Key Stories from this week

Students protested for “climate justice”, calling on Cambridge to “divest, disarm, decolonise”

Around 270 students gathered on Friday afternoon in a protest calling for the University and colleges to “divest, disarm, decolonise”. The event was jointly organised by student activist groups Cambridge Decolonisation Network, Demilitarise Cambridge, Cambridge University Palestine Society, Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, and Cambridge Defend Education. Protesters shouted chants and carried flares as they marched through Cambridge. One protester put a lit flare in the keyhole of the door of Old Schools. Banging on the door the protesters broke the lock, chanting “Who wants to break the door? We want to break the door”. A joint statement by the organisers said “Today our campaigns joined forces, mobilising hundreds of students to say no to this institution’s legitimisation of the destructive actions of arms and fossil fuels companies”.

‘Queerying’ the curriculum

Launched in January this year by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LGBTQ+@Cam, is a new programme aiming to promote research, outreach and network building related to queer, trans and sexuality studies at Cambridge. Dr Sarah Franklin, Head of the Sociology Department and Director of the LGBTQ+@Cam programme, told Varsity that “With this area we really don’t know how much we don’t know because of the amount of restriction on areas of study as the inevitable result of the stigmatization of LGBTQ people and identities in the past”. A new third-year sociology paper entitled “Love, Gender and Sexuality 1740-1824” is set to be taught from 2020, and according to Dr Caroline Gonda,  a fellow in English at St Catherine’s College, will be the “first time there has been a sustained commitment to making space in the undergraduate curriculum”.

Murder investigation at Grand Arcade

A murder investigation has been launched after an eighteen year old was stabbed outside the Grand Arcade during the early hours of Thursday 15th November, and later died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The police are treating the death of Benyamin Hussain as murder. Two men were arrested in connection with the events, a 20-year-old man from Cambridge, who has since been released under investigation, and a 23-year-old man from North London, who was arrested on suspicion of committing grievous bodily harm and was later re-arrested on suspicion of murder. He has since been released on condition of bail until 11th December. A report published in 2016 indicated that Cambridge students reside in areas with higher-than average crime compared to other university cities,while  a 2017 report ranked Cambridge as the 9th safest university city in the UK.

Controversial Israeli politician cancels visit

Naftali Bennett, a controversial right-wing Israeli politician, has cancelled his scheduled visit to the UK. This includes a trip to Cambridge to speak at an event organised by the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum (MENAF), which prompted criticism from 30 student societies.  The cancellation reportedly comes as a response to the Israeli Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman’s resignation following the cabinet’s decision to accept a ceasefire ending two days of fighting in Gaza, describing it as “surrendering to terror”. Last Sunday, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza strip. On Thursday PalSoc released an open letter that was signed by 30 University societies that stated that Bennett “is not welcome to express his well known and deeply racist views at our university”. This letter was endorsed by CUSU, who discouraged students from attending the event.

Aspinall finds OfS meeting “frustrating”

CUSU president Evie Aspinall expressed her frustration at a meeting she had with the chair of the Office for Students (OfS), Sir Michael Barber. Aspinall criticised Barber for remarks that he made during the meeting with her and other CUSU sabbatical officers on widening participation and the Prevent duty. Aspinall expressed her frustration on Monday in a Facebook post saying that there were “still no answers on Prevent” offered, and the “OfS [Office for Students] is obsessed with solving access problems with ‘crash courses’”. A spokesperson for the OfS said: “Sir Michael does not recognise this account of his meeting with Evie. He was pleased to meet Evie when he visited Cambridge and to have the chance to discuss ideas with her. He is always keen to engage with students when he visits universities.”

On the lighter side…

‘Paxo’’s surprising advice

In a recent interview with Varsity, former editor Jeremy Paxman, so familiar in the role of interviewer, was on the other side of the questions. Speaking about his career as a journalist and on Newsnight, Paxman said that he’s “always been curious”, going on to say “you only need two things to be a journalist: you need to be immensely curious about the world, and you need to love words”. Talking about the ‘post-truth’ era that has come to describe today’s media, Paxman said that he believed in the importance of “the imparting of a small number of important facts to a limited number of very busy people”, yet realises that nowadays “a lie can be right around the world before truth has got its boots on.” Finally, when asked what advice he’d give today’s student journalists, Paxman responded: “I would say, don’t. Don’t do it. The business has become completely casualised now and there's very little longevity in it, so I think you ought to be very careful.”