THE CITY OF LEARNING
“How banal!” laughed a friend and twenty-year resident of Oxford when I told him about the book and my title for the Oxford chapter. “How much research did you need to come to that conclusion?” “Well,” I said hesitantly, not missing the sarcasm in his voice, “what would you call it?” He thought long enough for me to drink half my pint of lager. “Hmm…. How about ‘Oxford, City of Learning’?” We both laughed. “I’ll drink to that,” I said.
I guess many will agree with my friend—who, by the way, has no connection to Oxford University. Indeed, this chapter’s claim is that Oxford’s ethos helps us learn about learning. Oxford’s tolerance of nonconformism and eccentric behavior provides an atmosphere of learning. Not all residents of Oxford enjoy access to learning or benefit from this atmosphere, however. The chapter therefore ends with what remains to be asked: namely, how the ethos of learning can be shared by a wider population.
The name Oxford has always been synonymous with learning, and it’s the first thing you think of when you hear the city’s name. Oxford is one of best-known universities in the world, even though its student population is not large. In 2009, there were 11,765 undergraduate and 8,701 postgraduate students at Oxford. Undergraduate applications have risen by 61 percent over the past ten years, though the number admitted each year has remained about the same.1 The university keeps the number of students relatively low because its system of tutorial-based undergraduate teaching requires that lecturers and teachers (tutors) meet students regularly for tutoring either singly or in groups of two to three. Despite its rather demanding coursework (most students submit papers to their tutors every week), Oxford University is extremely popular, partly because its graduates relatively easily gain acceptance to graduate programs in top universities and partly because an Oxford degree places graduates on the fast track to the most attractive jobs. I believe that Oxford is popular also because of the city itself—because of what it represents and because of the sheer pleasure of living in this thoroughly unique atmosphere for a while. But I confess that I am biased; both Daniel and I received our doctorates from Oxford. Justin Cartwright, a well-known South Africa–born and Oxford-educated writer, takes a similar position.2 He claims that the city casts a spell on its students. But he is a graduate of Oxford as well. Might this suggest something? Are those who fall in love with the city mainly its students?
Oxford is certainly the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is hard to say when it actually became a university. We know that teaching began in 1096; at first, the content was mostly theological and attendance was paid for by students who chose and hired private tutors. I mentioned this to a few of the students I interviewed, and their reaction was often similar and quite cynical: “That’s not a bad idea,” they quipped, although they were all proud to be at a state-funded university rather than a completely private one. Oxford University has, in fact, been dependent on the state for its success: in 1167, when King Henry II announced that English students would no longer be allowed to attend the University of Paris, Oxford became an attractive alternative.
Historians have different explanations of why Oxford, of all places, became a city with a world-class university; one explanation is that from the outset the quality of teaching was high and the curriculum wide. In the fourteenth century, the pope and the English kings praised Oxford for this. Another reason for Oxford’s success was financial. Well-known masters of religious houses increased their incomes by taking on what were termed “paying pupils,” and thus some teaching was carried on outside the college. This allowed a greater degree of freedom in the subjects taught, so gradually the number of subjects taught increased.
When I asked students, “Why Oxford?” they replied, “We don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t the weather!” They recalled the Oxford blues, a common feeling of sadness associated with the gray December sky and the chilling dampness in the air during that wintry time when sunlight is a rarely caught pleasure.
I remember that, as an Israeli student, I was one of the few who stayed in Oxford over Christmas because it was too expensive to go home and because, like Muslims, Israeli Jews don’t celebrate Christmas. Indeed, the only other students who stayed in Oxford were the Arab students. So, for Israelis and Arabs, at least during this period, Oxford contributed to a sense of commonality and a shared fate.3
As the university grew, early pupils needing lodging stayed at inns that provided room and board. Later, teaching rooms were rented at the inns, which eventually became student residence halls. In the thirteenth century, after violent clashes erupted between students and townspeople, residence halls were built that were designed to house only students, and thus to protect them. In the early fourteenth century there were 120 such halls.4 Since not all students could afford the expense of attending the university, wealthy donors provided financial endowments to establish halls for students from poor families, or—in Walter de Merton’s case—to house his family members who could not afford the fees. This was the start of today’s system of colleges. The earliest colleges were University College, Balliol College, and Merton College, all established between 1249 and 1264.5
An important reform took place in 1878, when academic halls were established for women. Today all colleges accept both women and men, though the fact that I mention that this is true today may suggest that the story of Oxford, education, and learning, is not really an egalitarian story.
They say that there are more pubs in central Oxford than in any other UK city. I am not sure I believe this, but surely not many cities have stories about great academic personalities or famous novelists and poets sitting in this or that pub. Whether these stories are true is another matter, but we will give Oxford the benefit of doubt.
If you are keen on having a large English breakfast in Oxford, you may want to join me in one of my visits to a small café near the Eagle and Child pub. There we can sit and order the most unhealthy but tasty breakfast one can think of. I used to do this when I was a student: it was cheap and comforting. Now that I can afford more and have become a vegetarian, the Eagle and Child pub is more attractive. It is an oddly shaped, very narrow building, with longish rooms and a long history, which you can read about online:6 it is said to have been the lodgings of the chancellor of the exchequer during the English Civil War. That’s not much to boast about, to my mind: Oxford was the royalist capital and strongly supported the king. But if you really like the pub, as I do, you may care to side with those historians who dispute the claim that the pub housed the chancellor. After all, the civil war lasted from 1642 to 1649, and the pub has been an inn only since 1650.7
But the pub’s claim to fame has to do with the Inklings, a group of Oxford writers that included C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. From 1939 to 1963, the Inklings met there every Tuesday at lunchtime. It is said that they did cross the road (St. Giles Street) from time to time to sit in the Lamb and Flag, another well-known pub and Oxford institution. St. John’s College bought both pubs in 2003, and, indeed, Oxford is one city where colleges own pubs and pubs are places where you will find informal academic and literary discussions being held over a couple of pints.
I must confess that I am a bit partial to Oxford. As I said earlier, Oxford is where both Daniel and I received our PhDs. It is where Daniel married his wife, Bing. He is half-Catholic and half-Jewish, she is Chinese, and Daniel wrote a dissertation on the importance of attachment to forms of communal life.8 It was in this city that I, too, married my wife, Yifat, who had come from Israel with me, and where our first child, also Daniel, was born. Many fall in love with Oxford at first but become tired and bored after two to three years; it is a relatively small city (the smallest in our book), roughly a half hour across by bike. But I could never find Oxford boring.
Since I graduated, I have been back every summer for a month or two, and twice for sabbaticals. In my experience, the city, which they say never changes, in fact changes a great deal, if only because there are so many students and they change. But although Oxford’s first associations are with the university and its students, we wish to tell a story of a city that is more than a university but has an ethos dominated by that very basic virtue that the university encapsulates: learning—with all its advantages and drawbacks.
LEARNING, RESEARCH, SCHOLARSHIP: CLARIFYING CONCEPTS
After a long visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden, I leave the garden and turn left. The building next to the rose garden is the Daubeny building, a laboratory built by Charles Daubeny, one of the botany professors responsible for the garden’s care. I read that he paid for the building himself.9
I pondered why academics spend so much energy, time, and even money on research. What drives them to keep studying? With their interminable questions, are they like curious children faced with a mystery they feel compelled to explore? For some types of individuals, it is this curiosity that drives their inquiries. These types are the researchers. They feel that their job is to understand, discover, explore, investigate, and unearth the unknown, and show it to the not-knowing. For researchers, the two stages—researching and telling others—are equally important. In contrast to this type we have a second type: the scholar. For scholars, the purpose of learning is to acquire knowledge. It is not always about discovering the unknown or telling others about the discovery. Scholars who dedicate their lives to study are like a fruit that grows sweeter as it matures. And in the sense that it is about transferring knowledge to others—since the point is not to discover the unknown (although a scholar may encounter something new in her career, new is not what is important here), the scholar’s gaze is fixed on handing down her knowledge to new generations of students. The biologist and physicist represent the researchers, and the intellectual historian the scholars. The biologist and physicist convey the most modern theories and information on how the world works, paying scant attention to great theoreticians, including Galileo and even Einstein. Intellectual historians, on the other hand, teach Aristotle and Plato and are wholly convinced of the intrinsic value of such knowledge.
In contrast to Cambridge, with its outstanding natural science departments, Oxford is better known for the humanities and social sciences (although its natural sciences are also excellent). To be fair, the sciences are so good that in 2009, for example, Oxford was among top three European universities in winning European Union grants for research. Nevertheless, I think it right to say that in Oxford, unlike the Ivy League American universities, learning is more about being a scholar than about doing research. At Oxford, learning includes research, but the ideal Oxford don is a broad-minded intellectual, a scholar who passes his knowledge on to new generations. It is less a person with a long list of publications. Moreover, this attitude is not only the university’s, but also the city’s. Whenever I discuss learning in schools with my Oxford friends, it strikes me that they think of the experience a child or youth should get in school as broadening her mind, mastering a lot of knowledge, rather than focusing on how to do research.
“The college system creates a tremendous teaching burden for the college,” explained the Exeter College rector, Frances Cairncross, when we met at her home. Therefore, I believe that Oxford’s heavy emphasis on scholarship reflects, at least in part, the fact that academics who spend so much time teaching have very little time left for research and publication. An entire ethos has built up around scholarship, which is reflected, among other ways, in a very common phenomenon in Oxford, known to many as “the book fetish.” People are extremely proud of their libraries, and Blackwell’s Bookshop on Broad Street is perhaps the busiest bookstore in England. “It’s as if being in the presence of books delivers exactly what a fetish object promises, supernatural powers, or power over others” writes Justin Cartwright, describing his return to the city where he studied.10
I recall my first visit to my supervisor’s study, with its mounds of books. The very thought that he must have read all those books made me feel like an ignorant person. On the other hand, I felt very lucky to be supervised by such a scholar.
LEARNING: CONTEMPLATION AND CREATIVITY
Every summer I go to Oxford to work, and usually I work in the Bodleian Library. This is probably one of the most uncomfortable places I’ve ever worked in. The chairs are too wide and too deep, and they are not high enough for reading comfortably; the tables are much too high, and the light (should God give Oxford a reprieve from its fate of raining enough to ruin one’s day) cannot penetrate the ungenerously sized window. Should you wish to use your laptop, the few seats with plugs nearby (laptops must be too noisy and modern for Oxford libraries) probably are already occupied. Yet, despite this, the library’s unique ambiance attracts hundreds of people who insist on studying here. In my experience, this has been the place where many of my most creative ideas have been born—perhaps discomfort leads to inspiration and creativity? I’ll try sitting on nails next.
Artists might agree with this notion that one must suffer to create. But where I come from in the mostly sun-drenched Middle East, academics want comfortable, spacious, sun-bleached rooms, libraries, and laboratories in order to create. Yet, in Oxford the “coolest” thing is to have your room as dark, as cozy, and as messy as can be.
I remember climbing the staircase to Professor G. A. Cohen’s room in All Souls College for my end-of-first-year interview. He already had my paper and doctoral research proposal for approval of my continued research. I climbed the many stairs to his room, built in 1438, my heart beating rather quickly, partly from the climb and partly from the momentousness of the occasion. The staircase was very dark and a bit creepy, I thought. Professor Cohen was the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, holding a chair established in 1944 for the great scholar G.D.H. Cole of the Fabian Society. I had been nervously and anxiously awaiting this meeting for several weeks. I knocked on the heavy wooden door, but there was no reply. I knocked a second time, but still no reply. I waited another two to three minutes, and then knocked again. Just as I was about to turn around and ask if anyone had seen Professor Cohen, a voice behind me said, making me jump, “Why don’t you knock on the door?” In the darkness and silence, the last thing I expected was a voice behind me. How had I missed noticing him climbing the staircase? I turned around. There was Professor Cohen, smiling cheerfully: “Did I scare you? Won’t you come in?” He pushed the door for me. It was unlocked. And why shouldn’t it be? I thought. This is Oxford. We entered the dark room, and I was hit by the smell of books, paper, and less than fresh air. This was hardly surprising, as the windows, tiny fifteenth-century windows, had probably not been opened in the past few centuries: had they opened, it would have been onto Oxford’s High Street, nominated by the local press in 1987 as the most polluted street in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of a couple of streets in industrial Poland. But here, inside the college room, we were protected from the pollution and probably also from the real world, where air smells, not of books, but of pollution from car fumes.
Professor Cohen pointed to a sofa—which was so old and its cloth so unraveled that I remember thinking it must have belonged to his great-great-grandfather—and offered to put the kettle on. He deposited himself in a chair near the sofa, but then rose, went over to his desk, and pulled out my paper from a huge, disordered pile, and deposited himself once more in his chair, saying, “So, Mr. de-Shalit, you think Ronald Dworkin’s theory cannot be applied to intergenerational cases?!!”
That was the start of one of the most stimulating philosophical discussions I have ever had, the two of us talking, with piles of books all around us on the floor. When I think back, I am reminded of an amusing quotation from the Canadian writer and professor Robertson Davies, who comments wryly that to be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend and a miser.11 We sat for a long time in the dark (Prof. Cohen never bothered to turn on the light, nor did he remember to make us that cup of tea after his old kettle had managed to boil) and discussed my rather undeveloped ideas profoundly and intensely.
Back to the Bodleian Library: not only is it uncomfortable but the building is not even beautiful. It is the very thought that you are sitting in such venerable surroundings, where so many scholars have sat, and where (in what is now an exhibition room open to the public) the English parliament assembled during England’s Civil War (1642–51), that provides sufficient reason to study there. The room where parliament once sat has not changed in the past four hundred-odd years and, among other things, is used for filming historical dramas, including the excellent The Madness of King George.12 This only adds to the unique aura of the “Bodley,” as it is known to Oxford scholars. Perhaps this and the closeness of the old library room with its rare handwritten books allow students and scholars alike to sit and contemplate, feeling “special” and “unique.” When questioned, many admit feeling extremely fortunate to be able to study in such a building. Do they feel part of a chain? I ask, to which they reply modestly, Oh, no, even though they do feel inspired by their knowledge that thousands of scholars, past and present, have sat here, in an unbroken chain of scholarship spanning several centuries.
Entering the gigantic building of the Bodleian Library feels like entering a fortified castle. First, you make your way past dozens of tourists and unconventional types who sit on the outer steps on Broad Street, eating their lunch from plastic containers from the nearby covered market. Then you walk through the gate (in an ugly metal fence enclosing the building), past the offices, and into a quadrangle with large flagstones. The atmosphere is still fairly “normal,” with Japanese tourists snapping pictures and Italian summer school boys chasing summer school girls, all wearing practically nothing. But once you see the doors of the Bodleian’s multiple entrances, which are actually the doors to its Old Schools, with their Latin names painted in golden letters (Schola Moralis Philosophiae, the School of Moral Philosophy; Schola Logicae, the School of Logic; Schola Linguarum, the School of Languages, where Greek and Hebrew were taught), and once you see the sign, “Silence Please,”13 you start whispering as though you’d entered a cathedral.
Cricket on a Sunday, by Christ Church College, Oxford. Photograph © Douglas Freer. Courtesy of Shutterstock.
The colleges try to stimulate their fellows (lecturers and students) to creativity by supplying the right atmosphere. Their approach is mens sana in corpore sano—a healthy mind in a healthy body. The idea is that if you offer students and scholars an aesthetic environment and facilities to carry on their sports (cricket, walking, jogging), they will intellectually develop more soundly. Many colleges therefore count cricket grounds and sport facilities among their attractions.
When in Oxford during my summer research breaks, I enjoy meandering over to St. Hilda’s College in the late afternoon. St. Hilda’s is a beautiful building next to the River Charles. On the opposing riverbank one can see tennis courts and cricket grounds, which, when not flooded, as they often are in winter, are dotted with men and women in white, their voices drifting through the summer air. Occasionally you may encounter a theater group rehearsing, and, if you are fortunate (there are long lines), you can hire a rowboat (or a punt, which is a long, narrow boat) and watch the student production of a Shakespeare play from the river—free of charge, naturally. Indeed, in 1898 St. Hilda’s College bought its first rowboat, which it called the Wild Goose.14 The first punt was purchased in 1900. I wonder how many they own today; probably several. Punting is tranquility, and even if you lose the punt (the pole you push into the muddy floor of the river to drive yourself along) a couple of times and have to jump into the river to retrieve it, the joys of punting are great. Above all, I enjoy coming here to gaze at the beautiful garden and watch the smooth, gentle movement of the river. When we were studying at Oxford, my friend and colleague Saul used to say that when he finished his doctorate, he would photograph the landscape at St. Hilda’s, make a massive print, and stick it on his window at home (which is not in England), so he could still see the landscape. He said, and I agree, that bringing this tranquil landscape to mind should have the same quality as formulating an interesting philosophical idea.
LEARNING: THE RIGHT CLIMATE FOR STUDY
While I was writing my dissertation for my D.Phil., a friend with whom I had studied as an undergraduate in Israel visited me in Oxford. He joined me in a class called “Star Wars” because the three teachers—Gerald Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, and Derek Parfit—were considered the best in their fields, and their approach to one another was competitive and somewhat antagonistic. Dozens of students packed into the library room at All Souls College, but I can’t recall which of the three “stars” lectured and who “slaughtered” him (our way of referring to the philosophical critique each lecturer was put through by a colleague), but it was certainly an experience. On our way out, my friend, who was very excited about the lecture, mentioned his dislike for the All Souls College architecture. He felt it was too dark and overwhelming, making students feel like ants. What my friend said reminded me of my recurring feeling while listening to my exalted professors, namely, that I was nothing, that I would always be nothing, and that I could never become such a great philosopher. My friend, however, did not let this feeling interfere with his ambitions. Back at my lodgings, he told me that he had decided to apply to study at Oxford, which he indeed did, and today he is an outstanding philosopher.
But not everyone dislikes gray stone towers. Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows loved this architectural style. He claimed that he was often inspired by “the good grey gothic on the one hand and, on the other hand, the cool, secluded reaches of the Thames.”15 So, what about these buildings attracts so many students and scholars, and why are artists, novelists, and freaks drawn to the city, not just to the university?
When I asked scientists, philosophers, and scholars these questions, I found a lack of consensus regarding the ideal circumstances and conditions for research and scholarship. They generally believed that for research, especially hard-core scientific research, comfortable conditions, a well-equipped laboratory, good-quality computers, good graduate students, and research assistants are needed, and perhaps even a challenge from rival colleagues in the same field.16 But for scholarship and teaching, they believe that what was needed was tranquility, lots of spare time, and, instead of competition, cooperation and informal discussions over coffee or a beer, and a stroll in the park with colleagues and students. Indeed, many first-time tourists to Oxford are impressed with its tranquility and inspirational charm. “The world seems slower here,” said one tourist. But the blend of old buildings and open parks, students chatting as they walk through the streets in their draped gowns, and the abundance of pubs, bookshops, and music shops all create an atmosphere of calm. Add to this the multinational composition of the student population, and you get an atmosphere of tolerance and pluralism. Throw in Oxford’s stunningly rich past and long history of academic and cultural achievement, and you get scholars who believe in the importance of learning and see their freedom and leisure time as things legitimately provided to them by the state to engage in learning, contemplation, and teaching.
Most of the people I interviewed felt that Oxford University would not be the same if it were located anywhere else. I asked them the following: Say you took Oxford University, with its students, dons, laboratories, and libraries, and moved it all to a modern city with wonderful facilities. Would it still be the same brilliant university? Would it be as good? Most said unhesitatingly, no. What I think they meant was that the special X Factor that made the university so good and so special was its environment, its historic buildings—essentially, the entire town of Oxford. In my experience, Oxford has an intimacy that makes you feel at home in a way that is conducive to contemplation and study. A well-known professor of jurisprudence, Joseph Raz, once told me that Oxford is not a real place. Perhaps he is right. But it is still a place that arouses such a strong feeling of intimacy that very quickly you feel comfortable and at home.
Oxford University establishes this intimacy through its tutorial teaching system. It has taken face-to-face teaching to the extreme, even though the system is not very efficient.17 Nowadays, most universities adopt the “frontal” teaching approach, in which a lecturer stands in front of a class of some fifty to five hundred students, but Oxford has remained faithful to its tutorial system, in which at most three students attend meetings with their teacher. Nick Crafts, the economist who wrote of the “loss of distance” with the Internet, electronic communication, and virtual communities, argues that the death of distance has been greatly exaggerated and shows that some activities cannot be practiced unless they take place here and now. Higher education, he maintains, especially graduate studies and research, must be face-to-face or it cannot be effective.18
Together, the city and its structures create an intellectual device known as “Oxford,” whose sole purpose is to support and encourage the pursuit of learning and knowledge by its students and scholars. Take, for example, the magnificent thirty-two-panel ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre, which opened in 1668 and is now used for lectures and university ceremonies (tickets for excellent concerts—I recommend them—are available at reasonable prices). The ceiling, designed to give the illusion of open skies, depicts “the Triumph of Art and Science over Ignorance.”19 The “Phil and Jim”20 school, which my children attended when we were in Oxford on sabbatical, provides another example. The school has a good-sized playground and spreading lawn where the children can play football (or soccer, as it is called in the United States). The school’s classrooms face these open spaces and are so full of light they feel more like a home than a school. The school encourages its pupils to walk or cycle to school rather than come by car with their parents. This is a neighborhood school, the teachers said, and we should try to feel this by walking to school. My children still remember it as a place where they grew and were empowered. Indeed, when I try to explain that the atmosphere in Oxford is highly conducive to study, what I really mean is that it is a facilitative atmosphere that is also empowering.
I spoke with a young woman who works at the Innerspace Shop on Broad Street in Oxford. She was born in Africa and now lives south of Oxford. “Do you like Oxford?” I asked her. “On sunny days,” she replied, smiling apologetically. “I know what you mean,” I commiserated. When I first arrived in Oxford as a student, I sensed immediately that this was the right atmosphere for studying. But that was in September, when the days were bright and clear. In December, I felt a gloom settle over me. And when I discussed this with the locals, they merely laughed knowingly, saying, “It’s the Oxford Blues.” On those days, I no longer felt the atmosphere was conducive to study. David Miller, a top political theory professor and my esteemed supervisor, once teased me, “The rule is there can never be more than two sunny days a week in Oxford!” And there I am, asking a student who came to Oxford a year ago from a desert climate whether the rain bothers him. He says, “Yes, a bit, but isn’t it why there are so many pubs?” We both laugh and he adds, on a serious note this time, “Not to mention concerts, and theaters, and opera.” Indeed, given that it cannot control the climate or the weather, Oxford has chosen to provide its scholars with the best possible intellectual and cultural climate for their minds to flourish.
Establishing a climate conducive to learning has always been Oxford’s goal, to such an extent that in the 1830s, when plans were made to build a railway through the city, Oxford University resisted it on the grounds that it might “imperil the morals of its students,” and Christ Church College refused to let a railway station be built on its land.21 In the end, the university could not stem the tide of progress, and agreed to the railway station on condition that the university be allowed to monitor students and their train destinations. This condition did not, however, assuage the fears of Oxford’s first chancellor, Arthur Wellesley, aka the first Duke of Wellington, who feared that railways could encourage the “wrong people” to travel.22 He worried that students might begin taking trains to forbidden places and undermine their moral fiber. Indeed, Oxford University’s concern about its students’ morals was part of fostering a climate favorable for learning and scholarship. Quite unbelievably, Oxford University still has “moral tutors” for students.23
At the entrance to Christ Church Meadow—an incredibly beautiful, pastoral, simple meadow and popular Oxford walking spot owned by Christ Church College—is a notice with the following caution: “Meadow Keepers and Constables are instructed to prevent the entrance into the Meadow of all beggars, persons in rugged or very dirty clothes, persons of improper character or who are not decent in appearance and behaviour, and to prevent indecent, rude or disorderly conduct of every description.” This notice is further evidence of the university’s feelings of responsibility for providing its students with the right climate for study, among other things by preventing poverty, misery, and ugliness from inflicting themselves on them. Strolling across the meadow and noticing the tourists and nonstudents who are enjoying the fresh air, however, I am struck that these days, most of the students who seek inspiration (and who are, naturally, not affluent) rent flats near the Cowley Road area, which is not wealthy, where most of the Asian and African immigrants reside, and where the streets are not as clean and tidy as, say, the north Oxford neighborhood of Summertown.
Even Oxford street names reflect the city’s respect for learning and scholarship. A narrow bridleway running from High Street to Merton Street (known as Horseman Lane in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, apparently in reference to the presence of a horse-powered mill), was renamed Logic Lane in the seventeenth century, after the school of logicians at its north end.24 In the northern section of the neighborhood of Jericho there is a small bridge over the canal called Aristotle Bridge, which leads to Aristotle Lane. A number of park users have formed a group called “Friends of Aristotle Lane,” which works with the Oxford City Council to improve the park.25 A city that names its streets, bridges, and lanes after Aristotle or a historic school of logic is surely trying to deliver a rather specific message.
One day, I heard lively music coming from Queen’s Lane and went along to find the Oxford University Brass Band playing in the open air. I asked the players if there was a special occasion and they informed me that Oxford had a new Lord Mayor and they were playing for him. I remember that morning I had walked over to the Oxford Botanic Garden, located opposite the famous Magdalen Bridge and Magdalen College, and was told by the lady at the ticket office that there would be a special celebration for the new mayor that afternoon, and entrance to the garden would be free from noon to 5 PM. This brought me back to the botanic garden that afternoon. “Oh, you came back!” she said, greeting me with a nice smile. The garden was incredible: flowers everywhere, musicians playing, children dancing cheerfully around them, families out walking. I recall that at the time I had a touch of writer’s block regarding my doctoral dissertation. I had new ideas, but I found them overwhelming and difficult to express. So I made it my habit to visit the garden and walk along its paths, letting my mind relax in the tranquil beauty of my surroundings. Then, I would return to my desk and find that the ideas flowed readily from my head and hands onto the computer.
The Oxford garden is not only the oldest botanical garden in Britain; it is one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. It was founded by Sir Henry Danvers, the Earl of Danby, who in 1621 donated five thousand pounds (the equivalent of £3.5 million in today’s money) for a “Physic Garden” to grow herbs and plants for medicinal and scientific research.26 In those days the garden’s purpose was “the glorification of God and the furtherance of learning.”27 Perhaps not in line with glorifying all Gods, the garden was built on the site of a medieval Jewish cemetery.28 As is sometimes the case even today, the project started off on a grandiose scale but, once it was built, the money ran out for things like maintenance and the warden’s salary. Also, like many young scientists today, the first head gardener, Jacob Bobart, a German botanist who came to England to supervise the garden, was so devoted to the project that he worked for seven years before receiving any salary.
Thinking about this man’s name, Jacob, his story reminds me of the biblical Jacob, who worked for seven years to marry Laban’s daughter, Rachel, only to be told that he would first have to marry her older sister, Leah. In the end, he worked seven more years to win the hand of his beloved Rachel.
This Jacob, being similarly romantic in his attitude toward his work and his studies, was responsible for establishing the status and tradition of the Oxford Botanic Garden. He and his son, also named Jacob Bobart, cared for the garden for seventy-eight years. Bobart senior was the first in the world to develop a plant classification system and almost certainly (we are not sure because the catalogue was published anonymously) produced the first listing and plant descriptions, published in 1648. Bobart the younger became Oxford’s first botany professor and the first to initiate a botanical garden seed exchange system. The oldest tree in the garden today is an English yew planted by Bobart senior in 1645.
One year I was invited to lecture at a political science seminar. As a guest lecturer in the city for a couple of days, I was given a college room. The porter told me proudly that it was the best room in the college. Fortunately, it made up for its lack of TV and radio with its rich character. It was a spacious room that faced the cloister and the lawn. I felt that if I stayed in this room a month I could write half a book. The room had a chair, an old-fashioned writing desk, a standing lamp, a huge clock on the wall, and about fifty volumes of the journal Punch, starting with 1884. Outside lay a deer park, and upon opening my window I caught sight of grotesque stone gargoyles, carved for ornamental purposes though some say they were political, reflecting the students’ discomfort with their teachers. With the window open, I could hear footsteps downstairs, which sounded as though those who made them hadn’t a care in the world. Tourists take life easy in Oxford, soaking up the ambience, and observing and admiring the students.
Magdalen College Chapel, 6 pm, choral Evensong. I go in. Concert posters: Haydn’s Creation, the New College Choir. In Blackwell Music Shop (whose logo proclaims it “The Knowledge Retailer”), I observe the CDs of Oxford choirs: New College Choir, Magdalen College Choir, Lincoln College Choir, Christ Church Cathedral Choir, City of Oxford Choir, Oxford Gospel Choir, Oxford Bach Choir, Queen’s College Choir. Some choirs in Oxford are not selling CDs at the moment, but you can listen to them in concert: Oxford Girls’ Choir, North Oxford Choir, Summertown Choral Society, Oxford University Choir, St. Giles Choir, Oxford Children’s Choir, Oxford Georgian Choir, two choirs from Worcester College, the Oxford Welsh Male Voice Choir, and perhaps a few more. Eighteen choirs, nearly one for every eight thousand residents.
Oxford is home to quite a sizable group of novelists, poets, and artists. During Oxford Art Weeks in May and June each year, artists open their houses, offering the public a chance to visit the homes and studios of four hundred Oxfordshire artists and crafts people.29 Amazingly, that is about one artist’s home per four hundred residents. In addition to its art weeks, Oxford is famous for its Literary Festival, which attracts writers both local and from outside Oxford.30
The Literary Festival’s executive director, Angela Prysor-Jones, says she is not sure whether she sees her work as a job or a passion. I have known Angela for some time now, ever since her children, Francesca and Dan, became good friends with my own children, Shiri and Hillel, during one of my Oxford sabbaticals. So I think I know the answer: probably a passion, because no doubt there are better-paid jobs around. This is also true of university faculty, or colleges teachers, or teachers in Oxford’s reputable state (that is public, not private) schools.31 Angela observes that although her job as festival director is high-pressure and involves a great deal of organization, everything seems to go smoothly and calmly. The two of us are seated in her kitchen, enjoying our tea. I ask her about the festival, and while she talks I watch the birds in her garden, which at its far border melts into a large green meadow running down to the canal—or is it a river?
I have known the family for some time and I like them a lot, so, making an effort to be objective, I ask myself whether I am experiencing this other-worldly feeling of mind and body, this exquisite sense of tranquility and spirituality, because we are friends, or because we are discussing literature, poetry, and this chapter while drinking a “nice cup of English tea,” or because we are gazing languidly out the window at this beautiful garden in the gently drizzling rain. I conclude that my feeling is objective. This is Oxford, a combination of factors and feelings, a pure moment of Oxford’s unique magic, magic that I believe many people in this city experience. Or do they? Later we will explore whether everyone experiences Oxford in the same way.
LEARNING: THE ROLE OF NONCONFORMIST BEHAVIOR AND TRADITION
The idea of nonconformism is often used in regard to private matters such as sexual habits or taste in food or the arts. Here I use the concept of “eccentrics,” to imply people who hold uncommon tastes or who do not behave in line with the common social codes of behavior. When I discuss nonconformism here, what I have in mind is intellectual nonconformism—views, ideas, or arguments that are nonconformist in the sense of radically diverging from the mainstream ideas of the person’s community. In this sense, to be nonconformist one’s views, ideas, and reasoning must be unpredictable. Society expects people to act, react, and hold views that are consistent with societal experience and knowledge of what is prevalent and everyday. For example, if 95 percent of people react to C by doing or believing X, then we would expect people facing C to do or believe X. When 5 percent of the members of a population deviate from the norm, they constitute a nonconformist minority. The point at which irregular behavior shifts into nonconformism is a function of infrequency. If only one person in a thousand believes something, then that person is likely to be a nonconformist. But to be considered a nonconformist, an extra something is needed. A nonconformist is someone whose beliefs or views aren’t just different because that individual belongs to a minority subgroup. Note that we are not talking about someone who opts out of society. A nonconformist is someone who insists on speaking out, saying what she wishes to say loud and clear.
A commonly held view is that in order to foster a climate of learning, society should encourage nonconformism. John Stuart Mill is still regarded as an advocate of this view. In his book On Liberty, which was published in the 1850s, Mill asks why we as a society need “troublemakers” who critically scrutinize our beliefs and question our institutions. He answers that when we believe something, there are three options: we could be wrong, we could be partly wrong, or we could be right. If we are wrong, it is clear why we need nonconformists to challenge our beliefs—we wouldn’t want our beliefs to be wrong. The same is true, most times, when we are partly right and partly wrong—it is better if our misguided beliefs are pointed out to us and put right. But if our beliefs are well-founded, why would we want them challenged? Mill offers a simple but attractive reason for testing our well-founded beliefs to make sure they are right: an unquestioned belief quickly becomes a prejudice, with a consequent loss of moral status. I would slightly modify Mill’s position. Whereas he argues that allowing nonconformism is the path to truth, I suggest that by allowing nonconformists to challenge our beliefs we can avoid certain errors (which is different from arguing that nonconformist thinking is more likely to lead to the truth). One way or the other, nonconformists have a crucial role in society’s progress.
But (theoretically) learning may be just a reiteration of traditional wisdom, in which case nonconformism would be only an impediment. Oxford’s answer to this is clear. Learning for Oxford is never just about repeating traditional wisdom: even when learning is about the past and the great masters, it is always interpretive, and therefore new knowledge is always acquired even during the process of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next. As Justin Cartwright puts it, “The tutorial system, by design or accident, is addressed directly to the questioning of received wisdom and the probing of meaning.”32 A well-known postcard sold in Oxford shows a gargoyled person agonizing over his studies. The text supplies the wisdom: “The more you study, the more you know; the more you know, the more you forget; the more you forget, the less you know; so why study?” I think that this (corny) cynicism is actually expressing a sincere Oxford belief that the aim of learning is to broaden knowledge. Therefore, learning cannot accompany a conservative outlook because it is about self-transformation. After we learn something, we are not the same as we were before we learned it.
Nonconformism, or at least religious Nonconformism,33 was accepted by Oxford University fairly early. In 1871, when the University Test Act abolished all religious tests for nontheological degrees at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, the initiator of the reform, Prime Minister William Gladstone, was anxious to see a Nonconformist college established in Oxford. Thus in 1886, Mansfield College was founded as a “Nonconformist College.” Today, a portrait of Oliver Cromwell hangs in Mansfield’s senior common room and portraits of the English dissenters of 1662 (who challenged the Church of England) watch over the library, as if to guard the college’s Nonconformist freedom.34 But this was not the first case of tolerating nonconformists. For example, in 1653, two hundred years before the founding of Mansfield College, Jesus College accepted the Nonconformist Samuel Jones as a fellow. It was just one example of Oxford’s tolerance of nonconformism at a time when conformism was the rule.
A few steps from Folly Bridge in the direction of the Carfax junction is an absolutely marvelous exhibition. The Bate Collection of Musical Instruments in Oxford University’s Faculty of Music is an impressive collection of some two thousand instruments showing “the musical and mechanical development of all wind and percussion instruments from the Renaissance and the Baroque to modern times.”35 It was donated to Oxford in 1963 by Philip Bate. I visited the collection once while staying in Oxford and was delighted to find so many instruments on display. I have no doubt that every music lover would be thrilled and pleased with this collection. But, above all, I experienced a sense of admiration for a city and a university that have established a place like this for us—citizens, tourists, students—to visit. I felt that if I had not already been a musician, I would have begun looking for a music teacher. I’m convinced that no one could be indifferent to the richness and beauty of music and musical instruments after experiencing such an exhibition.
Originally, Mr. Bate gifted these historic instruments under the condition that they be available for students to play. Therefore, many of the collection’s instruments are actually in use. The collection is open to the public for just a few hours a day and the display is “cramped.”36 But visitors do not mind too much when they can see the harpsichord that may well have been Handel’s own, along with many other seventeenth-century instruments. The collection’s website is very open about the questions regarding the history of Handel’s harpsichord: “There is an uncannily close resemblance between this harpsichord and that on which Handel is leaning in the portrait by Philippe Mercier. Michael Cole, who first noted this resemblance, has published a detailed article on it in Early Music (February 1993).”37
Oxford University’s high respect for nonconformism attracts nonconformists to the city, enhancing its atmosphere and encouraging a very tolerant attitude, which also influences and inspires the school system. When I spent two years in Oxford with my family, my two children went to Church of England schools because they were the schools in our neighborhood, Jericho. As a Jew, I had a few qualms about this: Would they be expected to go to church? Would they have to conform to the school’s religious denomination? To my surprise, this was far from the case. The schoolchildren represented many different religions: Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and, of course, Christianity. A lot of parents were secular, in fact. The school policy was to enlighten children about all religions. They took the children to meet rabbis and Buddhist scholars, and of course they took them to a church. The headmistress asked my wife to come and explain to our son’s class about Passover and its origin and customs. Our children returned home one day excited about having met Hindu parents who explained their religion and customs. By the end of the year, my children were very informed about different religions and were certainly more open and tolerant to other cultures than they had been previously.38
It is also widely accepted that nonconformism, or what academics often call “thinking outside the box,” is the basis for creativity in learning and research. It was after a year or so of living in the city that I understood that nonconformism was encouraged not only by the university but by the city as well; take, for example, the celebration of First of May (May Day), with traditional Morris dancers and a group jump by dozens of residents and students into the River Charles’s icy water at 5 am as the choir sings from the nearby college tower.
Yet, one could ask: To what extent is nonconformism about nonconformity, and when does not conforming equal eccentricity? Oxford tends to take nonconformity so seriously that it seems to embrace behavior that may be considered eccentric. Whether this aids learning is a moot point, although it is certainly an asset to Oxford tourism—especially the numerous legends about ghosts.39 Now, ghost stories are not necessarily about eccentric behavior, but the point is that they do form an important role in Oxford’s culture, and this is quite eccentric. Even a few college websites and information guides contain stories about ghosts. But ghost stories are not the only signs of eccentricity. Both the older and younger Bobarts of the botanic garden were quite eccentric. Reports were that Bobart the elder would deck his beard with pieces of silver, and that he had a pet goat.40 A prominent philosopher, still active today, was known for giving tutorials while taking a shower. Whether this is a myth or a true story is really not important; the point is that he was so eccentric that everyone believed the story.
There is a shop on Cowley Road that is named after its phone number—722027. The sign outside the shop states, oddly, “We are not open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays. Saturdays we are open only a few hours.” Is this really a shop? If they really wanted to sell anything, would they be open only one day a week?
One evening I stroll further along Cowley Road, where I come to the Hobgoblin Pub, which advertises archly, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Inside, the atmosphere is charming. People are singing along to some guitar music, and the bar staff do not hide their appreciation for the not very professional guitar players.
So why is there such eccentric behavior in Oxford? Some might say that college dons can indulge in eccentric behavior because their jobs are secure: tenure gives them license to behave unusually. But if the answer were so simple, we would find eccentric behavior in numerous other universities where faculty members have tenure. But we don’t. So there must be another reason why eccentric behavior is so common in Oxford. It is only when we compare Oxford to other towns where eccentric behavior abounds, such as Berkeley, California, that the uncomplicated thought occurs: maybe eccentricity flourishes where tolerance and acceptance are found. People in Oxford are not put off by eccentricity, nor are they surprised by eccentric behavior or taste. As a local friend tells me, they are so used to it that they often don’t notice it. They simply don’t see extreme behavior or taste as eccentric in the least.
Underneath the Bridge of Sighs is a tourist information sign. It states that the mayor of Oxford inspects the city wall every three years because of an agreement made back in 1379, when permission was given to build New College inside the city walls. I sigh beneath the Bridge of Sighs: nowadays the wall is in the center of town. A city with this kind of tradition must be eccentric!
Interestingly, some argue that there is no need to be a nonconformist to study and become a scholar. On the contrary, to study you must sometimes feel connected to a scholarly tradition, feel part of a community of individuals who are deeply enthusiastic about what they do, even if they are doing whatever it is—reading, research, studying, writing—alone. Exeter College’s homepage says: “Step into our front quadrangle, and you are in another world…. magnificent Victorian Gothic Chapel, whose spire dominates the Turl St. skyline; and the loveliest gardens in Oxford…. [I]n the summer it is one of the nicest places imaginable to sit with a book, or just sit, or play croquet.” The website discusses the history of the place, Exeter’s famous past students J.R.R. Tolkien and William Morris, and its “world-class teaching.” The Christ Church College website expresses pride in the “fascinating history and distinguished people who have studied here,” among them John Taverner, Philip Sidney, John Locke, Robert Hooke, John Wesley, Robert Peel, William Gladstone, Frederick Lindemann, William Walton, W. H. Auden, Hugh Trevor Roper, Jan Morris, David Dimbleby, Rowan Williams, Richard Curtis, and Howard Goodall. Indeed, the people who have lived and worked in Oxford are part of its atmosphere. It is as though this heritage is “forcing” you in the same direction, toward the life of the mind.
The church near Queen’s Lane has a sign stating that St. Edmund of Abingdon, the first master and theologian of Oxford University, who later become the archbishop of Canterbury, is buried there. He taught at Oxford in 1195–1201 and 1214–1222. As I stand reading the sign and looking around, a couple of tourists come over and join me. They read the sign, look at each other, and say, “Wow”—a small word that says a lot. These tourists are secular Americans, and yet when I ask them what they are feeling, they say they feel that “it must be something” to study and live in a city where a medieval saint taught and is buried.
In 1986, when I was accepted to Oxford to write my doctoral thesis, the university wrote asking me whether I would like to be addressed as “Sir.” This was apparently because my surname has “de” in it (“de-Shalit”). I replied, “‘Comrade’ will be enough!”
Earlier, I discussed the fact that Oxford offers the right atmosphere for studying not only to its students but also to nonstudent residents. But sometimes providing the right atmosphere can deteriorate into elitism, which always seemed to me not only stupid in its own right but also instrumentally harmful to science. For example, in my humble view, the Oxford institution of “High Table” is about snobbery and elitism. High table is basically a special table for college teachers, with a richer menu, more wine, and more deferential service. It costs extra, of course. The architecture of the dining halls of Oxford colleges was built with this tradition in mind: students would be seated at long tables down the center of the hall while the college master and fellows sat at the end of the room at a separate table on a raised platform, facing the students. Thus the experience of dining reinforced the superior status of the master and fellows, who were often served a special menu. Here is how the website of one of the colleges describes these formal dinners:
Formal Hall: On Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, formal hall is served from 7 pm and lasts about 45 minutes. It is a three-course meal, which costs about £4, served by the kitchen staff. Everyone must wear gowns and dress is appropriate to the occasion. After everyone is seated, those dining at High Table process in and stand behind their chairs. The fellow presiding at High Table bangs on the table, and everyone rises. Grace is said in Latin, after which everyone sits down again to enjoy the meal. On Sundays wine is provided; on Tuesdays and Thursdays you are allowed to bring your own…. It’s a great place to meet and get to know people.41
When I was a student, many of my fellow students looked forward to being invited to dine at High Table by their supervisors or other college fellows at least once a year. As for me, I turned down invitations to dine at High Table. During my sabbatical, however, I was invited by a colleague and decided to attend. The food was nothing to write home about and the atmosphere—polite conversation with strangers seated on either side of me, smart attire, and blessings in Latin—neither suited my mood nor impressed me. I have never attended High Table again. My position is simple. I believe a university must be egalitarian: a community engaged in sharing learning that abolishes class and all forms of distinctions and barriers. A university should espouse the values of humanism and Enlightenment, and equal status. So, even though it is good to respect scholars, there is no need to establish a barrier when people are engaged in something as basic as eating, even if you call it “dining.”42 Anyway, between us, I have always felt that Oxford University introduced the idea of High Table to compensate for the food being so … well, not wanting to insult anyone, shall we just say “ordinary.”
The former editor of the Economist and well-known journalist Frances Cairncross is now rector of Exeter College, one of the few female heads of an Oxford college. We sit in her study, which is just how you would imagine a study to be: full of books and papers. There is a long desk with a computer and printer, and the sense that a lot goes on here. She listens as I discuss our project and book. I ask her whether class is an issue in her college, and about “town versus gown.” She is remarkably candid, saying, “Notice how the colleges’ architecture and social structure are anything but inclusive.” I agree. Ms. Cairncross explains: the colleges are self-contained; their windows face an internal courtyard. The courtyards imply that the action is inside the college, the students are meant to concentrate on what is happening inside the college, not outside. Ms. Cairncross compares this with London’s terraced houses, home to working-class and bourgeois families alike, where the doors open directly onto the street. In London, she says, houses are connected to the street, whereas in the university, courtyards separate the colleges and student residences from the street and city life.
I remember giving a paper in Brighton some years ago. Brighton University had taken the step of knocking down the walls that divide the town from the university. My seminar was advertised in the city through the local newspaper, and nonstudents were invited to attend. Indeed, quite a few came. After the formal seminar, we all went to a pub and continued our discussion there. Then we went to a restaurant, where those who had jobs paid for those who did not. I think of the new colleges in Oxford—St. Anne’s College, for example. Their new buildings were added onto the older ones, usually using a lot of glass, so they are transparent. Since these buildings face the street, there might be a message here—of openness to the public. I think of Berlin, where glass buildings are meant to reflect the triumph of democracy and liberty (see the chapter on Berlin). I mention these thoughts to Ms. Cairncross, but she is skeptical. The buildings are built of glass, she says, because it was cheaper, and the entrance to the dorms is still via the inner courtyard. So the college is still oriented inward.
Do students mix with city people? Not exactly, says Ms. Cairncross. Her explanation is original and offers food for thought. She was a student at St. Anne’s College when it was an all-women college. The women needed to go to the men’s colleges when they wanted to socialize, but they were not allowed into the men’s rooms. Male and female students therefore went out to the pubs, where they mixed with local residents. Because nowadays the colleges are co-ed and more liberal, students can get everything they want inside the college. They have less need to go out, and therefore go out less, mingling less with local residents.
I follow the instructions in the well-designed “Oxford Science Walk” leaflet.43 I cross into Christ Church Meadow via Rose Lane, and follow the wall to the right. There I find a plaque in honor of James Sadler. Sadler was the son of a pastry cook who became an assistant at the Ashmolean Museum and became the first English balloonist when he flew a hot-air balloon to Woodeaton, six miles from Oxford, in 1784. Twenty-seven years later he flew from Birmingham to Boston. Though he did not cross the Atlantic (this was the original Boston, in Lincolnshire), this balloon ascent marked a great English accomplishment and breakthrough in human flight.
So is Oxford University closed off to working-class people? Of course not. In fact, the university, with its idea of learning, allows people to achieve social mobility through education and knowledge rather than through property and income, at least theoretically. Oxford students are, of course, assessed on their academic performance rather than their social origins; therefore, Oxford offers some social mobility via study. I say “some” because one would expect an education from Oxford to provide far more social mobility than it does. But the reason is very understandable: most British high school graduates cannot go to Oxford University because there are so few places available. Moreover, almost half of Oxford’s undergraduates attended private schools.44 Students who were not accepted to Oxford either attend other universities or are below general university entry requirements. This means, in fact, that Oxford University contributes to perpetuating a class system in which the poorer, more disadvantaged segments of society have fewer chances for social mobility. This is true not only for Oxford and other leading English universities, but for top-ranking universities everywhere. The fact that there is only one (or maybe two or three) “top” university makes it the most popular and sought-after by students. “Top” universities will accept only the brightest students, often from the best schools and wealthier families. Because graduates of the top-ranking universities have the best chances of obtaining the choicest career positions, the top universities essentially help to perpetuate social class differences.45
Some colleges try to correct this. Exeter College, Ms. Cairncross told me, feels it has a duty to the town to share at least a small part of the college’s fortune. The college thus has a program for mentoring high school students and a charity, initiated and run by Exeter students, that takes high school students from disadvantaged homes away for a two-week fun vacation. The university has also developed a student-run charity called Jacari: Time to Teach.46 This home-teaching program asks college students to commit themselves to at least one year of helping ethnic minorities in Oxford, teaching them English as a second language. The volunteers teach children in their own homes for an hour or so a week and meet their parents. The leaflet for the university students reads, “The chance to give something to the surrounding community is a really worthwhile experience, an opportunity to see a very different side of Oxford and breaks down the traditional barriers of ‘town and gown.’”47
When I reflect on Oxford University’s approach to teaching—say, teaching philosophy, with which I am familiar—something bothers me, however. The approach to teaching philosophy is wholly analytical, the sole focus being on theory, “pure” nonapplicable theory (theory not meant to be applied), sometimes using examples drawn from science fiction rather than real life. This shows scorn and disrespect for real-life questions and “applied philosophy,” which many Oxford philosophers believe is second rate, all of which suggests to me something quite disturbing. The philosophical approach taught at Oxford is not about making the world a better place. Its interest is in a purely theoretical world that does not exist. Seeing themselves, first and foremost, as bound to the forms and rules of the sciences, Oxford philosophers think in categories and concepts and tend to analyze these in an ideal world rather than the real world, where things are vague and mixed and odd. The saying “It’s only academic” is particularly apt for Oxford’s philosophical bent. And if so, then perhaps those among us who care about removing the walls between town and gown, who believe that learning should not be the right and preserve only of the elite, should be bothered.
At one of the colleges students are playing croquet. A largish group of tourists is standing around taking photos. They are all enjoying the delicious May sunshine and blue skies. A thought comes to mind: mostly, the state pays for students to study at Oxford, yet here they are, playing croquet in the sunshine. I notice that they have been playing for two hours. Is that alright? Part of me says that it isn’t—they should be indoors working on their research, if that’s what the state is paying for them to do. On the other hand, if we would like outstanding minds to produce outstanding research, they must also rest, enjoy sports, play, and relax—after all, a sound mind in a sound body. I observe the students; they are quite young. One day most will work in the City of London global financial center, or become hospital physicians, prominent lawyers, politicians, or university professors. But what if somebody from the east side of Oxford, where most residents have never been near a college, could come over and see this: wouldn’t they feel that it was unfair for the state to subsidize these students?
Surprisingly perhaps, the percentage of Oxford children who earn high school diplomas is rather low. According to the City of Oxford website, in 2006, 45.8 percent of Oxford children received five A* to C grades on the GCSE (high school graduation exams),48 compared to an average of 56.6 percent for Oxfordshire county. Furthermore, more Oxford children leave school without earning a degree than do children in the rest of Oxfordshire.49 The “no qualifications” map is very revealing, showing the percentage of residents in different Oxford neighborhoods who have no educational qualification. In north and central Oxford, very few residents have no qualifications: 0 percent to 17 percent; in the area south of Magdalen Bridge and even south of Cowley, however, a high percentage of residents have no qualifications: between 36 percent to 86 percent. At the same time, 26 percent of Oxford’s working-age population goes to college or university—the highest percentage in England and Wales.
I keep strolling. I walk near the canal, and across the water I can see Allan Bullock Close, where I lived in subsidized accommodations when I was a student. Allan Bullock Close was where I did my research while the people next door paid taxes to finance me. Did I feel guilty at the time? Do I feel it now? I’d like to think that I have given something back to society. But what does society think of it? Do the people who never went to college but paid their taxes so that I could go feel the same way I do about what I have or haven’t given to society? I continue walking until I reach the Magdalen College fellows’ garden, which only college fellows may enter, and there is closed-circuit TV monitoring of who goes in. In contrast to the impression one gets from the TV monitoring system, the garden is restful and quiet; I wish I could go in. Is that what those people who didn’t make it to college—to Oxford University, in particular—feel when they are not permitted to enter college grounds? Is Oxford a “gated community”? Is that how the townspeople see the university as they watch the students strolling about in their gowns?
Because Oxford is such a tolerant city, it attracts quite a few homeless people. Someone I know who helps them told me that another reason the homeless come to Oxford is because it is close to London. When they find London overwhelming, many homeless people and rough sleepers go to Oxford, which is fairly well equipped with shelters—five day shelters plus five night shelters.50
Daniel’s father was a well-known Canadian writer. He certainly didn’t dress well, and his beard was grayish and straggly. While on a visit to Oxford once, he decided to take a break on a bench in the city center. Removing his hat, he set it next to him on the bench. A passerby put some money into it. Near the train station, I stop to buy a homeless-oriented street magazine, The Big Issue, from a homeless man.51 He notices that I am not English and is surprised that I want to buy the magazine. We start chatting and I ask Jim (that is his name) his opinion of Oxford as a city. He says that he likes it; he grew up in a rural area. His parents moved out of the city when he was young, but he never liked the countryside and tried to move to the city and make a life, but he didn’t succeed. Now he is homeless. He arrived in Oxford some time ago. It is difficult to talk with him about the city because he keeps raising philosophical questions. He wants to talk about genetically modified food (GMF), and when I tell him I used to research the ethics of GMF and that his arguments are very interesting, he replies: Just because I am homeless does not mean I don’t read. I ask him whether he likes reading and talking about these issues because he is in Oxford and so many people are scholars, and he looks at me in surprise: no one here has spoken to him like this before. Well, my experience of Oxford is different from his, I tell him. I often see people chatting with homeless people who are selling The Big Issue.
But is this tolerant and hospitable attitude toward the homeless reflected in the university’s attitude toward people from the lower classes in general? Frances Cairncross says that one of the differences she noticed after she moved to Oxford was that there were so few manual car washes compared to North London, where there were many. She asked herself why, and the answer she found was the scarcity of working-class immigrants in Oxford. She says that this has to do with rent. Students pay high enough rents that landlords need not provide cheap housing for immigrants—the market is more expensive than working-class immigrants can afford. She thinks this is largely responsible for Oxford’s character.
But perhaps the gap between town and gown is only natural because many times people connect when they become parents and meet other parents, and school intakes in Britain are based on catchments areas that are naturally homogenous socially and economically. So, because the working-class population of Oxford lives in the south and east of the city, and the academics, who are mainly middle- and upper-class, live in the north and west, they do not mix through their children’s schools because of the school system. Could this explain the town-gown divide?
I remember my early days as a student in Oxford. On my first visit to the open market to buy vegetables, I stood in line behind an immigrant from Africa. In those days, market merchants were all white and, unlike today, all born in England. When the turn of the man in front of me came, the saleswoman shouted at him, “You weren’t in the queue.” He looked at her, stunned, so she added, “You know, a queue; it’s an old English tradition.”
Twenty-two years after my first Oxford market experience, I went to visit the open market on a rainy day, very early in the morning, when the market workers were setting up the sales stalls. Most of the market workers were immigrants, not necessarily from the developing world. I went into the first café I found open at that hour to wait for the market to open. The young woman behind the counter served me a surprisingly good, strong cup of espresso. “You cannot be English,” I laughingly commented, “because your espresso is really strong.” “Well,” she replied with a smile, “I am from Croatia. But,” she hastily added, “I have been here for more than three years, so I feel almost English.” “And how do you find Oxford?” I asked her. “Good people,” she answered, and repeated, “very good people.”52
Sue (not her real name) is a “scout” (doing household and cleaning work) at one of the colleges I have returned to for the past twenty-three years. She calls me “Professor.” I tell her my name is Avner. She calls me “love.” She warns me to be careful on the staircase; it’s old and the stairs are not of uniform size. I ask her how the bank holiday was. She smiles happily: “My family came; we had a barbeque.” I ask her where she is from and she says Blackbird Leys, a rather poor neighborhood in the south of Oxford. I plan to go there to interview a group of people and am eager to hear what she can tell me. But she would rather discuss the professors in the college. He is very nice; she is very kind; he is very clever; she is very pretty. They treat her nicely. One professor lets her use his first name; another doesn’t. He prefers the title “Professor.” This morning, I went to the market at 5:30 am; she saw me going out and asked me if everything was alright, assuming that if a guest wakes up so early in the morning, something must be wrong. When I return soaking wet after a long walk in the rain, she is worried. “It is too cold to walk outside,” she scolds. We chat. She is proud of being one of the longest-serving scouts in the college. I ask her if it doesn’t feel odd calling these people “Professor” after knowing them so many years. She laughs, saying, “It’s nice to say ‘Professor,’” and for a minute it seems to me as if she is singing the last word.
My interview with a group of Blackbird Leys residents is most illuminating. My friend Fran, who works there, takes me to the interview. Fran and Ken are delightful people we met on one of my sabbaticals. They were our neighbors, and their son Ralph, then the funniest teenager I had ever seen and now a most gifted writer and actor, went to school with our son Daniel. En route she explains whom I am going to meet. The people in the group grew up in the neighborhood, but unlike many from Blackbird Leys, they now work and are independent of the state. The neighborhood is a council estate, that is, public housing to be occupied by the more disadvantaged population for subsidized rent. Some say that this is the largest council estate in the United Kingdom. According to the 2001 census, 45 percent of Blackbird Leys residents lacked educational qualification, only 41 percent were employed full time; 9 percent reported poor general health, and 18 percent suffered with long-term illness. The neighborhood website’s home page advertises training and has links offering job-hunting assistance. Summertown, on the other hand, where white-collar employees, academics, lawyers, students, and artists live, also has a website. Its home page has headings such as: “Eating Out,” “North Oxford Schools” (“Some of the best state and private schools are to be found in and around Summertown”), information about recycling, cafés open for lunch, and so on.
In Blackbird Leys I meet a group of four people at the charity-run Advice Centre, which provides useful information on money matters and welfare benefits, and helps local residents to deal with their life situations. I meet the staff, who all live in Blackbird Leys. I ask what word comes into their heads when I say “Oxford.” At first I receive the usual answers: “home,” “rivers,” “colleges,” “spires, like in the postcard.” Then I say, hold on, that’s fine. But what associations would other people from your neighborhood have? Now the answers change: “wealthy people,” “Oxford money,” “posh accent,” and “town and gown divide”. I noticed that the university people speak about “town and gown”; in Blackbird Leys, they add the word divide.
I ask the group if they are frustrated. They say yes. One says that Magdalen Bridge (considered the southernmost point of the university) is a border. They rarely go to the center of town. One recalls that when he was a child, his father said that if he went into town he should not tell people he was from Blackbird Leys. One recalls being on holiday in southern England and hearing a stand-up comedian ask the audience where they were from. He asked the interviewee, who hesitated briefly but in the end decided to tell the truth. The comedian joked, “Everyone out; this isn’t a safe place!” “Not my kind of humor,” comments my interviewee.
I ask the group whether they ever meet students from the university. In my discussion with the college rector two days earlier, she had said proudly (and rightly so) that her students had a project that reached out to help youngsters from outside the college with their schoolwork. I thought they probably didn’t reach out as far as Blackbird Leys. The Blackbird Leys groups say that some students had worked in the Leys, but it was rare and “they are not reliable.” Sometimes they come; sometimes they don’t. I ask, Do you think anything can be done to bring students and local residents together? “That would be nice,” they agree and offer suggestions, such as advertising events that take place in Blackbird Leys, which might attract students. But, they add, “perhaps this would bring people from other parts of the city, but we have no idea what’s going on in other neighborhoods in town.”53 “Is the gap between you and other communities in town an issue in the upcoming local election?” I ask. “Oh, no,” they say. “Here we care that they are closing down the post office: people will be fired and lose their jobs.”
I ask the group what they think about learning. Do they think Oxford is a city of learning? They say that the neighborhood schools are not well-funded and that children do not do well. They say that teachers don’t expect the kids to learn, not even in the classroom. And they also condemn their neighbors for not understanding the link between learning and earning. They say that some people want their kids to go to school just so they can keep claiming benefits for them, and that if a child can get a job and earn more than the state allowance brings in, the family pressures the child to leave school and go to work.
A “lurker” in the group suddenly joins the discussion. Oxford is “crap,” she says. It has changed since she was young. Oxford means crime today. People push. In the city center, people “behave like cows”; they push, she keeps repeating. I say that many tourists see the city center as a center of culture, studies, and politeness. Her face flushes red with anger. That was a long time ago, she says. Her children have left the city. They worked for BMW but now they are gone. She takes a bus to Melton Keynes to do her shopping to avoid going to Oxford because she feels she is not wanted there; people push her, she says again. Besides, she adds with a sigh, Oxford is too expensive.
The image of Oxford as a center of learning and scholarship becomes distorted when I listen to these people. Is Oxford only a center of scholarship for some? Is the divide between middle-class Oxford and working-class southeast Oxford so immense? Is it possible that Oxford is not that bad for immigrants, not so bad for the working classes? But can they see that? Is the geographical divide responsible for the geography of difference?
Situated to the right of the botanic garden is a beautiful rose garden. A small, barely noticeable sign explains, “The rose garden was opened in honor of the research workers in this university who discovered the clinical importance of penicillin.” I read this and think: How very modest (“research workers”). What typically English understatement.
The sign refers to the pathologist Howard Florey, a Lincoln College fellow who later became the provost of Queen’s College, and the biochemist Ernest Chain, who was appointed as a lecturer in chemical pathology in 1936. These two “research workers,” together with Alexander Fleming, received the Nobel Prize for the “discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.” The first experiment using the drug ended tragically. In February 1941, an Oxford policeman, Albert Alexander, was scratched on the side of his mouth while pruning roses, and subsequently developed an infection, with huge abscesses that affected his eyes, face, and lungs. The scientists treated him with the drug they had produced, and within five days he had responded well and the infection had started to clear. Sadly, the scientists ran out of the drug; the amount on hand was not sufficient to cure the infection, and the policeman died.54 This was a tragic end for Mr. Alexander, but by using the drug to treat him, the scientists demonstrated its efficacy, and millions of lives would eventually be saved.
Scholarship and learning are not a selfish journey whose fruits are limited to a particular class. Perhaps these scholarly pursuits are not as democratic and egalitarian as we would like. Still, their benefits empower many. Education in Oxford, as in other places, has changed from being available only to the children of the aristocracy (by birth) to a more meritocratic procedure for granting access, whereby talent, ability, and even a strong desire and readiness to devote oneself to learning are the parameters determining one’s chances to receive higher education. At the end of the day, scholarship and learning do empower many. The question that remains regarding Oxford is: how can learning itself and not just the fruits of research be made accessible to ever larger numbers of people?