MICHAEL GOVE: Oxford is on its knees to every Left-wing god. No wonder students cheer the death of their political opponents

Public confidence in our political leadership remains dangerously low. Therefore, how we select, prepare and train the next generation of political leaders is critically important.

If Boomers have failed, Generation X has been a disappointment, and Millennials are lacking in action, then the composition of the future elite will matter.

One of the most effective nurseries of political talent has always been the Oxford Union. It may have been a playground parliament, but it prepared statesmen and women for power, from William Gladstone to Roy Jenkins, Michael Heseltine to Benazir Bhutto.

During my time there in the 1980s, I saw a host of future leaders cut their teeth, from Simon Stevens (lately chief executive of the NHS) to future Cabinet ministers, including our own Boris Johnson. The union was a student preparation for a future life of service.

Hence the importance of the debate over the fate of the recently elected President of the Union, George Abaronye. He was removed from office this week by a vote of no confidence, but only because the Union’s own elder statesmen and women stepped in. Worryingly, he was supported by hundreds of students, despite exhibiting the kind of behavior that goes well beyond university immaturity and confirms the depth and power of the destructive currents sweeping through our elite institutions.

Mr Abaraonye received a vote of confidence after it was revealed in the Daily Mail that he not only disdained the views of others but also took pleasure in murder.

He debated against American conservative influencer Charlie Kirk at the Oxford Union last year and, by all accounts, was best defeated in the debate.

Instead of reflecting on what he could learn, he reacted to Kirk’s assassination last month with a chilling, ideologically twisted expression of glee. “Charlie Kirk got shot,” he shared, which is short for laugh out loud.

This was not an aberration. He also accused the late Queen of ‘genocide’, declared that he would not frequent ‘white fields’ and was recorded as saying he felt ‘hatred’ for the Union’s traditions.

But hundreds of Oxford students thought that someone who boasted about blood should be the champion. It tells us a lot about what’s happening on our campuses today. But however shocking Mr. Abaraonye’s views may be, they should not surprise us. Because the problems of our elite institutions like Oxford go far beyond nihilistic student activism.

The rot is coming to a head. The culture that enables and fosters the George Abaraonyes of our age is the creation of the academics and administrators responsible for higher education.

Earlier this month, Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracy delivered her annual Oration, a report card on the health of the university. It was a series of genuflections before every progressive god the country’s Leftist establishment holds dear. Net zero bigotry, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ideology, suffering through mental health insecurities, celebrating universities’ ‘Sanctuary’ status as a magnet for refugees – no woke box was left unchecked.

Professor Tracy celebrated the fact that Oxford students must now undergo a program of ‘induction’ to better understand DEI so that they can exercise their right to ‘freedom of expression’, in other words to teach what they are allowed to think or say before opening their minds or mouths to others. This practice of controlling thought and language is directly contrary to the spirit of an institution dedicated to academic freedom.

Professor Tracy’s language is not the language of a free-thinking person. His pitch, full of phrases like ‘joining the innovation ecosystem party’ and ‘government-approved access and participation scheme for in-course study skills’, is a pathetic exercise in dragging lifeless jargon into the service of thoughtless fads.

While Professor Tracy uses the language of Shakespeare and Dickens with the mastery of a toddler, slamming Duplo bricks together, the academic life of the university, like once great institutions, is suffering.

Oxford is spending £3.3 million to ‘decolonise’ its curriculum by reshaping intellectual inquiry to fit a Leftist prescription. University libraries are being ‘decolonised’ to eliminate ‘microaggressions’ vulnerable undergraduates may face. It was canceled because academics confirmed the scientific fact that only two genders are fixed at birth.

As this ideological intolerance progresses, standards slip; Entry requirements are being relaxed for students from privileged backgrounds and examination standards are being lowered for certain groups. For example, Mr. Abaraonye only achieved ABB at A level; Note that a significant proportion of A levels now reach A* grades.

A growing encouragement, both at Oxford and other top academic institutions, is to claim inadequacy rather than celebrate excellence, seek special treatment and strive for a flashy reward. Students who claim to have a disability enjoy favorable academic and examination treatment at higher education institutions; So it is not surprising, but still shocking, that at least one-fifth of students coming to Oxford are registered as disabled.

In an environment where adults in leadership are ashamed of our history, twist the curriculum to fit Marxist theory, speak in incomprehensible jargon, put emotions before facts, lower standards to suit fashion, and fail to defend those who speak the truth, is it any wonder that students like George Abaraonye feel emboldened to act this way?

George Abaraonye discusses Charlie Kirk at the Oxford Union in May this year

And when they look across our honeymoon quadrangles at many of our institutions, today’s students see the same trends at work. The Bank of England is advertising an apprenticeship scheme open only to black or mixed-race applicants. The judge-led Sentencing Council wanted a two-tier justice plan that was more lenient towards certain minorities.

Museums and art galleries are trying to outdo each other in apologizing for the past they are supposed to celebrate. The university’s glamorous graduates like Emma Watson are denying gender reality and drawing applause from Wake’s loudest advocates.

The reputation of our best universities and institutions is based on their commitment to open inquiry, free debate, the pursuit of truth, respect for the achievements of Western civilization, and immunity to ideological fads. Now these traditions are crumbling everywhere, and with them our defenses against ignorance, corruption, and prejudice.

That’s why Oxford undergraduates like George Abaraonye think they can celebrate the deaths of political opponents, and why another Oxford academic, Balliol student Samuel Williams, took to the streets of the city last week to call on a crowd to bury ‘Zios’, in other words, to kill the Jews.

Many universities, including Oxford, rely on donors to subsidize their work. Some of the most generous, such as Stephen Schwarzman, Len Blavatnik, and Simon and David Reuben, are enterprising businessmen with little sympathy for woke causes or soft on anti-Semitism. But that’s what they find themselves financing. Oxford is happy to take their money, name a building after them, and then ignore their views and bow to their ideological enemies.

If Britain is to regain its intellectual vitality, institutional self-confidence and civilizing energy, we must learn to stop subsidizing, indulging and submitting to the surrender of what was once most prestigious in our culture to the advance of revivalism. Pirate business leaders may believe that relationships with universities such as Oxford now give them luster; But they’re just paying for more logs to be placed on funeral pyres.

The philanthropy of those who believe in sustaining our civilization does not deserve to be directed at an institution that sees the story of the West as a chronicle of colonial shame. The embrace of progressive nonsense, not only for the Union but also for Oxford, has gone far beyond a joke. It’s time for a new beginning.

Michael Gove is editor of The Spectator.