Student Life
‘My aim is to make everyone equally unhappy’: Catherine Royle on Somerville, the Foreign Office, and the importance of pragmatism
Sitting at a table in a sunny Somerville office, I get out my phone and ask Catherine Royle: “Do you mind if I record the interview?” I receive a diplomat’s reply: “I suppose not, but it will make me say different things, you know that? I have a lifetime of never saying anything you don’t want to see in print.” From the outset, it’s clear that Somerville’s principal continues to be shaped by her unique diplomatic experience. A career spent in the Foreign Office and then NATO means that Royle has lived all over the world, from Chile to Venezuela to Afghanistan. “I worked it out; until I got here, since 1997 I’d really lived in Britain for three years”.
Royle is a Somerville alumna, having studied PPE there before completing an MSc at Aberystwyth. She speaks of applying to Oxford with a casualness common to many students, yet I’m surprised by her modest dismissal of the barriers that she overcame. Her sixth-form experience at a newly converted grammar-to-comprehensive school was, she admits, “a bit of a mess, to be honest”. Her initial application to Merton College was (unbeknownst to her) doomed to fail because of “a philosophy tutor who didn’t agree with the college going mixed. He never let any women in”.
It’s clear that her time at university after being “picked up” by the then all-women’s Somerville was formative. She describes the unique experience of being surrounded by “exceptional” women, especially Daphne Park, the principal of the College at the time. In those days, Park was known for her distinguished career in the Foreign Office, but it was only when Royle joined the service herself that she learnt what Park was really doing: she was a senior spy controller for MI6. It’s clear that Park, described as both “extraordinary” and “terrible”, was an inspiration for Royle, and it’s a surprise to her that their relationship didn’t end with attempted secret service recruitment. She recalls going to speak to Park to ask for permission to become the Somerville JCR president. “Daphne Park… said ‘If you do this, you won’t get a first’. And I said ‘Well, I’m not going to get a first anyway… may as well have something good on the CV’.”
We naturally turn from the inspiration of Park to Royle’s own Foreign Office career. I ask about the decision to go abroad. Whilst Catherine was certain, her family was not, with her mother seeing it as “her idea of hell”. It’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed as Royle rattles off the countless postings, locations, and responsibilities of her varied diplomatic career. Yet it’s her very first experience in Chile that she draws out as a highlight. It doesn’t sound idyllic: she was given the placement suddenly, “had to go and learn Spanish in eight weeks”, and the lack of communication services meant that “as far as my friends were concerned, I just dropped off the end of the world”. But the experience of living through a turbulent time in Chile shaped Royle’s life. “It was a very formative experience and a fascinating period. When I arrived, Chile was a dictatorship. When I left, it was a democracy”. I get a glimpse of the extraordinary life of the diplomat, where one becomes a spectator to rare, epochal moments.
Our interview takes place only a few weeks after one such moment: Israel and the USA’s attack on Iran, which started in spite of diplomatic talks. How does Royle see the role of a diplomat in an increasingly militarised world? She defends her field: “I think it’s an absolute disgrace that the Foreign Office is cut to the bone, always underfunded… If you start with wars as the continuation of politics by other means, then you do need to do something other than fight…You need people who are able to work through the disagreements between states, it is a skillset.”
The potential drawbacks of relying on military power take Royle back to Afghanistan, where she was deputy ambassador and managed co-operation with the Afghan police during the US-led military presence in the nation. “Part of the problem of where we went in Afghanistan was that the diplomatic bit of it was really undervalued. The military were pushing things and doing things, thinking ‘well, actually we’re the policy makers here’. But they didn’t know how to do it… in particular, the American military, they don’t really think about working in partnership because they don’t have to, except that, if they did, they’d do better.” Royle feels that diplomats get a bad reputation; in her view their role as pragmatic consensus builders is essential. “My aim is to make everyone equally unhappy. Because, if I could make everybody happy, well, we’d just do that.”
Royle explains how she’s brought this diplomatic approach to her current position as principal. I ask what prompted this pivot in her career back to the world of academia, especially since earlier she contrasted the fields, claiming that, as a diplomat, “you’re absolutely not a specialist, in some ways you’re the antithesis of an academic”. The story of her return to Somerville foregrounds Royle’s straightforward attitude. Already an honorary fellow of the College, she was asked if she might apply for the role of principal. “I thought about it, what an honour, obviously, and a wonderful community to rejoin. So why not? … People in NATO were saying to me: ‘Do they know what they’ve done?’ And I said, ‘well, they know me quite well. So, it’s their own fault’.”
I ask about the strange experience of returning to her previous place of study. “Walking back in, it was really weird… But the College in many ways is similar in its approach.” How was it adjusting to the role? “There’s a steep learning curve, but I can still do things that go back to my old days… funnily enough, lots of people want to talk about the state of the world at the moment. I can still scratch that itch.” Yet grappling with the complexities of the college and university relationship hasn’t been easy. “[Oxford] is reckoned to be the best university in the world. I sort of think that’s possibly in spite of its governance rather than because of its governance.” Royle talks about the opportunities and challenges of being the principal with enthusiasm rather than apprehension. “It’s really exciting to look at the next generation, to think about the next thing coming up”.
I’m curious as to how Royle’s practical approach, useful in constantly changing international situations, might fit into a slower-moving, millennia-old institution like Oxford. Yet she’s already pushing for progress where she feels there’s a need: “The government postgraduate grants for humanities and the social sciences for Oxford have been cut 93% this year. They’re offering four for the entire University… We have had a conversation about setting up a new fund to support graduates and early career academics, because they’re under such pressure.”
To wrap up our conversation, I ask Royle what she’s proudest of in her varied life. She gives two values that she’s stuck to, neither of which surprises me. “I’m really proud of the fact that I have tried to stand up for what’s right and not for what’s easy.” Coupled with that is her desire to be a problem-solver. “I don’t tend to be somebody who comes with a problem; I tend to have a possible solution. And I think that’s so much harder.”
Throughout our discussion, it becomes clear that Royle’s approach towards her role is both pragmatic and principled; a respect for tradition combined with an excitement for the future. She unwittingly sums up her attitude best in an offhand comment: “We need to keep the important values… and value the history, but not get stuck in it. That’s always Oxford’s challenge, to keep moving forward.”
Student Life
Branding the beautiful game: How the World Cup logo signifies the commercialisation of football
As billions around the world gear up for the beautiful game to touch down in not one, but three cultural superpowers, there has been an overriding sense of disgruntlement with North America’s vision of the world’s festival. Restlessness with the tournament, hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, has grown steadily since the unveiling of its logo nearly three years ago; far from an empty icon, its design reveals an insight into the growing commercialisation tearing fans away from the game they love.
Beset by organisational and political problems, the upcoming FIFA World Cup is not only the most ambitious in the institution’s history but also the most marketed. In fact, this World Cup goes where none other has before in the realm of marketing. From Clarkson’s Farm to Coca-Cola, Lego to Lays, there is seemingly no product to which the World Cup treatment has not been extended. Key to this effort is the marketing power invested in the World Cup logo.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the World Cup logo for setting the tone of the quadrennial tournament. From the very first World Cup logo at the 1954 Swiss tournament, a stylised ball-like icon incorporating a red Swiss flag turned football pitch in its centre, the World Cup logo has been utilised as a chance to paint a picture of national pride and culture. Through the years, each host has taken up this chance with fresh ideas and new perspectives.
There have been both remarkable successes and notable failures in the history of World Cup logo designs. Mexico’s 1970 World Cup saw what many regard as one of the finest sports logos ever created, its distinctive MEXICO 70 wordmark drawing inspiration from Lance Wyman’s typography for the 1968 Olympic Games. By contrast, England’s 1966 logo lacked both the inspiration and commendation expected for a tournament which brought such iconic moments. Yet, despite their varying levels of success, each of these attempts shared a common goal: they are designed not only to articulate a host nation’s identity but also to communicate its place within an international community brought together by football.
This is what the World Cup is about: drawing football into a global conversation of hope and joy. The World Cup logo is a visual cue for this, stating the organiser’s ambitions for the tournament. The logo for South Africa 2010, for example, was designed around the idea of unity, using sweeping colours that combine to form the African continent while converging on the football. These logos signify cultural moments, and being a part of a cultural moment is what fans seek. It is precisely this sense of shared significance that many fans seem to find absent from the approaching tournament.
The World Cup is not only about culture, it is also a political beast of sizable proportions. In its worst forms, football has proved an effective way of bolstering support for authoritarian regimes and blinding the world to corruption and coercion. The World Cup itself is no stranger to political interference. Whether used to strengthen and unite Fascist Italy in 1934 or ran by a brutish authoritarian regime, the tournament has long struggled to keep a clean face to cover its dark underbelly.
As the symbolic face of the tournament, the World Cup logo has often served as a façade to cover up cultural and political tensions. Decided upon by design committees, consultancy firms, and so-called ‘brand teams’, the World Cup logo is a powerful marketing device aimed at suspending the material, political, and social reality of the tournament, promoting the image of a world unified by the spirit of the game. However, at this year’s 23rd edition of the FIFA World Cup the curtains have been well-and-truly drawn back.
Rather than projecting an image of a tournament defined by sporting merit and excitement, this World Cup’s logo serves as perhaps the most striking testament to its underlying commercial character. Since Sepp Blatter’s 17-year stint as FIFA president, beset with allegations of corruption, fans have felt a growing rot within the game as commercial interests begin to outweigh sporting spirit. The selection of the USA as primary hosts, the foils of dynamic ticket pricing, and the expansion of the tournament to 48 teams, have all contributed to the sense that this World Cup is a pinnacle of the game’s demise. This year’s logo does little to hide this. Its sterile numerical design and photo-realistic representation of the FIFA World Cup trophy bear greater resemblance to Apple campaigns than to tournament logos of old.
While FIFA has adapted this design for the individual host cities, it seems more like a brand template than a thoughtful representation of sport or culture. The brainchild of a Toronto-based creative agency, the logo does little to acknowledge football fan culture, instead becoming just another feature of America’s corporate “logorama”. If the World Cup logo aims to summarise the tone of the games, symbolising the tournament’s message to the world, then this is a message of meaningless corporate greed and soulless commodities. The World Cup logo has been rendered plain and marketable, suiting a tournament that now holds those values at its core.
And yet, this format is here to stay. ‘Johnny’ Infantino, as he is warmly referred to by President Trump, promises that all future tournaments will continue to use this numerical design to provide brand consistency, no matter the extent of fan outcries. Whatever excuse or justification one makes for such a decision, it always comes back to the same logic: business. For fans around the world, World Cups are not remembered for their revenue or marketability, but because of the cultural moment they created. It seems that for Mr. Infantino and motley mob, this is of little importance. FIFA is very much at risk of tearing out the game’s soul in order to grow its brand; once that soul is gone, one must ask what there remains to sell.
Student Life
Oxford Union holds “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam” Debate
Background
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, otherwise known as Tommy Robinson, is due to speak at the Oxford Union at 8.30 pm this evening at a debate on the motion “This House Believes the West is Right to be Suspicious of Islam”. The event has drawn condemnation from University societies, local politicians, and local faith leaders.
The debate comes days after Yaxley-Lennon was detained at Heathrow Airport on Saturday evening under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, following his return to the UK from Russia. His phones were seized, but no further action has been announced by the Metropolitan Police.
Thames Valley Police (TVP) has confirmed a significant policing operation across Oxford city centre from 3.30 pm today. St Michael’s Street, where the Oxford Union is located, has been closed to vehicles and pedestrians since 4 pm, and will remain shut until 1 pm. Despite earlier statements, it has been confirmed that no other roads will be closed.
Businesses in the city centre have also been closing early: The White Rabbit pub announced in advance it would shut from 3.30 pm, citing safety concerns and solidarity with other independent businesses. The Handlebar Kitchen on St Michael’s Street closed at 3.00 pm – their pavement licence was revoked for the day. Activate Learning, which runs further education colleges in the area, has also written to parents and carers advising students to avoid large gatherings and allow extra time for journeys through the city centre.
In a statement, Oxford City Council Leader Susan Brown has raised the question of the cost of the large-scale security operation. She wrote that the Oxford Union “must meet the full costs of staging their event, rather than leaving Oxford’s taxpayers to pick up the bill”. The Oxford Green Party has also issued a statement, demanding that the Oxford Union “cover the entire cost of the security operation it is requiring” and that “compensation be paid by the society to local businesses forced to board up their windows and close”. Cherwell has previously reported that the Oxford Union is just years away from insolvency.
The Oxford University Islamic Society issued a formal statement warning that the invitation posed a direct threat to Muslim students’ safety, arguing that “extending a platform to individuals whose reputations are built upon targeting minority communities is not without consequence”. A group of Oxfordshire Liberal Democrat politicians, including MP for Oxford West and Abingdon Layla Moran, have also called on the Union to reflect on whether proceeding “was consistent with “the values of respect, inclusion, and community cohesion that Oxfordshire strives to uphold”.
Individual colleges at the University of Oxford have announced that they will remain closed to the public this afternoon, and have reached out to remind their students to take the requisite precautions. Wadham College, for example, urged students to “please act responsibly, stay safe and vigilant and take the disruption into account when planning your afternoon and evening”.
The debate is due to feature Laurence Fox and Jonathon Sacerdoti (alongside Yaxley-Lennon) on the proposition, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Abdullah Al-Andalusi, and Michael Doward on the opposition.
Defending her decision to invite Yaxley-Lennon in an article in The Telegraph, Elrayess wrote: “For more than 200 years, the Oxford Union has existed to host debates – not to platform views uncritically, but to subject them to the most rigorous scrutiny. You do not invite a speaker to endorse them: you invite them so that their ideas can be examined, and their claims tested.”
A spokesperson for the Oxford Union previously told Cherwell that the Union gives “members the opportunity to challenge…a broad range of speakers” and “only host[s] speakers who agree to be challenged”.
The University of Oxford has shared a reminder that “welfare services are available to support all students”.
I was very close to rejecting Oxford for Exeter. While this is not why I eventually accepted my offer, I couldn’t stop thinking about the prestige the name ‘Oxford’ connotes. This ‘prestige’, however, was historically incubated through empire, slavery, class hierarchy, and elite political power. For these reasons, especially, I feel that studying here is nothing to boast about at all.
We often ignore the fact that Oxford did not merely exist during the empire, but helped to produce the people and ideas that sustained it. It was this institution, alongside Cambridge, that was tasked with educating generations of colonial administrators who governed the British Empire. Among them are: Cecil Rhodes, Lord Curzon, Alfred Milner, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, and Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin. Additionally, Britain would offer members of foreign elites a place to study at Oxbridge, a practice that some scholars view as a soft power tactic to strengthen British cultural and diplomatic influence abroad. Perhaps unrelated, today, over one quarter of the world’s countries still have a leader who was educated in the UK.
Oxford further helped intellectually legitimise the empire and colonial hierarchy. Subjects like classics, theology, and my own subject, ‘Oriental studies’ (now Middle East Studies), were historically intertwined with imperial governance. These disciplines provided the ideological justifications and administrative frameworks necessary to establish and manage the British Empire. Even today, I have classmates from ethnic minority backgrounds who have told me about Oxford coursemates and even a tutor who has proudly introduced themselves – to them specifically – as the grand or great-grandchild of the governor of areas in Bangladesh, India, and so on.
Oxford has also benefited from wealth derived from colonial exploitation. The Codrington Library at All Souls College was funded by Christopher Codrington. His fortune was accumulated from Caribbean sugar plantations where enslaved Africans were put to work. When Oxford has wished not to associate with its donors, they have renamed libraries. The Ferdowsi Library in Wadham College was initially the Ashraf Pahlavi Library, as it was funded by the last Shah of Iran’s sister in 1977. Just two years later, when the Shah was overthrown, the College didn’t hesitate to rename the library. The Codrington Library, however, still bears a slave-owner’s name.
Looking back at the last three years, Oxford students organised encampments calling on Oxford to divest from companies linked to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and criticised the University for insufficient transparency regarding its investments. Oxford was quick to ban and dismantle the encampments. In January 2025, as many students may remember, abseiling police officers were seen scaling the Radcliffe Camera to arrest protesters from Oxford Action 4 Palestine. Would the University’s response have been so harsh if students were protesting a different humanitarian catastrophe?
Another cause of personal discomfort for me is every single time I have to wear my sub-fusc. The same sub-fusc that was worn by Leo Amery and Lord Alfred Milner, who, along with Arthur Balfour, drafted and authorised the Balfour Declaration.
These ongoing and past injustices are easily traced back to Oxford’s alumni and donors. Apart from these alumni and Oxford’s current polemical financial investments, having played a role in fuelling injustice in current ongoing international conflicts, its links to past atrocities can still be seen in its landscape. The relationship between Oriel College and British imperialist and white supremacist Cecil Rhodes (the founder of the colonies of North and South Rhodesia) is perhaps the most high-profile example. Rhodes left a financial bequest to the college, which funded the construction of the building that still bears his name, and his statue remains prominent in Oriel. Again, in the past, Oxford has renamed buildings and can easily do so again. For instance, the Faculty of Asian and Middle East Studies was previously the Oriental Institute – while the name has officially changed, the ‘Oriental Institute’ sign remains.
In 2015, the University of Cape Town, after immense pressure from its student body, removed the statue of Cecil Rhodes from their campus. Our students continue to campaign for the same, especially after the “Black Lives Matter” movement, but the Rhodes statue remains. The global “Rhodes Must Fall” movement has argued that Oxford glorifies the Empire while marginalising those harmed by it. At times, our student body has done the same, like in 2015, when the Oxford Union named one of their cocktail drinks: “Colonial Comeback”.
It is public knowledge that up until that year, academics from Worcester College were drinking from a 225-year-old skull, thought to have belonged to an enslaved woman, and gifted to them by an alumnus. Why did that alumnus feel that human remains, which were passed down in his own family, were the best gift to present to his college? Why did he assume it would not raise any questions? Why did multiple Oxford academics even think to use it for such a purpose, and comfortably do so for years? Even after it was damaged, they used this human skull to store chocolate. All this alone reveals so much.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was some Oxford academics (Julian Huxley, John R. Baker, and E. B. Ford) who were among the elite who perpetuated eugenic theories, and played a role in legitimising racial hierarchy under the guise of ‘scientific research’. In recent times, other Oxford academics, like Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology, have defended certain aspects of colonialism, as can be seen in his article for The Times in 2017. As for Oxford donors whose names are ingrained in stone in the buildings we study in, their names are also found in the Epstein files. If not for word-count sake, this list would go on, all raising questions about the kind of institution I feel I really belong to.
And yet, instead, for reasons I cannot fathom, Oxford is somehow considered by so many to be a source of moral and intellectual authority. In a clothed expression of classism, a former sixth-form teacher of mine even went as far as to describe Oxford students as “the peak of civilisation” to explain why he was shocked that Oxford has one of the highest statistics among UK universities for cases of sexual assault on university grounds.
I will never belittle all that Oxford has given me, including my Oxford education, and I suffered greatly for my place here. However, pride in this institution – in where I study and who has studied here before me – will always be impossible for me.
We cannot pick and choose. We cannot believe that we are inheriting a millennium of intellectual achievement, and also dismiss the moral weight that comes with it. We cannot falsify, erase, or deny history, and a large part of Oxford’s history is shamefully one of empire, elite political power, and built with slavery-linked wealth. Students have every right to question what that legacy means today. If anything, doing so reflects the very critical thinking and values that Oxford claims it champions.
The post Oxford’s prestigious reputation deserves scrutiny appeared first on Cherwell.
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