On Finishing What I Set Out to Do (and Graduating to Spectrehood)
Reflections on completing my university course- and on that university's greatness and decline
Let me begin by reproducing what I posted on Facebook when I found out my final degree results:
Well, today I received my final results and degree classification. I now officially hold an English Literature and History Master of Arts with Honours, First Class degree from the University of Edinburgh. It's been a long, long journey: from my first steps into higher education after my Dad died, to coming to this beautiful city and brilliant institution, to being knocked out for a year thanks to my appendicitis sending me to the verge of death, here I am. I couldn't be happier. Sorry for the soppiness, but I'm feeling quite emotional. Love to my Mum and all my family and friends, in the knowledge that my Dad would be so very proud of me today.
I also put that in last week’s newsletter, so you are likely over-familiar with the news. It’s a strange feeling, achieving what one has set out to do. In my post a couple of weeks ago which contained some of my life story, I went into a lot more detail on some of the things mentioned above. What I want to focus on here is the sense of completion.
What does it mean to have finished something one set out to do? Frodo destroyed the One Ring and Alexander the Great conquered the known world, but neither could go back to their lives beforehand. Alexander wept because there was nowhere left to conquer and Frodo sailed off to the Undying Lands having outgrown the Shire. Well, I’m nobody so grand, but The Lord of the Rings and Alexander of Macedon (or at least the version of him Mary Renault brought to life in her imperishable trilogy of novels) are two of my favourite subjects, so forgive me if I seem pompous for making the comparisons. But they do express something of the quandary of completion: the feeling that one has finished a task but isn’t yet … done.
I’ve fulfilled a dream- of getting a degree from Edinburgh- and a vow, and this is good. It has made me happy. But what next, what next? That is the scary part. Now I have no more excuses: I must go out into the world and survive alone. I exaggerate, of course. I have family and friends. Indeed, I’ll be going back to live at home in August, another unemployed graduate with no money. If I could wish my dreams into existence, my future would look something like this:
I would have financial security for life. At one end, enough to live in my own home and do as I please. At the other, enough to have lots of houses and travel wherever and whenever I want.
I would have some kind of permanent writing job, reasonably well paid, and would write books of various kinds. It’s the pundit’s life for me…
I would be able to support causes I care about and travel to far-flung and dangerous places in that task. This ties into the above: I would love to be paid to do such travelling and fighting.
I would never want for company, but neither would I have to endure it. Solitude is very often good and is very different from loneliness.
I would find love (soppiness, sorry.) Perhaps family- kids, dogs, cats, the works.
I would spend my days travelling, going on interesting outings, reading, and writing. Evenings would be spent alone or with company, depending on my mood. Pubs and restaurants are places I would frequent often. Few things appeal to me as much as sitting at a restaurant table outdoors, surrounded by interesting people, in the haze of cigarette smoke, with food and drink and talk aplenty.
I would live abroad, America being my dream destination.
I would be fit and healthy.
Most of all, and/or to sum up: I would be happy.
I have a few threads to tug on in these directions, and plenty else to occupy myself with in the meantime. So the plan is to stay at home for a while until getting some kind of decent employment, preferably in the writing business, but if not I would do the writing at night, as it were. Once more, I importune you: if any opportunities are known to you, let me know, and I shall be forever grateful. There are vague plans in my mind, but nothing I can state publicly, and I am quite happy (for the moment) to pursue things casually, drifting wherever the wind takes me. We shall see, we shall see. Onto new worlds, I suppose.
But for all my worrying, the point is that I have achieved something concrete now; I have fulfilled dreams and vows- and this feeling of completion is a very good one indeed. I have done at least one thing I set out a long time ago to do in life.
Enough introspection. Finishing up at Edinburgh has prompted other reflections of a more polemical nature. One of the reasons I wanted to come here in the first place was its world-class reputation and the majesty of its history and alumni. It remains one of the very best universities in the world, but a shadow looms. Last year, in a tale I have told multiple times now, I fought against the post-George Floyd racial justice group Black Ed’s campaign to have the name of David Hume effaced from one of our campus buildings. Despite my efforts, and the undoubtedly greater efforts of many others, David Hume Tower is now merely 40 George Square.
There is no point in rehashing that lost battle, but it points to something much more insidious. As I said towards the end of my Areo Magazine article on l’affair Hume:
This whole episode might seem paltry—it’s only a name on a tower for goodness’ sake. But this small, sad affair is part of a bigger battle. Wokeness, which is reactionary pouting dressed up as radicalism, is gaining ground all the time. If you see it coming, resist it.
And so it proved. Black Ed, which sprang up quite suddenly, held and holds significant power at the university, as it has been brought under the umbrella of the Race, Equality, and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee, which presides over the institution’s Race Equality and Anti-Racist Plan. (Shades of Soviet bureaucracy, and then some.)
This year, they launched a mobbish cancel campaign against an intelligent and kindly lecturer with decades of service who had opposed the removal of Hume’s name. His crimes included mocking the corrupt Bourbon-esque Thai king and stating that ‘civilization is for everyone’ in his Twitter bio. So bereft of actual evidence of Dr Neil Thin’s extreme racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia were Black Ed that they had to state that they were too triggered to continue their mining of his Twitter history for such evidence! A nice trick, that.
Happily, their campaign failed despite leading to Neil’s suspension for eight weeks while an investigation was held. But none of his accusers has even been publicly named, nor are they to face any consequences themselves for their malignity. Not that he would want such a thing to happen: he maintained his dignity throughout the ordeal, and only ever wanted to talk face to face with those who had the destruction of his career in mind.
I’m proud to say that I was the one who first notified Neil of the rumblings from the Facebook Edifess page against him, and stood with him as much as I could throughout the affair. Along with Sam Bayliss and Rob Lownie, fellow students and colleagues at Free Speech Champions, I met him for some drinks and a chat to keep his spirits up and can confirm from experience my assessment of the man’s good heart and sharp brain as hinted at above. I recommend Rob’s essay for Areo on the affair, which gives more detail and references and makes a plea to students to stand by their professors rather than hounding them or allowing them to be hounded.
Another article I recommend is the great historian Professor Sir Tom Devine’s recent Spectator piece about the sad decline of this great institution. It is a damning indictment of the university’s policies but might just act as a wake-up call. Devine quotes some anonymous academics at Edinburgh, too scared to speak out lest they become the mob’s next prey. Since I’ve also had contact with academics who want to remain nameless, but who are equally disgusted and alarmed at what is going on, I want to express my solidarity with them, even as I castigate their (understandable) desire to stay out of the limelight: speak up, publicly, for your colleagues and for the good of universities as a whole! This lunacy won’t even come close to ending without open combat. If all the anonymous academics and students who disagreed with the way things are going actually spoke out, the fanatical minority that whips up mobs and ruins lives would be utterly finished.
Still, Neil did win his battle, and I know from my brief time at Free Speech Champions that there are a great many engaged in the war on the side of the angels. Rob and Sam will still be at Edinburgh in the coming year and I am slightly jealous of them, for the fightback does seem to be really starting, and I might miss the main event. But I have been in the fight and I’ll still be around, staying in Fife, very close to Edinburgh, doing what I can. I’ve graduated to spectrehood!
All this to say by way of farewell to the University of Edinburgh: you are a great historic institution, one of the world’s superior centres of education, but the shadow that looms over you is alarming to those of us who love you. Do not let the partisans of fashionable ideology destroy you.