Acting on principle: University of Cambridge is trying to live up to its values

There are universities, and then there are universities.

Let’s call the latter group super universities: a select bunch – no more than one or two in most countries – that account for a wildly disproportionate share of interest and attention.

They are the universities with instant public recognition, as well as outsized clout in academia itself.

One consequence is that almost anything those universities do makes headlines: every misstep is amplified, but it also gives them a unique capacity to set the agenda, should they wish to.

This thought occurred to me recently when yet another news alert about the University of Cambridge pinged on to the screen of my phone.

Consider just a few of the high profile decisions made by the university in recent months.

At the start of the academic year, Cambridge snapped up an offer from the rapper Stormzy to fund scholarships for black students – an offer that Oxford had turned down.

The following term, it took decisive action in rescinding a visiting fellowship from the controversial Canadian academic (and self-styled “professor against political correctness”) Jordan Peterson.

A month later, a Cambridge college sacked a second academic who it concluded had collaborated with right-wing extremists.

Last month, Cambridge launched a two-year inquiry into the university’s historic involvement in, and benefit from, the slave trade.

These examples differ significantly from one another. The scholarships decision, for example, was a no-brainer, and it was a lapse in common sense from Oxford not to have jumped at the offer first.

But the other decisions have proven more provocative.

The slave trade inquiry was fiercely criticised by Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar, who has become something of a cause célèbre after being attacked by fellow scholars for suggesting that elements of colonialism were worthy of pride (attacks that he attributed to an “illiberal climate” in academia).

Writing in The Times, Biggar accused Cambridge of setting “new standards of political correctness” with the inquiry. “The university says it will look at how it ‘challenged’ as well as ‘contributed to [and] benefited from’ the Atlantic slave trade. But the inquiry’s weight lies firmly and fashionably on its left foot, with its eyes focused grimly on the debit column,” he wrote.

The Times followed up this broadside with a leader taking Cambridge to task on the treatment of Peterson and the junior academic sacked by St Edmund’s College, Noah Carl, concurring with the latter’s view that “he is the latest victim of an authoritarian leftism that has taken hold at many British universities”. “The authorities at Cambridge are making a habit of sacrificing traditions of free speech and vigorous debate on the altar of a quiet life,” the newspaper concluded.

But this conclusion seems wrong-headed. We live in a mouth-frothing era in which universities in the US and, increasingly, the UK have found themselves at the centre of the new culture wars.

So whatever your views about the decisions themselves (and many would share concerns about academia being open to accusations of political monoculture), Cambridge’s actions are anything but a retreat from principles in pursuit of a quiet life.

Taken in isolation, or by a university that was not a higher education superbrand, interest in any of these decisions would have been fleeting. Taken together, and taken by the University of Cambridge, they become something bigger: a clear statement of principle and intent.

But it is hardly credible to believe that Cambridge is actively courting the opprobrium of Biggar, or the sort of online commentators who left their pithy but pitiful analyses below his recent article (“In a nutshell: ‘Cambridge, get your head out of your arse’,” offered one).

As Andrew McRae of the University of Exeter put it in a more considered response to the piece: “Critics of the Cambridge decision have labelled it ‘virtue signalling’, deploying the reactionary’s suspicion that anyone looking virtuous must merely be putting on a show.

“And yet universities today spend much time and money on signalling their virtues, usually in the form of ‘values’ or ‘mission statements’ that are rarely read or remembered.

“By contrast, Cambridge is enacting its virtues, and sending in the process a much more powerful message to former, current and potential students.”

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com