The University of Oxford has announced its 2026 honorary degree recipients, with seven individuals to be conferred with degrees at the Encaenia ceremony on 24^th June. 

The honourees come from a wide variety of careers. Those awarded include former world number one tennis player Billie Jean King; economist and Nobel Laureate Professor Daniel Acemoglu; and former chief executive of GSK, Dame Emma Walmsley DBE. They are joined by dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta CBE; biochemist Professor Katalan Karikó  and Nobel Laureate Professor Shuji Nakamura; and Emmy nominated filmmaker and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The University has been granting honorary degrees since the 1400s, whilst the Encaenia ceremony can be dated back to the 16th century, assuming its current form around 1760. 

Recipient Billy Jean King won 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles, including winning a record 20 Wimbledon championships. She is also known for campaigning to equalise prize money in professional competitions across both womens’ and mens’ professional championships. Carlos Acosta was awarded a CBE in 2014 and retired from Classical Ballet in 2016, but continued to choreograph and perform.

Professor Acemoglu was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2024 alongside two others for “studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”.  Fellow recipient Professor Nakamura was also awarded a Nobel Prize, for Physics in 2014, for emitting energy-saving efficient blue light-emitting diodes, whilst Professor Karikó won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries enabling nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccines.

Dame Walmsley worked at GSK for 15 years and served as Chief Executive Officer of GSK for 9 years, retiring in December 2025. She is joined on the list of honourees by Henry Louis Gates Jr, known for his work as a literary critic, professor and history, as well as a literary critic. Gates was nominated for an Emmy Award for “Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking”  in 2022 for his work as Executive Producer for the documentary Frederik Douglas: In Five Speeches.

Honorary degree recipients are recognised for their distinction in their field or service to society. Previous honorees include former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and Monty Python comedian Sir Michael Palin. Decisions on recipients of honorary degrees are made by a selection committee. Encaenia 2026 comes after Lord Hague awarded eight honorary degrees in February this year in a Special Honorary Degree Ceremony to celebrate the beginning of Lord Hague’s term as Chancellor at the University. 

The ceremony involves the heads of colleges, university dignitaries and holders of Oxford doctoral degrees in Divinity, Civil Law, Medicine, Letters, Science, and Music. The honourees assemble and walk in procession to the Sheldonian Theatre. There, they are introduced by the Public Orator with a speech in Latin, and finally granted their new degrees by the Chancellor, Lord William Hague. Students at the University may attend the ceremony, with tickets released on  5^th May. 

“If he wanted to he would”. Look under the comments of any TikTok video about dating and you’ll see it repeated over and over again; it’s a promise of clarity, an explanation, a definitive answer to any and all problems that could arise in a relationship. But relationships aren’t that simple. With the rise of TikTok, and the generic, algorithm-driven dating advice that comes with it, we are continually encouraged to seek a one-size-fits-all answer to our problems. As more of us turn to an app rather than our partners or friends for advice, we risk reducing complex dynamics into 30-second videos that assume the worst, and ask for the impossible. TikTok has no shortage of “dating experts”, and their advice offers a bleak and overwhelmingly negative outlook on our relationships.

Today, I opened TikTok to see a video entitled “At the end of the day, dump him”, in which the creator listed a number of ‘flaws’ deemed worthy of a breakup. Among them, the simple act of questioning if your boyfriend has cheated on you: “at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was actually cheating on you, the fact is you’re questioning [it]”. Now, in some cases, this might be a valid point  – yes, of course your boyfriend shouldn’t be making you feel like he has cheated on you. But I can’t help but wonder about the effects that this sort of content has on relationships where this isn’t the case. Or relationships where one party is naturally prone to doubts, and is convinced by someone they’ve never met to dump a boyfriend who is “trying his best”, because – as this TikTok put it – “his best ain’t it”. Every relationship is different, and when we simplify all problems down to one issue with the exact same solution, we strip away the nuance that real-life situations often require.

These TikToks, along with offering an overwhelmingly negative outlook, encourage unrealistic standards for our dating lives. Entering this side of TikTok, you are met with a barrage of content centred around communication.We’re not meant to be reachable 24/7, but by telling us to expect this, these “dating experts” are only setting us up for failure. Creators often make assertions about how long it should take to receive a reply to a text message (their answers all differ), but also about how often you should see one another (on which they also can’t agree). Their advice is the same for developing relationships; I have seen countless Tiktoks claiming that if someone is interested in you, they will make the effort to seek you out. But the reality is that this kind of constant open communication isn’t natural. If your partner is working, busy, or even just in need of an hour to themselves, not texting back  does not mean that they don’t care about you, and TikTok should not tell us that it does. 

This kind of advice doesn’t just set unrealistic expectations, but actively discourages real communication. Instead of having a conversation with our partners, we are encouraged to analyse, dissect, interpret, and ultimately to assume the worst. Even where there were no issues in the relationship, this ensures that they can be easily created. Tiktok constructs a paranoia, whereby taking time to reply to a message suddenly represents a lack of interest, spending too much time with friends becomes a sign that they don’t care. We begin to hold our partners to unrealistic standards, quietly “testing” them to see if they will fail, rather than being honest with them about what we need. But relationships aren’t built on mind-reading. A simple conversation would suffice to fix most of the issues that these TikToks claim to resolve. But that wouldn’t generate enough views. And therein lies the problem. 

The people making these videos know exactly what will work to gain more clicks, more likes, more followers. They know that the more dramatic they are, the more likely their viewers are to continue watching, and this in turn ensures that the TikTok algorithm suggests similarly outlandish videos. And so the cycle continues; we see a video telling us that something our partner did is breakup-worthy (like when they took too long to reply to a text the other day), and we watch it until the end. This ensures that we are shown similar content. We then begin to overthink (how long will it take them to reply to this text?), and draw the worst possible conclusions when we don’t get the desired outcome. All the while the comments section continues to whisper “if he wanted to he would”. And so we continue to doubt our relationship, watching more videos for an explanation – and the one provided is ultimately generic and hollow. 

At this point, the problem isn’t necessarily the relationship at all. It’s the way that we’re being told to interpret it. These videos, through capitalising on an insecurity, manage to create problems even where there were none, so that their creators can then offer a solution. These TikTok “dating experts” may offer us a quick fix to our problems, but relationships don’t need generic answers or universal solutions – they need communication. So, if we want a relationship, maybe we should look away from our screens and towards the person that we want to build it with.

Catherine Xu, the Oxford Union’s President-Elect for Michaelmas 2026, has been permanently barred from holding office at the Society after an Election Tribunal found that she orchestrated a scheme to impersonate legitimate voters at the Hilary Term 2026 election.

The Tribunal, which sat on 25th and 26th April, found that Xu retrieved a stack of Oxford Union membership cards from her locker at Exeter College on polling day and distributed them to individuals not entitled to vote, instructing them to cast ballots in other members’ names. Yolanda Liu, a successful candidate for the Secretary’s Committee, was also found to have participated in the scheme, receiving approximately six cards from Xu and distributing at least one on polling day.

According to a report seen by Cherwell, the Tribunal’s findings relied on a combination of witness evidence and communications between Xu and Liu. WeChat messages sent by Xu on polling day, in which she asked how the process of “finding people” was going and instructed Liu to be “especially careful”, were found to have “no plausible innocent explanation”. Additionally, a voice note sent by Xu four days after the election, asking Liu if she still had “the cards”, was described as “particularly damning”. Xu’s own witnesses gave contradictory accounts of her movements on polling day.

Xu was found guilty on six of seven charges, including using the Society’s membership records to influence the election, procuring the impersonation of members at the poll, and conspiracy with Liu. The Tribunal described her conduct as “wholly incompatible with the standards of behaviour that would be acceptable for a President of the Society”. 

She was found not guilty of intimidating a Secretary’s Committee candidate who had intercepted one of the individuals attempting to vote fraudulently, but the Tribunal said her conduct towards them “does Ms Xu no credit”.

Xu’s legal team did not file a witness statement despite having one prepared; she herself chose not to give evidence-in-chief. 

Following the outcome of the tribunal, Xu has been disqualified from the Hilary Term 2026 election, and from nominating in any current or future election in the Union. She has further been “permanently barred from holding any Office, Appointed role, or official position in the Society”, “permanently barred from sitting on any Committee of the Society, with the exception of Consultative Committee”, and “suspended as a Member until the end of 9th Week Trinity Term 2026”.

Liu’s membership has likewise been suspended, and she has also been disqualified from the Hilary Term 2026 election.

Liu did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment. 

The Tribunal has ordered that the election for President-Elect should be annulled, and that there be a re-Poll, to be held on Monday, 11th May. Previously nominated candidates, with the exception of Xu – namely Hamza Hussain, Gareth Lim, and Liza Barkova – are to be included automatically on the ballot. Additionally, members eligible to nominate for President-Elect in the Hilary Term election will also be eligible to nominate in next week’s re-Poll, with no requirement for any qualifying speeches. The Tribunal will remain empanelled in order to oversee the re-Poll.

When approached for comment, the Oxford Union told Cherwell: “A Disciplinary Proceeding has taken place, following which the Election Tribunal has ordered a re-poll. Standing Committee note the findings therein and will discuss them in due course. It would be inappropriate to comment further as the proceedings may become subject to appeal.”

Xu did not respond to Cherwell‘s request for comment.