CONTENTS

FROM THE MASTER

It’s always a specially cheerful matter to be able to report collegiate success on a wide front, and once again we are able to do just that. An unprecedented second placing on the river, after a tense, dramatic and rather wet week was followed by a May Ball generally agreed to have been a particularly warm and relaxed occasion (remarkably undisrupted – despite earlier anxieties – by the presence of a substantial building site in the Fellows’ Garden) and a magnificent showing from our Finalists. Magdalene continues to fire on all cylinders, confirming our conviction that energy and enjoyment in any one area of our common life tends to breed energy and enjoyment in all the others. On top of this, the Choir released a very successful CD of Christmas music last year, and extended their global profile with trips to the US last summer and Italy in the spring of this year. Choral standards have continued to be impressively high, and the recently invented ‘tradition’ of an open-air service in the Master’s Garden with baptisms and confirmations, towards the end of the Easter Term, gave the opportunity for a beautiful rendering of Byrd’s Four-Part Mass in radiant sunshine to a congregation of around eighty. And while we are in the neighbourhood of the Chapel, it’s a delight to report the appointment by HM the Queen of our former Dean of Chapel. Dr David Hoyle, as Dean of Westminster, a position of unique distinction in Church and nation.

But we can also report a different kind of success in the progress of the Future Foundations Campaign. This has exceeded all our expectations: within just over two years of the Campaign’s launch, we have raised more than £22 million pounds. A memorable dinner in the Drapers’ Hall earlier this year celebrated the wonderful progress so far made. This means that the cost of the new Library building is practically taken care of, and a substantial number of new bursaries will be fully funded. I reported last year on the success in raising funding for the new Chair in African Archaeology (Professor Paul Lane is now happily among us as the first holder of this appointment); work also continues to fund more Mandela Scholarships for African graduates, and Standard Bank of Africa has been very generous in its sponsorship of several awards. The building work on the Library is well-advanced (on target and on budget), and the opening is scheduled for September 2020. The next step will be the consequential work needed on the Pepys Building. The Pepys Library will of course remain intact at the heart of the building, but we shall now be able to adapt the use of some of the other rooms for academic and other visitors, and also to carry out muchneeded maintenance on some of the historic fabric. This second phase of the Library project will also be looking for funding as we go forward. But to date, the energy and generosity of our alumni and alumnae has been really extraordinary; the enthusiasm for the Magdalene of the next generation has been equal to the enthusiasm for the Magdalene that alumni remember – which speaks of a

commitment to a living community, not just a nostalgic haze! And our debt to the Campaign Board – not least its Chair Andrew Fischer – is very great indeed; they have given selflessly of time and energy to serve the Campaign, and we are profoundly grateful.

But of course all discussion of Magdalene’s future must be set in the context of the University’s future, and this is currently quite a complex picture. As noted last year, pressure is on to make Oxford and Cambridge more visibly responsive to the charge that the admissions process favours certain social groups and effectively excludes others. I fully recognise that there is no cause for complacency here. Our own admissions last year showed an unprecedentedly good representation from groups regarded as disadvantaged; the ceaseless hard work of Dr Munns and the Admissions team continues to move us steadily closer to where we should like to be. Our involvement with the Seren network – focused on outreach to schools in Wales and organised in partnership with the Welsh Government – has also borne a great deal of fruit with a huge increase in applications and offers. A couple of months ago, the network celebrated its first two years with a conference in Cambridge, and there was much appreciation for Magdalene’s role in encouraging and supporting its work. The Welsh connection was also incidentally highlighted when the College hosted last September an extremely lively and productive seminar for the Learned Society of Wales, on sustainable development.

The larger issues for College and University continue, though, to be pressing. The new Office for Students (a designation which rather underlines the model of the student as consumer) is still dissatisfied with the University’s progress in meeting certain targets, and life will not get any easier on that front if we are to maintain the ideal of admissions based on academic attainment. As noted last year, the University is considering some sort of ‘bridge’ course, to bring all students admitted up to a level starting-point, on the assumption that exceptionally able students, whose ability has become clear in the admissions process, may not have had their academic potential fully developed at secondary school. Details remain complicated to work out, but discussions continue actively.

Some of the media attention to Cambridge in the last year has produced strong reactions from alumni. Reports about the withdrawal of invitations to certain speakers on ideological grounds, about the University’s project on the legacy of slavery, on the ongoing discussions about removing colonial or culturespecific bias from various courses and various other things have fed a narrative about Cambridge (and other institutions of higher education) being taken captive by an agenda of ruthless political correctness, a narrative beloved by certain bits of the press. As so often in these cases, the press narrative is hard to recognise in the reality on the ground. We have had some very animated debates here about the limits of free speech; and whatever tangles some Cambridge institutions have got themselves into, it is simply false to say that there is some sort of ideological tyranny being imposed.

The uncomfortable truth is that we are all waking up rather slowly to what it is actually like to be in Cambridge if you are a certain sort of person; if your race, social background or gender identity is not what has historically been taken for granted here. To acknowledge that there is work to be done in listening to perspectives that sound strange or even unreasonable to you is not to tear up history and heritage but to use the traditions of academic attentiveness to the full, looking hard, listening, discerning, taking time with the unfamiliar, searching for ways of reshaping what you think and hope for. The College seeks, very explicitly and consistently, to be a community that works for all its members; so we rightly pay attention when it is not working at its best for all. Some readers may have seen on the BBC’s website a brief interview with two young women of African family, discussing their experience of Cambridge; they speak with calm wit and insight, spelling out – without rancour or self-pity – just why they found the atmosphere of Cambridge difficult and unwelcoming, despite the goodwill of many around them. Responding intelligently to this intelligent questioning is properly part of what a good University or College should be doing. It’s a huge and complex area; if it’s sometimes hard going and if mistakes are made, the best advice is not to panic. This remains a community dedicated to real and generative debate, whatever the media says. And it must be said that much of our media, like much of our current abysmal political discourse, doesn’t exactly provide a model of intelligent collaborative discussion...

No, I shan’t take that as a cue for an excursus on Brexit and its endlessly ramifying implications; except to say that we are most of us feeling unhappily like the miserable child in the back seat, moaning ‘Are we there yet?’ every few miles – with the added problem that the driver doesn’t appear to know where ‘there’ is. By the time you read this, things may be, if not clearer, at least a little nearer to some kind of decision. But, as I have said before, the massively confused condition of our public life reinforces the determination of this academic community to equip our students with some of the tools of honesty and discernment, intellectual edge and ethical passion that may help keep alive in the doubtless turbulent decades ahead some space for genuine thinking. All of you will know that what you picked up here was not simply a degree but – at best – a habit of reflection and conversation. Later life in various professions will very likely erode the breathing space needed for this to flourish; but I suspect we all know what it feels like and why it matters. We are determined to go on nourishing these habits; and all I have reported is, in one way or another, about how we try to do this – with your continuing support and sympathetic interest. We here in the College are abidingly appreciative. R D W