The Third Degree

In the latest act of his long-running battle with Oxford, philsopher Andrew Malcolm has opened a bookshop in the heart of the university to promote dissent and attack the establishment. At premises opposite Balliol College he plans to sell books - including the one Oxford University Press refused to publish - and to hold readings by the poets who were removed from OUP's list. The shop, called Akme Expression, could become a "centre for a range of disaffectees", he says.

Malcolm also hopes to raise £12,500 he owes the university in legal costs after their latest duel in the courts. In 1991 Oxford paid him £17,000 after appeal judges decided OUP had broken an unwritten agreement to publish Making Names, a book in the form of a dialogue between a philosopher Andrew Cause and Malcolm Effect, a research scientist. He went on to publish it himself. Litigation broke out again when Alan Ryan, Warden of New College, who had originally supported publication of the book criticised it in a letter to the Times Higher Education Supplement. Malcolm argued unsuccessfully that this was in breach of the 1991 settlement.

AKME EXPRESSION, MAY-JUNE 2002 THE LEGAL BACKGROUND and Malcolm's Lectureship offer THE BROAD STREET SHOP featuring the Gallery of Shame, Akme University, St. Frideswide's grotto, Akme Ball etc. Reports: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Oxford Times 21/6 THES 26/4, Oxford Times 26/4, Guardian 30/4, Oxford Star 2/5, Oxford Student 2/5, Cherwell 3/5, Publishing News 10/5, Private Eye 17/5, Guardian 25/6, South China Morning Post 11/5, Change (US H.E. journal), Philosophers' Magazine, Autumn. Alan Ryan quits, ranting: THES 31/5, Cherwell 7/6, other quotes Rave review of Making Names in Oxford Student 30/5: "One of the most powerful statements of the human condition written in the past century."