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Martlet Newsletter of Pembroke College Cambridge Issue 20 Spring 2016

Aspirations for the Future The Master, Lord Chris Smith

Contents 3 Reflections on Senior Tutordom 4 Difference and Diversity Digested 5 Rethinking Modern Conservatism 6 The Syrian Tragedy 7 In? Out? Shake It All About? 8 Mens Sana In Collegio Sano! Advancing MentalHealth Support in Pembroke and the University 10 Catering to Fond Memory 11 Sing Me a River 12‘Charity suffereth long’ 13 Gossip 15 Poet’s Corner

Published by Pembroke College Cambridge CB2 1RF Telephone 01223 338100 Email: martlet@pem.cam.ac.uk Editor Alex Houen Gossip Editor Colin Wilcockson Illustrations Martin Rowson © Pembroke College 2016 Photography and illustrations copyright of the owners Design cambridgesesignstudio.org Print Langham Press

t is now (I regret to admit) forty-six years since I came up to Pembroke to read English as an undergraduate. I spent six hugely happy years here, for my BA and then a PhD focused on the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. And returning now as Master, I’m struck by how much has changed and also how little. There are of course some enormous differences. The College (wonderfully) is full of women students and Fellows, for a start. Foundress Court has been created, and the new Master’s Lodge alongside it. The food is definitely better – indeed students from across the University tell me that Pembroke has the best there is. One really important thing hasn’t changed at all, however: the sense of community that runs through the whole of our College life. Pembroke has always been a remarkably friendly College, but the sense of collegial spirit that infuses everything we do and are has, if anything, become stronger with time. I see it as my most important task to nurture, sustain, and strengthen that spirit over the years ahead. As I write, we have just finished the Lent term, and I was reflecting on some of the things that have happened in just the last three weeks. We held the competition for the Parmee prize for entrepreneurship – with fourteen exceptional student entries and an inspiring series of presentations. The Pembroke Politics Society held a meeting with the Speaker of the Kurdish parliament. We held the second in a series of high-level seminars on the refugee crisis breaking over Europe. There was a series of late-night Bach cello recitals in the Chapel. Pembroke Players put on a ‘smoker’ in the Old Library (without the smoking, of course) with some of the very best stand-up comedy I’ve encountered in a long time. The men’s first Football Team reached the Cuppers final for the third year in a row – sadly they again lost, but there’s always next year to look forward to! The men’s first boat had a brilliant Lent Bumps and are now lying third in the river. The women’s first boat bumped every day and won their blades. The men’s first hockey team not only won the University league but then went on to triumph over the Oxford leaders, Worcester. And this past term’s President of the Union Society, a Pembroke man, has handed over to next term’s President, a Pembroke woman. As you can see, the College is in great shape, and very good heart. In a few months’ time we will, sadly, face Mark Wormald’s departure as Senior Tutor. As Mark himself writes (see next page), after sixteen years he is looking forward to doing some writing and getting a bit of his own academic life back. We won’t lose him from the Fellowship, of course, and we look forward to his continuing contribution to the College’s life for many years to come. His service as Senior Tutor has been outstanding, and it was always going to be a really difficult task to try and find a worthy successor. I’m delighted to report that we have done so, and – in the face of stiff competition from both inside and outside Pembroke – Dr Dan Tucker (an existing Fellow and Tutor, and Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Medicine and Public Health) has been appointed. He will take over on 1st September. In the meantime, our exciting plans for the purchase of the south side of Mill Lane, and the development of the most transformational extension to the College since its foundation, immediately next to our original medieval domain, are taking shape. Negotiations with the University for the purchase have taken time, but are now nearing a

successful conclusion; and I hope to be able to report further on this to alumni shortly. Some of the buildings, because of listing requirements, will have to be kept; others can be replaced. Our aim is to create a whole new courtyard of accommodation, primarily for graduate students but for undergraduates as well, together with new study, seminar, research and library space, some community facilities, exhibition space, and if possible an auditorium. And in order to ensure the integration of the College as a whole, not forever divided by the traffic on Trumpington Street, we hope to create a tunnel to link the two parts together. These are very ambitious plans, but they have secured a giant leap towards their realisation with the extraordinarily generous gift we have received from the estate and family of Ray Dolby. Ray came up to Pembroke as a Marshall Scholar in the 1950s, to study for a PhD in x-ray microscopy. He went on to become a Research Fellow and then developed the Dolby sound system that has revolutionised listening for every film, television programme and piece of recorded music across the globe. The Dolby estate and family have pledged £35m to help Pembroke to bring the Mill Lane development to fruition. I’m determined we’re going to honour their generosity and succeed! One of the most moving things about being Master here is the way you are constantly reminded of how bright, dedicated, imaginative, and outward-looking our undergraduate and postgraduate students are. Whether it’s an engineer going out to build sewerage systems in Africa, or a classicist developing a safe-space social media application for children, or a historian drawing parallels between the Hanseatic league and the interrelationships today in the European Union: it’s a real privilege to be here, listening to them, being enormously impressed by them, and helping to encourage their aspirations for the future. Like Ray Dolby, they will go out to change the world. And Pembroke will, I believe, have helped that to happen.

Reﬂections on Senior Tutordom Mark Wormald

hen, some months ago, the Martlet editor asked me to reflect on my experiences as Senior Tutor, I knew – as I did that evening, sixteen years ago, when Sir Roger Tomkys invited me back to the Master’s Lodge and asked me whether I would succeed Clive Trebilcock as what we then called the Tutor – that of course it was an honour I couldn’t decline. But it still feels like tempting fate. Statute revision may have changed the title, and having just clocked up my own half century I am indisputably older. But between the end of Lent term and Easter, one term shy of sixteen years in post, too much business remains to justify a valedictory note. Another Tripos season looms, with all its unpredictability. You are never experienced enough to be a Senior Tutor. That’s hardly surprising. Take four hundred and forty brilliant undergraduates, brought together from most corners of the country and the globe, for three nine-week spells of total immersion. Add the yeast, and spice, of two hundred and seventy graduates, for roughly half of whom Cambridge is their only British home as well as the place where they will set the course of their academic, professional and personal lives. Season with seventy-five Fellows, as stimulating and starry a constellation of intellectual talents as you could imagine. Then ask them all to live and work and think and feel more intensely than most of them have done before, in very close proximity to all the others, and you have the recipe for any number of excitements. One thing you can guarantee, in a college whose hundred and fifty staff pride themselves on the care they take of these tightly stacked sets of odd volumes, is that whatever emerges from this intellectual oven will not be half baked. The ideas, the discoveries, the encounters, that have animated and stretched every one of my working days are never routine. In 2015 the Graduate Tutors held a twentytwenty competition for Pembroke students: twenty slides, twenty seconds each to talk about them. One Master’s student in Architecture was studying the culture of the rough but vibrantly multi-cultural district around Brussels’ central railway station. I was reminded of Auden’s sonnet ‘Brussels in

Winter’. By the end of our conversation she had revealed her passion for curating; I’d told her how excited I was about a recent addition to Pembroke’s growing collection of Ted Hughes material. Kathryn talked to Pat Aske, our Librarian; by the time she moved on to Harvard and a PhD, she had with Pat’s help not just conserved these treasures, but had also written a two-hundred-page catalogue of them. For the pleasure of it, she insisted; but of course for posterity too. It will be on our website soon. A fortnight ago, on a day of eleven meetings, the fourth, about welfare provision and intermission with the Junior Parlour Committee, needed to over-run. A patient group of Engineering finalists came back the following day, and told me about the Cambridge Development Initiative, a studentfounded, student-run charity bringing practical technology and ideas, sewage systems, biodigesters and entrepreneurial ideas to Tanzanian villages. I hope we’ll be able to find them support from among our wider Pembroke community: ideas and young people like this will change the world. And I’m confident such support will flow. Amazing generosity from friends of the College has not just added to our graduate studentships and undergraduate bursaries; it has also enabled me to welcome to Pembroke some extraordinary writers these past years too, in some of the most memorable evenings of my life. But sometimes the world and how it feels makes thinking impossible, and skews choices. For a few students every year, impossibly complex family situations and the real challenges of negotiating their first years of independence can produce a crisis, sometimes for their Cambridge friends too. College friendships have always been intense: but a decade into the Facebook age, we have still to find the sanest way of using social media and the new technologies of communication. The borders of the self, of the public and the private, are changing. Working, occasionally at all hours, to help vulnerable young minds and bodies find some respite and a way through dark times is both the most daunting and one of the most satisfying parts of the job. And for the rest? Well, keeping a sense of perspective, being clear, humane and professional about expectations, developing policies that help students and even my academic colleagues negotiate the demands on their time and talents, has also been at the heart of things. It’s also been a real privilege to help shape a vision of Pembroke’s future on a transformed College site on both sides of Trumpington Street, in conversations between radical ideas and a determination to protect Pembroke’s traditions. In all this, Directors of Studies, Tutors, Admissions Tutors, Development Directors, three hugely distinguished Masters, but above all, perhaps, the resourceful, kind and unflappable friends I’ve been lucky enough to have beside me in the Tutorial Office, have made the last sixteen years a time of real happiness for me, as they will I know for Dan Tucker. I wish him every success. For myself, I now look forward to a year of sabbatical, more time to write, a new inter-collegiate role as Secretary of the Senior Tutors’ Committee – and maybe the odd fishing trip.

Diﬀerence and Diversity Digested Tom Shakespeare (1984) on the 2015 William Pitt Seminar

icky Bowman (1984), who had returned from Burma particularly for the Pitt Seminar, entitled ‘Being Different: the value of equality and diversity in public life’, opened proceedings by noting that the evening also marked the reunion of three quarters of the very diverse 1995 University Challenge team. She resisted drawing conclusions from the failure of that quartet to persuade Bamber Gascoigne of our brilliance. The 2015 Pitt Seminar quartet was no less diverse, but we hope rather more successful in entertaining a very erudite audience. Trevor Phillips is hugely qualified to talk about diversity and equality, having chaired the Commissions for Racial Equality and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. But he came fresh from his role as Partnership Council President at John Lewis, the first external appointment to the role since 1928, and he wanted to talk about data, big data. His talk was fascinating, with tidbits such as the Indian male preference for driving green cars. But his main point was that diversity is very complicated, and many of our assumptions about how people identify and how they behave are incorrect. As a self-confessed ‘quant’ – I think that’s the new word for ‘wonk’ – he told us that the data does not give simple answers. Chillingly, he pointed out that retailers, particular internet retailers, may know us better than we know ourselves. Patrick Voss has made it his business to encourage business to engage with diversity. He welcomed news that women hold 26% of FTSE 100 board positions, and told the audience that the new target was 33%. For him, the key question is whether diversity helped the bottom line. He said that there is clear evidence that companies with an ethnically diverse, gender balanced board perform better in the market place. His current interest is in working out what motivated middle managers, and how they can become as enthused about diversity as their CEOs. Rae Langton, Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Newnham College, was introduced as the fourth most influential female philosopher in the world. She began by pointing out how few women succeed in academic philosophy. For example, in 2010, the proportion of US women getting doctorates in philosophy was lower than in maths, chemistry and economics. Professor Langton is one of a group of women philosophers looking at why this was the case. There are many explanations for gender bias, starting with the image of the philosopher king – 90% of readings on a philosophy course are likely to be by men – and including the prevalence of sexual harassment. But Professor Langton emphasized psychological concepts such as stereotyping and unconscious bias. Sharing the stage with such experts, I decided to stick to what I know best: disability. I started by offering two images: the highly competitive assault course, and the (level) playing field. My own social research adopts a human rights perspective, emphasizing how people are disabled by society as much as by their bodies. Discrimination is one of the explanations of why 46% of disabled people were employed in 2012, compared to 76% of their non-disabled counterparts. Disabled people are nearly three times as likely as non-disabled people to hold no qualifications, and only 15% of disabled people hold a degree, compared to 28% of non-disabled people. But this is not

because disabled people are stupid, it’s because there is a strong social gradient in health, and poorer people are far more likely to have disability. When disabled people do get jobs, they are more likely to work part-time, and they are likely to face a ‘glass staircase’, meaning that they are concentrated at lower grades. Moreover, disabled people are 50% more likely to be victims of harassment or bullying in the workplace. I suggested that the liberal idea of removing barriers to promote equality would not liberate all disabled people, who are themselves a very diverse group. I offered a final image of equal opportunities as a garden, like the glorious flowerbeds of Pembroke itself, where plants are planted in the right spot, carefully nurtured, protected under glass where necessary and supported by stakes, so that they can each give of their best blooms. At question time, the diversity and expertise of our audience was revealed. What did we think of HR professionals? (Not much.) Should Ivy League universities rig their entrance processes to ensure that the student cohort was not dominated by hard working Asian Americans? (Don’t know.) Did evolutionary psychology have the answers? (Not when it only supplied ‘Just So Stories’.) ‘What about the people of Fenland?’ asked one participant. He had a point, I thought. Predominantly white, working class, and deeply disadvantaged, why should they care about diversity, which, by implication, is a middle-class worry. This cued a conversation about ‘intersectionality’ (sociologese for the inter-relation of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and class). People have more than one identity, although one aspect may be more salient at different times. This year, male portraits in Hall had been covered over by images of women from the Fellowship. Some things, rightly, change, and we were celebrating thirty years of women in Pembroke. Some things, thankfully, don’t change – our engrossing conversations did not prevent us from appreciating the Pembroke tradition of excellent food and wine. The tenth William Pitt Seminar raised many questions, and not a buzzer in sight.

Tom Shakespeare got his BA (Hons) in Social and Political Science at Pembroke, and then a PhD in Sociology at King’s College. He has researched and taught at Sunderland, Newcastle, Leeds, and is now at University of East Anglia where he works in the Medical School. He spent five years at the World Health Organization, and for five years was a member of Arts Council England.

Rethinking Modern Conservatism Emily Jones on Edmund Burke

W Dr Emily Jones is the Mark Kaplanoff Research Fellow at Pembroke. She completed her DPhil in History at Exeter College, Oxford, on the posthumous career of Edmund Burke in September 2015, before joining Pembroke the following month. She is currently adapting her thesis for publication with Oxford University Press, as well as researching the transformation of British Conservative political thought and intellectual culture – beyond Burke – in the late Victorian and Edwardian period.

here do political ideologies come from? This is a question most people would never think to ask. But conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and numerous other ‘isms’ – as bodies of thought – came in to being thanks to historical processes of construction and circulation. This is the type of question my work centres on: how canonical political thinkers and ideologies become intellectually coherent to wide audiences, and the ways in which traditions of thought are made to be easily digestible – enough, at least, for people in the past to have a vague notion of what it meant to be a conservative (and, in Britain, a Conservative) of one kind or another. Take the example of the Irishman and Whig politician Edmund Burke (1730-97). I first encountered Burke as an undergraduate historian, where he was presented to me as a ‘conservative’ political thinker whose theory of politics fed directly into the identity of the Conservative Party. This philosophy of ‘conservatism’ consisted of doctrines such as a belief in the historical and organic nature of society, and a reverence for tradition, property, and religion. To my mind, this description of Burke’s thought seemed quite problematic: surely most people in the eighteenth century – and especially politicians like Burke – believed in the importance of property and religion as anchors of society? After some further reading, it became clear that in his lifetime Burke had gained a reputation as a reformer of abuses, including slavery, before he launched his ferocious attack on the French Revolution in 1790. But even as the Revolution played out, Burke was viewed by his peers in an unusual light – and certainly not as the founder of an influential body of thought: commentators were more concerned that – in working himself into such a frenzy over France; splitting the Whigs in the process – Burke seemed to have gone slightly mad.

Portrait of Burke by Joshua Reynolds

Because the French Revolution is now seen as the starting point of modern politics and thought, it has become relatively easy to position Burke – an opponent of the Revolution – as a kind of anti-democratic, religious, reactionary ‘conservative’. Yet it was clear to me that the

invention of Burke as a C/conservative (and indeed of his very own brand of ‘Burkean conservatism’) had happened at some point after his death in 1797. Fast-forward five years, and my work has charted Burke’s transformation from Irish Whig politician to ‘founder of modern conservatism’ over the course of the long nineteenth century in Britain and Ireland. I collected material from books, newspapers, periodicals, political speeches, pamphlets, school textbooks, and university examinations in order to show how a distinctive brand of conservatism – focused around the figure of Burke – was developed, established, and circulated by 1914 in high and low politics, historical and constitutional thought, and early attempts at writing a ‘science of politics’. The result was an intellectual and political construct that has since had enormous consequence around the world. As a historian, the question of how this change had taken place nibbled away at me: why do people reinterpret texts and historical figures? Of course, no two people read the same text in exactly the same way. Even canonical authors are reinterpreted as society, politics, educational curricula, and intellectual and cultural fashions shift and develop; correspondingly, the questions with which we approach historical events and figures change, too. It also became clear that political ideas and canonical figures were (and are) not just consumed and discussed by elites, but by thousands of lay readers and students every year. The really seminal moment for the re-invention of C/conservative ideas in Britain was the late Victorian and Edwardian period. The mid-1880s witnessed the beginning of a transformative period in the history of British politics: from the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers and to most commentators the establishment of a voter democracy in 1884 (democracy meaning here something distinct from universal suffrage!); the fundamental rupturing of the Liberal Party over the issue of Irish devolution; the rise of Labour and socialism; to the emasculation of the House of Lords in 1911, and the trauma of the Great War. A number of Conservatives chose to seize the moment, producing an intellectual response to this rapidly changing political environment. Their aim was to rejuvenate and reinvigorate the recently conjoined Conservative and Unionist Party (a partnership from 1895; fusing fully in 1912). There was an efflorescence of writing across this alliance as a whole, borne from a widespread impetus to define and promote ‘C/conservative principles’ in a really novel way – from Burkean conservatism to ‘Tory Democracy’ (i.e. ‘One Nation’). The texts produced were distinctive, not only in their quantity, but in their attempts to construct a historically and intellectually grounded ‘modern C/conservatism’ or ‘Toryism’ that could both offer inspiration and express some of the assumptions of politicians and the educated public. By taking the historical view, we can chart the ways in which highly authoritative systems of thought come to be established: from elite to popular culture, from high politics to the disenfranchised. It allows us to think more critically about the use of reinvented heroes, concepts, or histories, and can tell us a great deal about a particular society – including our own. It also enables us to demonstrate the ways in which historical actors, on the right as well as the left, have thought imaginatively about their intellectual heritage and political principles, and in doing so have shaped the way we think today.

The Syrian Tragedy Sir Roger Tomkys

ince 2011 in Syria, of a population of 22 million, almost half are refugees or internally displaced. 250,000 are said to have been killed, but this is surely an underestimate. Refugees now form a third of the population of Lebanon, perhaps a quarter of that of Jordan. Those who can get further are beating on the doors of Europe or dying en route. This started because in the Arab Spring, peaceful demonstrations for democratic reform were brutally suppressed by the regime which had been in power for nearly half a century. The regime was not all bad: it was not sectarian; Christians and other minorities enjoyed the same limited rights as the Sunni majority; women’s status was respected, medical care and education were promoted. Even so, Baathist by origin, led since 1970 by the Alawite clique around Hafiz al Asad and then his son Bashar, it used all-present secret police and torture to enforce ruthless control. In 1982 it suppressed an armed uprising of the Moslem Brotherhood in Hama by closing down all media access and killing some 30,000 in three weeks. Thirty untroubled years later they thought a dose of the same medicine would work again. It did not, for several reasons. First, it was no longer possible to suppress social and public media. Second, the enthusiasm in the Arab World for change was contagious. This enthusiasm caught the media also in the West, who made little distinction between different outbreaks of Spring, wherever they occurred, and everywhere reported the uprisings as commitment to pro-western democracy that would and should triumph. All the world saw the violence in real time and backed the rioters. The US and British Governments danced to this tune, either because they wrongly judged that the regime would fall within weeks, or else because they wanted regime change in Syria, despite their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, and without any clear idea of what a successor regime would look like. Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf States and Jordan sought to topple Iran’s only Arab ally; an unintended consequence of US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its disastrous postwar management had been to exacerbate Saudi paranoia over the threat from Iran, and create the nightmare of an Iran-led Shia bloc from Tehran to Beirut. Turkey’s President Erdogan, dependent on Islamist support, was also committed as he saw Asad as providing refuge and support for his Kurdish militant opposition. These regional players therefore backed the Syrian opposition with money, arms and transit facilities, while foreign fighters, mostly Sunni jihadists, supplemented the Syrian military groups who deserted to oppose the regime. Whatever the horrors of the resulting proxy war over the dead bodies of the Syrian people, concern over violation of human rights played little part in drawing up the battle lines in 2011. Past experience in Iraq and Afghanistan meant that neither Britain nor the US were prepared to intervene with their own forces in Syria. They relied on support for the ‘Free Syrian Army’ and other ‘moderate’ forces to do the job. Their Saudi and other friends were less scrupulous and poured resources into Islamist groups, some linked to Al Qaeda. Meanwhile in Iraq, ISIS, aka Da’eish, thrived on Sunni reaction against Iranian backed Baghdad, and got funding from Gulf supporters and oil sales from territory it controlled in Eastern Syria and Iraq. On the other side, the Syrian regime enlisted direct military engagement by ^

Hizbullah forces from Lebanon, and from Iran. Fortunes fluctuated, neither side could gain decisive military victory and the country was destroyed. Only the Kurds got some satisfaction, extending their own local control and thereby claim to future autonomy. In this bloody stalemate peacemaking efforts foundered on the determination of the Opposition and its Arab and Western backers that Asad’s departure was a precondition to negotiations. The regime would not concede since it was not defeated. Da’eish, however, was increasingly seen as a wider threat, including, ultimately to the Western friendly Arab Monarchies, and the US began to edge toward a more nuanced position that Asad’s departure might be delayed. The Saudis and Turkey remained unreconciled to compromise and the killing continued. Russia throughout had given support to the regime, their only ally in the region. Syria gives Russia naval facilities and some leverage to block US efforts to reorder the Arab world to suit its interests. After Ukraine, the crisis affords an opportunity to show Russia cannot be underestimated. Russia also shares the West’s fear of Da’eish’s global reach. When Putin committed full Russian air intervention, in contrast with Western half-hearted engagement, he broke the stalemate, ensured that Asad could not be defeated, and enabled serious bilateral negotiation with the US that could eventually lead to an effective ceasefire, the destruction of Da’eish in Syria and Iraq, major international efforts to rebuild Syria, and, at the end of the process, an opportunity for the Syrian people to have their say on the future of their country. It is a long shot. The risks are appalling. Between submission of this text and its publication, much will have changed. I do not know whether Syria can survive as a unitary State, though I am sure the West should not try to break it up. And if Donald Trump is the next President of the USA? Don’t even ask.

Sir Roger Tomkys was Master from 1992 to 2004 – a period of transformation for Pembroke with the building of Foundress Court and the Library extension, initiation of the Development Programme, growth of International programmes, increase in Graduate and Fellowship numbers and greatly improved undergraduate results. He read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, before entering the Diplomatic Service. He served in Jordan, Libya, Athens and Rome as well as London postings, and as Ambassador in Bahrain and Damascus, and as High Commissioner in Nairobi.

In? Out? Shake It All About? Geoffrey Edwards on the UK’s forthcoming referendum on EU Membership

I Geoffrey Edwards is a Senior Fellow and Emeritus Reader in European Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies in the University of Cambridge. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke. He has held research posts at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Chatham House and elsewhere. He specialises in the European Union, its institutions and its foreign and security policies.

began to study the then European Communities in 1973 when I was briefly in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. I have continued to research and teach on the subject ever since in think-tanks and in Cambridge, receiving a Jean Monnet chair in Political Science in 1996. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that I am a passionate supporter of remaining in the EU. When in Brussels, I have often been accosted by bewildered colleagues wondering why we should be having an In/Out referendum. Not simply has English become the dominant language in the EU, but much more decision-making, whatever the rules, is on the basis of consensus among member governments, and the EU has sought a more open policy towards the global economic system and often a proactive foreign policy to promote European/British values about the rule of law and human rights. In reality, we have a referendum in order to let Mr Cameron off the hook in the face of divisions within the Conservative Party – just as Harold Wilson led us into the first referendum back in 1975 to dish his Eurosceptics in the Labour Party. We must now vote on an issue of fundamental importance to the UK’s and Europe’s future. Every vote counts – a potential problem for the Remain camp since, according to the polls, those more likely to be in favour of remaining (younger, and better educated) are less likely actually to vote than those wishing to leave. The number of undecided voters remains high, many saying they want more reliable information. Whether they get it is a serious problem, given that so much of the media continue to pick up the fag-ends of debates in Brussels (few British national dailies have journalists there) and follow any Eurosceptic remark made in Westminster. A steady drip of Eurosceptic editorialising has become the norm. The issues on which the vote centres (this is written in March) revolve around questions of sovereignty, migration, security and alternatives to membership. Sovereignty for the Leave camp seems largely to be about undemocratic rule from Brussels,

the infamous ‘faceless bureaucrats’ – presumably the unknown faces in Whitehall have the advantage of being our unknown faces. Yet Brussels doesn’t impose regulations. The British government, voting in the Council, was on the winning side (according to work done at the London School of Economics) over 97% of the time during 2004-09 and nearly 87% from 2009 to 2015. These votes were usually on trade, industry, environment, transport, EMU and internal market policies – extensive but limited. Indeed, the House of Commons Library has estimated that little more than 13 per cent of our legislation derives from Brussels. Moreover, unbeknown to most because the media rarely cover it, the European Parliament – which we elect directly – has become co-legislator on most of these issues. In 2014 it elected the President of the Commission, JeanClaude Juncker, since his party gained more votes in the last European elections. It’s not quite our own majoritarian system but nor is it undemocratic. Fears of migration have often been tied to issues of security – whether in terms of controlling borders against potential terrorists or the impact of EU migrants on public services. Certainly, Europe faces a deep humanitarian crisis in dealing with those fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan, and economic migrants from elsewhere in Asia or Africa seeking a better life. While most member states, including the UK, recognise this as a European crisis, they have nearly all adopted national measures that undermine any Europe-wide solution. As for border controls, since Britain is not part of the Schengen group, the Border Agency retains strict controls, checking passports against databases for criminals or suspected criminals. As for EU nationals, relatively few claim benefits in the first couple of years after arrival and they make significant tax contributions. There is no evidence that the UK’s benefit system attracts migration. And with an ageing population we actually need migrants to do the work that Brits often don’t want to do – or rather damningly don’t have the qualifications to do. The alternatives to EU membership are hugely complicated, stretching from the ‘Norwegian’ model (access to the Single market via the European Economic Area but at the cost of accepting EU regulations without having a say in the decision-making process and contributing to the EU’s budget), a ‘Swiss’ model (some 150 different bilateral agreements which need to be changed as the EU changes its policies and regulations as well as entailing contributions to the EU budget), through to a ‘WTO’ model allowing free trade in goods. Any free trade agreement with the EU would come at a price, especially if we wanted to include services where we are strong. We would also have to renegotiate all the trade agreements signed by the EU with, say, China, Canada and others and cannot expect to carry the same weight in those new negotiations. Finally, the costs of membership are nothing like the figures bandied about by Eurosceptics which fail to take account the UK’s rebate. In 2014, Britain’s actual payment based on data published by the Office for National Statistics was £14.7 billion, equivalent to £4.40 per person per week according to Iain Begg at the UK in a Changing Europe. And if a ‘Brexit’ is what happens we will still have to support our farmers and poorer regions. I hope we remain in the EU. The continued well-being of both Britain and Europe depend on it.

Mens Sana In Collegio Sano! Advancing MentalCourtney Landers (2013) offers a student perspective

ambridge and change are not always the best of friends. When it comes, change is sometimes slow and difficult. To be fair, it has taken society as a whole a long time to acknowledge problems with attitudes and practices surrounding mental health. Thankfully, current levels of advocacy and awareness-raising for the entire mental illness ‘spectrum’ are very positive. As a result, changes are on the horizon for our language, our expectations for productivity and stamina, our employment and admission practices, and for service-funding within and without the NHS. To the surprise of some and the relief of many, Cambridge’s efforts to support student mental health are on par with the outside world. Cambridge is an institution based on the pursuit of excellence and innovation: it owes it to itself to lead the charge. At Pembroke, our welfare structure is based on the standard Cambridge model that comprises Tutors, Directors of Studies, and Senior Tutor all working together to support the academic progress and mental welfare of students. We are blessed to have the exceptionally warm and experienced Jan Brighting offering support as College Nurse in addition to our Tutor for Graduate Affairs, Loraine Gelsthorpe, who is a trained psychotherapist. Our students are also served by Welfare Officers from the Junior and Graduate Parlour Committees, who do an excellent job of advocating for students on College committees and running events designed to foster mental well-being. On the whole, this pastoral system works well. New Tutors receive some training – including from the University Counselling Service – and many academics involved in pastoral care go above and beyond the call of their duty. Most academics are themselves under significant pressure, though, in having to juggle teaching, administration, and research along with the needs of their students. Thus, in the delicate situations that sometimes arise due to mental illness – such as the need for a student to intermit swiftly – it is sometimes difficult for academics to respond quickly or to reschedule other commitments. This means that in addition to the guidance developed by University bodies such as the Senior Tutors’ Committee, adequate mental health and welfare support for academics is also essential. The most recent update to Pembroke’s welfare system was the College’s participation in a pilot ‘Mindfulness’ course during Michaelmas and Lent last academic year. This involved a small number of Pembroke students attending a two-hourper-week ‘Mindfulness’ course as part of a study for a threeyear research trial run through the University Counselling Service. As at other colleges participating in the trial, the course was very well received by the Pembroke participants. Several of these students have now established the ‘Cambridge Mindfulness Society’, which is currently comprised of previous trial participants in order not to bias the results of the study. When the findings of the study have been published the Society intends to open itself up to all students. Last academic year also saw a highly positive student campaign for mental health support in College. The Pembroke Leavers of 2015 decided to raise money to support the mental health of their fellow students, and were successful in doing so. The Leavers have also contributed to the cost of various self-help and study-skills books which are available in the College Library.

Pembroke’s welfare system places us towards the leading edge of the College pack. Having a smaller student body than colleges like King’s and Trinity means better contact with welfare officers and fewer students per tutor and (for undergraduates) per DoS. Relative to student numbers, Pembroke also has a fair amount and accommodation in College and nearby (although we can currently house only 65% of graduates), and that helps to reduce the stress of students finding and financing convenient accommodation. On that score, if more College accommodation is established with the development of the Mill Lane site it will be an added boon. There is, of course, always room for improvement. Leading the way in providing mental health support for its students is the University’s Medical School. Amongst other measures, medical students are assigned a school-specific Tutor and have access to a rapid-referral psychiatrist. While medical students have a particularly demanding course, it is increasingly obvious that academia in general can take a great toll on mental health – especially since mental illnesses most commonly emerge between the ages of 18-30. Continual awareness and innovation will be required to fulfil the purpose of Pembroke and the University more generally: to nurture and stimulate the great minds of the future; to create an environment in which students can learn and grow in such a way that they will continue to flourish once they leave.

The University Counselling Service student team

Courtney Landers (2013) is currently in the third year of a PhD in the Department of Pathology, investigating the genetic inheritance of postnatal mental illness. When not in the lab or writing for student media about mental health, she spends most of her time mucking about on the Cam with PCBC’s women’s side.

Health Support in Pembroke and the University

Loraine Gelsthorpe became a Fellow in 1994, and has been Tutor for Graduate Affairs since 2003. She is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Deputy Director of the Institute of Criminology, as well as being Director of the Cambridge ESRC Doctoral Training Centre across the social sciences, and national President of the British Society of Criminology.

Loraine Gelsthorpe, Fellow, Tutor for Graduate Affairs, and College Counsellor, gives her perspective

Géraldine Dufour’s perspective as Head of University Counselling Service

embroke has an unusually large team of 16 undergraduate and graduate tutors; they meet regularly to share concerns and good practice, including occasional discussions about listening skills and how best to contain student anxiety. Tutors are carefully chosen by the Senior Tutor (being a tutor isn’t something that everyone would want to do and not something that everyone can do!). Tutors are not counsellors, so alongside the Tutors, JP and GP welfare officers, and the College Nurse, there are three counsellors working in College each week during term. All three also have some capacity to continue to see students out of term, which is particularly important for graduates – whose main base may be in Cambridge. Chris Rowland and I are UKCP registered ‘psychoanalytical psychotherapists’. Ruth Cocksedge is a chartered and registered counselling psychologist and an accredited CBT therapist. In practice, our work is very similar; we may all use CBT techniques to some extent, but also more open counselling. The Pembroke counselling team views itself as ‘back up’ to the University Counselling Service, particularly in terms of the length of time that we can see people. Sometimes we know that students have a mental health condition right from the start and so we can offer support counselling throughout those students’ time here. We try to offer particular support to students who have intermitted – if they want it. We also offer weekend or late night intervention in cases of crisis. The mental health challenges experienced can range from bi-polar conditions to attachment problems prompted by earlier traumatic experiences. The most common problems that we seek to help students cope with include parental disharmony, family terminal illness, bereavement, homesickness, relationship problems, supervisory breakdown (which is very rare), and loneliness. In other words, the Pembroke community reflects normal community life with all its mix of strains and stresses. At the same time, student life in Cambridge presents particular challenges, and uncertain futures can mean that the time in Cambridge generates extreme anxiety. Bright students are sometimes concerned about not ‘fitting in’ or ‘feeling different’. Academic pursuits allow them to retreat from a social world that leaves them feeling incompetent, into a more comfortable world of abstraction or virtual reality. This leads to an internalized imperative to be ‘special’ and to excel – sometimes to the extent that a sense of ‘specialness’ becomes a primary source of self-worth. Acceptance then means being the best, while anything more modest is seen as ‘total failure’. Counselling work in Pembroke can thus revolve around helping people negotiate the social world and adjust selfperception, as well as helping them deal with the challenges of more independent living than many are used to. As Courtney has emphasised in her piece, support for University ‘Mindfulness’ initiatives and alertness to the need to foster and promote resilience both feature here in the College’s thinking and practice.

t is fair to say that except perhaps to the eye of some of its students, Cambridge is among the front-runners in terms of the breadth and depth of support available in general to university students. Complementing the comprehensive welfare support provided by the colleges, the University Counselling Service is one of the largest in the country. Support is available to students with many different needs, from those who are experiencing debilitating stress to those with mental health illnesses. Increasingly we are also focusing on prevention by running workshops and groups on a wide range of issues, including ‘Developing SelfCompassion’ and ‘Surviving Cambridge for Graduate Students’. We have started to provide Mindfulness on a large scale, reaching out to up to 210 students a term. As far as we know, this is the largest provision of Mindfulness courses to university students anywhere. In parallel with the provision of support, we are collaborating with the Department of Psychiatry to study the impact of Mindfulness on student resilience through a large random control-trial, researching the validity of our intervention and developing the evidence base for student support. Working for a world-leading institution puts pressure on staff and students alike and however comprehensive the support provided, it sometimes seems to have little impact on the perception of some students and staff. Support by its very nature is limited, which can be frustrating. It seems that with regard to mental health as with anything else in Cambridge, it can be hard to judge what is ‘good enough’. Learning to develop a more realistic sense of expectation is often part of the therapeutic encounter. This does not mean that the Counselling Service can become complacent, as of course there is much to gain from listening to the experience of its users. However, we need to think carefully about what we do in relation to what we learn. Although it is important to liaise with students to understand their needs and adapt our responses, with regard to mental health issues it not always the best to listen to the ‘customer’. For instance, most professionals in the field would argue that a model that allows all students to access psychiatric help on demand is not in fact helpful. Students mostly face emotional and developmental issues that need to be worked through. It is often the case that learning to deal with the issue is the better solution for long-term benefits. So when students access our services, we will assess if they require further help and we will then direct them to see a psychiatrist only if this is needed. Géraldine Dufour is the Head of Counselling at the University of Cambridge. She oversees the provision of psychological support for the collegiate university, and leads a large team of counsellors, CBT therapists, mindfulness teacher and mental health advisors. She is the outgoing Chair of the Heads of University Counselling Services (HUCS), and is the strategy advisor on the executive committee for British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy Universities & Colleges Division. Additionally, Géraldine has been a member on a number of national committees related to student mental health and wellbeing.

Catering to Fond Memory Ken Smith recently retired as Pembroke’s Conference and Events Manager. Knowing how much he likes a good form, the Martlet editor sent him a retirement questionnaire...

ow many years will you have worked at Pembroke on retirement?

Without naming names, what student antic sticks most in your mind?

Nearly forty! I started here on 29th November 1976 and retired on 31st March 2016.

Many years ago a new walnut tree was planted in the middle of the lawn in Old Court ... but overnight it was moved to a pot on the landing of LL1! Later another tree was planted, but again overnight it disappeared ... only to be found later at 10 Selwyn Gardens. A short time elapsed before another tree was planted, this one survived until it was taken down a few years ago.

What are the different roles you’ve done in that time? My first role was Chef Manager. I had a hard act to follow, as the person I took over from was much revered within Cambridge University and throughout England as a top chef and catering judge at events such as Hotelympia where he excelled with his royal icing modelling. After a few years I was made Catering Manager and so I was more able to move forward with Conferences, Summer Schools, Dinners etc. Over the next few years I changed positions to Conference and Catering Manager, then to Conference and Events Manager, the position I had until my retirement on 31st March 2016. Describe a typical day in your last role Usually at my desk by 5am for a spot of emailing before talking to the Duty Night Porter to see if events the night before had gone well. Then throughout the day I’d be doing a multitude of tasks: e.g., bills, updating functions, meeting customers, checking event set-ups, etc. I’ve always felt it’s beneficial talking directly to people, as you see their body language. What are the main changes you’ve seen in the College? I’ve slowly seen Pembroke move up the ladder to a top position in Cambridge University due to the hard work of all persons involved within the college. The college is now well known for virtually everything: academic prowess, gardens, chapel, catering and for being a kind and friendly place to be.

How important has Pembroke House been to you? Pembroke House has always been very special from my first year at Pembroke, as we used to have the Pembroke House Pensioners down for the day, giving them coffee, lunch and afternoon tea. During the afternoon the Dean would recruit our students to entertain them with a punt trip and guided tour. I’ve kept attending Pembroke House functions over the years and was very pleased to be invited to the re-opening of Pembroke House / St Christopher’s Church. Hopefully I’ll continue to attend some of the functions there. What things will you miss most about the College? EVERYTHING!! – you see it’s never difficult to do a job when you enjoy it; it becomes more a way of life. What things will you miss the least? Seeing bad weather from my office and the hours of darkness. What’s your proudest achievement here? Through a kindly ‘Pembrokian’ my family and I were invited twice to the Queen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. It’s more a fond memory, but an achievement to be the first in my family to go there.

What’s the funniest or strangest thing you’ve witnessed here? How will you be spending your time in retirement? Many years ago, a member of staff came to my office which was in the kitchen at the time to say some gentlemen had arrived in the Hall for a ‘Wedding Breakfast.’ My first reaction was to check my bookings diary, but I found no such event there. When I went into the Hall I found ten gentlemen in morning suits asking where to go for their meal. I looked from them to the member of staff who was there and asked if this was a joke or Candid Camera but there was no laughter, only serious faces. Eventually we found out this group of gentlemen should have been at Pembroke College, Oxford. I felt so sorry for them and was much relieved that I’d not made a mistake! What are your fondest memories of your time here? One of my fondest memories is the Chancellor of Cambridge University’s Luncheon I organised on the Library Lawn after the Congregation for the conferment of Honorary Degrees at the Senate House on 12th June 1986. It took long, hard planning but we were blessed with a beautiful day and it all went off well. When the Chancellor, the Duke of Edinburgh, left the College I was presented to him, and he thanked me and all the staff for a beautiful luncheon.

I’ll not be changing my routine a great deal in the first year; I’ll continue to rise early, see the sun rise, and go to bed as and when I feel ready to. I’ll be spending more quality time with my family, doing gardening, and spending time at my caravan in Heacham (on the Norfolk coast) where I hope to do kayaking and sea fishing. I’m looking forward to having the chance to decide when and if I want to do something – possibly for the first time in my life!

Ken Smith recently retired as Pembroke’s Conference and Events Manager

Sing Me a River Tom Zawisza (2008) on the thriving Pembroke College Boat Club

T Tom Zawisza (2008) is currently finishing his PhD in economics at Pembroke and is a Royal Economic Society Fellow at the Faculty of Economics. His research focuses on questions of optimal taxation and social insurance programs. He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford, and an MPhil in Economics from Cambridge. He rowed for the men's first boat in 2013 and 2014.

he aesthetic qualities of rowing are not always foremost in rowers’ minds. A winter training session may begin in icy darkness – frost building on the kit of the crewmate ahead – and finish with a striking iridescent dawn; in summertime, the warm afternoon air, the light breeze and the rhythm of a long training piece can have a deliciously hypnotic effect. Despite these vivid physical sensations, a College rower will inevitably look beyond the situation at hand to an anticipated moment: those few adrenaline-fuelled seconds following the cannon blast (what else?) that signals the start of any Bumps race for a long procession of boats. It’s not just the booming cannon that makes oarsmen and oarswomen nervous: the unique format of Bumps – with its unpredictability and desperate battling at close quarters – makes for thrilling racing that is stressful even for seasoned College rowers. This is undoubtedly what makes success even more exhilarating. Emma Carter, threeseat of the first women’s crew, describes the euphoria following the bump on Caius on the last day of Lents 2016, when W1 won their ‘blades’: ‘We had one of our best starts – we were flying. When the bump came, we literally roared. The river was clear behind us, but in any other situation we would have been fined. Afterwards, we cycled back to College with the PCBC flag in V-formation, singing Angels and One Day More!’ We are living through a period of marked success for the Boat Club. As well as the first women’s blades, for instance, there is the men’s first boat, which finished last year’s Mays in second position on the river. Success is the result of a number of factors. As Stijn de Graaf, the Men’s Captain, points out, the Club supports the development of athletes extremely well. Three PCBC rowers represented Cambridge victoriously in the men’s lightweight race against Oxford, and one is in the reserve team in the men’s heavyweight squad. Most of them came into their own as rowers at Pembroke. The dedication of senior rowers and the example of their discipline in training provides inspiration to newer members of the Club, and a clear path to participation at a higher level, resulting in a marked depth of talent. ‘The lower boats are really

keen’, comments Stijn, ‘and there is constant selection pressure. Almost every year there are novices who make it into the first boat.’ Raw enthusiasm seems to be the predominant emotion in the PCBC. This is indicative of a distinct ‘Pembroke’ culture, recognizable to rowers from previous generations, and it reflects a special continuity of spirit that is embraced and remade by each successive generation. For example, it is normal for PCBC alumni to come back and coach crews, in particular in the lead up to Mays. Current members thus benefit from alumni experience and gain a palpable sense of what a special place the Club has held in their lives. ‘Alumni understand the Pembroke mentality’, says Emma; ‘When they say they wish they were here, it makes you appreciate how lucky you are to be here.’ Back to the task at hand, and, for the men, the preoccupation is unfinished business from last Mays. After a streak of three bumps in three days, the odds were on Pembroke winning Men’s Headship. Cruelly, a freak crabbing upset allowed an extremely lucky Caius crew to get away on the final day. The task now is to use the strong emotions from last year to good effect in the lead-up to this year’s Mays campaign. Meanwhile, on the women’s side there is clear enthusiasm to build on the success of Lents, despite a reluctance to predict what might happen in the summer (‘Let’s not jinx it!’). There will be a large number of trialists for all crews – another sign of the Club’s rude health. The alumni who return to visit and coach us impart some sense of what rowing has meant to them, but the members of earlier generations make their presence felt too. It is impossible to row at Pembroke and not feel part of a long and highly distinguished history. Getting changed at the Pembroke Boat House, you see the names of the members of past Pembroke crews on the wall, a good many with the words ‘Head of the River’ engraved alongside them. I have personally always felt keenly aware of the oar marking Pembroke’s win of the Grand Challenge Cup in 1935 – the main event at the Henley Royal Regatta, perhaps one of the most prestigious trophies in rowing. The fact that this oar and others like it sometimes provide a handy hanging rack for odd bits of kit only reinforces the feeling of intimacy with history. As Pembroke rowers, we aim to leave something behind, contributing to the marks of success on name boards and making sure that the Boat House brims with artefacts of distinction: oars, photographs and other historical memorabilia. But what we’ll take away perhaps has more to do with the accumulation of those frosty dawns and sunny afternoons: the honour of sharing a journey with a long line of oarsmen and women who got out of bed, trained hard and long – and did their best.

‘Charity suﬀereth long’ Matthew Mellor, Director of Development, reflects on how proposed legislation could affect charity fundraising

he law of unintended consequences often leaves us with other, less pleasantly named laws to face. In response to one or two examples of bad practice in the charity sector, legislation is being introduced which, if enacted as it currently stands, will radically threaten the way that all charities raise funds from UK citizens and residents. In particular, the mass-mailing of members of the public, the passing-on of data via commercial organisations and the cynical targeting of people who are not in a fit mental state to make philanthropic distinctions or decisions has been deplorable, dishonourable and often counterproductive. When these practices were looming large in the public consciousness last summer, we spoke to our student callers during their comprehensive and careful training to assure them that what they were being asked to do was very different, practically and ethically. My colleagues and I are aware that not everyone appreciates the way Pembroke and other educational institutions go about their business in raising funds. For many, merely being asked for support is felt to be an intrusion in their lives. Many others enjoy the interaction with the students on the phone, or with me and my colleagues as we try to ensure that we reach an understanding about their generosity for the College. In ways that are for some very different from twenty years ago, when I first came to Cambridge, the process of giving to Pembroke has become much more the product of a relationship and a dialogue. In 1994 we wrote many more letters than we do now. Yet we rarely use email to ask someone for a gift unless they may simply be renewing or restarting their support, or for our Reunion Giving programme. Emails have become depersonalised and do not represent adequately the way in which Members should think of how they engage with the College from the point of admission to the point of their last encounters with Pembroke. Most of our approaches are via the phone and in many cases, via phone then in person. The Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) legislation, as it is currently framed, will prevent this kind of informed dialogue from taking place. From an unspecified date in the summer, the FPS will give people an opportunity to ‘opt out’ of all charity fundraising communication (letter, phone, email) forever, in one go. It is not yet known whether it will be possible for someone to identify specific charities or types of charity that can be exempt from their embargo, but the measure is nevertheless draconian. Under the envisaged

circumstances, Pembroke will be highly reliant on donors or potential donors informing the College proactively that they are happy for someone from Pembroke to ask them for money. Once someone has registered with FPS, even asking a Pembroke person if it is then, or in the future, okay for the College to ask them will be regarded as a fundraising approach and could thus be in breach of the regulation. Charities in the education sector, along with other ‘membership’-type charitable organisations have protested that for years, decades even, they have built relationships with alumni with varying results in terms of funds contributed. For me and my many colleagues over time, and we trust for Pembroke Members themselves, this has for the most part been a really positive experience. We are delighted to welcome so many benefactors to various functions during the year and to have the opportunity that these events provide to hear advice and to explain what we are trying to achieve. At Pembroke, if someone says that s/he does not wish to give, ever, this is respected and our system is adjusted for that person accordingly. Some other colleges are contemplating taking the view that alongside all the invitations mailed comes the right to ask (not to expect, simply to ask) once in a while for financial support. We have not yet taken such a view, but we understand why they have. As charities, they, we, ask because we do not otherwise have the funds to provide the environment to support the students who need financial aid, or to recruit and retain the world-leading academics to research and teach without philanthropy. These are times when responsibility for the funding of much of Higher Education has been transferred from the state to undergraduates and benefactors, with the inevitable consequences that prospective students make choices about universities, courses and careers that their forbears were not so restricted in making. There is also a limited number of people who care: 9,000 living Pembroke alumni, 2,500 members of the Pembroke College Circle – we could not realistically appeal, before or after the establishment of the FPS, to anyone else. To achieve what we need to ensure that Pembroke maintains its standards and its traditions of welcome and mutual support, we need to keep raising money and we need, therefore, to keep asking – we hope you understand. The proposed FPS legislation comes at a critical time – cuts in public funding increase the need for charities to ‘step in’, yet their work is made harder in the same swing of the axe. Pembroke is not exempt. Our forthcoming campaign seeks to raise in the region of £70-£75 million to provide an enhanced and interconnected college environment in the heart of the University and city, with extraordinary living-, study-, teaching- and research-facilities to make the lives of Pembroke people, formerly-resident, currentlyresident and still-to-be-resident, among the most enviable in Cambridge and an inspiration for the best and brightest to come here. The Dolby family has made this possible and we will be so grateful if you can help us to complete the task.