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Hilary Term, Week 1 | Friday 19 January 2024
The
OXFORD STUDENT The University of Oxford’s Student Newspaper, Est. 1991
Rhodes Professorship of Race Relations renamed
O
n the 8th of January, The Oxford University Gazette confirmed the renaming of the Rhodes Professorship of Race Relations following approval from His
Majesty’s Privy Council under the 1923 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act. The Chair of this professorship will now be known as the Professor of African Studies. The
Ruby Hurst
University stated that ‘the move reflected this post’s central role in building the University’s African Studies Centre’. The ASC was founded in 2004 and offers a range of post-graduate
New postgraduate medical college to be built in Warneford Gabriella Kchozyan
A
Image Credit: Des Blenkinsopp
postgraduate medical college is set to be built in Warneford Park, adjacent to South Park in Headington, as part of its redevelopment plans. Through collaboration a m o n g s t t h e U n i v e r s i t y, O x ford Health NHS Foundation Trust, and philanthropic developer Ian Laing, Warneford Park will be transformed into a brain health sciences campus. Existing Warneford site build-
ings will be repurposed into a new postgraduate college to support multidisciplinary academic and clinical research. The Warneford site currently hosts the University’s Department of Psychiatry and the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity. Redeveloping the site includes replacing the 200-year-old Warneford Hospital with one equipped for modern medicine and technology, as well as building the Read more on page 5
Willaim Beinart (who inherited the role from Ranger) stated that ‘in his inaugural lecture, Terry noted his discomfort in bearing the title of the Chair, but then tried to address some complexities in Rhode’s legacy in Zimbabwe’. The controversy around the professorship came to a head at the beginning of 2021 following the BLM movement and, with it, the growing debate around the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oriel College. In May 2021, Oriel College published the results of its Independent Commission looking into its ties to Cecil Rhodes. The Oxford University Gazette announced in February 2021 that the ‘Social Science Division and Oxford School of Global and Area Studies’ had recommended the renaming of the professorship ‘subject to the approval’ of the Privy Council. In the midst of adding an information plaque to Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes and, more recently, renaming the Sackler library, it is clear that the University is increasingly conscious about the language used to talk about, or even suggest, their financial ties to controversial figures of both distant and recent pasts.
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programmes in African Studies. The centre has always been a core focus of the professorship. In an interview with The Cable, Professor Wale Adebanwi (the most recent Chair) said this involved ‘attract[ing] funding to strengthen the financial position’ of the ASC. The University commented that ‘The Rhodes Professor of Race Relations was created in 1953-1954, following a donation from the then Rhodesian Selection Trust’. The Rhodesian Selection Trust was a mining corporation that operated in what was at the time Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe). The University made clear that whilst the donors ‘requested’ the position ‘be named in memory of Cecil Rhodes’, the role ‘has never been funded by Rhodes himself or his financial legacies’. Despite this, the use of Cecil Rhodes’ name in the title unavoidably painted the role as another echo of his greater colonial legacy. The use of ‘race relations’ only furthered Read more on page 3and the colonial connotations dynamics tainting the title. Previous holders of the professorship, namely Terence Ranger, did not shy away from underlining the complications of the position. An article by
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