R.I.P. | Robert L. Schuettinger (Exeter and Christ Church)

Robert L. Schuettinger,
1936-2018.

Posted on the bulletin board of the Oxford and Cambridge Club of London, where Alice and I stayed on Wednesday night, was a notice of the death of member Professor Robert L[indsay] Schuettinger, who was up at Oxford the same time as I was in 1962-64.

The notice said that Bob (as we knew him) died on September 11, 2018.

Schuettinger was the founder and president of the Oxford Study Abroad Programme, which began as a Washington Academic Internship Program in 1983 and first sent American students to Oxford in 1985. He was an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Washington International Studies Council in Oxford. He studied at Columbia, the University of Chicago, and at Oxford University (Exeter and Christ Church). His graduate supervisor in political philosophy was Professor Sir Isaiah Berlin, Fellow (and President) of the British Academy, Order of Merit, and Fellow of All Souls College.

Schuettinger taught at St. Andrews University in Scotland and Yale University, where he was an Associate Fellow of Yale's Davenport College from 1974 until his death. He has lectured at the Kennedy School of Politics in Harvard and also was a Visiting Research Fellow in International Relations at Mansfield College, Oxford University, for a three- year term. He taught an Oxford seminar in diplomacy jointly with Professor Lord Beloff, FBA, Fellow of All Souls College. He was a Visiting Research Fellow of Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute, elected by the RAI's Fellowship Committee in April 2013. He was an Associate Member of the Senior Common Room of Christ Church. He was also appointed by Christ Church to the college's Board of Benefactors.

One of Schuettinger's books.

He authored or co-authored 19 books, including Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls, which he wrote with Eamonn F. Butler and was rated 4.11 out of 5 on Goodreads and went into a third edition in the United States and was translated into Chinese. He also wrote U.S. Strategy for the Decade Ahead, China: The Turning Point, Korea in the World Today, Saving Social Security, Scholars, Dollars and Public Policy, and Toward Liberty.

He served as a senior aide in foreign affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives, as deputy to the Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, as a senior policy aide in foreign policy in the White House and in the Senior Executive Service in the US Information Agency and the Pentagon (Director of Long-Range Policy Planning).

He was also Assistant Director for National Security Policy in a Presidential Transition Office. He was Director of Studies in Washington's largest think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and was founding editor of its social science quarterly, Policy Review, now published by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Besides his membership in the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, he was a member of the Cosmos Club and the Metropolitan Club in Washington, and of the Beefsteak Club and The Reform Club in London. He was elected to membership of The Pilgrims Society, the Anglo-American Society, and of the Institut d'Études Politiques. He also received several teaching awards, including "Best Professor of the Year."

Sources of information, in addition to citations above, include: https://www.iwp.edu/faculty/detail/robert-schuettinger. 

OXFORD COLLEGE ARMS | Review in QUAD "Off the Shelf"

Richard Lofthouse in "Off the Shelf", QUAD, 4 September 2018

https://bit.ly/2xwNizA

Imminently available to order is John Tepper Marlin’s Oxford College Arms (Boissevain Books, 2018. £15). If you ever wondered what your college coat of arms means, and where it came from,  here is the answer.

The heraldic expert in our midst and distinguished former Chief Economist for New York City and of course Oxford alum (Trinity, 1962),  John delves into every college coat of arms while a heraldic glossary provides valuable guidance to those uninitiated by the formal language used to describe coats of arms.

When he wrote about this subject for the Michaelmas, 2015 issue of Oxford Today, John explained that even late 20th century colleges scrambled to establish coats of arms. Not out of vanity and not even to flog scarves and trinkets to eager parents. No,  they fell into the tradition in order to have a sustainable identity in the broader context of a collegiate university, particularly on sports field and river.

As such the book is a delight because John has taken recent images to journalistically nail his theme. In one instance a Mansfield wall hosts a perfectly recreated, chalk-rendered coat of arms, alongside the results from rowing Torpids in 2015.

Whether or not any generation of students really thinks about their coat of arms, and I suspect most of us blanked it,  John’s point is that we enthusiastically embrace it as the token of belonging to a particular community. This is so strong that modern arguments to ditch coats of arms have come to nought.

[The author is speaking at the Oxford Reunion on Saturday 15 September. The book is on sale at Blackwell's.]

BIRTHDAYS | Oxonians, September 2018

Oxford Alumni Weekend (2018)
Oxford Black Alumni (2017)
Famed Oxford Alumni by College (2015)

September
07 | Peter Darrow (Trinity) 1950
14 | Oxford Open Day, for potential applicants to Oxford
15-16 | Oxford Alumni Weekend

October 
02 | Graham Greene, 1904
23 | Denis Woodfield (Lincoln) 1933
November
09 | Noel Godfrey Chavasse (Trinity) 1884
09 | Francis Chavasse (Trinity and St. Peter's) 1884
15 | William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham* (Trinity) 1708
21 | Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "Q" (Trinity) 1863
29 | C. S. Lewis* (Univ.) 1898
December
18 | Charles Wesley (Ch.Ch.) 1707
22 | James Oglethorpe* (Corpus), 1st Gov. of Georgia 1696
January
03 | J.R.R. Tolkien, CBE (Exeter) 1892
27 | Charles Dodgson, "Lewis Carroll" (Ch.Ch.) 1832
February
13 | Anna Watkins (rower for Cambridge against Oxford), 1983
21 | John Henry Cardinal Newman (Trinity) 1801
21 | W. H. Auden
March
01 The Oxbridge Pursuivant (Trinity) 1942 😏

02 Dr Seuss (Lincoln), 1904

11 Rupert Murdoch, 1931
14 Stephen Hawking (Univ), death, 2018 (born in April)
24 William Morris (Exeter), 1834

26 Robert Frost, 1926
26 A. E. Housman, 1859

April
01 Rachel Maddow (Lincoln), 1973
03 Jane Goodall, 1934

April 23. St George's
Day

05 NYC Boat Race Dinner, University Club
13 Frederick Lord North (Trinity), 1732
13 Christopher Hitchens, 1949
14 Michael Maclagan (Ch.Ch. and Trinity), 1914
15 Emma Watson, 1990
15 Joseph Lister, 1827
19 Dudley Moore, 1935
23 St George's Day
28 Harper Lee, 1926
28 Elena Kagan, 1960
May
10 | James Viscount Bryce (Trinity) 1838
20 | Melvin "Dinghy" Young (Trinity), DFC & Bar 1915
29 | Sir Basil "Gaffer" Blackwell (Merton) 1889
June 
04 | Dan Topolski (New) 1945
05 | James Smithson (Pembroke) 1765
16 | Adam Smith (Balliol) 1723
17 | John Wesley (Ch.Ch.) 1703
July
09 | Oliver Sacks (Queen's), 1933
10 | E. Clerihew Bentley* (Merton) 1875
22 | William A. Spooner (Warden, New College) 1844
27 | Hilaire Belloc, 1870
28 | Senator Bill Bradley (Worcester) 1943
August
08 | Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (Trinity) 1605
10 | George Goodman, "Adam Smith" (BNC) 1930
11 | Lawrence Binyon (Trinity)
16 | T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) (Jesus) 1888
19 | President Bill Clinton (Univ.)

*Clerihews for Oxonians

BIRTH | 9 July–Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)

9 July 2018–Today would be the 85th birthday of Oxonian writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, best known for his patient-focused explorations of the mysteries of the brain.

Sacks was born in London, youngest of four boys, to parents who were both doctors. When the Luftwaffe started bombing London, his parents sent Oliver and his brother Michael to a rural boarding school in the Midlands. Sacks found the experience horrendous and returned home eventually traumatized. He sought refuge in his basement chemistry lab, studying to become a doctor.

After graduating from Queen's College, Oxford, he emigrated to America for an internship in San Francisco, in the early 1960s. He quickly took to the easygoing culture. He went on a motorcycle trip to the Grand Canyon with the Hell's Angels that he later wrote about in his memoir, On the Move: A Life (2005), in which he also discussed the realization that he was gay.

In 1965, Sacks found work at a hospital in the Bronx. He'd hoped to do medical research, but: "I lost samples. I broke machines. Finally, they said to me, 'Sacks, you're a menace. Get out. Go see patients. They matter less.'" He wrote a book called Ward 23 about his experiences, but disliked it so much he burned it. His first published book was called Migraine (1970). His friend, poet W.H. Auden, counseled him to improve his writing style: "Be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need."

Sacks became fascinated with patients who suffered from sleeping sickness. They were catatonic and had been in the hospital for decades. He began to give them doses of L-dopa, then just beginning to be used for patients suffering from Parkinson's, and the patients responded by emerging from their stupor into a world they didn't recognize, but enjoyed. He wrote about them in Awakenings (1973). The book was a hit and later became a movie starring Robin Williams (1990).

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), Sacks explored the case of a man who suffered from visual agnosia and couldn't recognize his wife. His essay was later adapted into an opera, which premiered in London in 1986. Sacks wrote also about Jimmy G., a submarine operator who suffered from Korsakoff's syndrome and could remember nothing of his life since the end of World War II, even things that had happened a few moments before. He also wrote about Madeleine J., a blind woman who thought her hands were "useless lumps of dough."

Sacks's books were best-sellers, but some critics objected to his use of real case histories. One called Sacks "the man who mistook his patients for a literary career." Sacks said he saw himself as a "naturalist or explorer." Millions of copies of his books are in print and he introduced the general public to Tourette's and Asperger's diseases. He was receiving more than 10,000 letters a year from readers in the early 2010s. He said: "I invariably reply to people under 10, over 90, or in prison."

In 2005 he was diagnosed with ocular cancer. He was treated for ten years (https://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/09/01/oliver-sacks-on-vision-his-new-book-and-surviving-cancer/) and died in 2015 at 82 years of age.

OXFORD'S OPEN DAY, OPEN ARMS | 14 September 2018, Walking Tour

1. Jesus College on Turl Street flaunts its
 green color, which conveys its Welsh and
Celtic appeal (or the field of its
revised arms).

Friday 7 September, 2018–Next week is Oxford's last Open Day in 2018.

One of the commitments of the Vice Chancellor of Oxford, Louise Richardson, is to continue to enlarge the pool of applications. She is embarking on her second academic year.

Achieving this goal is harder to do than it might appear. For many decades, since the days when I was up at Oxford in the 1960s, the University has been expanding the range of applications from secondary school students and the percentage of entrants from the elite (so-called "public" schools because they draw from a wide geographical area) schools has fallen every decade.

One of the problems in attracting promising students from schools that do not ordinarily send their graduates to Oxford is that the University is foreign to them. They are unlikely to know any Oxford alumni. 

2. Exeter College, also on the Turl, has
its purple Welcome banner out.

To address this problem, Oxford University and its constituent colleges have organized two "Open Days" when Oxford's 38 colleges and six Permanent Private Halls (PPHs) open their doors to visiting teenagers who are prospective applicants:

• The first is usually toward the end of June, about two weeks after the end of the last (Trinity) term.
• The other is two weeks before the opening of the first (Michaelmas) term, which in 2018 is next Friday, 14 September (the Feast of St Michael the Archangel is 29 September).

Your Oxbridge Pursuivant has taken some pictures of colleges decked out for Open Days, and have selected five of them for a Walking Tour.

If you want to check out other colleges than the ones on the list, the Oxbridge Pursuivant would like to recommend a handy guide, Oxford College Arms, which was published this month. Order it here: https://amzn.to/2NXh0F1.  It is also on sale by Blackwell's.

A guide to Oxford's 44 colleges and halls, starting from their coats of arms.

The book covers all 44 colleges and PPHs and is up to date through August 2018 (including, for example, the Norrington Table results since 2006). It is a good way for visitors to Oxford–parents, applicants, alumni, students–to stay up to date on the arms, locations, histories and current standings of the colleges and halls.

The photos show that the colleges and halls are becoming more competitive about Open Day. For that day, the college gates are opened wide. The signs signifying "Keep Out" or "£6 Admission" are replaced by welcoming banners, balloons, and open gates.  


Some colleges take the competition to the next level.  Unfairly? You be the judge. Here are some Open Day stories from four colleges and one hall–Jesus, Exeter, Trinity, Regent's Park College, and Lady Margaret Hall. 

3. Trinity College is central, next to the Morse-featured
White Horse, Blackwell's, and the Bodleian libraries.

We start our walking tour going north on Turl Street. We pass Lincoln College on our right, visit Jesus on our left, then Exeter on our right. We now face Trinity College. We take it all in and turn left at the corner, intending to head next for St Regent's College in St Giles. 

However, as we pass Boswell's, we are hijacked. We are offered a free ride akin to that in Midnight in Paris–to a place called LMH, with the promise of free ice cream at the destination. Read on.

4. Regent's Park College makes itself
known in front of the Sheldonian.

1. Jesus College. As one walks on The Turl north from High Street, Jesus is on the left. I was advised by Paul Walton, who knows a thing or two about Wales, that the green color of Jesus is related to its Welsh affiliation, because its foundation was promoted in 1571 by Welshman Dr Hugh Price of St David's Cathedral.  However, the original field of Price's coat of arms had the tincture (colour) of azure (blue). The field's tincture was later revised to vert (green), perhaps in honor of the Green family, or in homage to Price's Welsh heritage.  

Queen Elizabeth is the founder of Jesus College; it is the only college founded at Oxford during her long reign. Its Celtic Studies library is special. Its most famous alumnus is surely Welshman T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"). Its student body is 15 percent Welsh.

2. Exeter College. Exeter College's color is purple, referencing the fact that it was founded in 1315 by Walter de Stapeldon, a Devon man who rose to become Bishop of Exeter and Treasurer of England under Edward II. Purple is the color of bishops. The eight pairs of golden keys in the Exeter coat of arms reflect the episcopal origin of the college, as St Peter, the first bishop, was given "the keys to the kingdom of heaven", one being for what he "bound" or "loosed" on earth and one for what he thereby "bound" or "loosed" in heaven, as the St James translation of Matthew 18:18 (https://bit.ly/2M7CyNf) goes. Exeter was originally called Stapeldon Hall; it is considered the fourth-oldest college at Oxford.

3. Trinity College. Trinity's arms are those of its Founder, Sir Thomas Pope. The tincture on his arms is azure (blue), with the metal or (gold). The college colors are blue and white. Pope was a Catholic entrusted with the task of dissolving and emptying out church-owned colleges. Durham College was a seminary established by the Bishop Prince of Durham. After Catholicism was reinstated by Mary I, Pope established a new Catholic college on the spot.

5a. Offering a Free Ride to LMH.

4. Regent's Park College. Things are not always what they seem. Regent's Park College is the smallest of the six Permanent Private Halls. The PPHs are increasingly being given similar status as the full colleges, but because of their close religious affiliations are deemed to be less independent than the full colleges. 

Regent's Park College sells itself as a quiet place near the center of Oxford. Its origins go back to a Baptist conference in 1752. The original institution was founded in 1810 and moved to Pusey Street, off St Giles, in 1927. It is near St Cross College, for graduate students, which shares an entrance with Pusey House. 

5b. Dishing the free ice cream at LMH.

Regent's Park College welcomes students in the arts, humanities and social sciences. A few study to be Baptist ministers. The Library includes a special focus on the history of dissenters. In fact, because of its history of religious dissent, members of Regent's Park College are discouraged from using Latin! The college Grace is recited in English by the Principal: For the gifts of your grace and the community of this college, we praise your name, O God. Amen. At the end of Formal Hall the Principal signals the departure of senior members (there is usually no High Table) with the words: "The grace and peace of God be with us all. Amen." Amen to that.

5. Lady Margaret Hall (LMH). Just as Regent's Park College is a hall, so Lady Margaret Hall is a college, as is St Edmund Hall.

5c. Picnic at LMH, by the Cherwell, 1918.
Two Saunders sisters (L) and C.S.L.

LMH is located at the end of Norham Gardens, with property extending to a wide frontage on the River Cherwell. Since this is a bit of a hike without a bike from central Oxford, the offer of a lift with ice cream waiting at the end is a clever way of attracting the interest of potential applicants.

While the lure of free ice cream may seem to be unfair competition, how else expose impressionable students to the glory of the banks of the Cherwell, where picnicked in a 1918 photo three LMHers (two Saunders sisters at left and someone at right identified as C.S.L. who is clearly not C.S. Lewis).

TOLKIEN EXHIBIT | Reserve!... or Queue

J. R. R. Tolkien

See the Bodleian Library, Weston Building, exhibit, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. 

It explores Tolkien's life as an artist, poet, linguist, and author – both his academic career and private life.

The exhibition follows his famous works, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, displaying an array of draft manuscripts, illustrations and maps drawn for his publications. 

It also introduces the viewer to Tolkien's early abstract paintings from The Book of Ishness, the touching tales he wrote for his children, rare objects that belonged to Tolkien, exclusive fan mail; and private letters. Note:

• No photography is allowed inside the exhibition gallery. Further information on access and details can be found here: Tolkien exhibition FAQ.
• Opening times: Monday to Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 11am-5pm
• A ticket is required. Entry to the exhibition is free, but ticketed. Tickets can booked in advance online. Each online transaction is subject to a £1 booking fee. There will be a limited number of tickets available on the day on a first come, first served basis.

While you are at the Weston Library, go to the exhibit on the progress of women's rights, "From Sappho to Suffrage."

OXFORD COLLEGE ARMS | Oxford Talk, 15 September, 12:30 pm

NEW YORK, N.Y., 30 August 2018–The Oxbridge Pursuivant just published a book on the coats of arms of the 44 Oxford colleges and halls.

He will speak on the topic on Saturday, 15 September, at 12:30 pm at Trinity College, Oxford, as part of the Oxford Alumni Weekend.

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The book is sold at Blackwell's and on Amazon (https://amzn.to/2oShnWq).
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The talk with slides will cover the coats of arms of both the Oxford and Cambridge colleges and halls.

The "charges" (objects) common to several Oxford college arms will be compared with their use in Cambridge colleges.

For example, the Oxford and Cambridge University arms both feature the Bible and royal patronage.

The Bible signifies both learning and piety, i.e., knowledge balanced by the fear of the Almighty.

The Oxford crowns and Cambridge lions and ermine signify the protection of the English Monarch.

Oxford was protected by Henry II from competition from the University of Paris. Both Henry IV and Henry VIII exempted Oxford colleges from costly visitations by heralds.

Later, both Oxford and Cambridge were protected by the Crown from creation of any new universities, for nearly 500 years!

Is there significance in the fact that the Oxford Bible is open and in the reading position, while the Cambridge Bible is closed and on its side?

These are the kinds of questions suggested by the study of the coats of arms of Oxford and Cambridge.

Be there... Saturday 15 September, 12:30 pm! 

Friday 14 September is the last Open Day in 2018.  For more about Oxford's Open Day, click here: https://bit.ly/2NZSgMg. (In case you were curious, Cambridge has Open Days as well.)

The author will be talking about the book and signing copies in Flaggs between 11:00 am and 11:30 am on Friday 14 September and Saturday 15 September. 

The book is on sale in Blackwell's.