Nothing really changes. Obama's appointee to the Supreme Court Elena Kagan went to Harvard. The new SC will have 9 judges all of whom either went to Harvard or Yale. David Cameron, the new British Prime Minister went to Oxford. His Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg went to Cambridge. Barack Obama also went to Harvard. Elena Kagan also went to Oxford. It's virtually a closed shop as you'll see from this partial list of Oxford's Prime Ministers:David Cameron
(1966-) May 2010- Conservative
Tony Blair
(1953-) May 1997 - Jun 2007 Labour
Margaret Thatcher
(1925-) May 1979 - Nov 1990 Conservative
Harold Wilson
(1916-1995) Oct 1964 - Jun 1970 Labour
Mar 1974 - Apr 1976
Edward Heath
(1916-2005) Jun 1970 - Mar 1974 Conservative
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903-1995) Oct 1963 - Oct 1964 Unionist/Conservative
Harold Macmillan
(1894-1986) Jan 1957 - Oct 1963 Conservative
Anthony Eden
(1897-1977) Apr 1955 - Jan 1957 Conservative
Clement Attlee
(1883-1967) Jul 1945 - Oct 1951 Labour
H H Asquith
(1852-1928) Apr 1908 - May 1915 Liberal Coalition
May 1915 - Dec 1916
Marquess of Salisbury (1839-1903) Jun 1885 - Jan 1886 Conservative
Jul 1886 - Aug 1892
Jun 1895 - Jul 1902
Earl of Rosebery
(1847-1929) Mar 1894 - Jun 1895 Liberal
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) Dec 1868 - Feb 1874 Liberal
Apr 1880 - Jun 1885
Feb 1886 - Jul 1886
Aug 1892 - Mar 1894
Earl of Derby
(1799-1869) Feb 1852 - Feb 1852 Conservative
Feb 1858 - Jun 1859
June 1866 - Feb 1868
Sir Robert Peel
(1788-1850) Dec 1834 - Apr 1835 Tory
Aug 1841 - Jun 1846
George Canning
(1770-1827) Apr 1827 - Aug 1827 Tory/Whig coalition
Earl of Liverpool
(1770-1828) Jun 1812 - Apr 1827 Tory
There's actually another 9 of them but you get the picture. Some other interesting facts about David Cameron: he is a descendant of King George III and a cousin to the Queen, he's part Scottish (like all recent PM's), he was a member of the secretive and really quite loathsome Bullingdon Dining Club and his tutor at Brasenose College, Vernon Bogdanor, gushingly called him his most brilliant student ever. Vernon Bogdanor was also my tutor at Oxford and the only thing he ever called me was "adequate, McKinty, quite adequate."
40 comments:
This is making me want to read some Evelyn Waugh.
So does this mean you have a shot at Prime Minister?
Aadequate, Quite Adequate
There's the title of your memoirs, man.
Wouldn't you like to see the Bullingdon Dining Club get into a brawl with a biker gang and emerge the worse for the wear?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
at Oxford and the only thing he ever called me was "adequate, McKinty, quite adequate."
He said you were promising young lad, but your marks in coke,orgies, alcohol and general mayhem were unacceptably low.
well Harvard is the king maker.
Foreign grad students who start out at Harvard are highly critical of the manner in which seminars are conducted and the ways of the other grad students. Lots talk for the sake of talking, without going anywhere / getting to a good point (I was a temporary grad student there for 1 semester). Later, when many of them graduate, they are vocally in favor, totally defensive of said ways.
MIT is completely different in this regard. Temperament and word choice does not trump what you've actually done.
I know this thanks to my job at MIT and my job as inadvertent chauffeur to Montreal.
A while ago it was a news story here that all government officials in France studied not only at the same institution, but actually studied policy. As if it was unheard of to have professionals in government rather than amateurs dabbling for a few years.
For some reason running the affairs of the country has never seemed like something someone should study for the same way they might study for engineering or medicine or poetry theory.
It's funny how we view government.
Seana
Yeah but go for Decline and Fall not Brideshead.
I will only become Prime Minister when the Queens summons me personally, until then the country will just have to suffer.
Peter
Good title for memoirs, duly noted.
I think its quite likely the FSB or some other foreign intelligence agency has photographs of Cameron, his Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Mayor of London (all in Bullingdon at the same time) in some kind of depraved orgy, hopefully with this guy.
Marco
Little you know how close you skirt to the truth with that jest.
Sheiler
I've always been fascinated by Harvard and MIT. Indeed the whole of Boston as an intellectual hub. My brother in law teaches philosophy at BU but I think he also does a course at Harvard. I wonder what he thinks of the comparative quality of the students between the universities.
John
Would that be the Ecole Polytechnique? I can see that its a good thing for everyone to have an actual degreee in government as opposed to US politicians who actively run from their intellectual abilities but there is the danger of group think which Wall Street and other institutions seem to have fallen into over the last decade.
While Cameron looks uncomfortably like a smarmy game show host, I wonder what you think of some of his appointments. Sec of State for Wales, Cheryl Gillan, a good Welsh lass. Sec of State for Scotland, Danny Alexander, a squinty-eyed Jock but a Jock nonetheless. Sec of State for Northern Ireland, Owen Paterson, a leather salesman from Shropshire. While it's not essential for a Sec of State to come from that region _ and who knows, Paterson might a revelation _ it perhaps indicates that the Tories and the star-struck Lib Dems intend to get around to Nothern Ireland much later rather than sooner. Again.
David
Yeah N. Ireland is not going to be high on anyone's agenda, that is until the next catastrophe.
Where's the Minister For Night Buse? I was looking forward to Nick Clegg bringing in his whole night bus agenda. Surely the Night Bus Department Head deserves to have cabinet rank?
Nick Clegg's favorite crime novel. It's a good one.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Harvard and BU and MIT and the comparative quality of the students.
It reminds me of a professor I had at Concordia (Garry Geddes, a very good poet) who really liked the idea of teaching at a university that started as a night school for part-timers with day jobs and was the anti-McGill but would sometimes have lunch with a friend at the McGill faculty club and come back to the, "gym locker smells," of Concordia trying not to let anyone notice how he'd give up his socialist attitudes for tenure across town.
Or maybe not, Garry was pretty true to his belief. Maybe it was me who'd give up my ideals for oak panelling and leather and real food.
Psst, John: You better not tell Adrian that Concordia was formed in part from a university called Sir George Williams. That might detract from the gritty, populist aura.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Well, if the queen does call, I think you'd better go.
Yes, Decline and Fall is what it would be as it's the second half of a cheap old paperback I have, the first half of which is A Handful of Dust.
Oddly enough, in my long drawn out reading of Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence (which is a rec from here in case anyone thinks I'm throwing that in for effect)I just today came across the bit where Barzun is talking about the varied meanings of esprit, and he says that contrary to the American idea of esprit de corps, which we take to mean team spirit, it in fact originally meant "the selfish sticking together of a profession or government bureau against the legitimate claims of the public". I suppose investment bankers have had esprit de corps in precisely this sense.
So maybe everyone studying government together is not such a good thing as at first it sounds.
Oh, and Marco always knows how close to the truth he skirts in jest.
Yeah, thanks Peter, I left that out on purpose. I didn't want to mention the merger with Loyola and the black robes, either.
Whenever I get back to Montreal these days I'm amazed how much Concordia looks like a "real" campus.
That school is a model of peaceful sectarian coexistence, isn't it? Old Iggy Loyola must have been rolling over in his crypt.
Who came up with the name Concordia, anyway? ==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Well that novel just proves Clegg's point. Something needs to be done about night buses. They should have a Royal Commission or a vast inter departmental public inquiry.
John
I just feel sorry for those poor sods at Dartmouth. They're paying 50 grand a year and nobody even knows what state the place is in.
Seana
Let it be said again and again, that book really does pay off in almost every page doesn't it?
The missus was doing a little analysis on the best seller list of 1948 and she found an interesting article written in December of that year about the "new fiction". The article was by Jacques Barzun.
It's good to know that Jackie boy is STILL going strong 62 years later.
It's fantastic that he's still around. I hope it's as fantastic for him.
I just feel sorry for those poor sods at Dartmouth. They're paying 50 grand a year and nobody even knows what state the place is in.
Only hope in life they have is a low- to mid-level post in a Republican presidential administration.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Frankly, I have no idea where Dartmouth is. But to be fair, as a West Coaster, I really had no idea where any of those big Eastern schools were until friends started having some connection to them and I visited.
Of course, I've known where Berkeley was for a long, long time. And USC almost from preconsciousness. I remember walking around on that campus when I was about four and seeing the statue of the Trojan.
Hew Hampshire!!!
What do I win?
a trip to Vermont
I think the whole thing about the Ox-bridge and Ya-vard universities is that they are designed to turn out people (or to attract people) who want to run the world. I managed to graduate with a masters in that sort of control-freakery all by myself!
Well, you qualify. McKinty next, maybe?
Philip
I think thats true. Sane sensible types would self select themselves out of there.
Miss Witch
If I was smart and a megalomaniac, I'd start writing speeches for the Miliband brothers because you know that five years from now EVERYONE is going to be sick of Clegg-aron.
The first time I went to Bouchercon I was standing at the bar (where else) with a bunch of writes and one said she'd graduated from Stanford. No one said anything so she explained, "It's the Harvard of the west coast," and Jim Born said, "I went to Florida State, it's the Harvard of Leon county."
John
Nice. Jim Born FTW!
Make a good T Shirt slogan too.
I did not know this history of Concordia. I am aware of the Harvard/MIT and McGill/Concordia dynamic nearly every weekend, thank goodness, or I'd be footing the bill myself for my extravagant use of the car.
signed,
Sheiler
There's an interesting article about an eco-inventor named Saul Griffith in the May 17th New Yorker. (I know it's the future but that's sort of where we live out here on the West Coast)
You can read the abstract here. I bring it up mainly for his reference to MIT. He reached MIT from Sydney, via Cambridge and said of it, "I don't think most students get full utility from MIT, but if you learn where all the dumpsters are, and what labs are open on what nights, it's just this incredibly fertile environment for doing your own stuff."
Of course, inevitably, he ended up in San Francisco.
Seana, I, on the other hand, edited a science story at work tonight that quoted a geneticist from UC-Santa Cruz on Neanderthals and our relationship to them. The story even had a picture of the guy. I think his name is Green.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
That doesn't narrow it down much I'm afraid, Peter. All our names are Green now. It's a legal requirement of living in the county.
By Jove, even your sense of humor is ecologically sound. This is the guy.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Well, the humor does have to be vetted before it leaves town to make sure it sends the right environmental message.
He looks vaguely familiar, though his colleague Adrienne Zihlman sounds more like someone I've run across somewhere.
Seana,
It's true the dumpsters are filled with gold on the MIT campus. Maybe not so much now. There are roving bands of people dedicated to dumpster interrupting or diving. Research has to have faster, bigger tubes/lasers/cameras/computers, so the older stuff gets replaced even then when they work perfectly well. The newish crop of kids is more organized and dedicated to combating tossing the stuff out.
I don't remember dumper diving from my days in college, but maybe I just didn't hang out with the right crowd. It happens here now too. Doubtfully the same kind of loot to be had, though. It's more what students are willing to throw away at the end of the year.
My one experience of dumper diving, in which I went into the one at our high school after my sister accidentally left her retainer in her lunch bag pretty much insures I will not be going on such missions again, even though that one was luckily a success.
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