Dear Member of Convocation,
I was your phantom fifth candidate in the chancellorship election. I was backed by a total of 54 nominators (note 1 below), but the university Registry claimed (after the deadline had passed) that ten were not graduates but 'non-conferred examination-passers', disqualifying my candidature by six on the grounds of this 'medieval technicality'. Although some of my alleged NCEPs disputed this, seven at once entered the conferral ceremony specially convened on 11th March to widen participation in the election, but still the Registry refused my candidature, thus disenfranchising over 50 members of Convocation. Why, one wonders, should this once-great bastion of free thought have gone to such extravagant lengths to deny its members' rights and my chance to have 500 words in The University Gazette?
Was it because of my policy positions? I can hardly think so. Policy statements are easy, especially when made for a post said to be devoid of executive responsibilities or powers. Everyone agrees that Oxford should be helped to regain its lost place amongst the front rank of the world's universities. Everyone agrees that it should strive to achieve the highest attainable levels in all fields of scholarship, research and education. For the record, my own prescriptions in summary were these: anti top-up fees, anti creeping privatization, anti cash for places, anti financial waste and fustian bureaucracy; pro increased access, pro modernization of the collegiate system, pro pooling of financial resources and management, pro legitimization of the university press (2).
No, in fact your university's technical extravagance was inspired not by my uncompromising dedication to academic ideals, but by a sad and venal history of which you may already vaguely know. If this is repetition for you, or you find my plaintive tone irritating, please forgive me, but beneath the apparently trivial facts that follow lies a circumstance for your university of which I believe you should be made aware. Between 1986 and 1992 the university spent an estimated half-million pounds unsuccessfully defending my claim against its press for not honouring a simple publishing agreement. The agreement concerned a book that several in Oxford thought to have educational value, yet the case ended years later with a court order barring the university and its staff from ever again publicly denigrating either it or me. (3)
This undertaking was at once both a perfectly natural and just outcome of an important and acrimonious publishing dispute, and an unprecedented and potentially crippling restriction of the university's freedom of expression. Even had such an undertaking not been so enshrined in a court order, the university would still surely have been morally bound to silence. As the OUP editor wisely observed at the time: "The book is not going to get a fair hearing at Oxford now that it has been treated in this way."
Maybe this unique undertaking explains why, when the book eventually did get reviewed in a UK journal, one Friday in 1992, the university on the following Monday instructed its solicitors to act against the reviewer (4). Maybe it explains why, just a few months ago, a philosophical talk I was invited to give in Oxford was halted after five minutes by the police (5). Certainly it explains why, when the OUP Delegate responsible for the debacle went into print and denigrated both the book and me in 2001, the university was obliged to defend his breach by renouncing its Heads of House as being no longer legally its 'servants' (6).
How can such an illustrious academic institution have fallen to such an idiotic and ignoble pass? How can its further such fall be avoided? And how can it now recover its true ethos and aim of providing a forum for the free expression of ideas?
My candidature in the chancellorship election was portrayed by some a bitter, mischievous prank. Yet in truth it was a sincere and serious attempt to resolve a problem that may, in the long term, prove even graver for the university than the many other serious policy issues it is presently facing. As I trust the other candidates in this election would agree, nothing could be more serious or solemn than an all-time undertaking made by the university in the High Court. And eminent and worthy of the chancellorship though all the candidates may be, none can write this disastrous episode out of the university's recent history. Saddest of all, the university has once more slammed its own technical doorway shut. May it have found forgiveness in the Divinity School.
1. My list of nominators, together with my more detailed manifesto, is at www.geocities.com/mjsayers/BORDERS_ON_THE_INSANE.htm
2. OUP was in 1978 secretly granted exemption from corporation tax on condition (a) that it would not become a source of revenue for the university and (b) that any surplus it made would be ploughed back into "non-commercial publishing." It is now in breach of both conditions. (Click for explanation).
3. The university's undertaking of 1st July 1992, "of unlimited duration" reads: "The Defendants (the Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford) agree that they, their servants and agents, or any of them, will not publish or solicit the publication of any derogatory statements, letters or articles about Andrew Malcolm or about the merits or quality of his work Making Names. For the purpose of giving effect to this undertaking the Defendants may disclose the text of this term to their servants or agents from time to time. The Defendants further agree to request Alan Ryan, Henry Hardy and Richard Charkin* not to publish or solicit the publication of any derogatory statements, letters or articles about Andrew Malcolm or about the merits or quality of his work Making Names." [*By the time of the agreement, these three - OUP Delegate, editor and managing director - had left Oxford.]
4. Making Names was reviewed (favourably) in The Times Education Supplement of 25th September 1992 by R. W. Noble, who was himself in a contract dispute with OUP. Oxford at once ordered its City lawyers Clifford Chance to act against him. Click for Noble's review and Private Eye articles.
5. On 4th October 2002 a talk I was scheduled to give at Borders bookshop in Magdalen Street was halted by the arrival of three squad cars. I and my audience of about a dozen (including some members of the university) were without explanation escorted from the store by eight uniformed police. The incident was reported in The Oxford Times & Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and The Evening Argus (11, 12, 15/10). Click for photo-story with links to reports.
6. This bizarre contention was upheld in a High Court judgment by Mr Justice Lightman of 24th January 2002, in which Ryan is held to be 'an independent contractor' (without a contract) with respect to the university. It is now the subject of an application to the European Court of Human Rights. Click for explanation and judgment.