What do the kings of Jordan, Norway and Tonga have in common with Bill Clinton? They all went to Oxford.
was his dean’s daughter.) Oxford dons C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien drank to- gether at a pub called the Eagle and Child, members of an informal group known as the Inklings, who would read one another their works in progress. (Another Inkling was English professor Hugo Dyson, who famously moaned, “Oh, no! Not another [expletive] elf” while Tolkien plowed through “The Lord of the Rings.”) The alternate Oxford that Philip Pullman created for the “His Dark Materials” trilogy is only slightly more peculiar than the real one. The Mini, that lovable little car, was
made in Oxford. (It still is, in a bigger, slightly less lovable version.) Because the city has always had a steady supply of young people to spread the fashions that arise there, it has given its name to things such as Oxford shirts, Oxford shoes and Oxford sauce. The final word on English words? Well, it’s not the Cambridge English Dictionary. When I lived in the city, the local
paper had an article about how Hitler had ordered Luftwaffe bombers to spare Oxford because he wanted to make it his capital after the Germans occupied England. Even Hitler, it seems, had a soft spot for the place.
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I took a few photos of the Oldest Ham in the World, then walked down Broad Street past Balliol College and Trin- ity College. Oxford University is like a coral reef. We think of it as one entity, when in reality it’s a collection of semi- symbiotic entities; however, instead of brain corals, anemones and parrot fish, it’s colleges — 38 in all — each with its own buildings, students, professors, ad- ministrators, traditions, rowing teams, rivalries, coats of arms, mottoes, Latin pre-dinner blessings and satisfyingly well-stocked wine cellars. Because the residents of Oxford
didn’t always appreciate the students in their midst — the city’s history is rife with pitched battles between town and
gown — the colleges prudently built themselves behind walls. I couldn’t tell you where half the colleges in Oxford are, because what they show to a pass- erby is a stone facade, all the safer to retreat behind. When I lived there, I tried to go to any
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lecture whose subject looked especially narrow — “The Relationships Between French Women and German Soldiers During the Second World War” was one; “Apartment Concerts and Informality: Constructing the Soviet Rock Star” was another. I even went to one talk just be- cause I was captivated by the name of the series: the annual Bap sybanoo Marchio- ness of Winchester Lecture. The subject was “Islamic Persuasions: Pathways to Change in Islamic Norms.” All I remem- ber about that one was that the speaker started out by saying, “I’m happy to have such a distinguished audience, which is what you say when it isn’t a large one.” (Who was the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester, you ask? She was the In- dia-born daughter of a Zoroastrian high priest. In 1952, she married a titled Eng- lishman and endowed a yearly Oxford lecture on the subject of international relations.) Oxford University is all about lectures
— oddly, there aren’t any actual classes, per se — and many of them are advertised in local gazettes or with posters pinned to school bulletin boards. I was never re- ally clear on whether you were allowed to just pop into a lecture, but plenty of folks seemed to. My fellowship program sponsored a talk every week whose at- tendees included at least two people I’m convinced were there only for the free sandwiches. After a lecture at Nuffield College, an earnest-looking man who had been sitting near me pushed a folder into my hands. It contained his detailed proposal for reforming the teaching of mathematics in Britain. Everyone in Oxford seems to have
time to hone his or her schemes for world improvement. The only lecture I could find that
Thursday morning was in the Old Indian Institute Building, a turreted structure that was built in 1883 as a place for “Orientalists” and “Indolo- gists” to gather and talk shop, a function it had ceased to perform about the time people stopped calling each other “Ori- entalists” and “Indologists.” The talk was titled “Reckless Caution: The Perils of Judicial Minimalism” and was spon- sored by something called the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. Oxford seemed to me a palimpsest,
its buildings, lecture halls and labora- tories slowly accreting monuments to human intellectual endeavor. I won- dered how long before the building I was in would become known as the Old Centre for Neuroethics and then the Old Centre for Telekinesis and then the Old Martian Institute. The next day, I made my own contri-
bution to knowledge, presenting my first — and, presumably, last — academic paper. Stacks of the neatly bound booklet — which for some reason I had inscruta- bly titled, “Red Kayaks and Hidden Gold: The Rise, Challenges and Value of Citizen Journalism” — rested on a table in the lobby of the university’s Saïd Busi- ness School. I hung around a few yards off to see how many people picked up a copy, then followed the crowd into the lecture hall to take my place on a panel with three other journalists. I can’t say that my performance that
morning persuaded the Nobel commit- tee to pencil me in for a future prize, but you know what? I held my own. Oxford seminars are like airplane land- ings: Any one you can walk away from must be counted a success. I was serious when I had to be, humorous when that seemed like a good idea. I deployed my approving nod. Occasionally, I respect- fully disagreed. In barely 90 minutes, the event
that had brought me back to Oxford was over, and the conference attendees swarmed back to the lobby and toward the complimentary wine.
September 12, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 27
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