OXFORD then and now

At Oxford, I was a member of Christ Church and Magdalen from 1929 to 1937. The humanities reigned supreme, literally led by "Greats" (classical languages); in academic processions classics scholars came first. The sciences were well represented, but they did not play a leading role in the university. The social sciences were just beginning. Technology was viewed as unacademic and relegated to the newer universities known unflatteringly as "red brick".

American universities left technology to schools like MIT and Cal Tech. Business schools were a novelty viewed with suspicion. I remember Professor Hugh Jackson, really the founder of Stanford's School of Business and a nice man, sitting in his office and dreaming os what the School might become. Since those distant days, technology and business have become the dynamos of Stanford and other universities, and Oxford has become Americanized.

Oxford has a technology park and a school of business, but the change in the university is best personified in the new Vice Chancellor, an office traditionally occupied by a head of college, who was usually a humanist.

The present Vice Chancellor is Sir Colin Lucas, a historian. Now the university has taken the extraordinary step of going outside the university, outside the UK, and outside traditional academic subjects for the selection of a new Vice Chancellor.

He is Dr. John Hood, Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. A Rhodes Scholar, he obtained an MPhil in management studies. He taught civil engineering at the University of Auckland for several years. He then moved into industry, becoming a senior manager of the Fletcher Challenge company. He returned to the University of Auckland as Vice-Chancellor.

His Oxford appointment indicates a desire to modernize Oxford and to bring its finances under control at a time when the British government is engaged in a sharp debate over the financing of universities. I wonder what Oxford classicists think of all this. I am sure that WAISer Michael Bassett of New Zealand knows John Hood. Does he has any comment?

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Christian Leitz,who taught history in New Zealand, eulogizes John Hood, who is leaving the University of Auckland to become Vice-Chancellor of Oxford:

"I can reassure you Oxford will be in safe hands. John (Hood) has been (still is, of course) an excellent vice-chancellor to Auckland University. I've met him repeatedly and on various occasions, and he has always struck me as both a very thoughtful and very incisively thinking person (with, I should add, a very keen interest in history). This appointment is definitely a loss to Auckland and a gain to Oxford".