Friday 8th August 2025

Opinion

The Encaenia is PR without the public (or anyone else)

Wholesale reform is the last thing Encaenia needs. If only people knew what it is, it would be a well-suited PR exercise for a modern Oxford.

This is how we combat the crusade against universities

It’s easy to think of an arts degree as a fruitless pleasure. But education and academic study are intrinsically valuable.

From pensioners to students, all should fear the Palestine Action ban

If you think this is a win for one side over the other in relation to Israel’s war on Gaza, be careful what you wish for.

Trashing rules save face, not students

Trashing is banned. But what does the banning achieve except pushing students further from...

Time to take responsibility: All Souls’ dirty legacies

"Out-of-date relics of elitism like All Souls hold a responsibility to do more than the bare minimum. But since pandemic rules paved the way for justifiable closing down, one cannot help but feel it is convenient for the College to keep these legacies hidden behind locked doors."

For art’s sake: How NFTs are changing the way we appreciate art

NFTs are not inconsistent with artistic creativity, rather, they are a vehicle for its democratization.

Comment highlights MT21

'Impossible to choose' Leah Mitchell We’ve had so many great articles this term that I found it impossible to choose just one! My particular highlights were...

Oxford University and the alienation of working students

"Working a job during university, it’s easy to become dissociated from both: always slightly excluded from the freedoms of non-working students, but never able to fully relate to the lives of coworkers."

The COP26 coalition: Politicians won’t save us, people will

"The Global Day of Action, the People’s Summit, and other actions in Glasgow over these two weeks demonstrate the anger and love that empower change."

COP26 or COP OUT?

"We can’t help but ask ourselves whether leaders care about leaving a planet behind on which the next generations can live."

THE NAME GAME: A personal reflection on the ‘transtrenderism’ trend

"It’s taken a while, but I’m slowly coming to terms with the idea that even if I do change my mind in the end, there is nothing inherently wrong with taking the time to explore one’s identity."

The problem with criminal biopics

Stories about the rise and fall of online scammers and their extravagant lifestyles in Nigeria can still be expertly told without making any reference to hushpuppi in particular. 

Great men on vacation: The reporting of Boris’ holiday

In my opinion, both sides make the same mistake here. They obsess over the leading man, either worrying that the holiday leaves us stranded or that it is necessary for him to rest before single-handedly facing the battles ahead. All of it leads to propping up the cult of personality that separates Boris from his party infrastructure.

A leftist critique of Oxford teacher strikes

I hope that the teachers and other academic staff of this university will see this article as an olive branch. We can work together. We can share solidarity for the betterment of all. We can unite the disparate popular classes of the university for the common good.

Women’s Street Watch: Finding strength in solidarity

"While it is saddening that their work is necessary, Women’s Street Watch has become a way for women to seize control against a tide of news that they often feel they are helplessly swimming against."

On the right to privacy

When I was asked to write this piece I initially refused. I refused because now, five years since my first Gender Identity Clinic (GIC)...

In-person finals: Ready or not, here they come

My main concern now is, if exams are going to be in-person, how are they going to support us? The faculty has promised that we will have adequate time and means of preparing for our finals that are now in a different format to the one we have prepared for entire two years we have spent at Oxford. Is this task going to fall on individual tutors at each college? If so, not only is this extra work for them, but students may receive different levels of support and exam practice depending on their college. 

What’s all the sub-fusc about?

Zara Arif explores whether Oxford students should continue to wear sub-fusc following a year of online exams.

“Vax” Oxford University Press word of the year

The Oxford Word of the Year award, run by Oxford Languages, is intended to be a word that ‘reflects the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance’. It is decided through various means, including individual social media suggestions, and high-tech software which scans millions of words from online publications over the past twelve months.

Pitch: 1, Parliament: 0

Rashford understands how tough life can be for people, while Boris seems to think it’s a bit like classical music -- he’s sure it’s all worthy of attention and so on, but just pretends to be interested in it so he doesn’t look bad in front of his dinner party guests.

The Murder of David Amess must change the way we look at politics

Jo Cox’s murder in Leeds in June 2016 shocked the nation.  For the first time in since the 1990, when Ian Gow was killed by the IRA, a sitting British MP was brutally murdered for doing their job.  There were 26 years between those two tragic incidents, and now British politics is left facing a second deadly attack in five years.  But what steps can we possibly take to ensure that this violence ends?

The four-day working week: A new way forward?

Imagine working reduced hours over a four-day week and having a three day weekend, every week.   It seems like a radical idea, one that is...

Updated trans athlete guidance: Unnuanced and exclusionary

My views here may be shaded by the fact that sailing events are generally mixed-gender, and women regularly out-compete men, especially at the university level. The SCEG suggests that trans women should be excluded from any sport they legally can be, by assuming that they hold some unfair physical advantage. The policy is overbroad and lacks nuance. The guidance does make one point I do agree with, that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is folly, and the only people that can really make this judgment are specific sporting bodies themselves. It would be a mistake, in my view, to rob trans women of the incredible adventure of competitive sport because of an assumption of advantage. Women's sports are not overrun with trans women; in fact, trans athletes are underrepresented in sport at all levels.

Gender abolition: Why it matters

"The solution cannot be simply equality. It must be the dissolution of gender as we know it."

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