This week, Oxford University has been in the news for two very different reasons. Firstly, it is making it compulsory for history undergraduates to write an essay on a non-British and non-European subject in an effort to diversify its curriculum. The world history requirement will demand that students devote at least one term of their three-year course to a subject that could include black, Middle Eastern, Asian or Indian affairs. Oxford has also doubled the prize money for the best undergraduate thesis on African history, up to \u00a3150, but that is still far lower than the \u00a3500 prize for the best thesis on British history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secondly, Oxford academics are currently trying to overturn a rule that forces them to retire at 67. In an article in The Times published this week, it was argued that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Ageing is biologically immutable but retirement is an arbitrary social convention. The mere fact of attaining a 67th birthday says nothing about a person\u2019s capacity to do their job. There is no good evidence that advancing age correlates with a decline in ability to do the tasks of teaching, research and student counselling that an academic is expected to perform. Some can do it and some can\u2019t; it depends on the person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case of Ronald Reagan was also used most admirably: “In the 1984 US presidential election, pundits suggested that the septuagenarian Ronald Reagan was past it. He responded in a televised debate: \u201cI will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent\u2019s youth and inexperience.\u201d I agree wholeheartedly that being older does not necessarily lead to diminished capacity and that far too much emphasis is placed on a person\u2019s age rather than their ability to carry out a particular job! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oxford University: Promoting Diversity This week, Oxford University has been in the news for two very different reasons. Firstly, it is making it compulsory for history undergraduates to write an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[338],"tags":[344,347],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5406,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions\/5406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susanpallister.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}