Oxford, Europe’s most illustrious university, will have a new kind of Latin graduation ceremony after 800 years. It will be “gender-neutral” and conduced for the benefit of “non-binary students”.
The London Times is right to quote Cicero: “O tempora, o mores!”. ("Oh the times! Oh the customs!:)
The 1,000-year-old university has been awarding degrees in Latin since the 12th century, but now it’s time for deconstruction. So instead of referring to students as “magistri” (masters) – a masculine word – they will now say “vos”, which is a gender-neutral term for you. Gone are the “doctores” (doctors), also masculine.
It’s not easy, but in Wokistan, nothing is impossible.
Oxford had already scaled back the study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey for the cause of “diversity.” Oxford has also decided that the classic Canterbury Tales are “racist and misogynistic” and has placed them under a moral slap, with a warning before reading.
According to Douglas Hedley, a philosophy professor at Cambridge, we are faced with “a deplorable indicator of the decay of our civilization.”
If we give in and use neutral Latin, we will get Sharia and Pekin.
Since 2017, Oxford has received £99m in donations from Beijing.
Oxford has also renamed one of its most prestigious physics professorships after a Chinese software company accused of close links to the Communist regime’s intelligence services, in exchange for a £700,000 donation, the Daily Mail has learned. The Wykeham Chair of Physics, established in 1900, is now called the Tencent-Wykeham Chair in honour of the Chinese conglomerate.
Huawei, which has many ties to the Beijing regime, is also investing heavily in Oxford’s institutions.
And then there’s Islam. Qatar gave St Antony’s College, Oxford, where Tariq Ramadan taught, £11m. Oxford’s £75m Centre for Islamic Studies has been supported by 12 Muslim countries, the Financial Times reports. The Saudis gave £20m to Oxford, not counting money from Brunei and the Maldives, countries where Sharia law applies as well.
The capitulation of the cultural establishment to the "woke" demands appears complete. They will end up between the Dragon and Islam.
Soon we will find out whether Europeans have definitively abandoned History like narcissists who dabble in “neutral Latin” or whether, like prodigal sons, they will return to the table of tragic men.
Giulio Meotti - isan Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian.
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