Meet the new man at the helm

It remains to be seen whether Lord Jenkins’s successor as Oxford chancellor, Lord Patten, will one day carry out such an exercise. But if he does, what a treat awaits in comparing Professor Andrew Hamilton with Dr John Hood, the controversial figure who has been running the university for the last five years.

For some, it will seem that Oxford University is beginning a new era today when Prof Hamilton begins work as Oxford’s new vice-chancellor, a job that seems to embrace the roles of chief executive, chairman, head fundraiser and agitator-in-chief for change.

The former Prime Minister and Oxford University chancellor, the Earl of Stockton (Harold Macmillan), once pretty well summed up how things work at Oxford: without a chancellor, there could be no vice-chancellor and without a vice-chancellor, there would be no one to run the university.

The man Oxford University has turned to, after some of the most turbulent years in its recent history, has arrived here from America, where since 2004 he served as provost of Yale University.

Today he becomes only the second vice-chancellor to have been recruited externally in Oxford’s 900-year-history, the other being the New Zealander he succeeds.

But there, the similarities between the two men pretty well end. Dr Hood had a background in business, while Prof Hamilton is a scientist, with a distinguished career in teaching and research, involving the design of cancer drugs. Dr Hood’s hunger for speedy and profound reform divided dons and fuelled resentment in senior common rooms, whereas Prof Hamilton enjoys a reputation as “a great mediator”.

And, for all his years working on the other side of the Atlantic, Prof Hamilton is British, free of both an American accent and any crusading zeal to “Americanise” Oxford, as he explained to The Oxford Times, in his first interview as the new vice-chancellor.

“People say to me, ‘Andy, by appointing you, does that mean they are trying to turn Oxford into the Ivy League?’. Well, I have to tell you, the Ivy League is trying to become more like Oxford.”

While UK universities have always looked jealously across the Atlantic at the likes of Harvard and Yale with their vast endowments and resources, according to Prof Hamilton, American universities, in turn, have long envied Oxford and its colleges.

“Harvard, Yale and Princeton are all trying to recreate the magnificent learning environment that a college system creates: the small community within a large community that is an Oxford college. Yale has a college system, but is planning to build more colleges. The collegiate system is the jewel in Oxford’s glittering crown. It is what makes Oxford a remarkably special place in higher education.”

For Prof Hamilton, a father of three, there is real significance in young chemists being able to sit opposite medical students, philosophers and linguists at breakfast and dinner.

“It creates the opportunity for inter-disciplinary thinking that is going to be increasingly needed as we tackle many of the most serious challenges in the contemporary world. American universities also look at Oxford’s tutorial system with admiration and envy.”

If this will come as music to the ears of traditionalists, Oxford researchers will be just as delighted that the top man still sees himself first and foremost as a scientist, who intends to escape from the vice-chancellor’s office regularly to work at the chemistry research building in South Parks Road.

“I am an organic chemist and it is my love of teaching and science that brought me into academic life.

“I will have a small research group in Oxford and I intend to find time to visit my group to discuss science and their research. Over the years I have found this helps me to be a better administrator. It doesn’t detract from my administrative responsibilities because it allows me to breathe the air of scholarship. It means I have close contact with the students and young researchers and the issues they face. More important than that, it keeps me sane.

”One of the many, many things that brought me here is the strength of the scientific research, no more so than in the area of biomedical research and cancer research, with the links to hospitals and the clinical testing of new therapies. Oxford is a very exciting place for modern bio-medical research and other areas of scientific research.

“ I want to continue to strengthen the research agenda and, like my predecessor, I will continue to focus on improving the infrastructure. There are many great new research buildings, but other buildings need renovation.”

Although he spent almost 30 years working in America, Prof Hamilton, 55, was born in Surrey and educated at Exeter University before doing a PhD at Cambridge. Those who remember the loss of talented British academics at the height of the 1980s brain drain will wince at his personal memory of those days. After studying with Nobel-winning scientist Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg, he had hoped to begin an academic career in Britain.

“In 1981, the year I came on the job market, there was just one starting lecturer position in organic chemistry in the whole of Britain, and I didn’t get it. So, I tried my luck in the United States.

“The early eighties were a dire time for British universities. Budgets were being cut dramatically. People ask why I chose work in the USA over Britain. It was never a choice of America over Britain. It was a choice of employment over unemployment.”

Unless the name happens to be Oliver Cromwell, Oxford University expects its chancellors to die in office. But vice-chancellors are given just five years to make their mark. He hopes his experience of different countries will offer a wider breadth of perspective.

“I hope Oxford saw in me someone who could take this great university and make it greater and secure its strengths. My hope is that when I finish my time as vice-chancellor, Oxford will be stronger than when I arrived.

“In many ways Oxford and Yale come from different cultural forces and societies. But, you know, in the time I have got to know Oxford, I have realised how similar Oxford and Yale are in their core values.”

Some would argue that when it comes to resources, the similarities end. Prof Hamilton is, however, surprisingly upbeat when it comes to Oxford’s ability to compete against richer rivals.

“It is not just possible for Oxford to compete, Oxford IS competing. Oxford can stand shoulder to shoulder with Harvard, Yale and Princeton. It has recruited me here and has been recruiting world-class academics over many years. Oxford should not apologise. It is a great university. There are always exciting proposals coming from faculties and students at both universities, but not enough money to fund them all. But, in a way, that creates a healthy environment. it means only the best ideas float to the top.”

He points to the fact that he has arrived to find that Oxford University’s £1.25bn appeal has passed the £720m mark.

“The fundraising campaign is going extremely well. This has been achieved in a very challenging economic environment. It reflects the generosity of old members and friends of the university as well as the professionalism of the fundraising office.”

But, if he is delighted to keep up the momentum of the Think Oxford campaign, the new man has no intention of taking up his predecessor’s doomed mission to change the way Oxford was run, by persuading dons to work in a new council dominated by businessmen.

That proposal was humiliatingly voted down, with opponents claiming it amounted to a bid to turn Oxford into what one don called “a kind of Tesco run by outsiders”.

Prof Hamilton said: “The university debated all that at great length two or three years ago. There was intense discussion and a vote involving many people. I think that is over and that Oxford has moved on. “ He is less ready to yet commit himself on the issue of “privatising” Oxford, by reducing future dependence on central government.

“For the first few months, I will be a listener. We are at the beginning of a national debate on higher education funding. But I sense that it will involve an emphasis on the diversification of sources of income to the very best universities. And it will involve a discussion on fees.”

At Yale he was recognised as a man who got things done, not least by opening a 136-acre research campus. Given the huge building plans coming out of both Oxford universities, I wondered whether he was yet aware that residents’ groups were campaigning against student ‘colonisation’ of parts of the city.

”Oxford has been part of the city for something like 900 years,” he replied. “In my time as vice-chancellor I will very much seek to engage in consultation with local and community leaders on issues surrounding new buildings or any particular development that Oxford might be pursuing. It is important to the university that there should be a partnership with the city.

“I also believe that Oxford benefits from the cultural opportunities that come with the university.”

He might, as a keen amateur sportsman himself, have added sports facilities to the list. He laughs loudly when I remind him of how he had once proclaimed himself “the Michael Owen of southern Connecticut” after becoming top scorer in his over-40s soccer team.

Heaping praise on the real Michael Owen’s return to form, he confessed that his knees have curtailed his own scoring triumphs.

Sitting in Oxford University headquarters, however, he looks to have retained the ‘Owen-like’ skill of being the right man in the right place at the right time, fully understanding that what Oxford University needs at its centre is a team player.