Chancellorship
The immediate past- Chancellor is Sir Martin Jacomb, Chairman of Canary Wharf Group PLC, and Share PLC (in Aylesbury), and the director of other companies including Oxford Playhouse Trust. He was Chairman of Prudential PLC from 1995 to 2000 and last year retired from the boards of Rio Tinto Group and Marks & Spencer. Former Chancellors of the university have been Margaret Thatcher who retired in 1999, and Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone.
Lord Tanlaw was appointed to succeed Sir Martin as Chancellor in May 2010.
The current Vice-Chancellor is Dr Terence Kealey, formerly of the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Cambridge University, who has held the post since April 2001. Kealey is known for his research challenging the idea that education and science are public goods needing public subsidies. He wrote an academic book on the subject in 1996 The Economic Laws of Scientific Research which he repackaged and updated for a general audience in 2008 as Sex, Science and Profits.
Kealey sparked a sexism row in September 2009. The Times Higher Education had commissioned, for its issue of 17 September 2009, seven articles of 500 words each on the seven deadly sins of academia. The seven sins were sartorial inelegance, procrastination, snobbery, lust, arrogance, complacency and pedantry, and the commissioning editor, Matthew Reisz, wrote that the contributors "entered into the spirit and offered amusing examples of their sins in action …". The illustrations in the magazine reflected the humour of the feature. Kealey wrote on lust, and he adopted a satirical tone, claiming that young female students were a "perk" for male academics and they should "look but not touch". Over the next week the Times Higher Education website filled with comments about the article, many expressing shock but some expressing support. On 23 September the London Daily Telegraph ran a story about the article and the backlash was swift from academics. Kealey was criticised by the University and College Union and the National Union of Students who said his comments displayed an "astounding lack of respect for women". At the same time Kealey was defended by scholars such as Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge University who in her online blog for the Times newspaper wrote that it was instantly clear that the piece was satire. Kealey wrote a defence of his piece in the Daily Telegraph and he was also defended by the editor of the THE but nonetheless he wrote a piece in the Times Education Supplement three weeks later in which he said that it is a mistake for a scholar to write ambiguously, which must generally preclude the use of satire, irony, humour or parody in academic writing.
In February 2010, Kealey proposed the establishment of a new independent university, modelled on American liberal arts colleges, that would concentrate on undergraduate teaching rather than research. The plan is currently being considered by the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), whose 243 members include independent schools such as Eton, Winchester and St Paul's. Kealey believes that complaints about impersonal teaching and oversized classes at many traditional universities mean there will be strong demand for higher education with staff-student ratios similar to that provided by independent secondary schools.
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