This article is taken from the July 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
“Since it is difficult for a university to agree by common consent and unanimous will, we enact that all regents or a majority of them shall appoint a Chancellor of their own choosing who has the knowledge, will and power to be, as it were, the superior of all.”
So begin the first statutes of the University of Cambridge, written around 1250 when the institution was still just decades young. The confidence and clarity of the Latin, however, are undeniable: the university would appoint a pre-eminent and trusted figure from amongst its own body to navigate difficult and contentious decisions.
Little could these scholars know how difficult and contentious a future Cambridge would be facing in 2025. And nothing could they know of how astoundingly weak the potential candidates for Chancellor would be. How did we get here?
Nobody knows how many Chancellors Cambridge has had (the great university chest was burned by rioting townies in 1381). Richard of Wetheringsett in the 1220s is the first we know of. He may have been Archbishop of Canterbury too.
That is fitting, as the office’s origins were ecclesiastical, combining aspects of an archdeacon and a chancellor of a cathedral chapter. Indeed, whilst Chancellors were chosen by the teaching (“regent”) Masters of the University, until 1400 their choice needed ratification from the Bishop of Ely.
Although the Chancellor was a leader who presided over his own court he had to follow the will of his fellow academics: “The Chancellor may not presume to make any new statutes without the consent of the regents.”
The Chancellor was elected biennially, with many serving more than once. Most of the medieval figures are now mere names, the rest of their lives being quietly devoted to university teaching. Yet amongst the list lurk founders of colleges, envoys to Rome, Chief Justices, Lord High Treasurers and too many bishops to shake a crook at.
All was to change in the reign of Henry VIII. After an unprecedented ten years in office, and after Thomas Wolsey refused to take up the post, the University extended John Fisher’s tenure as Chancellor for the rest of his turbulent life.
At once expectations shifted: the Chancellor, being no longer resident, would delegate day-to-day decision-making power to the Vice-Chancellor, elected annually by college Heads of House. In turn, the Chancellor became a ceremonial grandee.
A glance at the Chancellors who followed Fisher’s execution in 1535, and the suspension of canon law and scholastic teaching, reveals the crown’s influence: Thomas Cromwell, Stephen Gardiner, Edward Seymour, John Dudley, Gardiner again, Reginald Pole, William Cecil.
For the next three centuries the Senate voted to entrust the nobility with the Chancellorship: the sequence of dukes, marquises and earls was broken only twice — for Oliver St John during the Commonwealth; and for Prince Albert, who narrowly beat the Tory candidate, the Earl of Powis.
It might seem a small mercy that the appointment is only ten years, but the opposite is true
The 20th century allowed some social movement, for figures whose national service won unanimous respect. Leaders of the nation and empire — Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin (including during his third prime-ministerial term) and Jan Christian Smuts — were followed by a war hero (Arthur Tedder), a titan of science (Edgar Adrian) and the Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip’s successor, who is now stepping down, has been a more terrestrial figure: the solid and stable David Sainsbury.
Now the University must elect his successor. Ten worthies have thrown their names into the hat. None seems to have been pushed, blackmailed or tricked into doing so. Cambridge is not offered royalty, nobility, great figures of church or state or even Nobel prize winners.
Instead, fuelled by their remarkable sense of self-belief, the applicants are a businessman, a businesswoman, two former oilmen, a broadcaster, an ex-MP, an ex-civil servant, a research consultant, a former academic and one still-practising academic.
It might seem a small mercy that the new Chancellor will be appointed only for ten years and not for life. But the opposite is true: this fixed-term tenure focuses the mind awfully, with that dread word “legacy” rattling around the emptier heads.
Yet the terms of the present-day post are clear: “The person elected is the University’s formal and ceremonial head, and whilst they have no executive responsibilities, they will play a vital part in Cambridge’s public-facing activities, in fundraising and in providing advice to senior members of the University.”
A steady pair of hands is needed, and an ability to stand fast in the crosswind. What is more, the Chancellor also serves ex officio as Visitor (the final arbiter of internal disputes) for ten colleges, including Christ’s, Clare and Corpus Christi. Yet the list of candidates is grim to behold. Like an unwitting rail traveller pulling into Bicester station, almost nothing in view appeals, but alight somewhere we must.
Is this really the best that one of the world’s great ancient institutions can attract? Who looks most Chancellor-ready? Not 40-year-old consultant, Ali Azeem. Nor 44-year-old “strategic innovation specialist” Mark Mann.
Is it a 51-year-old consultant in the oil business, Ayham Ammora, who achieved 0.07 per cent of the vote in Oxford’s chancellorship race last year? Or is it an 80-year-old activist for Extinction Rebellion, Tony Booth? Surely not.
No female Chancellor has been appointed since the post emerged under Henry III. That fact alone could be enough to steer many voters womanwards. Their choice then lies between quondam businesswoman and inveterate activist Gina Miller and former Great British Bake Off host Sandi Toksvig.
The former has no prior relationship with the University, and she rejects the role’s ceremonial character (“it can and should be much more”); the latter is a graduate of Newnham and became in 2023 the first “Q+ Fellow”, appointed on grounds of sexuality by the Department of Sociology. Neither, of course, has any clue what the University needs or ability to provide it.
Four candidates remain, two of whom can be set aside. Wyn Evans, a Cambridge astrophysicist, is to be commended for his passionate desire to roll back the suffocating growth of the university’s “administrative oligarchy” and to reinstate “a self-governing community of scholars”. However, he is applying for the wrong job.
Then there’s the outgoing President of Queens’, Mohamed El-Erian, who announced his early exit from that post to spend time with his family — in California. Despite his stormy spell as Head of House, the Chancellorship now appeals.
After four decades playing the markets, El-Erian is unable to escape their jargon. He seeks to “reduce Cambridge’s current vulnerability to external shock”. Those who have experienced his technocratic philistinism can attest that he fundamentally lacks an understanding of what Cambridge stands for and what will distinguish it from the rest of the world.
The view of Emily Maitlis, Queens’ alumna and Honorary Fellow, that El-Erian has “a real understanding of the human soul” prompts hollow laughter from within his college’s walls.
So where does that leave us? Two figures from the world of politics but both with strong Cambridge links: Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury, and John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley.
After a pedestrian cabinet career in the Blair government, Smith has spent the last decade as a competent Master of Pembroke, where he read English in the 1970s. He would be safe, professional and no unwelcome agent of change, but does he inspire? Few can say yes.
Browne — who read Natural Sciences at St John’s — spent his career in energy, first fossil fuels then green alternatives. Knighted in 1998 and made a “People’s Peer” in 2001, he has since earned his stripes in the Upper Chamber.
That he authored the Browne Review of Higher Education in 2010 — thus ushering in the tuition fee chaos and the consumer culture it fed — will sit very differently with different constituencies in the university. Encouragingly though, Browne has stated that Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies are “getting in the way of merit”.
He plans to live in Cambridge, from where his soft power might at least push the University in the right direction.
No other options present themselves. Such is the state of contemporary Britain. When even the least bad is poor, we are not in a good place. Nor are we heading in the right direction any time soon.
