With Raphael Lyne and Gavin Alexander, I wrote English Handwriting 1500-1700: An Online Course (http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/), now part of an AHRC-funded project, based at the Cambridge Faculty of English, called Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts, Online (http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/).

From the Website of Cambridge Gaza Solidarity Campaign

http://cambridgegazasolidarity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/academic-letter-to-vice-chancellor.html

'A group of sixty Cambridge University academics 'have spoken out in dismay at the university's handling of a peaceful protest in which more than one hundred students occupied the Law Faculty.'  The occupation, which lasted six days, was intended to show solidarity with the people of Gaza. The students made 'six main demands' (the number of lesser demands isn't given, whether small or large). One of the main demands was for  disinvestment from the arms trade.

In their letter (February 6, 2009) the academics write

'We ... strongly agree that an educational institution should not be involved with or benefit from the arms trade which has brought so much suffering around the world, and therefore support students' calls for disinvestment from this industry.'

There's also some inoffensive waffle, '

'As teachers, we strive to foster in our students an interrogative and transformative attitude towards the world.'

The University authorities gave a more valuable lesson to the students, in the form of a reality check: the limits to self-indulgence.


'Over the course of the six-day sit-in, the University threatened matriculation sanctions and legal action. It also endeavoured to prevent any food being brought into the building for the occupiers.'

If more than a hundred radical Islamists had descended on the Law Faculty, occupied a different part of the building and demanded implementation of Sharia law if hundreds and hundreds of other protesters had decided to occupy the Law Faculty building for other causes and made their demands, including the demand for recognition of their right to free speech, then even these academics might just have realized that this couldn't possibly go on.


http://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/is-cambridge-defend-education-defensible-765/

The Cambridge Defend Education campaign group was formed in October 2010 in opposition to the dramatic cuts to the government’s education budget and the raising of tuition fees to £9000.

Dr Andrew Zurcher, in an open letter in support of CDE, published on their website, claimed that any threat to the core values of the university posed by the protesters when they interrupted Willetts’ speech was offset by the fact that the very act of inviting him to give the speech was, in the light of his recent political decisions, an insult to the moral standing of the university in itself. He challenged Goldhill: “You have said that CDE has mistakenly attacked the core values of the university. Perhaps you have undermined them, by inviting a politician to whitewash his ideologically driven rape of the university sector, in a speech that would rhetorically re-describe it as consensual sex.”

Dr Simon Goldhill, of the Faculty of Classics, had publicly spoken out against the government’s new education policy; even joining a group of 681 academics who sent an open letter of protest against it to the national press last year. But when Willetts’ speech was interrupted, he reacted with an angry statement on the faculty website, claiming that the protesters had denied Willetts himself the very freedom of speech they claimed to be trying to protect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzsddORxcBM

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/news/0015649-universities-minister-finally-comments-on-students-rustication.html


Willetts was prevented from speaking at all, as several students around the hall began chanting a 25-minute poem beginning "David Willetts, the future does not belong to you/This is an epistle that is addressed to you". The chanting was done using the so-called "people's microphone" method, whereby Owen Holland read out each line, which was then repeated back by all the other protesters. Willetts had been due to give a speech on "The Idea of the University", but left the hall during the course of the 'epistle'. The protest divided opinion among Cambridge students, many of whom, including CUSU President Gerard Tully, claimed that it had violated David Willetts' right to freedom of speech. The protest was followed by a week-long occupation of Lady Mitchell Hall by Cambridge Defend Education activists.


Faculty of English

Elizabethan colonial and military activity in Ireland


ntroduces a Renaissance masterpiece to a modern audience.This Guide will help new readers to understand and enjoy The Faerie Queene, drawing attention to its various ironies, its self-reflexive construction, its visual emphasis and the timeless ethical, political, and literary questions that it asks of all of us.

Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene": A Reading Guide

Chapter 1. Mapping and making

' ... he was never far from the brutal and repressive violence of Elizabeth's military campaigns in Ireland. He was present at Lord Grey's victory at Smerwick in the autumn of 1580, when at least 600 Spanish and Papal troops surrendered and were summarily massacred. He later accompanied Lord Grey on similarly brutal campaigns in Wicklow and Wexford and he must have seen - and perhaps done - terrible things durig the war that slowly engulfed Ireland after the revolt of the Earl of Tyrone in 1594 ... '