As a teacher and lecturer, I’ve had a fair amount of indirect contact with Soas — the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. I first met one of its doctoral students in 2001, around the time I began to send my A-level students to join its impressive list of alumni, which includes government ministers, ambassadors, diplomats, judges and a Nobel laureate. It has also produced impressive research tomes of international renown and is always high up in the university league tables. A sea of diversity under one scholastic sky, with so much to learn through intercultural exchange. For many, the Soas library is a place of pilgrimage.
But I’d now think twice before writing a Ucas reference to send one of my young students there. Not because I’m into the cotton-wool cladding of ‘safe spaces’ against freedom of expression: on the contrary, I view academic study as battleground of radical ideas.