The Antonian

Letter from the Warden

Dear Antonians,

As one of my last activities as Acting Warden before Roger returns from his sabbatical leave, it is my great pleasure to write this Warden’s letter ahead of the start of the new academic year.

Plus est en vous

As you know, our college motto is Plus est en vous - ‘There is more in you’. When I addressed our new students in induction week 2023, I had mentioned our motto and also referred to the US Black Civil Rights activist Senator John Lewis, who said the following at Emory University in his commencement speech:

‘On this beautiful campus, with your great education, you must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.’

Little did I know at the time that this year would become the year of making good trouble for many of our students here at the University and that it would so aptly bring out the true meaning of our motto in so many ways. Unfortunately, the context was the Gaza War. For some of our College members, the war - on both sides - is not a distant set of events but it has affected their families and friends. Our hearts go out to them. Whether or not directly affected, many of our students have taken a courageous ethical political stand, participated in protests, raised funds and mobilised in a variety of ways. Our students have demonstrated the value of courage to do the right thing in the face of catastrophic violence and a humanitarian crisis as well as against Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and racism, and have held us to account to do so too.

I have to admit, though, it has not been smooth sailing. Among some of our students, there have been hurt, anger, tension and frustration, and also fear, loneliness and a sense of isolation. We have tried to do the best we can to provide support, sometimes getting it right and sometimes not. Personally, this unprecedented situation has taught me as nothing before to listen with compassion and to learn with humility from all sides - the vocally upset and outraged, the quietly suffering, and even the largely indifferent. We have managed to pull through this year because of the enormous goodwill and understanding of our students, the truly exemplary dedication and commitment of our staff at every level and the leadership and responsiveness of our fellows. For this, I am extremely grateful to everyone, and despite this being a difficult year by any yardstick, I have found it rewarding and a privilege to be the Acting Warden.

Amidst these difficult times, I also wanted to share with you some uplifting news and updates about the College.

DAC Scholarship

I am truly delighted and grateful to let you know that we have raised over £1 million for the endowment of the DAC Scholarship Fund for students from low- and medium-income countries, listed by the Development Assistance Committee of OECD as entitled to public development aid. This means we will be receiving a further £500,000 from the University in matched funding. All combined, we will have a DAC Scholarship endowment of £1.5 million through which we will be able to support students who did their first degree in a DAC-listed country and have won a place to study at St Antony’s, but otherwise would have been unable to take up that place because of lack of funds. I would like to express our enormous gratitude to everyone who supported the appeal. I refer to this link for further scholarship news.

I would also like to sincerely thank the donors who are supporting three new programmes at the College: the Eastern Mediterranean Programme, the Fundación Ramón Areces Spanish Visiting Fellowship at the European Studies Centre, and the Hazem Ben Gacem Tunisia Exchange Programme. ESC and MEC Directors Othon Anastasakis and Eugene Rogan report on these initiatives elsewhere in this Antonian magazine.

Our students and Fellows

Our congratulations go to the St Antony’s football team. They won the Cuppers final and emerged as the University champions. MSc student Sarah Mughal Rana published her much acclaimed and thought-provoking debut novel, Hope Ablaze, about a young Muslim Pakistani-origin woman’s struggle against racism and Islamophobia in America. DPhil student and Dahrendorf Scholar Olivier de France was shortlisted for two of his poems for the coveted Oxford poetry prize. The poems speak for the lands and ecosystems in the depleted and threatened North Oxford Green Belt. In all these too, I am reminded - plus est en vous.

Moving on from students to Fellows, many congratulations are in order. Amir Lebdoui, Rachel Murphy, Leigh Payne and Tim Vlandas have all won various grants and research awards from the Open Society Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, ESRC and the British Academy. Several fellows have written new books: Tom Hale, Dan Healey, Amir Lebdioui, Eugene Rogan and Robert Service.

It saddens me to say that we lost several good friends in the past academic year. Allan Taylor (Emeritus Fellow and former Bursar), Professor Robert Barnes (Emeritus Fellow), Professor Mark Elvin (Emeritus Fellow), Professor David Marquand (Honorary Fellow) and Lord Patrick Cormack (with Archie Brown, the founder of the Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship) passed away in recent months. Their obituaries can be read on the ‘In Memoriam’ page of our website by following this link.

We bade farewell to Governing Body Fellow Professor Takehiko Kariya who is retiring and returning to Japan. We are delighted to welcome four new Fellows in the coming year: Janaki Srinivasan (Digital South Asian Studies), Kristi Govella (Politics and International Relations of Japan), Michael Odijie (African History) and Gregory Thaler (Environmental Geography and Latin American Studies). These appointments mark exciting new associations of the College with the Oxford Internet Institute and the School of Geography and the Environment, while further strengthening our links with the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the History Faculty.

I am pleased to announce that Professor Rashid Khalidi has been elected as Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s. In the course of his distinguished career, he has exemplified everything St Antony’s stands for in terms of pursuing the very highest standard of scholarship, contributing to the policy world with the benefit of research knowledge, engagement with the critical issues in the world today, and inspiring through teaching and supervision future generations of scholars and policy makers. 

Our Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship (VPF) Programme this year focused on climate change, with GB Fellow Tom Hale leading the initiative. The two parliamentary fellows were Chris Skidmore and Alex Sobel, both of whom have led on national environmental policy initiatives. The seminars on 'A green and pleasant land for nature, food, energy, and people' and 'Moving and building: local government and the climate challenge' were recorded and can be found on YouTube. We hope to announce soon who will be our Visiting Parliamentary Fellows in 2024/25.

Visiting the College: High Table

As ever, it was wonderful reading all your updates and I would like to remind you that all Antonians have an allowance of one free High Table a year for life. For all the details and if you would like to join us at High Table, please follow this link.

^{Acting Warden, 2023-24}