UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD:
ELECTION OF CHANCELLOR
MALCOLM'S MANIFESTO
issued 4th February 2003
CANDIDACY OF ANDREW MALCOLM
As a philosopher, author and long-time adversary of Oxford University and its Press, I offer myself as a candidate for the office of Oxford University Chancellor that has lately fallen vacant. I do so not in a spirit of mischief or irony, but as a genuine and serious attempt to resolve some of the university's present grave problems, including both the general failings which my case highlights and certain particular legal anomalies which it has generated.
It is said that during Harold Macmillan's tenure, the office largely lost its executive powers and became purely ceremonial. If I were elected, my overriding aim would be, in whatever ways are possible, to reverse this trend and with it, the recent steady decline in the university's various fortunes. Unlike some absentee 'star' from show business or politics occasionally basking in Oxford's illustrious history, I would want to be a hands-on reformer trying to engineer the university's future improvement. In particular, so far as I may be able, I would seek to:
- Restore the university's battered reputation for integrity and academic excellence, and help it regain its lost place amongst the front rank of the world's universities.
-
Maximise its fund-raising potential and all its available sources of income. However, I believe that the university's chief financial problems are not shortage of money but wastage, squandering and unaccountability. A good - that is bad - example of these is provided by the half-million pounds lost by the university from 1986 to 1992 unsuccessfully defending my simple breach-of-contract claim.
-
Modernise its archaic collegiate structure to achieve greater financial pooling and efficiency, and rectify the absurd new legal situation whereby, in the judgment of January 2002, heads of house (including the Vice- and Pro-vice- Chancellors) are in law no longer representatives of the university.
-
Oppose top-up fees and all such tendencies towards college separatism and privatisation, and increase accessibility for bright and talented students from all backgrounds.
-
Eradicate corruption, cash-for-places, croneyism, fustian bureaucracy and the many other such problems that have bedevilled and lately publicly disgraced the university.
-
Reconstitute the University Press with a view to restoring its academic integrity and its legitimacy (it is at present operating in breach of its 1978 charitable conditions).
With my long experience of many aspects of the university and its structures 'from the other side' I am well qualified to help diagnose and rectify many of its present failings, and if elected I would be uniquely placed to neutralise the problem that could otherwise prove to be its intellectual crippling - its unprecedented undertaking of 1992 concerning me and my philosophical text Making Names (Click for explanation).
MALCOLM FOR CHANCELLOR!
the only way forward
Click for Notes for nominators/voters, including link to official Oxford University website.
Click for linked series of earlier scene-setting reports on Oxford's search for a successor to Woy Jenkins, including Alan Ryan's abortive sponsorship of Bill Clinton - the dry cleaners' choice:
A Tough Act to Follow by Donald Macleod, 7/1; Position Vacant by Rodrigo Davies, 8/1; Clinton the Wrong Man for Oxford by Catherine Bennett, 9/1; Students back Clinton by Rodrigo Davies, 16/1; Clinton fights shy by Will Woodward and Sarah Hall, 17/1; Open to First Woman? by Rodrigo Davies, 17/1; How to become Chancellor by Will Woodward, 17/1; Chancellorship election rules (plus links for nomination forms etc.) OU Gazette, 23/1; Oxford race wide open The Times Higher (Education Supplement), 31/1.
CLICK FOR:
MALCOLM'S FIFTY CHANCELLORSHIP ELECTION INDEX
THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT OUP'S 'CHARITABLE STATUS' THE OXBRIDGE COLLEGE ACCOUNTS INDEX AND OUP ACCOUNTS INDEX THE MALCOLM vs. OXFORD CASE INDEXES: I (1984-92) AND II (2001-02) THE HISTORY OF AKME AND OF THIS WEBSITE THE AKME OXFORD CUTTINGS LIBRARY THE AKME LITERARY LAW LIBRARY THE AKME STUDENT LAW LIBRARY ABOUT MAKING NAMES ABOUT THE REMEDY THE SITE INDEX
e-mail: akme@btinternet.com