Cushman Writes

Starmer’s Immigration Policies – The Crumbling State of English Universities and the Growing Need for Reassessment By Freya Cushman Across England, universities are facing the same perfect storm: financial pressures, cuts to staff and courses, and now looming changes to immigration policy. A recent Office for Student s  report found that 4 out of 10 universities are headed for a deficit. Can Starmer’s Labour deliver a viable future for English universities amid economic strain and immigration reform? It was Monday, the 5 th of May, when I was sitting in the former JCR of Somerville College discussing the recent report on university deficits with my tutor from last term and fellow coursemates. ‘Oxford and Cambridge will be the last bastions standing,’ my former tutor claimed. The prestige of the Oxford and Cambridge names will, it seems, undoubtedly continue to gather international interest and preserve  the status of these great institutions for many years to come. However, t...

Fiddler on the Roof is a 1964 musical that tells the story of Tevye and his family in the shtetl of Anatevka. Although the story is based loosely on Sholem Aleichem's stories, the themes of Fiddler illustrate the importance of tradition, trauma, and nostalgia within the Jewish community of Tsarist Russia. This week, I reflect on my recent experience watching a production at Queen’s College Oxford and ask how far this reflects life for those in the shtetl?   The Jews in Russia Jewish communities had long been a part of Russia following the first partition of Poland in 1792. Here they lived in designated spaces within a space termed The Pale of Settlement . They were integral as farmers and many served in key roles in judicial bodies. Whilst there were times the Jews were treated as equals – such as under Tsar Nicolas I’s inclusion of them for military service with Russians of similar social status – they also faced periods of uncertainty. Klier has argued that the Jews of Ru...

After last week’s more academic post, I return with something that should at least make some of you smile… So, stick around as we travel back to medieval Italy this week. Men and maturity – a tale as old as time. No, quite literally it is! This week, amid the chaos of Oxford, our reading list veered into the violent — and vividly ridiculous — world of late medieval Italian city-states. As part of this, we got to engage in some rather entertaining readings, which, quite frankly, were too good not to share here. From men’s passions impeding their ability to sire sons, to not getting over their passions till later in life, it seems that really it was a man’s world.   The Situation: Violence in the City States Violence was a significant issue in medieval Italy, as is evident from the legal measures taken to curb it. In city-states such as Florence and Siena, vendetta — a blood feud in which the family of a murder victim sought vengeance against the killer or their relatives — wa...

To me, nothing is more personal than death. Cemeteries have evolved to be landscapes for the dead and the living to co-exist, paying respect, and acting as final resting places. Typically, cemeteries are sites used to inter the dead, often featuring markings to identify the placement of their remains. The study of two case studies, the Victorian Priory Road and modern  Primrose Lane  Cemeteries and their layout, headstones, and site features, will highlight how attitudes towards death have shifted from personal and symbolic representations of the deceased to regulated spaces in an increasingly secular society. The cemeteries selected for this study are notable for two reasons: one is an open cemetery, and the other is a closed cemetery. Priory Road Cemetery was established in the 1850s and was later expanded upon by Robert Hutchinson. [1] The site is home to a ‘closed’ cemetery, meaning plots are unavailable for purchase. Meanwhile, Primrose Lane Cemetery, established in No...

"Welcome back to Oxford," the email reads... Yeah, because nothing screams 'welcome' like the impending doom of exams. Oh, and don’t forget the essays due in both 0th and 1st week. This week, I reflect on the chaos of 0th week - and why it truly feels like the hamster wheel that is Oxford. Oxford isn’t so much a university as it is a hamster wheel — and nowhere is that clearer than 0th week of Trinity Term. While the 5th week is famously associated with the “blues,” academic exhaustion often arrives much earlier. For me, 0th week might just be the hardest of all. The cycle of deadlines, commitments, and chaos doesn’t gently begin, and before you’ve even unpacked your suitcase, you’re already sprinting to keep up.* My Trinity Term 0 th week was chaotic. Having been told my tutor could no longer teach me—on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, no less—I was given another tutor at the last minute. I was slightly worried about the organisation of the upcoming term. To most pe...