I realised I had too much time on my hands when I decided to watch all of the Sheldonian Series in one go. Laid up in bed with the new strain of the plague the freshers brought with them this year, my mind cast back to Michaelmas last year when I attended the inaugural event of the Vice-Chancellor’s pet project. Curious to see how the subsequent editions had gone, I found myself binging all four of the hour-long recordings. Who needs Derry Girls when the University provides such unparalleled comfort telly to nurse you back to health?
What is the Sheldonian Series, you ask? Taking place each term in the Sheldonian Theatre, the event sees a panel of experts and academics answer questions on the ‘big issues’ of today, from ‘democracy’ to ‘life’. The discussions range from the eye-roll-inducing to genuinely stimulating, but that’s not what compelled me to write this. The Sheldonian Series, purportedly existing to model to undergraduates how to disagree agreeably, instead reveals a university that does not want to listen to what its students have to say.
As an evening’s worth of intellectual entertainment, it’s perfectly fine. Kicking off the topic of ‘democracy’, the panelists of journalists and politics professors made cogent, if obvious, arguments. Donald Trump’s election is bad for American democracy? Wow, I never knew! Things go slightly awry when Sonia Sodha, Observer columnist and self-proclaimed “gender-critical feminist”, goes off on a tangent about how transgender people are an “elite minority” who stifle democratic debate, but otherwise the rest of the evening passed smoothly.
The contrast between a physicist’s, a theologian’s, and computer scientist’s view on the topic of ‘life’ in Hilary term made for an interesting dynamic. As were director of the Reuters Institute Mitali Mukherjee’s insights on the difficulties of journalism in the age of social media, during Trinity term’s edition on ‘truth’. The only real failure was this Michaelmas’ attempt to tackle the done-to-death topic of ‘cancel culture’. The evening quickly turned into an increasingly acrimonious debate between Conservative peer Lord Young and director of the think tank British Future, Sunder Katwala, who routinely failed to answer the questions of the audience and instead spent the evening taking pot shots at each other. Clearly someone had failed to tell them it was a panel, not an Oxford Union debate, and the tiresome back-and-forth unfortunately overshadowed the far more intelligent remarks of Guardian columnist Zoe Williams and Helen Mountfield, Principal of Mansfield.
But my issue isn’t so much with the content of the evenings themselves, but the fanfare the University presents it with. The Vice-Chancellor has made it clear that the main rationale for the series was to improve the quality of debate and protect freedom of speech at Oxford. Introducing the series on her behalf, Chief Diversity Officer Tim Soutphommasane explained that “we hope to model what free speech…can and should look like within our collegiate university community”. Combined with other initiatives such as the patronising ‘tips for free speech’, the Sheldonian Series is the University’s attempt to challenge an illiberal attitude towards healthy debate that supposedly plagues Oxford.
Maybe I’m just an unenlightened undergraduate, but I struggle to see how inviting semi-famous Gen-Xers who already have massive platforms to repeat the same talking points we hear everyday in our media is somehow a win for freedom of speech at this university.
The most obvious problem is the total absence of actual students from the proceedings. Sat at the very back of the Sheldonian in Michaelmas last year, all I could see before me was a sea of grey hair. This skewed age demographic gave rise to several truly bizarre conversations in which, at an event supposedly for students, the panellists talked about undergraduates as if we are strange and unknowable creatures. Journalists professed their fear that young people no longer cared about democracy, whilst Professor Kimberly Johnson of NYU declared that undergrads are not interested in marshalling evidence and argument in essays. The fact that no-one under the age of 30 was on any of the panels gave the event the feel of a David Attenborough-style commentary on the lesser-spotted undergraduate.
Equally odd was the choice of topics for discussion. The prevailing debates between students today centre around issues such as the University’s investments, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how to make prestigious institutions more inclusive. If Irene Tracey and Co. truly wanted to “model free and inclusive speech” as they profess, the Sheldonian Series could tackle these topics head on, yielding a likely fascinating set of conversations. But, of course, the University doesn’t want to talk about such issues for fear that someone might dare to criticise its handling of them; so we get an hour’s worth of pontificating on palatable concepts such as ‘life’ and ‘truth’ instead.
As a result, these evenings are less a good faith effort to engage young people in respectful dialogue on the most controversial topics, and more an attempt to steer the conversation away into ‘safer’ waters. There is something very ‘the grown-ups will take it from here’ about it all. The Sheldonian Series perfectly encapsulates the University’s tendency to hark on about the importance of free speech, whilst ignoring the issues students actually want to speak about. Time and time again, we have seen the administration’s reluctance to enter into a dialogue with students on subjects such as its investments, be those links to fossil fuels or to arms companies and the Israeli military. If there is an issue with discourse in Oxford, it is this.
This is frustrating because the format has real potential. With a few tweaks, it could be a winning one. Start with finding more ways to incorporate students, rather than confining them to asking one or two questions at the end. Where it’s relevant, have us on the panels. If the University wants to discuss access to higher education, get an undergraduate representative from the 93% Club. I, for one, would be more inclined to listen to a discussion about universities if it included someone who actually had to pay tuition fees. Most importantly, bringing students, faculty, and alumni together to talk about difficult topics would send a powerful message that the administration values what everyone at this University has to say, not just the famous faces that once studied here.
If Professor Irene Tracey just wants to host a chat between successful professionals each term, that’s great. But save us the sanctimony about how this supposedly is great for free speech at Oxford. Next time I’m ill, I think I’ll just watch Derry Girls instead.
