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<strong>Wolfson</strong>’s International Community<br />
Internationalism:<br />
thinking way beyond<br />
Oxford<br />
The President looks at how <strong>Wolfson</strong> can maintain and develop<br />
its international community<br />
When <strong>Wolfson</strong> was founded in 1966,<br />
being international meant thinking<br />
beyond Oxford: understanding<br />
the US university system, using<br />
Commonwealth links, having ambitions<br />
for European collaboration, looking<br />
beyond British shores for some of our<br />
student population. Isaiah Berlin – the<br />
brilliant refugee from Russia, adopted<br />
by the UK and Oxford, and who<br />
brought to Oxford an understanding of<br />
Europe, Russia and the US way beyond<br />
what was the academic norm of the<br />
time – was the perfect embodiment of<br />
the international intellectual.<br />
But being international now is different<br />
again, because the world itself is<br />
changing so fast. Being global is<br />
like having access to the Internet;<br />
impossible and crazy to think of<br />
unplugging from it.<br />
<strong>Wolfson</strong> College is now one of the<br />
most multinational Oxford colleges.<br />
Seventy per cent of our students are<br />
not British, and they come from 68<br />
different countries. As I walk around<br />
the College, peering into the library<br />
or listening in to a performance at<br />
the auditorium, I am as likely to hear<br />
Turkish language lessons, or Japanese<br />
children playing, or Greek dancing, as<br />
I am to hear English or Welsh accents.<br />
Our student body is undoubtedly<br />
multinational and multilingual. If you<br />
don’t believe me, have a look at the<br />
video we put up on YouTube to<br />
celebrate International Mother<br />
Language day, where our student<br />
body introduce themselves in their<br />
mother tongue.<br />
(https://www.youtube.com/<br />
watch?v=lD0xClsr8Ls)<br />
And I’m delighted that the artistic<br />
environment at <strong>Wolfson</strong> is getting<br />
more global; we have started to<br />
showcase some of the centuriesold<br />
sculpture from South Asia on<br />
loan from the Ashmolean, as well as<br />
contemporary African art, which is<br />
now entering the UK auction market<br />
and is from this spring on loan on our<br />
walls for the first time.<br />
So our student body and our<br />
environment are changing fast. What<br />
about our Fellows? Well, we are<br />
pretty international, but<br />
overwhelmingly<br />
European. The<br />
WOLFSON COLLEGE OXFORD . PLANS & PROSPECTS . <strong>2019</strong> . 11
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