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Cambridge University doesn’t need DEI Affirmative action is an affront to meritocracy

(Graeme Robertson/Getty Images)


March 18, 2024   5 mins

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is a set of notions that has long sat uneasily within a university. But now the situation is becoming even worse: imitating the United States, EDI is metamorphosing into DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), whereby the reparative nature of Equity is employed to exclude (so much for Inclusion) those who have performed better, but cannot produce evidence that they suffer from a prescribed list of disadvantages. When a great university turns aside from its pursuit of outstanding excellence and indulges in social engineering, it threatens its very foundations.

One might, therefore, feel relief at the proposal to abandon the targets for state-school admission that Cambridge University has been pursuing in recent years, currently set at 69%. In fact, the state-school intake now exceeds 70%, and it was always an extremely crude instrument of measurement. This is part of a broader mulling-over of Cambridge’s admissions procedure for undergraduates, which is always a challenge: nearly 30 colleges admit students independently, and they all jealously guard their autonomy against any attempt to centralise the process.

The general new idea is to concentrate on the contextual criteria that are also applied, such as the receipt of free school meals, poorly rated schools and other evidence of social and economic disadvantage. But as worthy as this sounds, a new injustice is being committed: against many bright products of independent schools who in recent years have been denied a place so that colleges can force their way up the table of state-school percentages. Many have gone instead to Durham, St Andrews, Bristol, Imperial and other excellent Russell Group universities. But many of these universities have also indicated that they would like to reduce their independent school intake.

The grounds for rejection of so many very capable students were in my view largely fabricated: the notion was that college admissions should concentrate not on “performance” such as past exam results, but “potential”, which would be identified in interview, in written work and in contextual evidence. This, though, is just a play with words. Dons had always considered potential and many, perhaps most, learned how to recognise students with minds of their own, who had not simply become A* performers of rote learning.

Today, however, it has become very easy for dons to dismiss accomplished products of Eton or St Paul’s as “well-taught”, shoving them into a category they did not deserve. Occasionally this has been the product of what can only be described as macro-aggression. I know of a tutor at another ancient university who quite simply refused to accept any applicants from independent schools. I do not believe that she was unique. The two schools I have already mentioned rightly wonder why their acceptance figures have dipped so steeply and rapidly. Behind the scenes, many colleges operate not targets but quotas.

The background to all this is, nonetheless, change for the better. Half a century ago, entrance to Oxbridge was dominated by famous public schools which sent extremely bright people to both universities, but could also wangle places for those who were good on the river, so long as they achieved passable results in their exams. But this history is too often simplified and caricatured. The post-war period saw a wave of students from grammar schools, and in particular from the direct-grant schools, such as King Edward’s School in Birmingham, that occupied a middle ground between the fully independent sector and the state sector. Past statistics are now manipulated to ignore the valuable social role these schools played in providing places for children from all backgrounds, many on full scholarships. Later, after the abolition of the direct grant in 1976, the assisted places scheme brought many children into private schools their parents could not afford. The abolition of this excellent scheme was the very first act of Tony Blair’s government. And the current Labour Party has similar plans to seize upon independent schools as one of its very first acts by vengefully imposing VAT on school fees.

It goes without saying that parents, not their children, choose whether or not to send their sons and daughters to an independent school, assuming they can afford it, and many forego luxuries in order to do so. But many such private schools also operate upon a principle of academic selection, which is also how the most successful state schools achieve good results. Oxford and Cambridge draw some of its best and brightest from such schools as Queen Elizabeth’s in Barnet, predominantly middle-class Londoners who once upon a time might have been educated privately (and who instead pay the effective fees contained within local house prices, such is the competition for places). Perhaps, then, it should have come as less of a surprise that the late Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Stephen Toope, insisted that he wanted to make it “very, very clear” that selective grammar schools as well as independent schools deserve to win fewer places at Cambridge. More sensible is the view of his successor, Deborah Prentice, that Cambridge should draw more students from the north of England, since the south-east absolutely dominates undergraduate intake. That would represent genuine diversity.

Yet in the meantime, there are good reasons to worry about genuine injustices that arise when admissions tutors dig in their heels and refuse to accept excellent candidates from all types of selective school. I have heard too many stories of angry struggles between Fellows and admissions tutors over this, not to mention irritated complaints by long-suffering heads who have seen their top pupils turned down for places that they seemed certain to obtain. Some of these candidates may have wrecked their chances by a bad interview; but that cannot be the case each time. The suspicion of injustice is accentuated when a college accelerates its state-school intake within two or three years from around 56% to 72%. This can only be achieved, in my view, by a rigorous policy of positive discrimination and the mistaken admission of students who sometimes find themselves struggling with their work. In several colleges that used to be near the front of the tables of degree results tables this has been reflected in dreadful scores in once highly successful arts subjects. Meanwhile science dons remain very worried about the level of accomplishment of students whose schools seem to have taken a Lowest Common Denominator approach to education in science and mathematics, particularly in mixed-ability classes, teaching at a level that suits the weakest students.

The other side of the coin is that state schools that used to shun Oxbridge have become more enthusiastic about sending their pupils to either university, and the good news is that this has steadily increased numbers arriving from those schools. There was undoubtedly a barrier of prejudice, which turned on the myth that Oxford and Cambridge were themselves places that heave with social prejudice. We are often told by so-called modernisers that state school candidates are deterred by the supposedly arcane rituals of the ancient colleges. The sight in my own college of masses of enthusiastic male and female students from all backgrounds dining in Hall wearing their distinctive dark blue gowns, as well as the still overwhelmingly popular traditions of black-tie balls, gives the lie to that argument.

“The ultimate test has to be the academic excellence of the candidate.”

It has long been understood that, where two borderline candidates of equal merit are competing for the same place, it is generally right to take into account disadvantages that one might have experienced and to favour him or her. That seems to me to be acceptable, but the danger with the new proposals is that “contextual information” will be promoted to a dominant position, and we will end up with quotas masked as “targets” once again. Much depends on what this contextual information contains: private school pupils on scholarships and bursaries may come from low-income families; some may receive free school meals. There is an opportunity here to identify candidates who often fell into a crack in the past. But the ultimate test has to be the academic excellence of the candidate.

What I am saying should not, therefore, be regarded as an attempt to sing the virtues of independent schools but as an argument that all candidates deserve unprejudiced treatment, whatever their background and whatever type of school they attend. It is not the task of universities, especially those with the highest academic reputation, to solve problems lower down in the British system of education.

The reputation of Oxford and Cambridge depends on the outstanding quality of their teachers, researchers and, last but not least, its students. These leading universities are avowedly highly selective, and — if they want to remain among the top in the world — the criterion for selection, whether of students or lecturers and professors, must always be academic ability. The proposal to abandon the state-school target should be welcomed; but the danger remains that the pursuit of American-style Equity will do irreparable damage to Oxbridge and our other leading universities.


David Abulafia is a Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University. His most recent book, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, won the Wolfson Prize in 2020.


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J Bryant
J Bryant
8 months ago

We read so often how the very wealthy are also ultra-woke. They support DEI and, it’s my understanding, are also major donors to prestigious universities.
So what happens when the kids of the ultra-wealthy are denied admission to top universities because they attended a private school, or for other indicia of privilege? Might that be the beginning of a reassessment by the elite of progressivism?
Of course, the children of billionaires will always be welcome at the Ivy League (along with their parents enormous financial donations), but what of the poor multimillionaires? Donation of a cool ten million buys almost nothing these days.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I think all of you need to do more research about what affirmative action is and the results it’s produced.
You can’t with one side of your mouth admit that systemic racism exists and on the other side start railing against efforts to provide marginalised people with the opportunities that they still continue to be denied. This includes poor people of all races .
Also everyone calm down, 82% of the United Kingdom is white. The colourds aren’t going to take your jobs anytime soon. They will probably still be doing the jobs you don’t want to do for a while. Relax

Simon Templar
Simon Templar
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Define ‘marginalized’ and define ‘denied’. Otherwise what you are saying is a tautology. By definition, marginalized people are people who are denied something. Think about any product you want to obtain. If I want buy a cake from the baker’s shop, but I have no money, I am therefore denied a cake. Am I marginalized? Do I deserve a cake?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
8 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

That is naïve if I may say so.
For the children of our ruling class or the very wealthy there has always been and always will be that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago

Charles Ryder’s Oxford is long gone.
The low door in the wall now has a DEI gatekeeper and being white, male, privileged and with a plummy public-school accent to match, can be a barrier to entry.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Maybe so. But does the person you described not still have an overall leg up in many elite environments, the practice of Law and Medicine, let’s say? Or do those who fit that profile find it hard to get ahead in England for lack of Oxbridge admission?
I’m not saying the initial reverse-discrimination is just, just trying to qualify the level of disadvantage that now arguably follows from it.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

That is not true. My sons are concerned that because they are white and male their job applications to say, British financial institutions, go straight in the bin.
Some of my colleagues are also concerned that this is happening to their sons

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago

But where is the evidence to support that concern?
People here are conflating reduced overall advantage with overall disadvantage, in your case purely anecdotally.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

No being a white male grammar school boy is an absolute bar to entry.
The public school places are ring fenced

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago

So they exclude all whites now. Breaking news.

N Satori
N Satori
8 months ago

Will DEI train up a generation of politically privileged parasites whose only real ability will be a surefire knowledge of how to exploit the system?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

I think all of you need to do more research about what affirmative action is and the results it’s produced.
You can’t with one side of your mouth admit that systemic racism exists and on the other side start railing against efforts to provide marginalised people with the opportunities that they still continue to be denied. This includes poor people of all races .
Also everyone calm down, 82% of the United Kingdom is white. The colourds aren’t going to take your jobs anytime soon. They will probably still be doing the jobs you don’t want to do for a while. Relax

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

A feeble and ill-considered comment.

It implies that ‘all of you’ (a lovely term) do accept that systemic racism exists. I suppose that is why the ‘opportunities denied’ have resulted in premier of the UK, Scotland and Wales – and the Republic of Ireland for that matter – being ‘colourd’. Well done with that term as well, by the way: just ever so slightly outmoded, though, I feel.

And well done for suggesting that ‘colourds’ are restricted to doing menial or unpleasant jobs, poor things.

And well done again for assuming that the objection to ‘affirmative action’ is that is beneficial. The objection is more likely to be that it is actually racist, promoting on the basis of skin colour rather than competence or merit. Take the recent President of Harvard University, for example.

I don’t know of anyone who objects to fair opportunities. More likely to object to irrational, divisive, race-obsessed perversion of the distribution of opportunities.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

Thanks all for your comments. It does highlight just what my children have to face when they go out in the world and the differences between peoples lived experiences of racism in the U.K. clearly there are white people who feel disaffected by the renewed push for acceptance and equality by others. I guess I can understand it: you’re trying to survive and thrive in a capitalist system that has gotten out of control and is squeezing most people and their families. There’s probably not much room there to tolerate the struggles of others especially if it looks like they’re asking for things that you don’t have ready access to.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

If, as you seem to imply, you are bringing up your children to believe that any setback they experience is because of their skin colour you are doing them a grave disservice and setting them up for a life of mediocrity.
Oh, and could you explain the difference between an experience and a lived experience? I’ve been longing to know.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
8 months ago

DU, I think I may be able to help on that one.
 
Experience: (a) an event that actually objectively happened to a person; also sometimes (b) how that person subjectively felt about that event.
 
Lived Experience: an event or events that may or may not have happened to a person, which that person weaponises for the purposes of: (a) ousting the notion of objective reality, (b) neutralising anyone else’s doubts about the authenticity of the claimed event, (c) vilifying and cowing any critic of that person, (d) claiming moral superiority, securing privileges, demanding reparations; all usually maximised by the accumulation of victim-points.
 
Ben Shapiro: Facts don’t care about your feelings.
 
Lived Experiencer: My feelings are more real than your ‘facts’.

Richard Gipps
Richard Gipps
8 months ago

Experience: I have Experience of, say, mental illness if I’ve worked on a psychiatric ward, had patients or family members or friends with it etc. Lived Experience: I have Lived Experience of mental illness if I myself have suffered it first-hand. (Does that work? Lived Experiences are, on this view, a subset of Experiences.)

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
8 months ago
Reply to  Richard Gipps

You’ve simply committed a logical equivocation here. Just being in the vicinity of people suffering from mental illness doesn’t qualify as you having experienced it. Experience is non-transferable: you’ve either had an experience or you haven’t. ‘Lived experience,’ like ‘return back,’ is a redundancy, since there’s no other kind. The only ‘subset’ we can speak of is the subset of your own experiences (yours in both cases) versus everybody else’s.

Nick Gilbert
Nick Gilbert
8 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

We can say ” I have experience of working with mentally ill people *. We can also say” I have personally experienced mental ill health. ” Conveying meaning is surely not so difficult, especially in a language as rich as English?

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
8 months ago

I’m equally curious to learn the difference between ‘threat’ and ‘existential threat.’ What’s the role of the modifier? What does it add?

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

That one’s easy. A threat, meaning an expression of an intent to injure or harm in some way…could be anything, aimed at anything (as in, that chocolate cake presented a real threat to my diet….that 7 ft. center, presented a real threat to our team’s ability to score inside….etc.) An existential threat is aimed at one’s existence. Nuclear War is an existential threat. Famine, the Black Plague, Alien Invasions, etc. represent real or perceived existential threats.
Probably to your point, though: It’s increasingly popular to use ‘existential threat’ to describe any number of possibilities which are not. As in, ‘Climate Change is an existential threat’….’Trump’s election is an existential threat’….’Fossil fuels are an existential threat’….’Cow farts are an existential threat’… the elimination of Affirmative Action is an existential threat.

Keith Merrick
Keith Merrick
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Looks like we’ve got ourselves a race-baiter, someone so obsessed with his favourite topic that even a post about how top universities favour state over independent school pupils gets shoe-horned into a discussion about race. What a simple life he must lead: all his successes are down to him, while all his failures down to malicious white people. I suspect that if we were to look back at all his previous comments there would one overriding a common thread running through them: my children and me are victims of systemic racism. Now, where have I heard this before?

R Wright
R Wright
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

“You can’t with one side of your mouth admit that systemic racism exists”

I’ll stop you right there. We don’t admit that because we don’t believe it exists.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  R Wright

Quite. It’s complete BS.
If it exists at all, it’s in the frequently racist attitudes of many of the so-called anti-racists.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  R Wright

Thanks for that.. at least I know we can’t then have a discussion .

Rebirth Radio
Rebirth Radio
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Why can’t you? Maybe the problems are your own mentality, not other people?

Rebirth Radio
Rebirth Radio
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Nobody is saying systemic racism exists.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Rather than simply dismiss your claim, I’d ask you, quite sincerely, to point to some specific examples of this “Systemic” racism.
There will obviously be individual instances of racism, because people are people, and only a fool would deny that might happen.
But I would definitely challenge you that there are instances of “Systemic Racism” in our University admittance policies. So what are they, as far as you are concerned?
I shouldn’t need to say this, but will; You cannot point to Inequality of Outcome, and suggest that is proof of inequity, or systemic racism. That argument only works in a Guardian echo-chamber.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Do you mean by “systemic racism” institutionally approved rules and regulations designed to discriminate against a particular race such as that that which existed in the US during the period of Jim Crow? I am unaware of any institutional rules and regulations designed to discriminate against any particular race in the UK. Those belonging to various ethnic minorities in the UK may have encountered prejudiced individuals that might have disadvantaged some of them but there has never been a system of discrimination against any race in place in the UK – although there was, of course in former times in the colonies.

On he whole UK Universities have in their own interests tended to try to admit the smartest students who apply. Of course those who have been to Public School may because of their background and teaching have presented as more able than equivalent students hampered by a less polished background and inferior teaching and perhaps this disadvantage is what you regard as systemic racism on the basis that minority ethnics are more likely to suffer such comparative disadvantage but there is no deliberate system to this so it should not really be referred to as systemic racism or institutional racism.

DEI is presumable an attempt to assess the inherent talent of students who don’t present as well as they might because of their background. However, it risks introducing systemic racial and social discrimination against pupils of public schools and UK majority race students that may be equally unhelpful in identifying those most likely to benefit from the particular course offered by the University.

One of the problems of DEI in the US is that it seems to discriminates against Jewish and Asian origin student even more than white students. It is clear that there is a systemic racial discrimination in operation there that seeks to correct for past Jim Crow discrimination. A further problem is that black students who don’t have the same cultural traditions as some Asian and Jewish students in favour education often struggle on courses that they are unsuited for them and the drop out rate is disproportionately high. It is argued that US black educational underperformance is a mixture of culture and bad education because immigrant blacks perform much better – but immigrant blacks are likely to be atypical precisely because they are immigrants. Professor Fryer’s work in the US suggests black pupils can perform well if incentivised, tutored well and poor performing teachers sacked. Of course such programs would probably benefit pupils of all races. The educational establishment are not keen to pursue such an approach however.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

What do you mean by ‘marginalised?’ Are you in this category, and, if so, who is marginalising you, and what are you on the margin of?

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Readers, heard or unheard: please don’t let this character dominate the debate here. Others have worthwhile contributions to make unrelated to his agenda.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

These numbers are for Oxford University 2018, I can’t seem to find more recent figures, but hopefully this will illustrate the disconnect ….
Population as a whole of 17 – 24 years olds: 81.7% identify as White. 18.3% as BAME
Oxford students: 82.1% are White. 17.9% are BAME.
Among BAME students, students of Asian descent make up a disproportionate percentage.
Of the over 19 000 students that apply. Approx 3200 are admitted.
Just how would you ‘engineer’ an outcome that you ‘feel’ would be fairer?
Any ‘positive’ discrimination favouring one side means actual discrimination against the other.
Applying artificial quotas in any field – to try and correct perceived imbalances – almost always leads to resentment from those who feel that not everybody is there on merit, and rather than healing divisions it actually exacerbates them.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Most of us probably do not admit that systemic racism exists. If you ask me, systemic racism is like dark matter: A substance that no one has observed directly, that is not supported by independent evidence, but that you assume is there in order to make your models fit. In the case of ‘systemic racism’ you use it to explain outcomes you do not like, without having to analyse which mechanisms are actually causing them. Racism exists, but unlike ‘systemic racism’ it leaves evidence.

You are normally quite a constructive debater, so we might have something to learn from you. This discussion would be easier if we could get to something more specific. What do you think should be done, and what outcomes would it take to prove to you that systemic racism had been beaten? Just to show what we disagree about?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Couple of examples of systemic racism. You can also do some research to fact check and verify if you wish :
Wind rush
The U.K. justice system and its biased treatment and sentencing of black and brown people.
Covid exposed the bias in the nhs
NHS again: disparity of outcomes for pregnant black women vs white women
F1 and Lewis hamilton
Stop and search and its effects on innocent black boys.

it’s exhausting having to explain things that affect one’s life to people who it doesn’t affect. I’d ask that before people say that institutional racism doesn’t exist they may want to do their own research (especially if you’re white and you don’t experience it yourself… otherwise you end up in an echo chamber).

I will say that this publication used to have a fairly balanced view which is why I was drawn to it but it’s taken on an insular slant of late . Not sure if it sells more subscriptions that way but it’s definitely noticeable.
All the best folks.

Katherin MacCuish
Katherin MacCuish
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Are you American by any chance?

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It sounds to me like you are saying that any time outcomes are worse for black people it can only be caused by racism. So if you can find no evidence of overt racism, you invoke institutional racism instead. OK, I am not a direct victim, but I would still propose a different approach: Let us admit it when black people have worse outcomes, but let us try to find out what the causes are, so we can better deal with them. Or if you do not have patience for endless fact-finding, argue for straight positive discrimination based on outcomes, without accusing everybody around you of racism.

Without disagreeing about the outcomes, it is easy to propose alternative explanations for some of your examples:

– The expulsion of the Windrush people: A Home Office under strong pressure to expel as many as possible, who went for the most vulnerable target to maximise numbers, with no regard for whether it was reasonable – or for their skin colour.

– Covid exposed – how? Disparity of outcomes for black women – how? Are you saying that worse results for some races is evidence of malfeasance by the NHS – rather than for instance different life circumstances? Based on what?

– F1 and Lewis Hamilton. I dislike Lewis Hamilton for the same reasons I dislike Gareth Southgate (who is white). Both have hijacked a high-visibility space that is not theirs to use to make propaganda for their particular version of racial politics. If I want to look at politics I do not turn to sports transmissions.

– Biased treatment and sentencing. If people get longer sentences for the same crimes in the same circumstances based solely on skin colour that is indeed very bad. Similarly, stop and search will certainly have a bad influence on the innocent. If this is caused by simple racism that is very bad, but considering that different groups have different life circumstances, attitudes to the police etc. it is not immediately clear how much of this is due to racism. I’d say this is your best argument, but I would still want to see more detailed analysis than just a comparison of average numbers.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Systemic racism doesn’t exist. There are no laws that parse outcomes by skin color. There are no organizations or corporations that hire/fire/promote based on one’s melanin content. There are no venues who admit on the basis of race or ethnicity. Every neighborhood is open to anyone who has the money to buy a house. There are no sports teams who determine a starting line-up based on demographics. These things aren’t happening and haven’t happened for generations.
As for what AAction has actually done? It’s passed over the more qualified for the lesser qualified. It’s encouraged and enabled the destruction of standards to enable demographic balances to be achieved. It’s pushed mediocrity over excellence and created a spiral of incremental, entropic decline as the lesser qualified hire and promote those who are even less qualified than they are.
And all this flies directly in the face of rationality & common sense.
When we’re lying on that hospital gurney, waiting for the surgery team to arrive to fix our dying heart….do we want the nurse to whisper in our ear: “Don’t worry, we have the most diverse, the most inclusive group of doctors you can imagine who have graduated from schools which eliminated their entrance standards and lowered their graduation hurdles in order to achieve the proper racial/ethnic/gender class balance”??? Or do we want to hear: “Don’t worry, we have the best damned cardiac surgeons in the world.”? You take your choice. Which do you prefer? Excellence or Diversity? Brilliant exclusivity or Equitable Inclusivity? The choice seems obvious to me, doesn’t it to you?

Samuel Gee
Samuel Gee
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Systemic racism is racism without actual racists. There is racism by actual practicing racists that can be se seen and some which is subtle and unspoken but can be suspected even if not proven. Actual acts or failures to act which disadvantage people based on the their race. This is racism by racists. As I mentioned systemic racism doen’t need any actual racists or any actual acts of racism because it is a belief. The question is not to ask whether a particular act or inaction or interaction is racist or not, but rather to assume the racism and ask how the act, inaction or interaction is racist. You job as a believer as an anti-racist is to detect the racism. The state of mind is “It is there, it must be, systemic racism tells me so. I must find it.”
It’s retrograde. Not least because if all white people are racist then the real actual practicing racists are just the same as the rest of us.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Gee

Well put.

Peter Principle
Peter Principle
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

Yes

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

Aside from those studying STEM subjects, or the more rigorously academic courses, society really doesn’t benefit from most graduates entering the work force at all – unless you think that what the UK needs is an ever swelling cadre of Diversity-and-Inclusion Officers, HR managers and professional activists.
As armies of teenagers, fresh from several years of instruction at the hands of marxist teaching unions, march into universities to study from a de-colonised syllabus, (to be taught by academics, 80% of whom identify as being left or very left wing) and are enjoined to worship false idols like St Greta, the end-times-prophet Hobbit, and believe that our history is only something we should feel guilty for.
Thankfully, plenty of these students will have the sense and the spirit to push back against this indoctrination – but plenty won’t – and so we find our heritage and culture threatened by this woke Taliban, these Children of the Quorn.

William Amos
William Amos
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I enjoyed that.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago

Interesting article, thanks. There’s very little I’d disagree with there – but my (infuriating) inner pedant caught this …
…. At the same time, the disruption of the residential model and the rapid delivery of online courses is pulling away the Emperor’s robe, revealing the reality that many courses and institutions are offering very little value.”
You can’t pull away the Emperor’s Robe – the whole point is that it isn’t there!
Was the author perhaps thinking of Toto pulling back the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, to reveal the mundanity of the man behind?

Diane T
Diane T
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

– Really! Your inner pedant needs to be shown its place – Twitter?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

Does it serve ny other propose?

Mr Sketerzen Bhoto
Mr Sketerzen Bhoto
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

DEI in Britain seems to be just allowing more working class and middle incomes groups into Oxbridge. Far from not needing that it’s clear that the U.K. would benefit from it. It’s from the existing Oxbridge graduates that we get the present ruling classes with their trans worship and whatever is going on at the BBC,NHS, and other once formidable institutions. And it’s where we got Liz Truss, Johnson and Cameron. Surely there are people with working class or regional accents much smarter than any of these.

On the other hand, Britain doesn’t need racial quotas – having a different history and different educational outcome for minorities. It’s the white working classes that are doing worse in Britain.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
8 months ago

You’re thinking of grammar schools. DEI lets in posh, connected people of all racial stripes – mainly from London and the south east….and all over the world…It actively discriminates against northern white working class boys who have the lowest outcomes of any group in the UK

Rick Botelho
Rick Botelho
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

This article is academically superficial because David Abulafia does not defined equity. Without such a definition, the discussion about opinions are futile because it does not clarify his biases.
What is your definition of equity?

N Satori
N Satori
8 months ago
Reply to  Rick Botelho

I don’t actually get to define equity Botelho. Equity and whatever value it may have is defined for me by the political class. I have no say in the matter – other than to offer an opinion or two on forums such as this which, let’s face it, carries no weight at all.

Keith Merrick
Keith Merrick
8 months ago
Reply to  Rick Botelho

Surely ‘equity’ means that all groups have pretty much the same outcomes. Is there another meaning you have in mind? Don’t you think articles would get boring and unbearably long if authors defined every single word they used in case there was some pedant reading who either didn’t know, or pretended not to know, what each damn word means?

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
8 months ago
Reply to  Rick Botelho

Isn’t Equity an exclusive organisation for actors and actresses? I think it also has something to do with accounants. Rather a fuzzy concept, or as Humpty Dumpty said, ‘It means just what I want it to mean…which is to be Master. That’s all.” Perfectly clear.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  Rick Botelho

Glancing through the essay, I’d say he actually defined almost nothing…making the quite usual assumption that most of the readership know DIE, have encountered it in the workplace, see it everywhere in the media, and hear it preached by the State. Are you saying that somehow you’ve missed all that?
As for ‘Academically superficial’?
This is not an academic paper, published in an academic journal, perused only by closeted academics in their Ivy Green towers. This is just an essay on a website whose purpose is; “to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places.”
Does that sound like we’re looking for academic rigor here?

Arthur King
Arthur King
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

It is also creating a segment of highly resentful cohort of white young men who are primed for far right ideology. I’m older and I feel the draw to it.

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
8 months ago
Reply to  Arthur King

Just one term of Starmer could lead to the rise of our own mustache man.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  N Satori

Yes, of course…but only until there’s no system left standing which can be exploited.
Downward spiraling, state-enforced mediocrity breeds inferiority, breeds, eventually — the Idiocracy.
And in the idiocracy, nothing works anymore, at all, for anyone.
Bridges crumble, planes crash, the power is intermittent (but gloriously green), phones function only at certain times and in certain ways, and the only food you can buy in the stores is flavored processed cheezwhiz with a gallon of Brawndo (it’s got what plants crave!).
And then, not with a bang, but a whimper: even the parasites die.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
8 months ago

Does Cambridge need DEI?
Affirmative action could increase the number of Black students at Cambridge by 60% quite easily.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

So what ? What would be gained ? And what lost ?
Oxford and Cambridge have spent over 800 years developing a deserved reputation for excellence and are a huge benefit to the UK.
You never raise performance by lowering standards.
I was at Cambridge 40 years ago. State school:private school ratio in my college was about 50:50. It was more like 40:60 last time I checked – disappointing. I suspect the may be because the Cambridge entrance exam was scrapped. This – and the interviews – really did measure potential far better than A-Levels ever could. I never met anyone who wasn’t there on merit (though Prince Edward certainly was an impostor). You simply wouldn’t enjoy it and survive if you weren’t good enough.
My lab partner was a black Zimbabwean from a state school there. My best friend from a state comprehensive in London and a Pakstani family. Of course, this is only one data point.
There certainly were groups from public schools who didn’t/wouldn’t socialise with those of us from state schools (and always had a condescending attitude to engineers). But these were a minority. It probably bothered some of us at the time. I’m long past the point where I realised they’re just not worth it.
The biggest change has almost certainly been in the gender balance. Was probably 60:40 men:women in the 1980s. Likely <50:>50 now.
It is impossible to achieve perfect fairness in any admisions process, just as with job interviews. You just have to trust the admissions staff/interviewers to understand what is in the best interests of the university/company and use their judgement accordingly. First rate people do hire first rate people after all. Butt out and let them get on with it.

Mike SampleName
Mike SampleName
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Sex balance is definitely a changing metric, especially in STEM areas.

In 23/24, Cambridge was 52% female. Apparently. In 16/17, it was 47% female, and in 19/20 it was 48% female. So increasing, yet all within a reasonable distance of 50/50, which is the stated aim.

By comparison, for 23/24 Oxford was 51% female. According to statista, most of the leading (top 10) global institutes are around 50:50, with a few notable exceptions outside of the +/-3% range – these being:
MIT:59% female
California Institute of Technology: 63% female
Imperial College London: 58% female
ETH Zurich: 67% female

(It’s worth noting that MIT, CIT, ETH and Imperial College are all primarily known for STEM.)

There is no Institute in the same range where >52% of students are male, 7/10 are predominantly female.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1345939/gender-distribution-world-leading-universities/

No No
No No
8 months ago

I think you might have read the statistics in this link wrong – the light blue is women, so your stats above are for the male student population of each institution?

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
8 months ago

Expand the page in your link and you will find the legend showing that your quoted stats are inverted, male are the prevalent majorities.

Andrew F
Andrew F
8 months ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

I hope you are joking?
Why should we increase numbers of black idiots at Cambridge by 60%?
Looking at blacks in London and looking at amazing “success” of African nations since independence, would not you agree that they have a problem with their IQ and culture.
I am happy for you to list their achievements in science, medicine culture and technology.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Your race essentialism is not the virtuous circle you imagine it to be, but a spiraling tunnel. Perhaps you can list your own achievements in the above areas, instead of falsely group-associating yourself with the smartest and most capable Europeans who’ve ever lived.
On either side of the Sahara, Egypt and Ethiopia had foundational influence on non-light-skinned peoples of the Fertile Crescent, such as the Israelites and Persians, who also influenced the emergent culture of the Ancient Greeks. Down the line came the imposed Christianization, then gradual literacy and technological advancement among the quite barbarous peoples of Northern Europe, including my Celtic ancestors. Much of the light is borrowed and shared. Don’t try to hoard or claim it as your own skin-collective possession.
Look at the white underclass in London. Measure them honestly, according to any established metric of education, achievement, and morality. Then look in the mirror.

Will K
Will K
8 months ago

Merit should be the sole standard. The people from the past would surely agree.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  Will K

Which people? The ones violently oppressing ethnic minorities or the ones who proposed policies that would ensure that same minorities wouldn’t have equity of access to opportunities.
This world functions on networks, inheritance and exclusion … (Boris Johnson, the royal family, House of Lords, PPE scandal, etc). Let’s be holistic about what we’re talking about here.

This strikes me as uninformed as U.K. governments published facts on gcse attainment clearly shows that most ethnic minorities score higher than white british . The lowest scoring are gypsy Roma and Irish travellers. (Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.U.K.).
So they’re certainly smart enough to get into these schools … ever wonder why they don’t get in?

William Amos
William Amos
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Which ‘ethnic minorities’ do you have in mind as being historically opressed? The Cornish? Up until 1950 Britain was 99% ‘White British’.
Unless you have in mind the historic ‘Norman Yoke’ I fear you might have American History too much in mind. Ours is quite different.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  William Amos

Yes it was. Then it opened its doors and started letting us in for education. But when our parents got distinctions in their studies (above their white counterparts) they were still barred from the jobs that were qualified for (by the standards set by the 99% white Britain). This is fact and wether you choose to verify that or not is a measure of your own process of critical thinking and dialogue.

For example , I agree with the author that school heads refusing to look at independent school applications is a boneheaded approach to DEI. I conclude that the issue isn’t DEI but it’s interpretation and implementation. It feels like a knee jerk reaction to a complicated issue (people don’t even believe institutional racism exists in this country) which will only stoke more divisions between people.

William Amos
William Amos
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You use the expressions ‘opened its doors’ and ‘barred from jobs’. Do you mean this formally and literally or anecdotally and figuratively?
If the formal, sustained and systematic exclusion of non-white graduates from positions commensurate with their qualifications and disproportionate to their demographic presence in this country is a simple fact then it can be simply shown.
Can you point me in the direction of your evidence?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  William Amos

These were my parents and friends parents experiences. If you do want to know more then I’d suggest engaging with the local ethnic minority groups in your neighbourhood and ask them what their experiences have been. Or watch a documentary.

But since you asked you may want to Google the Swann report in the 80’s or this Cambridge report for the same period https://sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Anti-racist-education-workshop-source-pack.pdf.
That should give you plenty of references to explore.

William Amos
William Amos
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Thank you, I’ve looked that over and it appears to be a source pack dealing with multi-cultural education in secondary schools in the 1980’s. If you have anything dealing with universities or the employment prospects post-graduation I’d be happy and interested to read that as well.
In my corner of London White British is a minority group.There is no absolute ethnic majority. Which is why I think we should be very careful about being ‘played off’ against once another. Ethnic factionalism of any stripe serves no useful purpose.
As it is, your description of a sense of exclusion and informal disbarment is one that is shared by many groups, ethnic and class based, when it comes to elite institutions. I recommend the novel Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy.

O'Driscoll
O'Driscoll
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

When the Prime Minister is a British Hindu of Indian origin, the Welsh First Minister is of Zambian origin, and the Scottish First Minister (and the Mayor of London) is a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, I struggle to see your “institutional racism”. I can see racism, like there was when my grandparents migrated here in the early 20th century, and like there is in every country in the world, but the institutions of this country seem to be open to all these days.

Rejoice, as someone once said.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  O'Driscoll

Ahh yes 🙂 The good ol ‘look there’s some successful brown people at the top so racism must not exist’ . Also used when Obama won. Didn’t make much difference for black and brown people on that side of the pond. They’re still getting killed by police.
And in the U.K. Muslims are still demonised, black boys are still being harassed by police , immigrants and non-white refugees are still being vilified.

JOHN CAMPBELL
JOHN CAMPBELL
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

wether = castrated ram
whether = whether or not
weather = the wet stuff out of the sky
Education is wonderful, don’t you agree?

Andrew F
Andrew F
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Problem with people like you is why you are still here?
Why do not you go back to these amazing shite countries you and your parents came from?
Why don’t you try to make them better instead of coming to uk (or wider West) and moaning how terrible it is?
No idea what ethnicity you are, but many non whites are doing fine in supposedly whacist West.
The one struggling are blacks, mostly because of low IQ and other cultural issues.
Reality is that modern world was created by White people.
While clowns like you are complaining about it using tools created by white people.
No one keeps you here by force.
Clear off, the sooner the better.

Rae Ade
Rae Ade
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

If you think this is a useful contribution to the DEI debate, think harder.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

🙂 thanks for validating my point about the extremist slant that UnHerd has taken on over the last few quarters. Dont worry I’m leaving. You can enjoy your so-called whiteness all to yourself.
Oh by the way there’s a black boy in Britain with a higher IQ than Einstein. The 4 youngest people to take your GCSE’s are all black . Nigerian and ghnaian kids on free school meals academically outperform their white counterparts.
Africans perfected Caesarian sections before colonisation when the west was still butchering its women in operating rooms.

Your people fucked our countries up so we’re gonna keep coming until that stops.if you don’t want us here then maybe vote for people who can change your foreign policy and stop interfering in our affairs.

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
8 months ago
Reply to  Will K

But how do you measure “merit” objectively?
The most reliable way to succeed in life is not to have “merit” but to have wealthy parents.

Simon Templar
Simon Templar
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

I’m going to say that having not only wealthy, but influential parents is one way to succeed – which we rightly despise because of cronyism – but engaged and sacrificial parents (who bolster their children’s education to be confident and think creatively) – that form of parenting is to be highly encouraged by society since that produces the best hope in the next generation. So yes, “parenting” is the best way to success. Let’s have more parenting.

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
8 months ago
Reply to  Simon Templar

Yes, good parenting can and does often overcome disadvantage in individual cases (I was one, as my impecunious parents were a bookseller and a librarian, so I was brought up with a love of books and learning).

But at the meta-level, money (and agreed, “influence” as a proxy for “advantage”) talks. When I was engaged in educational research 25 years ago, one of our teams explained that the only statistically significant variables on “attainment” at GCSE / A Level were the income of the parents and (at a lower level of correlation) the number of books in the house. I see no reason to think this has changed. indeed I imagine the effect has got more pronounced.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
8 months ago
Reply to  Simon Templar

I like your description of ‘sacrificial parent’: I was one: so were my previous 4 generations and my children and grandchildren: low income but loads of (inherited) books. However, maybe there is a luck in genetics to do with this property?

Trevor Evans
Trevor Evans
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

Very largely through proven academic prowess. Other character based attributes will, no doubt, be prone to assessor error but that cannot be a reason not to select those whom the assessors feel will contribute most to maintaining the high standards of Oxbridge. This has to apply across the population, as a whole. We should not dilute Oxbridge for any reason, including the exercise of prejudice against disadvantaged communities and public school candidates. 

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
8 months ago
Reply to  Trevor Evans

I’d like to agree with that but “proven academic prowess” is not an uncontested metric, as I said earlier. And rampant grade inflation at A Level and in Undergraduate degrees is making it increasingly difficult to distinguish “academic prowess” from grades written on a piece of paper. They are not the same thing. When approaching half graduands have been given Firsts at some universities, , how do you differentiate between those with real merit and those without? Even Oxford now gives an average of 37% First, compared with 18% thirty years ago.
A colleague who was a professor at my university was vehemently opposed to offering lower grades to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, though the evidence then available suggested that they did better than their grades would suggest and those from “better” schools, less so. I wanted to go with the evidence, he thought it was too difficult.
And now far eastern students are being admitted with poor grades and little English as our Universities want their money, and have become businesses first, education institutions second, driving out other students with greater “merit”.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

How to measure merit objectively?
What a strange question. ‘Merit’, of course, is a relative term indicating the degree to which an individual has demonstrated a high degree of excellence in some defined set of endeavors. It is field specific … and is earned as pre-set standards are achieved and/or exceeded.
We might say John merited the gold medal in the 100m sprint as he took first place. Equally we might say Debbie, with her perfect A+ grade average in Physics, demonstrated her academic merit.
Some measures are entirely objective…as in one’s 100m time; you either are or are not a sub-10 second runner. Other’s are moderately objective, as in Debbie’s 4.0+ GPA in physics. Not knowing the strength of the teachers or the rigor of the curriculum, or the grading methods, we can’t truly and absolutely know that Debbie is an outstanding student….but still we can be fairly certain.
And some are significantly subjective…as in one’s work performance record in management/leadership roles. We depend, there, upon multiple interviews, performance reports, and recommendations. If we’re looking for a top-notch leader for an IT Group, we’ll look at the academic foundation, the companies the individual worked for, the achievements they’ve tallied…and we’ll pay close attention to how well he or she interviews with a variety of managers.
In the end, if hiring or advancing the best & brightest is our goal, we’ll depend upon all those things and make the best decision we can, hoping that we’ve selected someone who not only has a meritorious record, but will be able to equally produce outstanding results in the future.
Merit is all there is…and it’s difficult enough to find it when that’s your goal.
As for the ‘most reliable way’ to succeed in life is to have wealthy parents….that’s just silly.
Have we succeeded in life if we sit upon a pile of money that Daddy earned? Of course not. That’s not success, that’s luck. And if that pile we sit upon is not IMMENSE, it will quickly evaporate as all we do is sit upon it. Have Bill Gates kids succeeded in life? What have they done other than be born? We might say Bill has succeeded in life if all we measure is economic wealth…and we’ll invite Bill to speak to our group about Achievement (and not his kids)…but success in life goes far beyond that, don’t you think?

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  Will K

Indeed.
It’s hard enough to find and develop excellence when that is your purpose. It’s impossible if we choose to follow DIE instead.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Bring back the Entrance Exam, and preferably the requirement to have Latin and Greek. Sorted!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

This strikes me as uninformed and racist given that the U.K. governments published facts on gcse attainment clearly shows that most ethnic minorities score higher than white british . The lowest scoring are gypsy Roma and Irish travellers. (Ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.U.K.).
So they’re certainly smart enough to get into these schools … ever wonder why they don’t get in?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Given that ‘research’ it strikes me that you sir are the racist. Don’t despair though, you’ll grow out of it with any luck.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

How exactly is that “racist” ?
The Oxford and Cambridge Entrance Exams were specifically designed to select students capable of thinking for themselves and originally. As were the interviews. And they certainly weren’t meant to be easy. They tested things that A Levels did not, that inherently favoured the talented over the coached. How is that a bad thing ?
You seem to imagine that Oxford and Cambridge somehow had a desire to pick -sub-standard students by somehow favouring the privileged. Rather than pick the very best to maintain their historic reputation.
But if that really were the case, over a period of time enough of those discriminated against top students would have raised the standards at the next level universities to surpass the self-crippled Oxford and Cambridge.
But that never happened, did it ?
QED.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Assuming the same level of professors, lab equipment, and (in fewer but not -zero current instances) printed materials. Is this a level playing field or does it introduce weighted variables into the equation?
A school like Oxford, or Harvard, mightn’t “desire” substandard students, but more such candidates get in from The Elite or birthright High Society, in America at least. Marginal students with parents who graduated an Ivy are much more likely to get into that same school than they would be on their own merits. Inconveniently for those who decry legacy admissions the loudest, substandard-score legacy admits tend to do better than their “outsider” counterparts.
Perhaps because they feel they belong, or were underachievers who got serious when they landed on an elite campus?. If on a smaller scale, are there no legacy practices in Britain? (Honest question, my guess is little or none of the overt kind). I think there are at least atmospheric or tradition-based obstacles for people who enter spaces that were previously often closed to their “demographic”; at one time this was true of women, and practicing Jews. It needn’t be deliberate, or even “systemic” to have some chilling effect that we can address or confront in some way.
I’d like to see the current version of DEI dismantled here in the States. We should neither exaggerate nor ignore remaining pockets of unfairness in the university game. And be willing to see when those pockets, for example, unfairly disadvantage Appalachian applicants who don’t fit the colour model, or benefit the children of wealthy Nigerian professionals.
Sometimes the door needs to be kicked open at first, but not propped open forever. Down with long-term Corrective Injustice.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s quite informative, don’t you think, to see which minorities score better than white British and which score worse. What, for example, is the factor that explains the large difference in outcomes between African and Afro-Caribbean pupils?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago

The legacy of intergenerational chattel slavery and colonial dominance comes to mind. I’m not saying that’s the whole story, or good excuse for a Haitian or Jamaican to blame History and The Man for his failures in 2024.
*What information does this outcome disparity provide, in your estimation?
People long-dominated by a foreign power, such as the Irish or Kenyans, tend to have lingering group underperformance once the chains are broken. Same with those shipped to plantation colonies like Jamaica or Virginia and not assimilated for many generations. But this hasn’t stopped a notable percentage of elite Nigerians, now that the country is independent.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

And if they score highly at A level on and on entrance papers they’ll get in.
GCSE s quite different kettle of fish to A level

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Why the caption photograph of Emmanuel’s somewhat barbarous (Baroque) Chapel?*Was Professor Abulafia an undergraduate there?

(* By a rather young Christopher Wren Esq.)

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago

Charles, I despair of you sometimes. That’s a lovely building (and I didn’t go to Emma).

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

It has à certain provincial charm I’ll grant you, but Vitruvius would have been horrified!

Andrew F
Andrew F
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

To be fair to Charles, you need to go to Rome to appreciate Barouque done right.
I never liked it till then.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Agreed, somehow it doesn’t suit the Fens.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago

But Cambridge isn’t actually in the Fens ! They start a few miles north.

Peter Principle
Peter Principle
8 months ago

“*Was Professor Abulafia an undergraduate there?”
No. King’s

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Thank you, and my apologies for being too slovenly to ‘look him up’.

Gordon Hughes
Gordon Hughes
8 months ago

I have nothing but fond memories of the Emma Chapel. But then we had our wedding celebration in it (as it isn’t registered for marriages) while I was briefly a Fellow of the College. Still the main quad of Christ’s (my primary college) is often undervalued.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Gordon Hughes

Agreed and despite its slightly lopsided layout. The Gatehouse is splendid despite its Beaufort iconography, as is the Hall in spite of Scott’s ‘restoration’.
It’s a pity the same cannot be said for the ‘New Court’.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago

Just outed yourself as a Yorkist there ? Sadly Margaret Beaufort and the Lancastrians and Tudors definitely won the battle to found/name Cambridge colleges. Something like Lancs 4.5 Yorks 0.5 (Queen’s had founders from both).

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Yes, and had it not been for those damned French/Savoyard mercenaries RIII would have won the day and we would have heard little more from the Tudor upstart.

Peter Principle
Peter Principle
8 months ago

A very good article: many thanks to Prof. Abulafia. Cambridge Uni’s earlier social engineering was not restricted to wangling places for those “good on the river”. It excluded married Fellows until the 1860’s and (folowing the reformation) non-Anglicans until the 1870’s. Women could not graduate until the 1940’s. At one time, King’s ony accepted students from Eton and, until 1988, Magdalene excluded women. Traditionally, it saw its role as preparing men to serve the Church and State. Any “pursuit of excellence” was done within those parameters.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Eton was founded with the specific function of supplying boys for Kings, just as Winchester before it had done the same for New College.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
8 months ago

Yes, I think we were very successful when we bred leaders rather than presently electing them off the street.

Alex Carnegie
Alex Carnegie
8 months ago

Although it is abused to impose quotas, I think that selection on “potential” rather than “performance” is correct. Later in life, I always preferred to look for recruits from those with mediocre A levels from undistinguished schools, who had later demonstrated both intelligence and determination to overcome this early setback, than amongst the glib but conformist Etonians etc with an immaculate academic record whose CVs appeared superficially more impressive. I operated in a field which required original thought and independent judgement and I found the former category produced far more decent recruits than the latter (though some useable individuals did come from the major public schools).

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  Alex Carnegie

I don’t wholly disagree.
Yet in practice there’s a problem that performance is both easier to measure and a metric it’s much harder to challenge. Judging performance requires a lot more judgement and intepretation – which then just allows you even more disputes about real or imginary bias.
It would be far harder to standardise a universal – and univesally accepted – measure of potential which was reliable and repeatable regardless of who was making the judgement.
If we went back to where we were 40 odd years ago and trusted the selectors to use their skills and judgement, many of the problems we have/imagine we have would disappear. And you’d likely get more slection by potential.
I’m not convinced that Etonians are more or less conformist than any other group.

Alex Carnegie
Alex Carnegie
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

On the last point, I am sure you are right that there are plenty of non conformist OEs (ditto the products of other schools with strong teaching) though I am not sure if non conformity and usefully original thinking are quite the same thing.

I found the challenge was that because they were well taught they often appeared more intelligent and original than they actually were. It was easy to overestimate their ability when interviewing them. “Good” teaching can also stress too much how to please examiners rather than to think for oneself. There used to be far more autodidacts – poorly educated but often startlingly original – than there are now. This is a pity since they were often very interesting.

I suspect these problems are far worse now than forty years ago. Micheals Howard and Gove’s reforms, the expansion of the university system , social media and the culture wars have all discouraged clear original thinking in pupils and students. The incentives are all the other way.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Alex Carnegie

Yes. And those who reject the radical creed of the Academy often do so only to swallow a contrarian creed, a kind of mirror-image love of one-sided answers that just draws from less mainstream or common sources–not the deep well of the Western Canon or World Classics.
They swallow red-dyed placebos. But a few fly the cuckoo’s nest with wings that aren’t made of wax.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago

Imposing quotas is, almost without exception, a terrible idea and likely to prove counter-productive. Calls to impose quotas persist because they arise from a (sometimes deliberate) misconception that any Inequality must be a result of Inequity.
Many who espouse the idea are not so stupid that they fail to see the illogic in their argument, they stick to it presumably in the hope of appearing “good” to the rest of the world.
I know ‘Elite’ is now universally applied as a pejorative, but that seems daft in the context of higher education. Universities should be elite institutions, attracting the brightest and the best – regardless of that student’s race, gender or where they sit on the Oppression matrix – and then pushing them to fulfil their potential.
However impassioned the arguments are for affirmative action, or an evening up of the scales, they cannot get past some inescapable truths.
Any and all “positive discrimination” for one group requires actual discrimination against another.
Applying artificial quotas in any sector – to try and correct perceived imbalances – almost always leads to resentment from those who feel that not everybody is being rewarded on merit and, rather than healing divisions, it actually exacerbates them.
Equality of Opportunity is a laudable goal and should be argued for and worked towards by all right thinking people.
Equality of Outcome is impossible, unworkable and requires inequity against one party to achieve “equality” for the other. This should be argued against by all right thinking people.
Merit is the only criteria by which a student should be measured.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Another well-articulated post that I mostly agree with.
One nudge. Is merit–even in connection to top-level studies–purely intellectual or academic? That is: Doesn’t a teenager who had to work part-time, take care of a grandparent during high school, or grew up in poor household with no books, not likely possess some merit of character and temperament that should be considered when all other things seem equal?

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

“all other things seem equal” is the key qualifier there, and yes, maybe it should …. but only if all other things are equal
I appreciate that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, but just from the experience of friends trying to get their kids into top universities, if there is a current bias, it is against white, middle-class privately educated boys.
It used to be that the interview portion of the selection process was what skewed the intake in their favour, because public schoolboys knew the language, looked the part and had the connections. That actually seems to count against them these days.
In much the same way that Asian lads are the most discriminated against in the US. Beware the unintended consequences of trying to appear fair.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Agreed.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Sure. But considered in what way and for what reason?
The caveat, “when all other things seem equal” is illusionary. ALL other things are never equal. Consider Bill & Sam: both males, both graduates, both carrying 4.0 GPA’s, and 800 Board Scores (assuming 800 is still a tip top Board score). Bill works part-time, takes care of his grandparent, and grew up in a poor household with no books. All admirable things. Sam was adopted…grew up in a single parent household… does all the cooking at home. Now Steve, also male, also 4.0/800. Steve’s step-parents are wealthy but twice-divorced…his birth mother no longer wants anything to do with him…his father died when he was young…Steve is the best player on the school’s football team and is ranked in the top 5 in the State. Steve volunteers every weekend at Big Brother. And now Jill, also 4.0/800 who placed first in the National Science Fair and has two patents. Otherwise her home and family life is completely average; she doesn’t work part time; and she likes playing video games.
Which story is the saddest? Which indicates the most hardship…or demonstrates the most merit of character & temperament? Who is the brightest …or has the greatest chance of achieving wonderful things?
The problem, of course, is that no two people are ever identical…nor are their stories, their problems, their challenges or their achievements. And what we are left with are 4 sets of two, narrowly measured metrics that indicate that all 4 are ‘identical’…and 4 sets of personal stories that indicate they’re not.
You’re the Chief Admissions Officer…you have one spot…whom do you admit?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

On the face of it it would appear that the way in which DEI principles are being applied may be counter productive but the more interesting (root-cause interesting) thing to perhaps question is the disparity between independent and state schools. Are kids in independent schools smarter or do they have access to better resources and one-on-one instruction that adapts (even if on a small scale) to their learning style and interests.

All this talk of merit discounts the barriers that children face to be able to thrive academically. If you want them to compete fairly then perhaps they all need to start from the same base?

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

For once, I agree 100%.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Having them all start at the same base would force the people who run the public education system to confront their failure in adequately preparing certain youths for college.

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

“The same base” would mean the same family, where one gets both their DNA from (hence, abilities/potential) and the most significant educational input to develop those abilities. The way society functions today it is impossible for all to start “from the same base”.
From my experience, the difference between state schools and selective academic schools is about different levels of expectation and extent to which students are challenged; these schools simply have different reference points for judging student’s performance. Studying non-stop full day is what expected for ages 13+, otherwise even the most able slip down to the average or below in their group. The main advantage of independent schools is their smaller class sizes filled with pre-selected through exams more able and ambitious students.
To clarify, nobody apart from students with special needs receives one-on-one tuition in private schools today. Such tuition one receives from one’s parents or possibly from tutors arranged for by the family.

Simon Templar
Simon Templar
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

There is no “compete fairly”, period. Every person is unique and born to unique challenges. Is it fair that a child born deaf, blind or intellectually impaired, or to a drug-addicted single mother, is much less likely to reach Oxford or Cambridge than a smart abled child whose parents are married? Of course that’s not fair. Equal outcomes are not possible, nor are they desirable. Life is about making the most of the hand you are dealt, and the joy of success is found in finding your own purpose; perhaps raising children or helping others achieve. Not everyone is supposed to reach the same level in any specified dimension, any more than every dinner is supposed to taste the same, or every animal is equally fast.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Good luck trying to arrange that all children have equally good parents. And always remember – state parenting is the worst possible outcome for children.
It is a practical impossibility to level the playing field. Better to spend your time looking for realistic, practical things to do here.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

If you want them to compete fairly then perhaps they all need to start from the same base?

To achieve that you would need to (magically?) devise and enforce a system under which every school pupil had exactly the same teaching in identical schools.

Then it would be from the same base, which would presumably be at a pretty low level.

And to enforce the system you would need to make it a criminal offence for parents to attempt to improve their children’s education

And this would benefit the pupils how? And benefit the country as whole how?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

Ask the Finnish

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The students at my fee paying academic school are smart but the biggest reason for their success is the intellectual atmosphere that frees them to be nerdy and interested in their subjects. There’s no micky taking of clever students. The other students allow and encourage the smartest to flourish.
The classes are a little smaller than in the state sector and, they get one to one help if they come and ask for it (just as I did when working in the state sector).

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
8 months ago

Whichever system in-demand universities use, there will always be those who say they have not been selected through an unfair process. So how do you pick a system which is least unfair? There are so many influences that are proxies for “privilege”, which is what fee-paying schools are really defending.
Attainment (GCSE / A level passes) is actually one of the worst metrics you could choose if you want selection to be based on some definition of “merit”.
When I was engaged in educational research 25 years ago a meta-study showed that the only statistically significant variables on “attainment” were the income of the parents and (at a lower level of correlation) the number of books in the house.
I doubt if this has changed.
Another study showed that over 80% of parents believed their own children were of above-average intelligence.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

Interesting points. I particularly like the “books in the house” measure, perhaps the truest causal correlation and the one no one actually sees.
But more fundamental is the question of ‘fairness’. What does that mean?
Simplistically we can say that if Mom is splitting a candy bar for her two kids, it’s ‘fair’ if each child has half. It’s not fair, if my brother gets a bigger piece. That’s easy to see & easy to measure because we begin with the certainty that each child equally deserves half of the object in question. There is no other qualifier other than ‘balance’.
But consider a basketball team (it’s that time of year!): is it fair that taller players have an advantage when it comes both to making the team and playing the game? Take the two brothers again as an example: Bob is 5’10”, Steve is 6’7″. Is it fair that Steve is always picked first? Yes it is, because both Bob & Steve recognize that — all other things being equal — Steve has a basketball advantage that Bob doesn’t. Bob can compensate for that advantage by becoming a superior ball-handler or shooter, but he’ll have to work harder and become better if he is to be considered equally likely to be picked for the team. Bob may not like it, but he’d consider it fair.
Now consider a more complex situation. Is it fair, for example, that only 3% of all cardiac surgeons are Black?
Like the basketball example, certainly we can say that the object of being a cardiac surgeon is saving lives threatened by cardiac failure….and cardiac medicine is by its nature extraordinarily complex with countless life-critical functions involved…so therefore the smarter and more capable one is, the greater the probability that they can become a cardiac surgeon. So it is fair that the smarter & more capable become surgeons and the lesser don’t…in the same way the taller become BBall players and the shorter don’t. Being smarter & more capable or taller, in the case of BBall, provides a natural advantage.
But that creates (today) a demographic imbalance in outcome. Is that fair?
Sure it is. An imbalance in process outcomes does not indicate the process is unfair. it simply indicates (at this time) that fewer Blacks are graduating from college…and going to medical school…and graduating from medical school…with the capability to perform heart surgery. As long as the process itself is ‘fair’, meaning at no step along the way is a qualifier race-based, then racial imbalance in outcome only indicates racial imbalance in non-racial qualifications. This is equally true in BBall which also has a significant racial imbalance in outcome with 73% of all players in the NBA being Black. They’re not there because they’re Black, they’ve achieved that level of success because they display a racial imbalance in non-racial qualifications….which is absolutely fair.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

Given the current academic climate, this short piece by Prof. Abulafia is nothing short of courageous! You could get ‘cancelled’ for a lot less these days.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
8 months ago

Whether EDI or DEI, let’s just call it what it is: organizationally-sanctioned discrimination. That’s what’s happening and everyone knows it. When people from certain groups are privileged over people from other groups solely for their group identity, that’s called discrimination. Ironically, the US went through a civil rights period to outlaw this sort of thing, only to have it resurface first as affirmative action and now, as DEI.
What a patronizing and condescending way of looking at minorities, one embraced by self-righteous white progressives who see every black person as a pet or mascot. There are reasons why academia has fallen into self-inflicted disrepute and this is one of them.
What’s extra comical is how much of the fuss is concentrated in places that most of us will not grace – corporate boardrooms, prestige universities, and so forth. No one gets too freaked out about the composition of the student body at some random State U; it’s at the Ivies where the people who know best hold court that it’s important. If their goal was to create backlash and stoke hostility among races, there is little they could have done that would be more effective. Well, except for letting certain groups of criminals wreak havoc, ironically to the detriment of law-abiding people in those groups.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Last year was 40 years on from Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech calling for people to be judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin.
Sadly, we are further away than ever from his goal.
When people tell me DEI is the way foreward, I remember MLK’s speech and know they’re lying, deluded or both.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

I’m sure MLK would be surprised to learn that he was still giving speeches in 1983, some 15 years after his assassination.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago

Apologies. I meant 60 years.
More to the point, I wonder if he’d be happy with the goals and methods being pursued by his successors ? Interested to hear your take on that.

Gordon Hughes
Gordon Hughes
8 months ago

The division between Admissions Tutors and Teaching Fellows or Directors of Studies who handle subject admissions is often forgotten. As a Teaching Fellow for 15 years, you had to live with your admission mistakes – often having to teach the students whom others would not take on. You learn very quickly to distinguish between high grades or smooth interview performance and real potential.
Some of my worst mistakes were bright, well-taught, students from both independent schools and direct grant grammar schools who blew up or went off-track shortly after arriving in Cambridge. It was Admissions Tutors who wanted well-rounded chaps (in the old lingo) or what would now be termed diversity hires.
There is a crucial lesson here. Admissions should he handled by people with real skin in the game. There is nothing like having to teach unmotivated or unqualified students weekly for 3 years as a stimulus to taking admission decisions seriously. Treating admissions as a game of meeting statistical targets entirely destroys this link and simply encourages the ever-widening gap between senior academics and undergraduate students. On a purely personal note, I was interviewed and supervised by (later) Nobel Laureates in my discipline. That had a formative impact of my career like nothing else.

Tancred Lockyer
Tancred Lockyer
8 months ago

If you really believe in meritocracy, the first thing to do is abolish private schools. I’m generally opposed to diversity quotas, but I don’t have much sympathy with David’s argument, which seems to be that the huge preponderance of wealthy kids at Oxbridge (whose parents bought them an unfair advantage in the university admissions stakes) represents some kind of ‘meritocracy’. Of course it isn’t the universities’ responsibility to engineer a fairer society, but if that’s what we want, then let’s scrap fee-paying schools. Surely if little Max and Cordelia are clever enough, they’ll do just fine at the local comp. Or is it meritocracy for me and not for thee?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

What a ‘chippy’ little rant! eg: “whose parents bought them an UNFAIR:* advantage in the university admissions stakes”. What’s unfair about it? They do the very best for their children as every parent should.

Then: “Max and Cordelia”, that’s way blow the belt, no doubt you would prefer it if they were called Wayne & Tracy.

Frankly given the deplorable performance of most UK state education, which in many cases is verging on child abuse, why shouldn’t one be allowed to BUY the very best education available?

Spiteful little toads such as your good self will never be satisfied until you have reduced all our children to monosyllabic, prematurely obese, unemployable morons, and all in the name of meritocracy. God help us!

(*My emphasis.)

Andrew F
Andrew F
8 months ago

Mostly agreeing with you.
However, as Lampl Trust research shows, public school education is worth about 3/4 of a grade in A levels.
So borderline A grade product of public schools is quite thick, really.
So having properly managed, selective state school system would be better overall for the country.
But with majority of parents realising that their Max, Wayne, Cordelia and Tracy are thick, it is not going to happen.
In democracy.
You are somehow keen on Greek and Latin.
Do you really believe that failures of the West are related to not learning long dead languages?
I am looking forward to being told why.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Thanks to Tony Crosland and many others the Grammar Schools were virtually destroyed to be replaced by utopian but dreadful Comprehensives. Thank you Labour.

Public Schools offer more than just a first class education for the cream of the country,* they facilitate entry to various elite gangs/clubs that dominate much of our national life. The Law, the City, most of the professions and august societies. Perhaps the zenith being Eton, Oxford and The Guards.

No off course a lack of Latin and Greek did NOT lead to the “failures of the West”, that was mainly down to hubris, as the career of one Herbert Asquith for one will show.

However a knowledge of both languages is still useful even if they are now ‘dead’, if only because they are at the very root of our Civilisation.

(* Otherwise known as the Rich & Thick.)

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago

Quite the little club of racists here, isn’t it?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago

Really? I hadn’t noticed, and even is so, so what?

Goodman Brown
Goodman Brown
8 months ago

What’s unfair about segregating children at birth, so the affluent can enjoy the ‘very best education available’ while others languish in a ‘deplorable’ state education system which is ‘verging on child abuse’? That question is asked and answered, presuming you think all of us state school kids turn out ‘monosyllabic, prematurely obese, unemployable morons’. It seems like you don’t mix with many people outside of your class. You’re happy for us to deliver your food and drive you about, I suppose. I met many people at Oxford who think like you do, though they never actually spoke to me the way you have. Your type gets very angry and rude when somebody suggests levelling the playing field, perhaps because you know how you’d perform if you actually had to compete fairly.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  Goodman Brown

Rather fortunately it must be said, but thanks to ‘effortless superiority’ we don’t have to compete. Annoying but true and has been for centuries.

Goodman Brown
Goodman Brown
8 months ago

.

Alan Kaufman
Alan Kaufman
8 months ago

I don’t know the British system at all. But the American “DEI” drivel has led to masses of mediocre students with prestige degrees. In hiring in the professions, one has to find a way of learning test scores that equalize (careful though! You discriminate when you ask about ability!) to figure out whether the racially privileged person in front of you made it on merit or privilege.
Academics measure very particular abilities. The world has great use for many non-academic skills. But when one turns academia into a “social justice” factory, what justice is achieved by discriminating on traits unrelated to ability or skill?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

Students should be accepted on merit alone, but it is reasonable to recognise that someone achieving excellence despite significant educational disadvantage has more potential than someone achieving the same standard with the help of significant educational advantage.
Racial quotas at university entrance havae been rightly outlawed in the USA, and they should be outlawed in the UK too. The Labour Party has only just ditched its gender quota – a palpably unfair system which for many years barred men from becoming Labour MPs.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
8 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I think I see the problem here, if this is a sample of your reasoning. I don’t know what the phrase “educational disadvantage” is supposed to encompass, but anyone who’s overcome a disadvantage of any kind to achieve something deserves some credit. However, from this we can infer nothing whatsoever about that person’s “potential” vis-a-vis that of another achiever who hasn’t had to contend with the same impediment. Only someone who knows logical relevance strictly by hearsay would think we could. On the question of what these two achievers’ potential happens to be in relation to each other, we are completely in the dark if all we know is that one had to overcome a disadvantage that the other didn’t.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
8 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

That’s true. Whilst the person achieving excellence whilst privileged hasn’t had to overcome disadvantages, it’s impossible to say whether they’d have achieved excellence or not if they’d had to overcome disadvantages.

JOHN CAMPBELL
JOHN CAMPBELL
8 months ago

Over 50 years ago I was accepted by Peterhouse. As the son of a coal miner from Lancashire my presumption has been that the place was offered because of my good looks and ability rather than my background.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN CAMPBELL

Was Maurice Cowling still there?

Trevor Evans
Trevor Evans
8 months ago
Reply to  JOHN CAMPBELL

Perfect criteria, in that order…

Arthur King
Arthur King
8 months ago

DEI is antihuman. It’s logic dehumanizes everything it touches.

Andrew F
Andrew F
8 months ago

I don’t have kids, so no skin in the game apart from education system being critical to the future of the country.
Prof Abulafia makes some great points but I met products of private schools and quite a few were not very intelligent but had polish and connections.
If I recall, Lampl Trust did some research many years ago and found that private school education was worth about 3/4 of grade at A levels.
So borderline A from public school was clearly weaker than strong B from state school.
Which shows why system grading from 100 points would be much better in distinguishing between weak A and strong B (like in 82/100 against 78/100).
According to my older English friends, public schools were in serious decline in 60s and 70s because of excellent network of grammar schools.
What revived public school was Labour decision to abolish grammar schools.
Somehow left in uk believes that selection by house prices is fairer that by 11 plus (or other academic means).
There was no problem with academic selection in communist countries.
Problem is that it is difficult to revive grammar schools and selection because most parents believe that their kids are above average (which is statistically impossible).
So they would never accept the system where, let say, 20% or even 30% go to selective schools.
Then is the question of IQ, which no one wants to discuss.
Basically, to get your children to publics schools you need certain income, which, apart from inherited wealth, comes from careers in business and professions.
These careers, in huge majority of cases, require well above average IQ.
So it follows that children will have above average IQ as well (yes, I know about regression to average).
So, it is not surprising that these kids will have better academic results, statistically.
I have no idea whether public schools kids are overrepresented in top universities based on inherent intelligence.
What we know is that blacks have low IQ with evidence available all around us and in Africa.
Other non white races are doing fine in white societies.
But we are not allowed to discuss it in MSM.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

What we know is that blacks have low IQ with evidence available all around us and in Africa.

Before you get started on that one, better consider how much your measured IQ is going to depend on stimulation, training and education (not to mention infant nutrition). Lots of other little fun facts: In the UK free school meals have a bigger effect than ethnicity; black Africans do clearly better than black Caribbeans (even though the latter probably have more ‘white’ genes); white non-British do much better than white British on some measures; on some measures whites (as a group) do clearly worse than blacks (as a group).

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

And over here certain sub-populations of whites, like US descendants of French Canadians (Cajuns) and Scots-Irish (Appalachians) do very poorly compared with other segments in the pan-ethnic group of White People.
Some of this seems connected to ethnic cultures that place less value on higher ed. and professional attainment, an attitude that tends to prevail in most of our majority-black ghettoes (“inner-cities”). The opposite attitude prevails among Han Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews. Not to overemphasize ethnicity in an effort to combat hard-right IQ essentialism!
A determined student can increase his or her IQ score over the course of a lifetime. The daughter of professors from a book-lined home has advantages that are not purely genetic. IQ is nothing like an unwavering or infallible measure, especially over multiple generations with a determined upward push.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Exactly!

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

What we know is that blacks have low IQ with evidence available all around us and in Africa.

But you people aren’t racists, right?
Wrong. This putz represents conservatism perfectly.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago

Let’s consider what is actually being said (not well said, admittedly, but still…)
Andrew tells us, “Blacks have low IQ with evidence available”. What he presumably means is that when we look at IQ measures by demographic group, that the Black group’s average IQ rating is lower. This is a statement of fact. (And of course, If you have facts that contradict that, please share them. We’d love to see them!)
That does not mean that any given individual’s IQ is higher or lower than any other individual’s IQ. It doesn’t mean that any given random Black man has an IQ which is lower than any given random White man. It simply means that the population averages are different when it comes to IQ measurement.
Equally we can say that the average weight of a Black man is higher than the average weight of an Asian man (198 lbs to 161 lbs). This does not mean every Black man is heavier than every Asian man; it simply means the population averages are different.
Equally we can say that Whites are, on average, lesser BBall players than Blacks simply because at the premier level in BBall, 73% of the players are Black. This does not mean that any given White player is not as good as any given Black player. It simply means the population averages, once again, are different.
These are not racist statements. These are simply factual statements that indicate a racial imbalance in population averages. The fact of a racial imbalance is not racist.
So no, whoever you think “you people” are, that statement does not make them racists. Categorizing groups as ‘you people’ tends to be.
What does make an individual Conservative, though, is a consistent reliance upon reality. You’re right there.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

And would you also connect blind worship of Bronze Age religious texts to that consistent reliance? Because that is certainly correlated with Conservatism among whites in the Anglosphere; with overlap and divergence, as with our limited intelligence metrics.
How convenient that reality itself seems to confirm your preferences and blind spots.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Do we really need to say that correlation is not causation?
Or perhaps go all the way back to basic logic and point that just because Garfield is orange, and Garfield is a cat….that not all cats are orange?
Don’t be silly.
Certainly there are those who self-identify as Conservatives who also follow BAP…just as there are those who are Conservative and eat tofu…and like to watch The Bachelor. That says nothing about Conservatism..,. but it does say something about those particular individuals.
Or should we talk instead about the genocidal starvation of the Kulaks and note that genocidal starvation and the pile of 6M bodies is correlated with Liberalism and Leftist politics?
Or, how ’bout, instead, simply looking at the point at hand?! A novel idea.
And that point?
It’s really such a minor one….amazing that you find it so inflammatory: that IQ measurement by population group has consistently indicated that when we compare group average to group average that the Black group average is lower than the White group average.
So what?
That doesn’t mean that any given Black individual has a lower IQ than any given White individual. That doesn’t mean yours is lower than mine…or mine lower than yours (however your confusion about Garfield is somewhat telling). It means, really, very very little. It simply says population averages are different.
If you can find a study that tells us that there is no average IQ difference between population groups, please share it. But that really wouldn’t mean much either.
We can also say that the male IQ, on average, is marginally higher than the female IQ. Again, so what?
None of us interacts with POPULATIONS; we interact with individual people.
But I am curious….what are MY preferences and blind spots, since evidently you know me that well?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

I appreciate that you are fair-minded enough to allow for divergence and overlap–and the basic distinction between correlation and causation. I just don’t think it’s that helpful–or sometimes, as blameless as you claim–to place much emphasis on generalizations about whole, huge populations, even when nuance is placed alongside those broad brushstrokes. I’ll accept that your highlighting of those numbers comes from an honest place, without any mean ulterior motive.
I pointed to the correlation between institutional Christianity and sociopolitical Conservatism. My pushback was in response to this: “What does make an individual Conservative, though, is a consistent reliance upon reality”.
That’s just silly to me. Yes, Conservatism is correlated with pragmatism, lack of emotion, caution, and a dim view of human nature. But that says next to nothing about the individual. They may be optimistic, or pessimistic; hotheaded or calm; brutal or kind; rigidly empirical or given to magical thinking. Heck, any realistic person probably has a little of all that–right?
I should have withheld or at least toned down my parting shot, especially since you weren’t even addressing me. I don’t know much about your preferences and blind spots, let alone how you really are deep down. We scarcely know ourselves in many ways. But you did ask:
You seem like a free-market extremist, and someone who is allied with your version of Conservatism at a soul-deep level. A pragmatist, but with rather fierce economic and sociopolitical loyalties–that you won’t suspend for long in the interest of real discussion. (Not saying I’m above all that myself). At times I think you confuse hardness–the “cold, hard” part of the truth–with the whole or only truth.
I also think you are smart, with a sense of humor, a lot to say. Like me, you often like to argue, and appreciate a worthy opponent, even if feelings get hurt or tempers flare a bit.
I think I’m more of a hothead, moodier. But it’s pretty hard to read character or temperament in characters on a screen.
Even though I frequently, perhaps usually disagree with you, I think you conduct yourself well here and make a strong contribution overall. Have a good day.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Hah! I feel like I’m reading a horoscope….or looking in a funhouse mirror. As with both, some right, some wrong, and always interesting!
I appreciate your taking the time to put together such a thoughtful & considerate answer.
You’re absolutely right. Conservatism is correlated with pragmatism,. I’d tend to say more than correlated, but actually definitionally linked. But, as you know, the definitions of what is Conservative and what is Liberal (what is Right and what is Left) and all the flavors in-between are soft and moving things. A Conservative in Versailles in 1789 would be radically different from a Conservative in small town Mid-America in 2024 who would most probably appear to a Royalist to be a raving Jacobin.
And you’re right again. Whether one self-identifies as Conservative or Liberal, that identification says absolutely nothing about the individual (who may be a total idiot…or a total genius…or a great guitarist….or a wonderful dancer…or or or or). It also actually doesn’t even tell us whether they are in fact, Conservative or Liberal, since a misunderstanding of both categories is fairly typical.
For me, one of the fundamental differences between Conservative and Liberal is the Conservative reliance upon Reality (as in the facts of a life in a cold hard world(to coin a phrase!)) as a foundation upon which policy can be built….and the more Liberal reliance upon Academic Theory (what I might call, Wishful / Rousseauian Thinking…which most typically seems to be built upon faith in the goodness of Natural Man…despite all evidence to the contrary).
It’s interesting that you see (at least within the comments of mine you’ve happened upon) my perspectives as being a matter of loyalty. Not a word I would have used.
‘Loyalty’ to political causes…or economic and socio-political ideas…really has nothing to do with it. Rather I have a ‘loyalty’ to what I’d like to think is logic, clear thought, reasoned dialogue, evidence, fact, truth, etc. Of course most of us probably believe that in the same way most people believe themselves ABOVE AVERAGE!
(of course we are!)
And I would gladly and enthusiastically engage in Real Discussion …but that’s hard to find. And comment forums tend to quickly degenerate into kneejerk name calling & labeling which kills Real Discussion.
In general I despise group category labeling. Conservative / Liberal / NeoCon / Leftist / Progressive / Christian Nationalist / Socialist…you name it, they’re all shorthand approximations for a whole collection of ideas that may or may not actually fit with any given individual so labeled. The real question, for all of us, is always or should always be issue & idea-based and not category based. If I am rabidly free-speech does that make me liberal or conservative? If I oppose men-who are pretending to be women participating in women’s sports, am I liberal or conservative? I don’t strive to be category-loyal; I strive to be reasonable, and logic-loyal (given a belief in certain fundamental, self-evident truths which transcend argument…as in men and women are fundamentally different)
In any case, to your point, this I think approaches being a ‘real discussion’. My pleasure entirely. And best wishes till next time.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

I appreciate your response and agree with much of what say here, especially concerning labels and guitar-playing ability, which I have some of (can’t dance well). I agree that we’re at least flirting with a real discussion now.
“one of the fundamental differences between Conservative and Liberal is the Conservative reliance upon Reality (as in the facts of a life in a cold hard world(to coin a phrase!)) as a foundation upon which policy can be built….and the more Liberal reliance upon Academic Theory (what I might call, Wishful / Rousseauian Thinking…which most typically seems to be built upon faith in the goodness of Natural Man…despite all evidence to the contrary).”
If it took it as accurate, that framing would make me want to be a Conservative! (More of the time that is, because I have certain conservative and traditional leanings).
But that’s a very skewed framing. Actual Liberals like I (mostly) am aren’t usually into Academic Theory or hard ideologies. That crowd belongs much more to the Illiberal Left, which includes hard Progressives and Wokesters. But I agree there is too much utopianism among actual Liberals too.
Allow me to tilt your seesaw back down a bit. Conservatives who think they have a monopoly or special hold on reality have succumbed to a self-serving arrogance. Many Liberals are pragmatic at heart, but with a more charitable view of human nature and openheartedness toward a neighbor. They’d rather err–since we all run into errors–on the side of kindness than cruelty. Too many Conservative are not what I’d call realists but radical human-nature pessimists or “kindness skeptics”. Some of them are cold utilitarians with a broken or factory-defective emotional machinery. Many among the self-declared Conservative crowd are Biblical Literalists who treat their given live on Earth as a mere warm up or testing ground for the real life to come in Heaven, or Hell. That is not pragmatism, nor realism, but escapism.
Or course none of these apparent traits apply only to one side of any easy binary, but I stand behind the (data free!) likelihood of my claims.
I’ll leave it there. Cheers.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

We could chase this for days….but it would be far easier over a cup of coffee or cold drink on a sunny deck.
But you do illustrate the problem with category thinking (that is using categories, like ‘liberal’ / ‘conservative’ / ‘progressive’ to conveniently capture (at least in our own minds) a whole debatable set of pre-defined assumptions about that category (as we see it)).
In other words, if my ‘category framing’ inclined you to be Conservative, then — in my lexicon — you ARE a Conservative! Congratulations!
Same with ‘Actual Liberals’ who are pragmatic and open-hearted! Heck, that means I’m an ‘actual liberal’! (some of the time).
The interesting thing is: that kind of ping-ponging doesn’t really resolve anything…nor does anyone’s position actually change (we just shift hats, temporarily).
The rubber really hits the road when and if we consider an actual question related to an actual decison in the actual world. That’s much tougher.
But more than enough for all this. I’m sure we’ll talk later!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

Yup.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

Sorry, but I think you are wrong, When you say

What we know is that blacks have low IQ with evidence available all around us and in Africa

you are not just comparing population averages. You are saying that lower IQ is inherent in being black, that blackness causes lower IQ. Similarly, if someone said ‘women do not make great artists you are not just saying that most great artists have been male (true fact). You are saying that there is something about being female that makes you less capable as an artist – disregarding the obvious alternative explanation that for most of history women have not had the opportunity to be artists in the first place.

Whatever the man may nor may not mean, that is what he is saying. And it certainly unproven and almost surely wrong.

Peter B
Peter B
8 months ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

I don’t think BD is saying there is anything *inherent* here. The fact that something may be so today does not imply that it will or must always be the same in future.
Similarly, there’s a difference between the statements “women do not make great artists” and “there have been few few great women artists so far”. The second is arguably true, whilst the first is a generalisation that we can choose to agree or disagree with.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Exactly right.
Or a different example: Only 3% of all cardiac surgeons are Black. That does not mean that Black are less capable of becoming a cardiac surgeon, it only means that fewer Blacks (as a % of the population group) have become cardiac surgeons. The first is simply a statement of fact; the second is racist.

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

But I didn’t say that at all…not in the least.
Go back and read what I said…it would be very helpful.
I am distinctly not saying lower IQ is inherent in being Black…nor am I saying being Black causes a lower IQ. I am just comparing population averages and I am then saying, with regard to these differences in average that… “These are not racist statements. These are simply factual statements that indicate a racial imbalance in population averages. The fact of a racial imbalance is not racist.”
You may disagree with my interpretation of Andrew (OP)…but that’s an entirely different discussion. Right now I would tend to say that he was only, rather inelegantly, trying to speak to the nominal fact of differences in population averages.
And, unfortunately, we have a tendency to assign a label like RACIST to any nominal statement of racial fact that really only is DIFFERENCE.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago
Reply to  B Davis

OK, I meant ‘you’ as in ‘when one says that…’. It was indeed not you who said that, it was Andrew F. And, while you may (quite legitimately) be comparing population averages, Andrew F, as evidenced by his own words, was not.

Jonathan Story
Jonathan Story
8 months ago

Imagine that DEI is applied to a competitive team sport like football, rugby, hockey, rowing, cricket…Any country which adopted it would lose eternally.
Affirmative action policies must be abolished fullstop.

David McKee
David McKee
8 months ago

Prof. Abulafia gives an excellent overview of the chaos over undergraduate acceptances.
I think though, that he is missing the underlying point, which is one of demand and supply. Why are young people so anxious to study at Oxbridge? Because they know that Oxbridge will give them a huge advantage in the jobs market. Russell Group is still pretty good, but beyond that… I suspect lazy recruiters use the university name as a crude way to weed out most of the job applications they receive: Oxbridge first, then Russell Group, and the rest nowhere.
The people who deserve our sympathy most are not the Cambridge rejects who end up at Warwick or Edinburgh. They are the ones from poor families and schools with incompetent careers advisers, who go to study at institutions from the shallow end of the academic pond.
Academics might kid themselves that prestigious universities are deluged with applications because of the quality of the teaching. The rest of us know better.

B Emery
B Emery
8 months ago

The proposal to abandon the state-school target should be welcomed; but the danger remains that the pursuit of American-style Equity will do irreparable damage to Oxbridge and our other leading universities.

The import of everything American style is doing irreparable damage to everything. WHY do we keep importing their ridiculous ideas? America is on its knees, it’s actually getting stupider, going bankrupt, can’t do any maths of any kind at any level of society and it’s politics are poisonous and completely ridiculous. WHY. Why would you copy them.
There must be some British idiots somewhere nodding along with their nonsense or we wouldn’t have imported this cr*p in the first place. Who are the British idiots that decided American policies were a good idea in the first place?

And… I have gone straight to American censorship style moderation. Another fabulous import. Trigger warning: This post contains some kind of explicit content.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
8 months ago

Can we get UnheardReader’s posts back, please? Stimulated a lot of interesting discussion. It just does not make sense to remove posts just because they are downvoted.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
8 months ago

Anti meritocracy and antipathy to excellence is the defining feature of the 30 year Progressive State – and the rapid decline in our national life it creates. Every day brings crushing evidence from Parliament on through unis, the Met to very corner of the now musty wfh workshy public sector of the consequences of putting unfit second raters first and scaring talent away. Its a death wish. No wonder Labour, still wedded to identitarian hate, will first target the elite educational sector and discriminate against wealth creators.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

Great discussion….

J. Arthur Rank
J. Arthur Rank
8 months ago

Enjoyed the discussion
Affirmative action is an affront to meritocracy……too true…

B Davis
B Davis
8 months ago

Good, but not nearly good enough.
The author tells us, “the pursuit of American-style Equity will do irreparable damage to Oxbridge and our other leading universities.” And this is true.
But harming our institutions of higher education may well be the least of the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad outcomes that flow from the Progressive embrace of DIE.
To chase equity….to laud diversity…and to insist on inclusivity is to kill not just the University and it’s fabled pursuit of Truth..it to kill the human spirit entire. It is to destroy freedom; it is to ruin the very civilization that somehow has produced this suicidal idiocy which will only bring us all to ashes.
In truth, we devote ourselves to our labors because excellence rewarded lifts us …and when we rise, our families rise; our communities rise…and the society as a whole becomes better. The engine of Capitalism (founded on human nature, competition and profit) has driven incomparable advances in the quality of human life worldwide.
And yet, today, we see our children, the Therapeutic Eloi, trying to kill it.
They, in their glorious, preening hubris, instruct us: when we reward Excellence, they say, we’re not rewarding Mediocrity. When we advance the very best & brightest, we’re not advancing the typical, the average, and the common place. These ‘sins’, the children of the West weep, created the so-called excellence which has created the separation which makes the world inequitable. And that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
And so they throw the spanner which is DIE, squarely in the works, every chance they get.
So what then?
If we turn the world upside down and insist that excellence will yield nothing if that yield is not categorically equitable or appropriately diverse or righteously inclusive… what then? Better the question: why bother?
Thus the world of “Harrison Bergeron” and Vonnegut’s apocalyptic vision: “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General….and her shotgun.”
What could be better than that?

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
8 months ago

DEI – let’s break this down.
Diversity. Not a strength, rather a weakness. Why? Because it has negative impact by reducing social trust, in turn reducing social cohesion and increasing isolationism. Putnam did work on this decades ago.
Equity. Which is essentially Affirmative action and it doesn’t work either. The evidence is plentiful and a recent meta analysis by the EJSP (European Journal of Social Psychology) found that AA elicited small to moderate negative effects, the reasons for which a so obvious its a wonder that people do studies on it at all.
Next we have Inclusivity, which is just unconscious bias masquerading under another name, and the great Implict Association test designed to sniff it out. Except that the test is worthless and identifies nothing. Even its creators Greenwald and Banaji have admitted its inadequacy, which kind of puts paid to the entirely of unconscious bias theory.
In summary DEI is a dangerous waste of time and resources. It’s a bogus ideology promoted by grifters and chancers eager to turn a quick buck peddling the latest social sciences idee du jour.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
8 months ago

DEI really means Didn’t Earn It.