The Indian government has formally requested the return of a 15th century bronze idol from the Ashmolean Museum, after new research found the sculpture was apparently stolen from an Indian temple in the 1960s.

The request comes after an independent scholar published new research last December which suggested the statue, depicting Saint Tirumankai Alvar, was pictured in a 1957 photograph in the temple of Sri Soundarrajaperumal, in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

In a statement, the Ashmolean said: “In November 2019, an independent scholar brought new research to our attention relating to the provenance of an Indian 15thcentury bronze of Saint Tirumankai Alvar which was acquired by the Ashmolean from Sothebys in 1967. Research in the photo archives of the IFP-EFEO (Institut Français de Pondichery and the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient) appears to show the same bronze in the temple of Shri Soundarrajaperumal Kovil in Tamil Nadu in 1957. The Ashmolean was informed that the bronze is one of a number of bronzes in collections in Europe and the United States identified by this researcher through the IFP-EFEO archive.

“Although there was no claim against the object, the Museum officially brought the matter to the attention of the Indian High Commission on 16th December 2019 requesting any further information (including possible police records) that would aid us in establishing the work’s provenance and noting that we were open to holding further discussions around the possible repatriation of the sculpture. The Indian High Commissioner acknowledged our letter on 24 December and informed us that the matter and the information we provided had been forwarded to the Indian authorities and expressing their appreciation that the University of Oxford and the Ashmolean had acted proactively in this matter.”

The First Secretary of the Indian High Commission in London, Rahul Nangare, told The Guardian that it had received a report from police in Tamil Nadu that “unambiguously shows that the original idol has been stolen and replaced with a fake one, and that the stolen idol is the same one that is presently with the Ashmolean.

“Therefore, we have conveyed our formal request to them for restitution of the idol to India.”

Nangare thanked the Museum for its proactivity and cooperation in contacting the High Commission, noting the Ashmolean is currently carrying out due diligence on the provenance of the sculpture, with one museum official due to visit India in the near future. The First Secretary expressed hope that “other museums would follow the example in dealing with suspected stolen pieces of our cultural heritage.”

The Ashmolean originally acquired the statue from Sotheby’s

auction house in London in 1967. The Museum commented: “The Museum acquired the statue in good faith in 1967. According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, the bronze was sold from the collection of the collector Dr J. R. Belmont (1886 – 1981). We currently have no indication of how the bronze entered his collection and we are continuing to investigate with the support of the Indian High Commission.”

The sculpture stands at one metre tall, depicting Tirumankai, one of the Tamil poet-saints of south India, holding aloft a sword and shield. Alvar was the last of the 12 Alvar saints of south India, known for the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism. Prior to his conversion to Vaishnava, Tirumankai was a military commander, a chieftain, and a bandit.

Scientists at Oxford’s Jenner Institute are currently working on a project to produce the first batch of a coronavirus vaccine for clinical testing. The project is in partnership with Italian manufacturer Advent Srl.

The World Health Organisation had previously warned that a vaccine could take 18 months to put together. The current outbreak looks likely to extend well into the autumn.

There are hopes that the Jenner Institute research will help reduce the time taken to prepare it for clinical trials.

Professor Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute said: “Novel pathogens such as nCoV-19 require rapid vaccine development.”

“By using technology that is known to work well for another coronavirus vaccine we are able to reduce the time taken to prepare for clinical trials.”

“Advent are working with us to move as rapidly as possible.”

The University’s Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility is currently producing the vaccine’s ‘seed stock’. After being transferred to Advent, it will produce 1000 doses for the first set of clinical trials for the vaccine.

In addition to working on the current vaccine, the Jenner Institute has been working on a vaccine against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another coronavirus. Due to the initial success of the MERS vaccine, the same approach to creating the vaccine is being used for the novel coronavirus vaccine.

Advent, the contract manufacturing organization and part of the IRBM group working with the Jenner Institute said on their website that: “The vaccines are produced using a safe version of an adenovirus; another virus that can cause a common cold-like illness.

“The adenovirus has been modified so that it cannot reproduce within the body, and the genetic code to provide instructions for making the coronavirus Spike protein has been added, enabling the adenovirus to produce this protein after vaccination. That results in the formation of antibodies to the Spike protein, which is found on the surface of coronaviruses.

“In someone who has been vaccinated, antibodies to the Spike can bind to the coronavirus and stop it from causing an infection.”

The UCU have released a statement calling for greater transparency regarding the £150 million donation by Stephen A. Schwarzman to the new humanities centre. They called for the University to adopt “new transparent and democratic procedures regarding gifts and donations, including the creation of a democratically elected deliberative body composed of faculty, students, staff, alumni, and local representatives.”

The UCU was contacted for comment by Cherwell but responded saying that “Oxford UCU is now waiting for a response from the University and cannot comment further until this is received.”

In the statement, the UCU expressed their concern that the acceptance of the donation “contravenes the University’s professed aims regarding (1) equality and diversity and (2) climate change.”

The UCU said: “Blackstone is one of the world’s largest corporate residential landlords. According to Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur for adequate housing, it is significantly responsible for fuelling the global housing crisis.”

The statement also criticised Mr Schwarzman’s links to the Trump presidency saying that “Stephen A. Schwarzman was an influential advisor to President Donald Trump during the period of the presidency that saw Executive Order 13769, the so-called “Muslim Travel Ban”.”

After expressing their concern about the lack of transparency in the decision-making process, the UCU called for the University to provide “further details of how the decision was made to accept Schwarzman’s donation, including a full account of the steps taken by the University’s Committee to Review Donations and information on the make-up of the Committee.” as well as to “clarify the proposed governance structure of the new “Institute for Ethics in AI”, which will also be housed at the Schwarzman Centre.”

Responding to the request for the vetting documents to be made public, a university spokesperson said: “Academics from across the Divisions represented on the Committee to Review Donations, and we did involve some students in the plans for the Centre before the announcement… The public release of documents relating to the review process could damage the University’s relationship with an individual or body that has been subject to that process. This could also deter prospective donors.”

Thomas Clements, spokesperson for Blackstone, told Cherwell that “To imply that Mr. Schwarzman played any role – formally or informally – in the Administration’s immigration policy is misleading and irresponsible.”

The UCU’s statement follows a motion from the Union Council’s meeting which called for the full details of the University’s vetting and decision making process to be made public.

The Master of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge has issued a public statement apologising to a black student who was “physically prevented” by a porter from entering the grounds for a meeting with a professor.

Collin Edouard, a master’s student at Wolfson College, reported that he was “grabbed” by a porter who refused him entry even after he had informed him that he was a student and given him the professor’s name and room number. It was only after his white friend, coincidentally present at the same time, confirmed he was a student that he was allowed to enter.

Edouard took to Facebook later that day to express his anger and distress at the issue, saying: “It took someone I knew that happened to be there at an unusual time, to tell them I am in fact a student. His tone changed once the person I know told them I’m a student then they tried to tell me it’s cause they have had problems with protesters in the past. I angrily told them that regardless of what your issues have been in the past you CANNOT put your hands on anyone.”

Since then, Eduoard has created the hashtag #speakout on social media to support students of colour. He reports receiving numerous messages from strangers after posting the hashtag, recounting their experiences of racism at the University.

He told Cherwell: “My situation is hardly unique at Oxbridge so I want people to begin to have these important conversations. Our feelings are valid and we will no longer tolerate any form of mistreatment. We will use our voices and #speakout.”

The statement from the Master, Professor Sir Mark Welland, was posted on the college website 4 days after the incident occured. Welland said: “..the College wishes to make a sincere and public apology to Mr Collin Edouard, a student at Wolfson College.”

“This was entirely unacceptable in the context of a student attending a supervision. Our processes did not ensure that Mr Edouard was treated with the highest level of respect and courtesy that we aspire to. We are aware that, despite our best intentions, he felt singled out based on race and we are truly sorry for the distress this has caused him. We are investigating the matter in line with the appropriate processes and will remain in contact with the student in question to review how we all ensure that visitors are welcomed consistently going forwards.

“As a College we are committed to recognising and preventing discriminatory behaviour, conscious or unconscious. I, along with the Senior Tutor and other colleagues at St Catharine’s, will also be openly sharing any learnings with the rest of the collegiate university.”

St Catherine’s communications office told Cherwell they had “Nothing further to add to the statement from Friday.”

Edouard told Cherwell: “I think the masters apology was a good start in a more productive direction and I’m looking forward to seeing the steps they plan to take in order to minimize these kinds of situations”.

The incident follows the controversial events at the Oxford Union in November of last year when Ghanaian postgraduate student Ebenezer Azmati was removed from a debate.

An investigation by The Independent reported that the number of racist incidents in universities across the UK rose by over 60 per cent between 2015 and 2017.

The environmental credentials of potential recruiters will soon be available to students as a consequence of a new initiative by the University’s Careers Service.

Any potential employer of Oxford students seeking to promote roles for students via the University’s CareersConnect service will have to answer a number of questions about their approach to reducing carbon emissions.

This will be in line with the Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment. These relate to how business can work out a schedule for profitably reaching net zero emissions by 2050. This is part of an ongoing attempt to enable students to make climate-conscious choices for their future careers by highlighting the approach of various organisations to climate change.

The momentum behind the initiative came from both the Careers Service and the Student Union. Kaya Axelson, Vice-President for Charities and Communities at the Student Union, said she had been “thrilled to be working with [the University’s] careers service to protect students’ futures and provide them with professional development opportunities to lead in the 21st century.”

She said: “Oxford Students want to join organisations that are preparing for the future not relying on business models of the past. Over half the world has committed to a net zero target by 2050 and the other half has to get on board for my generation to have a reasonable chance of growing up in a future below two degrees average warming.”

The Director of Oxford University’s Careers Service, Jonathan Black, suggested that this was part of a broader effort on the part of the Careers Service to incorporate students’ environmental concerns into their work.

He said: “As part of this, we are actively exploring ways to help students learn about organisations’ approaches to sustainability. As a result, we hope that those students for whom sustainability is an important factor in their decisionmaking will be better informed.”

Consequently, the Careers Service has indicated that it is also considering publishing the data gathered from potential recruiters in future careers fairs’ booklets and similar publications and providing a special emblem for companies that demonstrate their commitment to sustainability on the CareersConnect website.

The Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment, published by the Oxford Martin School, a research and policy unit based in the University’s Social Sciences Division, are threefold: an explicit commitment to net-zero emissions on the part of businesses, the production of a profitable net-zero business model and quantitative medium-term targets for achieving them.

Professor Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science, and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics, said: “It’s great to see the Oxford Martin Principles for Carbon-conscious Investment being applied in this way: the biggest investment many of us make in our lives is who we choose to work for. It would be great to see Oxford graduates voting with their feet and voting for the future.”

These principles were previously used in drawing up St Hilda’s plans for divestment. The college choose to remove its investments in the near future from companies whose policies diverged from the principles’ guidelines.

Though responding to the questions is currently only voluntarily, the Careers Service is positive about their impact so far. Over 200 companies have currently ticked ‘Yes’ in response to the question ‘Does your organisation recognise the climate crisis?’ Seventy three companies have provided supporting information about their commitment to sustainability.

Oxford is currently the only university in the country to implement such a scheme but it is hoped by the Careers Service that this will set a precedent for universities across the United Kingdom and beyond.

Thirty five Rhodes Scholars have signed an open letter in support of Bernie Sanders for the 2020 Democratic Nomination, decrying former Rhodes recipient Pete Buttigieg’s frequent citing of his own time in the programme.

In a letter entitled “Rhodes Scholars on Bernie, Buttigieg, and Meritocracy”, published in Common Dreams on Wednesday, the undersigned stated: “From our privileged position, we believe that the only candidate who is committed to transforming inequality and creating universal access to education is Bernie Sanders.”

In the letter, available on commondreams.org, the educational policies of Sanders’ campaign are cited as the primary motivation for the support given. Specifically, his “plan to eliminate student debt, invest in historically black colleges and universities, and guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, [means] he is the best candidate to ensure that other students have access to the opportunities we have had.”

Describing him as the candidate “most committed to rectifying these profound inequalities”, the scholars conclude with the statement: “As Rhodes Scholars, we believe that our credentials should not be relied upon in lieu of a strong and proven record of public leadership. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with the demonstrated experience and will to rectify the systemic injustice in America.”

Candidate Pete Buttigieg, former Mayor of Southbend, Indiana, was awarded the scholarship in 2004, studying in Oxford in that year. In keeping with his frequent internet portrayal as the “smart” candidate (so described by The New York Times), Mayor Pete claims to speak eight languages and worked in naval intelligence, in addition to his academic achievements.

The scholars acknowledge this, describing the Rhodes programme as lending Buttigieg “tremendous credibility, privilege, and respect in most professional arenas.”

However, they are quick to address an alternative view of the prestigious award. As opposed to being an indicator of erudition and a pinnacle of education, the letter states that the “Rhodes Scholarship is thus largely a marker of socioeconomic privilege, as well as a willingness to play by the rules of elite institutions, rather than an indicator of political commitment or capacity. Endowing Buttigieg with considerable political leverage due to his academic or personal achievements—without a broader understanding of his privileges—illustrates how inequality has been recast by elites as meritocracy.”

Continuing with this sentiment, the letter suggests that a Rhodes scholarship is further proof of Pete’s social advantage: “Consider the context of Oxford University, where in 2018 over 60% of undergraduate students came from private or grammar schools… The share of students in the 1% that attend elite colleges is already at an all-time high. In effect, most American students are locked out from an opportunity like the Rhodes Scholarship before they reach adulthood. Pete Buttigieg, by contrast, attended private schools sfrom childhood.”

Similarly, the credited author and 2019 Rhodes Scholar Jaz Brisack denounces any claims that the program is any marker of integrity or political ethics: “But the Rhodes Scholarship is rarely the moral litmus test it purports to be. This is exemplified by the Rhodes Scholar who was indicted on US government fraud charges in 2009 and the resignation of a Missouri governor over allegations of sexual misconduct and violations of campaign-finance law in 2018.”

A fashion panel at the Oxford Union has been postponed by Gucci due to travel lockdown in Milan resulting from the coronavirus outbreak.

The panel was due to take place on February 26th and included the CEO of Gucci as one of its speakers.

However, the University stresses that the “cancellation of one event does not make a trend.”

Furthermore, appropriate guidelines, in accordance with advice provided by Public Health England, have been circulated to individual departments and colleges.

Two members of the Gucci panel have recently attended Milan Fashion Week, which was affected by the measures introduced by the Italian government.

Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci, and Sinéad Burke, an activist and one of the 15 women to appear on the Duchess of Sussex’s British Vogue cover in September, both attended fashion shows before the restrictions were imposed.

A ban on public events in Northern Italy was introduced after the outbreak. This caused fashion houses, such as Armani, to close their Autumn Winter 2020 shows to the public and opting to livestream them instead.

Eleven towns across Lombardy and Veneto have been placed under quarantine after the coronavirus outbreak emerged on Friday 21st.

As of February 25th, there have been 229 confirmed cases and eleven deaths in the region making it the worst outbreak in Europe and the third worst outbreak globally.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised travellers returning from Northern Italy to self-isolate if they display flu-like symptoms, and to self-isolate regardless if they are returning from quarantined areas.

The Union promised the event would be a discussion of “the importance of inclusivity in fashion and beyond” with “some of the industry’s most influential figures.”

Bizzarri said that “creativity is a consequence of diversity,” and is credited with increasing Gucci’s global outlook.

The other speakers planned for the event were Dapper Dan, an American fashion designer from Harlem and long-time Gucci collaborator. Hari Nef, an actress, model and writer, was also meant to speka, Nef was the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of a major British magazine.

Councillor Mark Lygo, was elected the new Lord Mayor of Oxford on February 24th, taking over from the incumbent, Councillor Craig Simmons.

The selection for the new civic holders was made at a Full Council meeting at Oxford City Council. Further elects were the current Sheriff Councillor Stephen Goddard, who will take over the role of Deputy Lord Mayor from Councillor Mohammed Altaf-Khan. The former will be replaced by a new Sheriff, Councillor Dick Wolff.

Lygo will officially take on his role as the new Lord Mayor during the Mayor Making ceremony in this coming May.

Lygo said: “I am delighted to have been selected as Lord Mayor of Oxford. It is a privilege and an honour to be chosen to represent my city.” He currently resides in Headington with his wife and two teenage daughters, having been born and raised in Oxford.

Councillor Lygo has been involved with the local council for almost 18 years. Lygo was first elected to Oxford City Council in 2008, representing Churchill Ward.

Since then, he has served in numerous positions across the civic board. Lygo has served as a Board Member for Sports, Parks and Events for five years and is currently the Council’s sports
champion.

Lygo has also sat on a number of committees including Planning, Licensing and Scrutiny whilst at present he sits on two outside bodies, the Bullingdon Community Association and Oxford Sports Council.

Lygo is also a serving County Councillor and has represented Marston and Northway division since his election in 2003.

During his term in office, Lygo hopes to champion causes which he expressed an affinity for in his civic history. Community, volunteering, and well-being initiatives have been prioritised by Lygo, and he further hopes to encourage local people to embrace a more active and healthier lifestyle.

Away from council duties, Lygo is a keen supporter of grassroots sports and culture; he is currently Chairman of Quarry Rovers FC, a local referee and a dedicated supporter of Oxford United FC.

The Lord Mayor represents the Council at civic and ceremonial events. They promote the city, the council’s initiatives, support Oxford’s organisations. The Lord Mayor undertakes over 300 engagements a year, covering a diversity of events. The post is ceremonial, with no political power. The political head of the City Council is the Leader of the Council.