (1964), Sir due course. (which they lack at present) at the end Launcelot Henderson (1970), Sir O ne exciting project that is under way is the of the project. The wall memorials Henry Brooke (1957), and many publication of a special book about Balliol. This richly are being cleaned by Nimbus others too numerous to name here. illustrated portrait of Balliol, linking today’s developments Conservation, who recently completed The College is actively seeking with its remarkable history, will be published in similar work to an exquisitely pleasing the remaining funds to complete the December 2012. standard in Exeter College Chapel. works as part of our plans to celebrate Old Members will be offered the chance to subscribe Generous benefactors 750 years since Balliol’s foundation in in advance of publication, at a discounted price. More 1263. We are very grateful for all gifts details of this offer and information about the progress T he College has so far secured to this important project. of the book will be published in forthcoming editions of just over £2.1 million in gifts and the Annual Record and Floreat Domus as well as on the pledges towards the projected target More details can be found on the College website. of £3.3 million for the project, website at http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/ including the very generous pledge Archives/stcross01.asp

40 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Secularism and the state: the 2010 Master’s Seminar in Berlin By Travers McLeod (2007, International Relations)

Should the state be secular? On 19 February 2010, F ollowing a brief plenary The sessions were enormously around seventy people including current members discussion, we broke for an hour into productive, with discussion continuing of Balliol, Old Members, and guests, spanning close four groups, chaired respectively by well into the night over drinks and a Peggotty Graham, Denise Réaume delicious dinner at the Residence. In to thirty different matriculation years, and having (1980), Professor of Law at the a timely coincidence, the following travelled from all over Europe, gathered to discuss this University of Toronto, Sir Michael, weekend political theorist Tim question at the Master’s Seminar in Berlin. Making and Balliol Professorial Fellow Nick Soutphommasane (2004), writing this possible was Sir Michael Arthur (1969), British Trefethen, before reporting back almost 20,000km away in his weekly Ambassador to Germany, who generously hosted to the plenary for further debate. column in The Australian, considered Specific topics surveyed included the ‘That grey area between church and the Seminar at the British Ambassador’s Residence. subsidization of religious schools, the state’. Echoing the sentiments of Sir Michael was joined by fellow diplomat, His presence of established state religions, the Master’s Seminar, he noted that Excellency Philip McDonagh (1970), the current Irish legislation on religious matters, and politicians should exercise great care Ambassador to Moscow, who hosted the seminar the recognition of religious groups. Issues in drawing on their religious traditions last time it was in Europe – in Rome, in May 2006, attracting special attention concerned in public life, concluding: ‘Such is the extent to which secular values truly the burden of pluralism. Where when he was Ambassador to the Holy See. exist, whether debates as to common politicians are not judicious, they risk values can take place in a non‑secular undermining the legitimacy of public As Chair, the Master introduced The Balliol students who space, the limits and consequences institutions and the spirit of toleration’. proceedings with a special message attended the Seminar of token religiosity, and the proper Seven current students from Richard von Weizsäcker (1936), adjudicative and fact‑finding bodies to accompanied the College delegation President of Germany between deal with laws and other rules having to Berlin, including Christina 1984–1994, whom he had visited that religious effects. Schoenbach (2006), Maike Kaufman, morning. The message stressed the Philipp Mertsch, and Andrew Whitby continuing and necessarily unique (2007), and Mike Webb and Edward relevance of the seminar’s topic today, Grefenstette (2008). We benefited as well as von Weizsäcker’s interest in greatly from the local knowledge of any ideas and conclusions generated. Maike and Philipp in exploring the The Master then yielded the floor to two sights, sounds, and tastes of the city, specialists to introduce the topic: Leslie spending most of Thursday evening Green, Fellow of Balliol and Professor in what used to be East Berlin before of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford, visiting the Brandenburg Gate and and Professor Rajeev Bhargava (1975), Holocaust Memorial on Friday. We are Senior Fellow and Director of the especially grateful to Sir Michael for Centre for Developing Studies in Delhi. providing a tour of the British Embassy. Working from the assumption Barely a decade old, the building was that states value toleration, Green designed by Michael Wilford and is began by separating the concepts of located only steps from where the Wall toleration and secularism according fell just over two decades ago. to the extent to which they valued inclusion, before addressing familiar fears about secularism: that it constitutes ‘atheism in drag’, is ‘non‑neutral’, and encroaches upon ‘token religiosity’. Responding to the apparent consensus on the merits and manageability of secularism, Bhargava touted the ends for which states need it – principally for the reduction and elimination of institutionalised inter‑ and intra‑religious domination – before questioning the extent to which declared secular states are really secular, offering stark and provocative practical examples from secular and non‑secular European states. Europe, like certain other parts of the world, Bhargava argued, had a problem: despite increased demand for migrants, institutional arrangements had failed to come to terms with a multiplicity of faiths. More was required, The Seminar in progress at the British Ambassador’s Residence then, to further secularize the state.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 41 Warren Rovetch R ichard Jackson Peter Duffy Leslie Russell Neville McFarlane Paul Friedman Benefactors to Balliol Harold Seaman James Miller Ken Gee Basil Stein Francis Nichols John Healey Professor John Peter Nobbs Professor Emeritus The College gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the contributors listed Stewart Robert Oakeshott Kenneth Hilborn here to Balliol’s campaign for its 750th anniversary, whose gifts were received between Sir Jack Stewart- Brian Precious Anthony Hodson 28 February 2009 and 1 March 2010. We have respected the wishes of those who have Clark Bt Ken Reich Roger Jefferies asked for their gifts to remain anonymous, and we thank them too for their support. Michael Walker Donald Rickerd David Kingston We apologize for any omissions. 1950 Gavin Scott John McKerlie John Alexander David Smith Patrick Montague Richard Baines Stephen Stamas Robert Morris Annual Fund The Hon James John Stoker Robin Newson Billington David Watson Ronald Pritchard 1928 Keith Stephens Malcolm Hardwick Professor Eric David Bucknill Stuart Spence Eric Phillips John Williams Colin Houghton Sainsbury 1954 Marvin Durning Professor John- Leon Kitchen Ralph Shuffrey R obin Benson 1933 1941 Kenneth James Christopher Fraser Murray Lord Taverne Professor Geoffrey T he Revd Canon Ian Adams Glynne Jones Spender Michael Pilch Roger Till Bolton Lawrence Waddy Otto Fisher Trevor Knight Martin Vasey Martin Pinnell Jasper Tomlinson David Brooks 1934 David Gibling Professor Douglas Kenneth Wheeler Professor Ivan Roitt Colin Clements D esmond Gregory John Grant 1948 MacDowell Ray Downing John Wofford Thomas Sebestyen D onald Allen 1935 Colin Haines Malcolm MacInnes Jeremy Eyre 1958 James Michelmore Irwin Stein Nigel Dodd John Mallet L ord Arran T he Revd George Derek Taylor Eliot Hawkins Hood Emeritus Professor David Foster Michael Rodmell Sir Colin Imray Martin Biggs Leonard Minkes Thompson Professor John Fraser 1936 Professor George Maurice Keen David Blakely Hugh Myers Trevor Wilson Robin Jessel Steiner Sir Charles Gordon Denis Langton Martin Brown Emeritus Professor 1946 Kenneth Matthews Weland Stone Professor Toby Lewis John Littler Professor Anthony John Postgate D ouglas Allison Professor Kenneth Christopher Streat Bryer George Levack Brian Marshall 1942 William Ash McRae David Worthy Leif Mills John Crow Nicolas Myant Christopher Portal B ill Ayers Kenneth Brown 1951 The Revd John Brian Dickinson Peter Reynell John Sands Peter Jarvis Evan Cameron D avid Boll Morris Rodney Donaldson 1937 Joseph Merz John Clunie 1949 Professor Paul Sheats Peter Evans Ashley Raeburn Emeritus Professor David Razzak Norman Franklin P aul Almond Robin Barlow Senator Paul Sarbanes Professor Alexander Rob Robinson Geoffrey Thomas Professor Harry Professor William Peter Cornall John Watt Fetter 1938 Goldsmith Christopher Gomm 1943 Barber Philip Creighton Christopher White Sir Nigel Foulkes Adrian Hamilton Stewart Hawkins L eslie Chown Alan Brown Alan Dowding 1955 Sir Ronald McIntosh Ronald Ireland Professor John Michael Innes The Revd Martin Brian Drake Nigel Bacon Professor Michael Philip McGuinness Cressey Hillman Ralph Sexton Michael Gear Denis Cross Samuels John Phillips John Davey Michael Hell Ray Jennings 1944 Lord Rees-Mogg Professor Jack Dennis Tony Lane 1939 David Dell Mr Justice James Christopher Fildes T he Very Revd James Dewar Colonel the Rt Hon John Dunbar Hugessen Paul Lewis Edward Gelles the Viscount Ridley John Jones Henry Lloyd Professor Robert Thomas Espie Brian Knox George Mandel Barbour Professor David Ronald Siddons Kerin Lloyd Sir Matthew Farrer David Miller Alan Mayhook George Dyke Hewitt The Revd Canon Sir Bruce MacPhail Emeritus Professor Patrick O’Hea George Miller Leonard Hamilton Kenneth Paget- Raymond Walters Monty Frey Robert Mash Roger Marjoribanks The Hon John Sears His Honour Dr John Brown The Revd David Dermot McDermott 1947 Roland Mason His Honour Judge Lincoln Professor Paul Gardner Professor Jakob Meloe D avid Benn William MacKenzie Edward Slinger Peter Lloyd Streeten Peter Higgins Graham Nesbitt John Cashman Arthur Paton Hedrick Smith Christopher Lucas 1945 Gary Noble Donald Craig Leonard Hunt Colonel Andrew Professor Paul Smith Professor Amyan L ord Avebury Norman Curry Jim Lindars Remson Jr Peter Pugsley Macfadyen Professor Gilbert Thomas Brown Professor Norman Alan Marchant Professor Don Strang Jonathan Scott Professor Donald Robert Clifford Doenges Lord Mayhew Sherburne Arnold Shipp Russell Jeffrey Stanyer Douglas Darcy Michael Essayan Derek Nightingale Peter Stone William Wilkie John Smith 1940 Ronald Gee Professor Raphael Neil Rees Mark Smith His Honour Clive 1956 Sir Ronald Grierson The Rt Revd Ronald Loewe Professor Melvin Tayler Peter Snow David Malan Gordon Geoffrey Plowden Richter P rofessor Sir George David Taylor James Taylor Alberti Charles Tyzack Raymond Wirth Professor Jacques Peter Usborne Stephen Younger Brossard Ted Whybrew 1952 The Hon David Bruce Peter Willey Hugh Barber Gary Christiansen Classics Fellowships Campaign Professor Michael Thomas Field 1959 Bennett The Revd Dr Dick Andrew Beith 1948 Jonathan Scott 1977 1992 Professor William France Mark Bewsher L ionel Scott 1960 D avid Crook R obert Keane Carmichael Gordon Johns Malcolm Brahams 1949 R obert Wilson 1980 1994 Thomas Carpenter Professor Oliver Peter Buckman John Davey 1961 F elicity Hunt Edmund King Kenneth Cavander Johns Terry Cooper Martin Dodson 1951 R ichard Carter 1981 2000 Michael Crump Bryan Lincoln His Honour P aul Jenkins Ed Hatton Brian Davidson Nigel May Mike Doyle 1963 Martin Davies Professor Ved Mehta Dermot Glynn Clive Tayler 1982 R obin Gilbert 2001 Nick Dewey Robert Plumb Lord Gowrie 1953 R upert Holderness 1965 Amy Sewell James Jensen Christopher Riley Frederick Herlihy L ord Brooke of Bankim Thanki 2002 Earnest Lau Dennis Samuel Professor John Howie Sutton Mandeville M ichael Levene 1983 R ichard Eschwege Professor Ian Mansel Squire David Hutton John Carey 1966 M artin Kaufman C harles Garland Other supporters Macdonald John Stabler Powell Hutton 1956 Terence MacDonogh 1986 of Balliol Roy Napier His Honour Judge Howard Northam Sir Roger Tomkys Professor Christopher M y ichael Gu SMR Charitable Sir Geoffrey Owen Reginald Stanton Michael Orr 1957 Pelling 1987 Trust Alan Spencer Jeremy Syers Donald Shaw Sir Roger Tomkys Anthony Hillier 1968 Julian Mylchreest Anonymous David Sylvester Stuart Swift Patrick Montague Professor Charles Tom Ulrich Colin Wyman M iles Emley 1988 supporters Professor Peter Taylor Professor Michael 1960 Wiseman Lord Marks C amilla Bingham 4 anonymous Bruce Webster Warren Henry King supporters P rofessor Robert 1958 1969 1953 1957 Ashman Christopher Long T om Brown 1990 Hugh Bliss John Bazalgette John Besant-Jones Alastair Mack Michael Freeman Nick Delfas Lord Brooke of Sutton Michael Bell Professor Derrick Professor Ewan 1970 1991 Mandeville Gerald Bevan Crothers Macphail Stephen Dobson W illiam McDonnell Derek Clements Iain Brash Mike Fox George Fayen Iain Buchan Edward Fremantle

42 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s P rofessor Keith 1965 Griffin R ichard Ashton Chris Gutch Guy Aston Trevor Hanslip Professor Roger John Kentleton Cashmore Matthew Nimetz David Fox Lawrence Warwick- John Green Evans Roy Hay The Revd William Tim Hirst Sykes Nicholas Hope 1961 Paul Joachim Aslam Aziz Geoff King Abdulla Bishara Michael Levene Professor Gregory Gordon Littlewood Brandt Stephen McCarthy Richard Carter Ian Mertling-Blake Professor Des Clark- Hubert Murray Walker Emeritus Professor Brian Hodgkinson Paul Crittenden Professor David Kirk Alexander Pravda Frederic Kreisler Malcolm Naylor George Loudon Professor Stephen Harry Lesser Oppenheimer James Macmillan Michael Orr Chris Morris Richard Raeburn Richard Morris Saleh Tarin Lord Selkirk of 1966 Douglas James Aitken Robert Sleeper Professor Charles Ray Thorp Baden-Fuller Robert Webb James Bayliss 1962 Stephen Bergman John Adams David Bostock John Cookson Charles Brookes Alwyn Farey-Jones Christopher Currie Paul Findlay Aidan Foster-Carter Robert Guy Jonathan Green Professor David Edward Jones The Hon Kurt Andrew Thompson Tim Hardy Martin Hammond Captain Bill Griffin Gowland Julian Lewis Schmoke Andrew Watson Professor John Sir Henry Hodge Richard Heller Professor Peter John Lund John Scott 1973 Helliwell Hayes Alan James Professor José Hierro Richard Salter 1972 Andrew Burnham Richard Pardy Alan Hopkinson Alan Jones Simon Humphries Professor Stephen T im Allen Leo Cahalan Jon Pavey Peter Hutchinson Chris Jelley Professor Kenneth Smith John Bowler Nicholas Demery Tony Pullinger Philip Kay Martin Taylor Professor Sir Andrew Douglas Anthony Chapman Professor Chris Giles Vardey Likierman Stephen Lewis David Keane David Vernon-Jones Nigel Clark Hendrickson Simon Ward Mark Lowe Paul Viita Anthony Metcalfe Eero Kaprio Anthony Coombs Lawrence Hutter 1975 Alan MacDermot Derek Minor Philip Kendall Mark Whitlock Torgeir Finsaas Michael Macgregor Aldo Maria Mazio Blundell Charles Alexander Mike Morris Ronald Knox Richard Grant Tim Middleton Professor John Professor Ronald Edward Mortimer Julian Schiff 1971 Sanjeev Gupta Hakeem Belo-Osagie Ramsey Beiner Richard Parker Peter Scott Andrew Chedburn Joe Hughes Neil Stuart David Sheraton Tim Boardman Lord Patten Nicholas Shrimpton Jonathan Cox John Kahn Peter Sowden The Hon Richard Paul Edwards Jim Townend Jonathan Sunshine Andrew Craig His Excellency Garth Symonds Stearns Bobby McDonagh Alban Gordon James Tyler The Reverend Canon Andrew Foster The Revd Nigel Warner Barry Thompson Nicola Tee David Osborne Roger Gray Professor the Hon Professor Peter Laurence Weeks Robin Wilson Professor Bernard Professor Nigel Gilbert Gareth Pearce Stuart Jamieson Neil Williamson Gerry Wright Wasserstein Thomas Robin Illingworth Neil Record Simon McGuire James Yorke Stephen Moss 1967 1969 Professor Alexander Jens Roesner 1963 Douglas Young David Norman T he Hon David Boren T ed Allett T om Brown Leaf Michael Shreeve Julian Powe Mohamad Fazal Paul Brown Professor John Oliver Moore Gary Sibley 1974 T homas Barron John Ralfe Richard Fletcher David Gowan Cooper Professor Philip Nord David Simms Anthony Teasdale Robin Gilbert Christopher Grayson John Dewhurst The Hon Timothy Peter Stephens Michael Betterton Ronald Hamowy David Hooper Michael Donithorn Palmer Lennox Mercurius- Miles Burgess Christopher Turner Taylor Gordon Howie Brendan Horton Derrick Eden Robert Pear Justin Dowley Carson Wen Muhammad Ishaq Ian Ibbotson Paul Evans Peter Ward Jones Professor Paul Michael Freeman Richard Lambert Jankowski Ian Gass Roger Lewis Jon Moynihan Peter Gavan History Fellowships Campaign Richard Mills Charles Rickett Sir John Holmes Professor Michael Anthony Sheppard Kevin Honner 1931 1958 1971 1988 Player Eddie Teo Charles Jones P eter Calvocoressi John Cottrell P rofessor Peter Gilbert Kit Bingham The Revd Brian John Walters His Honour Judge Roberts Frank Waterland Peter Jones 1935 1962 1973 1989 Ian Bell Justin Scott Paul Swain Charles White Andy Lane T he Revd George Euan Sutherland Hood Major General Sir Alan Wilkie Charles Lane 1963 1974 1990 1936 Charles Vyvyan 1968 Philip Lemanski John Nicoll D arien Bernstein C raig Fraser Sir Charles Gordon 1964 Christopher Allen Wilf Miles 1964 1975 1998 R obert Cummings Robin Ashton Professor Peter 1941 C olonel Michael Eddie Filus P aul Durban Skegg Sandy Gray Andrew Buxton Hugh Myers Craster 1978 Dan Snow Michael Stewart Tony Kahane Nicholas Burnett 1943 1966 R ichard Fisher Anonymous Julian Lewis Professor Terrell 1970 John Taylor R ichard Allan Simon Green supporters David Long Carver Hew Balfour 1944 1967 1982 3 anonymous Professor David Michael Crane Professor Russell James Ellery Julian Le Fanu Nick Moakes supporters Lutzer Chris Dunabin Davies John Macgregor Edward Eadie Stephen Dobson 1952 1968 1985 Paul Pressly Miles Emley Peter Grebenik Hughe Ro Chris Dunabin Vaughan Clark The Hon Jed Rakoff Professor James Eric Hanson 1956 1970 1986 Charles Thacker Fawcett Professor Craig Joyce T he Hon David Bruce Hew Balfour M y ichael Gu David Taberner David Gartside David Jones

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 43 Professor Ian Nabney Michelle Cale 1991 Richard Sanderson Historic Collections Centre Mitch Preston Alasdair Cross Axel Baeumler Alan Thein Michael Reed Adam Duthie Tina Bennett 1996 1951 1967 1979 Matthew Taylor Ian Fox Jeremy Breaks B en Lynch Danny Truell Alastair Wilkins Mojo Billington M artin Foley Jonathan Long Ian Harnett Charles Goldsmith Samuel Zurier John Fleming Adam Constable Jon Moynihan Nicola Horlick Eleanor Greenwood 1953 David France Alexander Cooper John Walker 1980 1983 1997 P rofessor Sir M ichele Deitch Tamara Isaacs Iain Corby Christopher Ricks 1968 Sara Harnett Professor David Shaw Mark Falcon Andrew Chrisomalis David Marsh Lt Colonel Roberta Simon Clarke 1961 P aul Frith Ewart Giles Slinger Christian Gantz 1981 Eleanor Gordon Geoff Cowling Sir Alan Beith MP 1969 Charles Hopkinson- 1987 Rose Grimond M ark Storey Woolley Emma Hardy Professor Gregory P rofessor John P rofessor Michele Kirtee Kapoor Cooper Sarah Miller Gamburd Tina Hene Brandt 1982 Sarah Johnson Lord Selkirk of 1970 M ichael Reed Toby Miller Carl Garland Andy Morris John Masters Jade Newburn Douglas P eter Grebnik 1983 Alexander Morris Giles Howson Adam Zoia The Hon Robin Andrew Hallan Sir Launcelot D avid Witty Stephen Rabinowitz Gregory Jones W alker Harry Lesser David Witty Julian Knowles Rashid Zuberi Henderson 1993 1998 Richard Morris Bill Lipscomb 1992 1971 D ouglas Burns 1984 M ichael Birshan C atherine Adams Arthur Moore B enjamin Dalby Doug Rosenthal P rofessor Simon Suresh Kanwar Richard Collins Jonathan Brooke Mitchell Moss Dan Leedham-Green Robert Webb Kroll Paul Durban 1994 Jane Crossley Vicki Reeve Pei-Ji Liang 1962 Benjamin Harding 1972 Aiko Richardson Owen Darbishire Stuart Reynolds Christian Mehnert John Cookson Piers Horne Neil Record Clara Tan Lance Ellison Anwar Sidat Tonia Novitz Alan Jones Tomila Lankina 1974 1995 Claire Foster Chris Tomlinson Alfred Oetker Chris Jelley Emma Lindsay D arien Bernstein P aul Denning Anthony Frieze Paul Williams Oliver Pooley Sarah Longair John Lloyd Mark Garrod John Friedman 1988 Jonathan Savidge 1996 Luke Shepherd Eamon McKeown William Guttman C amilla Bingham Barnaby Maunder 1976 Vicky Davies Peter Trotter Anthony Metcalfe Iain Gray Reyahn King Jason Cale Taylor Peter Miller G raham Dunbar Paola Tinti Timothy Williams David Kogan Ronald Lehmann Leonard Cohen Derek Minor 2003 Simon Woods 1999 Stephen Sarah Elliott Yoshi Nishio David Howie 1964 Professor Steven Jane MacKay 1993 C hristian Barby Shuttleworth Other supporters Howard Shaw Schneider Russ Muirhead M andy Bazile Laura Birch 1977 of Balliol Charles Thacker Stuart Shilson James Rattue Michael Dal Bello Andrew Cohen D avid Pollack Julie Record Simon Stevens Sarah Seed Alasdair Hamblin Michael Hawkins 1965 1978 Anonymous Martin Thoma Shukri Souri Helen Hayes Vicky Jones P aul Joachim Jonathan Lowe supporters George Vayakis Ralph Walmsley John Sargent Johan Martens 1966 Christopher 3 anonymous 1985 Julian Wellesley Philippa Southern Edward Swann Simon Humphries Whitehouse supporters C harles Brittain 1989 Alison Spencer Emma Whale Jonathan Broomberg Adrian Bradley Stephens Paul Williams Adrian Darbishire Fiona Bolton Victoria Whitford 2000 Jason Hubert Adrian Lewis James Windle P hilip Bundy Anne Kiltie Clare Lewis 1994 Gillian Dow 1976 Jonathan Lowe Matthew Hamlyn Halik Kochanski David Lewis Neil Kennedy Simon Glassock P eter Andrews Arjuna Mahendran Mark Hudson Richard Locke Jane-Frances Kelly Josh Harlan Kristin Javaras Andrew Franklin Nicholas Prettejohn Felicity Hunt Lisa Lodwick Rory Pope Ali Husain Vincenzo Rampulla Richard Hocking Lord Reed Dara Jeffries Daniel Storey Justin Scott Andrea Woodhouse 2001 Isadore Jermyn Tom Reid Frank Kennedy Ronald Tenpas Dimitri Kullmann Alistair Stranack Philip Kolvin 1990 1995 P eter Cleland Guy Leech Peter Wetherall Jonathan Macdonald 1986 B arry MacEvoy B ecky Ashton William Mulholland James Ogilvie Christopher Stephen Maher B ronte Adams Marc Read Richard Ashton Amy Sewell Alan Robinson Whitehouse Paul Mason Eleanor Baker Paul West Barbara Jeffery Alexa Shipman Professor Tom Michael Wilcockson Andrew Morgan Clare Brown Peter Symons Carol McQueen Jason Vickers-Smith Schwartz 1979 Catherine Roe Stephen Shuttleworth Simon Auerbach Michael Rossington Bill Tonks The Revd Professor Adam Shuttleworth Hunt Williams Michael Banner Professor Duncan Tjalling Ypma Rod Batchelor Tate 1977 Robin Baynham Peter Telford Chris Start Elena Ceva-Valla Andrew Weir Philip Baker Robin Cohen 1981 James Barker Rebecca Colenutt R ichard Barnett Jonathan Bayliss Louise Collins Professor Arthur David Carter Catharine Driver Burns David Christie Andrew Evans John Colenutt John Dunleavy Warwick Fairfax Carlos Tello Diaz Neil Forsyth Bennett Freeman Professor Daniel Esty Richard Gillis Tawfic Ghandour David Foster Jeremy Mayhew Nigel Hall Wayne Henderson Ian Pearson Jens Hills Matthew Lynn Professor Philip Nicola Horlick Glenn Moramarco Scowcroft Helen Lawrence Jonathan Ostry John Winters Jost Leuschner Christian Roby Michael Wainwright Professor Philip Gordon Willoughby Richard Walker Maini 1982 1978 Brett Mudford R ichard Blackford C arter Brandon Elizabeth Nisbet Jeremy Cohn Marty Burn Hilali Noordeen Susan Cooksley Andrew Curry Mark Robinson Piers Daubeney Tom David Paul Shotton Robert Fraser Tom Elliott Professor Martin Lawrence Gray Peter Fink Zirnbauer Claire Gruzelier Walter Greenblatt 1980 Charles Hayes Kenneth Greig Alison Bertlin Rupert Holderness Harry Hamley Andrew Boucher Andrew Marshall Phil Hare Raji Davenport Nick Moakes Charles Hindson Christopher Gallop Clare Moriarty Richard Hooker Sara Harnett Sean Murphy

44 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s 2002 James Mackenzie Professor Nicholas Sam Brown Smith Fisher Legacies Vladimir Bermant Christopher Wells Catherine Hare Valerie Cooper 2005 Verney 1929 David Cormode D avid Knezevic Ruth Hewetson Aslan Hamwee Elizabeth Field George Matthews Lady Kenny 1935 Michèle Le Doeuff Leonora Fitzgibbons 2006 Kenneth Garlick Edward Knapp Judy Longworth M ichael Gallo 1937 Georgy Kantor David Mela Stanley Charles John Mallonee 2008 Seamus Perry Adam Nahum R obert Tarantino Professor Daniel 1939 Amy Shapiro Companies and Rubenstein Christopher Lucas James Sherwin- foundations Helen Steward 1947 Smith U BS Warburg Nicola Trott P aul Buxton David Wallace 2003 The Economist Hannah Wallace 1948 G eorge Grumbar Astrazeneca Marion Whalley John Blacker David McConkey Goldman Sachs Lady Williams Other supporters Justin Lewis-Oakes & Co. Tim Wilson of Balliol Christopher Other supporters Anonymous F rancesca McManus Skillicorn of Balliol Paulina Sliwa P rofessor Joel supporters Edward Stembridge Aberbach 90 anonymous 2004 Ursula Aylmer supporters R uth Larkin Martin Burton Hephzi Pemberton Barbara Ennis

Other projects 1960 Richard Salter Nicola Horlick 1988 Companies and T imothy Ades 1971 Joseph Incigneri F iona Mylchreest foundations Matthew Nimetz Shukri Souri 1938 David Burditt D onald Gogel 1980 Nirman Foundation Smart Family Nick Hodson 1961 Chris Hardy Sara Harnett 1989 P rofessor Ivan Foundation Roots Sir Adam Ridley 1972 1981 Adrian Lewis 1953 Robert Webb Inc. 1939 R obert Baldwin T im Allen John Colenutt 1990 The Gordon & 1963 Mark Storey Christopher Lucas 1955 Gareth Pearce L aura Hoyano Betty Moore M ajor General 1982 1991 Foundation 1940 Alexander Charles Vyvyan 1973 John Williams Hopkinson- Hakeem Belo-Osagie L arry Grafstein Jeremy Breaks Other supporters 1964 1941 Woolley 1974 Rupert 1993 of Balliol Raymond Ockenden P rofessor Robert Holderness P rofessor Wilfred O tto Fisher Munford P rofessor Hugh B en Rowland His Honour Judge Bradlow Andrew Keyser Beckerman 1945 Edward Slinger 1965 Moz Scott 1994 Margaret Dubner Irwin Stein David Critchley Edmund King 1956 P rofessor Anthony 1983 Sir Anthony Kenny Dugdale 1975 1946 John Cochrane C harles Conn 1995 Professor Steven John Phillips Michael Orr D avid Norman Malcolm Fluendy Professor David L eonie Foong Levitan Joan Miller 1947 Nicholas Hughes 1966 1976 Ekserdjian Robyn Williams Seamus Perry P aul Buxton Ted Pocock P rofessor Charles P rofessor Douglas Professor Richard 1997 Stone Isobel Rhodes 1949 Baden-Fuller Susskind Kirsty McNeill 1957 James Ogilvie Matthew Sarah Thomas P rofessor Bill Everitt John Bazalgette 1967 1998 D avid Hooper 1977 Westerman Professor David 1950 Malcolm Mitchell Jen Taylor Vines Jon Moynihan Ernst von Weyhausen John Wylie W eland Stone Stuart Spence Friedman David Wallace 1968 1984 Peter Trotter 1951 1958 1978 Marion Whalley P eter Pope C laire Foster Adam Fremantle Anthony Hanna Nick Gillham 2000 Tim Wilson Professor David Ulph Simon Stevens Mr Justice James Professor John 1979 T heodoros Myriam Wylie Hugessen Hillman 1969 T he Revd Professor 1985 Kyriacou Samuel Yin M arcus Smith 1952 Donald Marshall R obert Eales Michael Banner James Sherwin- Anonymous Paul Futcher Smith His Excellency Dermot McDermott Rebecca Colenutt 1987 supporters Doddridge Peter Pockley 1970 Ian Harnett P atrick Blakesley 2007 2 anonymous Alleyne John Smith Hew Balfour Jens Hills Julian Mylchreest G illian Einhorn supporters

Calendarf o 17 April 2010 3 July 2010 12 March 2011 events to Balliol North American Dinner, Balliol Family Day Greville Smith Society Lunch July 2011 University Club, New York (part of the University’s Biennial 24-26 September 2010 19 March 2011 North American Reunion) ‘Meeting Minds – Shared Spring Gaudy (for the Treasures’: Oxford Alumni 1991-1993 matriculation years) 15 May 2010 Weekend (dinner at Balliol on Thirty Years of Women at Balliol 25 September) Date to be confirmed Lunch (for matriculation years Master’s Lunch 1994-2009) 2-3 October 2010 Balliol Society Weekend 4 June 2011 10 June 2010 (invitation enclosed with Floreat Parents’ Lunch Seminar at Dundas Castle, Edinburgh Domus. The 2003 matriculation year is invited as College guests) 2 July 2011 26 June 2010 Summer Gaudy (for the Summer Gaudy (1994-1996 18 November 2010 1997-1999 matriculation years) matriculation years) Usborne Dinner, London

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 45 Buried treasure Muller Sean By Jacqueline Smith

What do the Ashmolean Bestiary, Shakespeare’s first folio, the map that the king and queen of Spain may have consulted while deciding whether or not to send Columbus to discover the new world, and the Gutenberg Bible have in common? They are all treasures held in the Bodleian Library. While studying for her MSc in Economics for Development, Gillian Einhorn (2007) developed an intense desire to see these unique Oxford treasures. Happily, she encountered Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s first female international Librarian, at one of Doug’s lunches (see page 8). Gillian persuaded Sarah (a Balliol Professorial Fellow) to set up a ‘treasure tour’ for fifteen Balliol graduate students.

It was on this tour that Gillian learned Divinity School, and Chris Fletcher, the Bodleian’s Bodleian Library, and the relationship about the wealth of archive material Bodleian Library Head of Western Manuscripts, before between these two illustrious institu- that is donated to the Bodleian every the final seal of approval was granted tions at opposite ends of Broad Street. year, much of which remains unclas- by College Meeting. Sarah Thomas The first Balliol-Bodley sified due to lack of financial and very generously gave a personal dona- human resources. This state of affairs tion to the fund, which was started Scholar prompted Gillian to put her thinking with money from Balliol (in turn W ho is Christine Madsen, the first cap on. An inspired idea came to her matched by the Bodleian), and sup- Balliol-Bodley scholar, and what very quickly: why not start a scholar- plemented by Gillian herself. The has her experience of the scholar- ship? The group of students who had first Balliol–Bodley scholar, Christine ship been? She is currently reading gone on the first treasure tour were Madsen (2007), was in place by Hilary for a DPhil in Information Com- all very interested in the Bodleian’s Term 2009. munication and the Social Sciences. holdings and qualified to help with Gillian is now working back home She explains: ‘I’ve been a librarian the massive archiving work required. in South Africa with Dalberg Global for twelve years and I’m working at What better way to foster the rela- Development Advisors, a company the Oxford Internet Institute on the tionship between Balliol and Bodley, that provides consulting services in future of libraries. I took part in Gill to ensure students still got to see the global health, agriculture, access to Einhorn’s treasure tour and I’m inter- fascinating material, and to help the finance, economic development, and ested in the connection between the library out, than to raise money to the environment. She is helping with Bodleian and Balliol.’ fund a work placement for a Balliol the implementation of a market access Christine wasn’t sure she’d quite student within the Bodleian? strategy for the Comprehensive Africa fit the bill for the scholarship, which Gillian wasted no time in taking Agriculture Development Plan – the was set up primarily to process an her idea to the Senior Tutor, Nicola first Africa-owned, continent-wide unprocessed collection of archive Trott, who responded positively and agriculture development initia- material at the Bodleian. She is presented it to Academic Committee tive of its kind. She says: ‘the work mainly interested in the digitization where it was approved. The terms Students viewing the is challenging because it addresses of cultural materials, and her thesis were thrashed out between Balliol Bodleian’s treasures longstanding African development is about the impact of digitization issues, but the opportunity to engage on scholarship and humanities.

Sean Muller Sean with senior policy officials and travel She presents her case in a nutshell: across the continent is inspiring.’ ‘Libraries used to be scholar-centred So what did Gillian gain from and are now information-centred, her year at Balliol that made her so and they need to be moving back committed to ensuring a positive to be scholar-centred and working experience for future students? ‘Bal- out what users really want, as well as liol provided me with a home away promoting what they do. There is lots from home. I learned to row (slowly), of digitization of cultural materials punt (misguidedly), and play croquet going on in the Tibetan and Hima- (badly). I really enjoyed the warm layan region, for example, preserving welcome from the graduate com- the culture of a diaspora (of interest munity, the excellent food, and the to anthropologists and philologists), diverse topics up for discussion at and dovetailing with other global Doug’s lunch’. It is clear that she devel- initiatives – but a lot of it doesn’t seem oped a firm affection for the place to be happening in libraries. Such and it is to her credit that she had the projects are independent, small, pre- drive and enthusiasm to set up such carious, and largely unsustainable; an innovative scholarship that benefits they need to migrate to a library insti- not only Balliol students but also the tution for survival.’

46 fa l o r e t d o m u s b a l l i o l c o l l e g e n e w s Sean Muller Sean F ortunately for the Bodleian, Usability of the Online Catalogues of assessment model, showed that the Christine decided to apply for the Western Manuscripts’ and ‘Impact site was really well used, especially in scholarship anyway, submitting her Analysis of the “Early Manuscripts at terms of the number of times other CV and a statement about why her Oxford” website’. websites linked to it. For the ‘Online skills might be appropriate. The selec- So what did Christine actually Catalogues’ project Christine talked tion committee (Balliol’s Librarian end up doing? ‘I worked for about to users and looked at how easy it was Penny Bulloch, Vice-Master Seamus ten hours a week for twelve weeks. I for different people to find what they Perry, Senior Tutor Nicola Trott, as used a model developed from some wanted. She recommended ‘bread- well as Bodleian staff Chris Fletcher work I did at the Oxford Internet crumb navigation’ (a trail showing and Mike Webb) immediately saw Institute on a JISC (Joint Information where you are in the hierarchy), as how her experience of the digitization Systems Committee) project. This well as RSS feeds or emails to alert programme at Harvard, for example, project involved developing a toolkit people to new developments. put her in a good position to assess for assessing the impact of the digi- Christine says that the scholar- the impact of some of the Bodleian’s tization projects that JISC had been ship had a positive impact on her digital resources; resources that had funding.’ research as it enabled her to step been in place for some time with- The ‘Early Manuscripts at Oxford’ outside the direct cases in her thesis, Gill Einhorn out having had a significant review. website is about ten years old, and and look at the same issues from a Two projects were set up forthwith: run by Michael Popham. Christine’s Tunnel underneath different perspective. Her detailed ‘Improving the Findability and investigation, using her impact the Bodleian Library and prioritized recommendations to the Bodleian, in terms of what could be done to improve usability of the two resources, are, according to Sarah Thomas: ‘valuable for us and useful for her own development in digital libraries’. After her DPhil, which she plans to complete in June 2010, Christine would like to teach at library school but also knows it’s important to stay involved and ‘hands-on’ in the library world. She set up a consultancy company last year which is designed to help libraries report back to their funding bodies and to users on how grant money is being spent. The 2010 Balliol-Bodley scholar is Carly Watson (2009). Carly is doing a Masters in English. For the Bodleian she will be conducting research into manuscript poetry in the Harcourt collection. The Harcourt papers are currently being catalogued, and comprise eighteenth- to nineteenth- century correspondence and papers of the Harcourts of Nuneham Cour- tenay in Oxfordshire, relating to poli- tics, science, the royal court, and the development of Nuneham. Among the papers are several volumes of mainly eighteenth-century poems. Further research is needed to see whether it is possible to identify the hand and the author. Possible archive collections wait- ing to be identified, listed, sorted, and boxed in the future include the papers of Sir Edward William Spen- cer Ford, Officer in Guards during the Second Wolrd War and Assist- ant Private Secretary both to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, and a large collection of archives of interconnected electrical companies including Marconi’s Wireless Tel- egraph Company and the General Electric Company. It is hoped that many more graduate students will feel inspired to promote the Bod- leian’s treasures and to consider whether they can offer their exper- tise through the mechanism of the Balliol-Bodley Scholarship.

issue n o . 1 6 A p r i l 2 0 1 0 47 oxford and punting on the rivers. After the war, he returned home, The married miriam, joined the family business, and started his own family. during retirement, he and his wife establishment spent a year touring . Arthur’s son Steven levitan is John A. Jurenko professor of of the Arthur computer Engineering at the University of pittsburgh. His research is in the fields of integrated and Miriam circuit (chip) design and parallel computer architecture. In the winter of 2000-2001 professor levitan Levitan Fund visited britain and oxford many times while his wife, professor Anna balazs, was a Visiting fellow By JacQueline sMith at corpus christi. during this time balliol how everyone, from the master he followed in his father’s footsteps to the fellows to the tutors, promoted and fell in love with the country. Six excellence in scholarship, athletics, Balliol College is very grateful to Professor Steven years later he was enjoying what he and intellectual endeavours both Levitan, Visiting Fellow in Engineering Science and Oliver describes as the ‘magical experience’ inside and outside the classroom.’ Smithies Lecturer in 2007–2008, for deciding to support of being a Visiting fellow at balliol. In 2009, balliol awarded the the College generously with an initial gift to establish an He spent his days working in first Arthur and miriam levitan college, and often had lunch and Scholarship to Jekaterina Ivanova, endowment fund, named in honour of his parents. The dinner at balliol too, which allowed who is studying Engineering, income from the fund is currently being used to provide him to meet many of the fellows, Economics and management. a scholarship for an undergraduate studying Science, Junior research fellows, students, the second-year Estonian student Mathematics, Engineering or Philosophy. and staff. ‘Not only was I invited gained a distinction in prelims and into the academic fellowship of the was ranked 29th out of 163 in the college, I was also welcomed into University. professor levitan’s father, Arthur, the community of college life,’ Jekaterina lived and studied never got a chance to finish college. he says. in Estonia until she was 17. She After one year of part-time study in professor levitan and his wife travelled widely with her parents New York city, he left to join the US chose to endow a scholarship fund during these years, which gave her Army and was stationed in England at balliol, in memory of Steven’s the idea of taking her A-levels in a during the Second world war. Here Jekaterina Ivanova, father and mother, in order to make different country. She chose thailand, he served as an aircraft mechanic, the first recipient of the balliol experience available to where she studied at regent School and fell in love with the british the scholarship more students. He sums up what he bangkok, one of the few international countryside and the british people. Professor Steven believes the merits of that experience schools offering scholarships. one of his favorite authors was d.H. Levitan and Professor to be: ‘the pursuit of excellence is Jekaterina then opted to continue lawrence. He also enjoyed visiting Anna Balazs a cultural phenomenon. I saw at her studies at the University of oxford because it offered the course in Engineering, Economics, and management. She says: ‘I believe that management skills and a knowledge of economics are essential for any engineer. balliol is one of the best colleges in both Engineering Science and Economics and management.’ It was not just the academic record that attracted her, however. She says that another reason for choosing balliol was that it ‘looked like the most informal college in oxford. things like gowns and formal halls at other colleges seemed odd and scary.’ She is very happy to have received the scholarship, and grateful to her tutors for selecting her. Her ambition is to become a civil engineer. At present, the endowment money is being used to recognize and reward an existing balliol student’s academic achievement and to encourage progress. In the future, as the fund grows, it is hoped that the Arthur and miriam levitan Scholarships could help to attract very good undergraduate applicants who might otherwise not be able to afford to come to balliol.

48 florEAt domUS bAllIol collEgE NEwS James Sherwin-Smith Generous and Theodoros Kyriacou James Sherwin-Smith (2000) and theo Kyriacou (2000) are support for generously funding an annual prize in Economics and management, to be awarded to a student achieving the best combined marks in his/her prizes at Balliol Economics and management papers in part 1 finals of EEm (or, if there The College is delighted to announce that three new is no suitably qualified candidate, to sets of prizes for academic achievement have recently an undergraduate reading the joint been established by Old Members and other donors. schools of Economics & management who achieves the best performance in prelims). Such prizes help to recognize and James Sherwin-Smith James and theo both read EEm reward students’ progress in their at the same time at balliol. James is subject, and also stimulate them to Theodoros Kyriacou currently a management consultant continue to do well in their studies. at oliver wyman, and theo works they are part of a long tradition at as a hedge fund manager at paulson balliol, and other oxford colleges, Europe llp. in making awards to the most they comment about the prize outstanding scholars. the prizes can they have created at balliol as follows: also provide much-needed financial ‘we are delighted to be able to support help to students in purchasing books balliol Economics and management and supporting their research projects. students with this prize. we found the Leonie Foong addition of ‘E&m’ to our Engineering leonie foong (1995) is generously degrees a challenging but invaluable funding two annual prizes for learning experience that has proven undergraduates studying Engineering, to be a differentiating factor during he did not pursue an academic Economics & management (EEm), our nascent careers. At the end of the career, he had a deep love of learning to be awarded to the best-performing third year, EEm students go straight throughout his life. I feel sure that students in prelims and finals from part 1 finals into a six-month he would have been delighted by the each year. the criteria for the prize work placement, and then back to establishment of these prizes, which can be extended to those studying college for part 2. we hope this prize we hope will recognize, celebrate, Engineering Science, or other will help students as they make this and reward outstanding academic scientific fields, if necessary. leonie transition, and further promote this achievement by students at balliol, read EEm at balliol, and now works niche joint schools degree at balliol.’ and encourage them to continue to do well in their studies.’ for lone pine capital in Hong Kong. Margaret Dubner commenting about the prizes she has established at balliol, leonie two years ago, margaret dubner The importance of prizes says: ‘balliol is where I have some generously established annual prizes commenting on these prizes, the of my fondest memories and made for undergraduates reading ppE Senior tutor, Nicola trott, says: some of my best friends...I found and classics, and, this year, has ‘prizes for student performance are the place intellectually challenging added a further two annual prizes a highly direct and visible way of and stimulating, and subsequently for undergraduates and graduates in supporting balliol, and we are very developed the most during my years at History and clinical medicine. She grateful to these donors for their balliol. None of that would have been has made these gifts in honour of her generosity. we advertise many of possible without the great tutorials and late husband, Samuel dubner (1936), our awards on the college’s website, support that I received from my balliol who passed away in November 2007. either to our current members, or tutors and college mates. Samuel dubner came to balliol on the Admissions pages in order to ‘balliol attracts many of the from manchester grammar School help attract strong applications in the brightest and most self-motivated Leonie Foong just before the outbreak of world subject. students. Having benefited from an war II. Here he read mods in literae ‘the most typical prize is an excellent education Humaniores before completing a undergraduate Scholarship – and all and a fantastic ppE degree. He then went on to students who gain a distinction or student life at work for the foreign office research 1st in their first public Examinations college, I hope that department (until 1942) and the gain an award – but there are balliol can continue central Statistical office, war cabinet many points in a student’s career, to offer a world- office (until 1945). After the war he and many forms of performance, class education and joined the ministry of Education for for which awards can be made by excellent resources to two years and then worked at the balliol. for example, the majority generations of future National coal board until 1977. He of undergraduates now pursue students. Hopefully, and margaret married in 1979, and “projects” of one kind or another, my little contribution they had one child, Jonathan. often involving some kind of travel, can serve as margaret dubner says: ‘my son and imaginative gifts to support additional motivation Jonathan and I are very pleased to these activities as well are always very to balliolites to be able to support these prizes at welcome. Such gifts are also of great strive for academic balliol. Samuel greatly enjoyed his benefit to graduate students, who results beyond their time at the college, and it always had frequently need to travel to pursue imagination.’ a special place in his heart. Although their research.’

ISSUE No.16 A p r I l 2 0 1 0 491 Would you like to make a lasting contribution to Balliol’s future?

A bequest can help the College and Over 200 Old Members and friends of the College, aged between 28 and 98, have already chosen to leave a legacy to Balliol in its students in many enduring ways their Wills. As a way of thanking them during their lifetimes, the College has created the Greville Smith Society, named in honour Gifts by Will can help to endow Fellowships, establish of one of our most generous legators, Harold Greville Smith, who scholarships, support the Library, create buildings, and read Chemistry at Balliol in the 1920s. fund our flourishing clubs, societies and sports teams. Members of the Society meet each year for a lunch at Balliol. These Since its foundation, bequests to Balliol have helped to shape gatherings are always convivial occasions, and the members and the College and support its teaching and research, and these their guests have got to know each other well. As we approach our legacies enable each generation to ensure that those who 750th anniversary, in 2013, we encourage all our Old Members follow them can enjoy everything that Balliol has to offer. and other friends of the College to consider making a bequest to Balliol. We hope that you will be willing to join them.

Legacies are a marvellous way to support Balliol’s general educational activities, and we are extremely grateful to receive these gifts.

To request a copy of our Ms Laura Bianco, Campaign Officer, Balliol College, Oxford, OX1 3BJ information pack about legacies, and to find out how Telephone: +44 (0)1865 277704 your bequest can help the College, please contact: Email: [email protected]