When I was a student at Cambridge in the 60s,our impression of Oxford was that it provided numerous politicians, almost all Conservative, or was more wedded to the establishment and more pragmatic when it came to accepting donations from doubtful sources. Even in his own time,Cecil Rhodes was a highly controversial figure but this did not discontinue Oriel College from accepting his philanthropy (Letters, 29 December).
Oxford does not seem to have changed much since Rhodes’ time; witness the recent establishment of an soil sciences laboratory and an academic chair, or courtesy of Shell,in 2013. Equally distasteful is the decision by five Oxford colleges to plot their investments in the hands of an investment partnership that apparently operates without an ethical policy.
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Source: theguardian.com