Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image description: two men wearing masks, walking along a street Read Maddy’s column from last week: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/16/what-about-the-fish/ At the beginning of the first lockdown (do you remember that? How wonderfully naïve we all were), I was added to a Facebook group for Lockdown Sceptics. Their posts were a little wacky, often linking COVID-19 to 5G […]
Continue Reading
Read Matteo’s column from last week: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/14/recalibrating-liberalism/ Image description: Old drawing of British House of Commons engulfed by flames in the fire of 1834 In a 1993 lecture on the differences between political and economic decision making, the libertarian American economist Thomas Sowell famously quipped: “Scarcity is the first lesson of economics. The first lesson […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Student on New Inn Hall Street with sticky notes reading: “send beer; corona is here”, “it’s his fault” (with an arrow pointing to the window above), and “patient zero” Recent news that students may face a two-week lockdown before being allowed to return home is typical of this government. It demonstrates a failure […]
Continue Reading
Image description: two students looking at some papers. Oxford’s yearly admissions statistics have recently been released, and on examination there are certainly things to celebrate: 68.4% of new undergraduates are from state schools. The ratio between students from the parts of the UK most likely to advance to higher education and those least likely has […]
Continue Reading
Image description: A grey circle on a yellow background, with the words ‘Never acceptable’ in white in the middle of the circle. The word ‘Never’ is scribbled out in red. Trigger Warning: rape, sexual assault, coercive control. Amid the headlines about Miss Rona’s reign of terror, another compelling tale of poor political decision-making took centre […]
Continue Reading
Image Description: Amir’s painting featured at an Exhibition at York University (1998). From left to right: Case Ootes, Toronto Deputy Mayor; Amir Pichhadze, Artist; and, Dr. Lorna Marsden, York University President. In 1995, the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin participated in an anti-violence rally that supported the Oslo peace process. At this rally, Rabin was […]
Continue Reading
Image Description: Two deer fight, overlayed with the logos of Oxford City Council on one side, and Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University on the other A similar sense of dread is settling over Oxford as it was in the panicked last week of Hilary Term. We know a little more about the virus than […]
Continue Reading
Image description: An aerial view of the Radcliffe Camera. October 2020 marks the centenary of female students being allowed to matriculate and graduate from the University of Oxford for the first time. The occasion calls for commemoration of all that has changed in that time, as well as reflection on what still needs to be […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Trump is shown with a black mask on in the main picture; an additional picture shows Trump with Melania, without masks and smiling Even among a competitive field, the 2020 American Presidential Election has been especially turbulent. The summer saw the country rocked by protests demanding justice for the deaths of George Floyd […]
Continue Reading
Image Description: the British Parliament, lit, at night Athena Kam: a blow to the rule of law ‘Participation in criminal conduct is an essential and inescapable feature’, states the British Government about their Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Bill, introduced on Thursday 24 September. The Bill permits otherwise illegal activities by MI5 and other public […]
Continue Reading
Image description: a fishing boat on choppy seas October 15th was Boris Johnson’s self-imposed deadline for talks with the EU. In September, the Prime Minister said that it would be time for both sides to “accept it and move on” if this date passed without meaningful agreement. Yet, trade agreements are fiddly things, and politicians […]
Continue Reading
Image description: A drawing of the Statue of Liberty and some people arriving to America by boat. The liberalism I’m interested in isn’t the conventional, American sense of ‘liberal’ – but the older and classical variety. It’s the liberalism that warns against the excesses of state authority and champions civil liberties, constitutionalism and the rule […]
Continue Reading
Image description: a school classroom is pictured, with one student holding their hand up. The latest guidance from the Department for Education (DPE) banning British schools from using materials produced by organisations ‘that take extreme political stances’ has sparked much debate. Criticism towards these guidelines comes mainly from its categorisation of anti-capitalism as an extreme […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Left: me outside my natural habitat holding a tin of alcohol as I watch the boat race, with my thumb held up. Right: a blurry photo of me, in my natural habitat, dancing in a nightclub, hands waving. You really don’t need to drink at uni. I know, it’s contrary to popular opinion […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Boris Johnson standing at a podium Boris Johnson has had a pretty rough ride of it lately. Even The Telegraph had abandoned him, as his government struggled to pull together a cohesive strategy for COVID, as ministers refused to face Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain and as he recovered himself from what […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster Last Wednesday, following a deal at the eleventh hour, the government’s latest renewal of the Coronavirus Act passed through the House of Commons. Pressure from backbench Conservative rebels forced Number 10 to make several concessions, including giving MPs a final vote on any new national lockdown. […]
Continue Reading
Image description: Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio (on the left) and the leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini (on the right) The democratic process has been under severe attack in numerous countries, especially with Donald Trump recently refusing to commit to a peaceful handover of power if Biden were to win in November. However, […]
Continue Reading
Image description: St’ Giles street. Recent articles in The Oxford Student, particularly ‘Morality Patrols’, as well as a petition currently circulating online, assert the University’s overreach in dealing with the Covid pandemic. They argue that by setting university guidelines that go beyond the current laws, and by retaining the right to change these guidelines in […]
Continue Reading
Image description: A pile of blue masks. Lockdown is a social responsibility – Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer It’s true that the number of severe cases and fatalities have dropped significantly since April. We also have a better idea now of who will be most severely affected by coronavirus, and the good news for the majority of university-age […]
Continue Reading