This page is in preparation
My page Cambridge University: excellence, mediocrity, stupidity has been part of the site for many, many years. For year after year, putting the search term Cambridge University excellence mediocrity stupidity or the search term Cambridge University mediocrity stupidity into Google has produced results. The page has been in first place in the rankings almost always. I think I could even claim that I'm amongst the world's foremost contributors to Cambridge University Mediocrity and Stupidity studies, perhaps the most prominent of all, but I've never done justice to Cambridge excellence. This new page doesn't correct the imbalance, but I do include - or will be including - new material on Cambridge excellence.
In all this time, there has been an omission. I've never mentioned some significant personal experience of the University. My page
https://www.linkagenet.com/phd/cello-violin-viola-proms.htm
includes sections on cross-country skiing and rowing. The rowing section has a photograph 'a boat of the club I rowed for' and another photograph of 'the boat house of the club I rowed for' but doesn't identify the rowing club. Until now, I've never mentioned anywhere a fact which is relevant to my criticism of Cambridge University and my appreciation of Cambridge University - the fact that I'm an alumnus of Cambridge University. The College is Downing College, Cambridge. The best known Downing alumnus is John Cleese, the very gifted comedian. The 'rowing club' is the Downing College Rowing Club.
Below (photographs not taken by me):
I came upon this photograph showing J staircase at Downing. The rooms I had (there were two of them) were at J9, on the far left of the 1st floor in the photograph).
Below, the Downing College chapel, grossly in excess of requirements. Only a small number of staff and students attended the C of E services.
The Downing College boathouse, with boats. In the foreground, the River Cam. In my time, the boathouse was less pleasing. A great deal of improvement work seems to have been carried out.
Below, a Downing College boat taking part in a race. I rowed in the stroke seat at the stern of the boat, facing the cox. The stroke is intended to set the rhythm and pace for the entire boat but the instruction I received never mentioned this.
I give much fuller information about my experience of rowing and my reasons for giving up rowing in the last section of the second column of the page with the cumbersome heading, Cello-violin-viola-the-Proms-cross-country-skiing-rowing.
The College has been described as 'the oldest of the new colleges and the newest of the old.' Pevsner, 'The Buildings of England, Cambridgeshire:'
'Downing must be recognized as the earliest college on the campus plan ... the chief attraction of the college remains: the wide lawn of the campus and the openness of outlook to the S. The college still keeps something of that feeling of being out of the town ... '
Providing general autobiographical information has never been important to me in writing for the site. There are some quite extensive exceptions, but they are few and far between. My work is a different matter - obviously, this does have prominence. Rowing has hardly any prominence. I make it clear that I've no interest in rowing of this kind, at this level - football is a far more interesting and sophisticated sporting activity. The boat I rowed in - all the crew new to rowing, with no experience or next to no experience of rowing before Cambridge - did win the competition held for boats of all the Cambridge colleges. This doesn't amount to a great achievement. I trained for six days a week, before deciding that this wasn't a sport for me. I was left with an affinity for water, an interest in boats, an appreciation of the enthusiasm of supporters in the colleges for the rowing events even if it wasn't enthusiasm I could share.
The long established page on Cambridge University now includes material on some other universities, including Oxford. The page is very big, and I decided it was time to set up a new page, to take account of significant developments in the very extensive field of Cambridge mediocrity and stupudity studies. I won't be giving much attention here to the multiple failures of Professor Arday. I see the need to focus attention now on the many, many Cambridge academics who may not indulge in outright plagiarism but who self-indulgently copy fashionable nonsense without any attempt at critical scrutiny, people who see no need for critical scrutiny, the many lazy-minded people to be found at Cambridge University.
The existing page on Cambridge University includes a great deal of material on one of these, Professor Priyamvada Gopal. On this page, I'll be adding new comment on this personage. The page contains a long piece on Professor Mark Berry (the music critic 'Boulezian') an alumnus of Cambridge University who studied history at Cambridge and who has presided at Royal Holloway for many years. I take the view that his failings are far more instructive than the failings of Professor Gopal. In the past, his gross excesses have been reported in the national media but he doesn't have quite the prominence of Professor Gopal. These are very different people, if united by the iron grip of ideology, but Mark Berry has to his credit - or rather to his discredit - a large number of quotable quotes, long deleted from his social media posts but preserved by me at least. Professor Gopal is a large scale producer of unimportant, insignificant verbiage which includes many deeply damaging comments but which lack the 'bite' of the characteristic Boulezian nonsense. I take the view that Professor Berry is a far more talented figure than Professor Gopal, but only for his musical reviews, which are often accomplished and perceptive. But as a general historian, Mark Berry is abysmal. The Cambridge University History Faculty blundered when it awarded him a degree.
She obviously thinks very highly of herself but other people are under no compulsion to feel the same. I take the stern view that Professor Gopal is ridiculous, not worth the time needed to draw attention to her failings - but at the same time, those failings are of the kind which shouldn't be ignored. She likes telling people what to think, as a would-be enforcer of orthodox thinking (DEI version, or 'Opus DEI') , and she likes putting people in their place, or trying it on.
An extract from the material on Professor Gopal in my main page on Cambridge University:
' ... she's petty, as well as smug and snobbish, with a view of her own importance which is grotesquely inflated. A perceived slight to herself becomes something of massive importance. She really does seem to believe that when she uses the accusation 'Racist!' then she's obviously right and the person she accuses has no defence at all.
She claimed she was subject to 'racist' treatment from King’s College porters. She said she would stop tutoring students at King's due to “consistently racist profiling and aggression by porters” at the college. Refusing to tutor students at the college was a ridiculous reaction, over-the-top, indefensible.
''I repeatedly asked them to address me as 'Dr Gopal' she says. Anybody who demands this of porters is a fool with delusions of importance.
'We have investigated the incident and found no wrongdoing on the part of our staff,' a spokesperson said. We categorically deny that the incident referred to was in any way racist.' The spokesperson said it had completed its investigation and cleared its porters.
In an email to me, she wrote,
'What a sad sack you are ! Get a life, kid.' I explain the context in this extract from the page.
Very, very unwisely, Dr Priyamvada Gopal made it completely clear her view of what was 'correct or acceptable' when David Willetts came to speak at Cambridge University and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to speak at Columbia University. David Willetts was Minister of State for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was President of Iran from 2005 to 2013. Whilst he was President, men and women were stoned to death for adultery, amongst other offences. According to Amnesty International, about 5000 men and women have been executed for same-sex activity since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979. On the Holocaust (statement of September, 2009):
'They [the Western powers] launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews." Mohser Amir-Aslani was arrested for 'insulting the prophet Jonah' and for making changes in religion. He was executed in 2014.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to give a speech at Columbia University in New York City. Lee Bollinger had referred to the President as a 'petty and cruel dictator.' Dr Gopal referred to this comment as 'demeaning.' She couldn't possibly agree with this breach of decorum. She wrote,
'There is no excuse for inviting an elected leader to talk at your university only to undermine him as lacking in "intellectual courage" before he has had a chance to speak.
I emailed some members of the English faculty, including Dr Gopal, to draw their attention to this material on Iran. After some time, she sent me this email. It was obvious she didn't like what I'd written, not one bit. She didn't offer any arguments and evidence. She wrote in her email to me,
'What a sad sack you are ! Get a life, kid.'
