Dear Gloria,
Thanks.
Please forgive this long response. I need to think these things through and make a record of my thoughts.
Cambridge is not overrated. Far from it.
Comparing London and Cambridge as University Cities
I have studied in various universities in and lived in different parts of London, which is both a university and a commercial city. I have lived in Canterbury, which is a university city, a university I attended. I have lived in Birmingham, the biggest English city after London, and which also has a university, perhaps more than one. Compared to these environments, even to the cultural capital represented by the proximity between the various colleges of the University of London in the city centre, SOAS, UCL, and Birckbeck, to such global cultural landmarks as the British Museum and the not too far away British Library, the National Portrait Gallery and others, including the dispersed presence of other colleges of the university across the city, such as Imperial, and the scope of bookshops and libraries in London, along with many other cultural nexi, if there is such a word, and impressive parks, I doubt if the quality of life in London as a whole, in the middlebrow North Finchley where I lived, in the lowbrow Hackney where I have spent significant time, and other, highbrow zones which I have at least visited, is superior to the quality of life in Cambridge across all sectors of the latter city.
Secondly, all the constituent universities of the University of London, taken together, from UCL, to SOAS to Imperial, to the London School of Economics, these being the most famous of these constituents, might not equal what I describe as the development, to a high level of vertical and horizontal networks of learning by the University of Cambridge, amplified by other institutions in Cambridge.
The knowledge connection between university and city is what I describe as a horizontal networks of learning, demonstrated in the creation of networks of knowledge dissemination from university to city, and to a degree, knowledge sharing between city and university.
Vertical learning networks consist in processes enabling transmissions of knowledge and skill between people at different levels of the academic hierarchy in the university.
What seems to be working for Cambridge university and some other institutions there is that they have, in equal measure, vision, ability and means, means perhaps not being as readily accessible elsewhere, even in England,for various reasons.
Comparing Selected Research Centres in the University of London and the University of Cambridge
I met at SOAS and UCL, both universities I studied at, a superb
Arts and Humanities Research Council centre
for Asian and African Studies, rich with regular conferences hosting contributors from different arts of the world. It was shut down after some years since its funding had expired. I used to attend the very diversely rich Leeds university CONGRESS/CATH conferences, which also shut down after some time as the funding for the
AHRC centre that supported it come to an end, although the centre's work continues on a reduced scale through
CentreCath. Cambridge's
CRASSH,Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, however, seems funded in perpetuity, has expanded its physical space and conference and seminar offerings from its earlier days and is so robust it can be described as a mini-research university, describing itself
as one of "the world's largest interdisciplinary research institutions[running] a programme of research development of over 300 events a year".
SOAS developed the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS), one of its more exciting initiatives being "
Approaches to World Literature: Questions of Critical Methods Beyond Eurocentrism" and the
CCLPS Critical Forum, one of its goals being "outlining the
Agency of non-European critical traditions [ by] making these traditions available in translation and in debate and bringing them] into genuine debate with western theory and critical methods", SOAS also developing a
BA World Philosophies program, "developed to promote philosophical dialogue between 'East' and 'West'[through exposure] to both European and non-European intellectual systems, engaging with Kant and Confucius, Aquinas and Appiah and building dialogues between diverse wisdom traditions". The more recent Cambridge initiative on
decolonizing the curriculum demonstrates that university has caught a similar vision, and from a small reading group, which I witnessed at its inception, is now enabled by CRASSH resources and is giving rich, public whole day seminars with speakers drawn from Cambridge and other universities.
Horizontal Learning Networks Between University and City in Cambridge and London
UCL has rich sciences, humanities and social science faculties. Imperial is a global science and technology powerhouse. SOAS is a central destination for studies on Asia and Africa. Birckbeck seems particularly strong in philosophy. All these being universities in the University of London cluster. My experience at the University of London, however, though not recent,suggests that as of that time, this composition of universities had not reached, to the level of Cambridge, the synergy between various disciplines in terms of working with staff and the public to develop and project to the world the unified complexity of the knowledge the university and the global academic system is developing.
This projection is carried out in Cambridge not only through Cambridge University's elaborate public seminar and conference schedule conducted by numerous departments, faculties, research centres, colleges and student bodies and the university central body, actively pursued by various unaffiliated organizations using university and non-university resources, such as the and the Wesleyan Church, both of which hold regular public lectures on the intersection of science and religion, with speakers at the cutting edge of various scientific disciplines drawn from various universities within and outside the UK, along with the Round Church lectures, centred on areas of intersection of culture and Christianity.
This daily, year round network of connections between the highest levels of research and social activity, from Cambridge and around the world, from quantum computing to talks by former heads of state on social and economic issues, are climaxed by the Cambridge Arts and Humanities festival and the Cambridge Science Festival, taking place at different times annually and consisting of presentations within and outside the university, of research and developments in various fields, in which members of the public also participate in showcasing their ideas and initiatives.
I took advantage of these enablements as a person who had no affiliation with the university and, like others, was not required to pay anything for these activities, the fee paying initiatives being very few. A good number of these occasions also provided free food at different levels of elaborateness, for attendees.
That connection between university and city is what I describe as horizontal connection, the creation of networks of knowledge dissemination from university to city, and to a degree, knowledge sharing between city and university. The volume and consistency of these initiatives at Cambridge implies vision, ability and means, a concentration of intellectual, social and economic capital applied to driving what Nimi Wariboko in The Charismatic City, describes as the communion quotient of a city, its ability to create connections between people across various demographies.
Cambridge seemed to me to be also very good at training its academics, as represented by the various training programs and institutional support provided for them.
That is what I describe as a vertical knowledge connection, creating transmissions of knowledge and skill between people at different levels of the academic hierarchy.
One can add to this summation the central university library, one of the richest in the world, which anybody can join and use, the city's public library network, its various bookselling centres, providing academic to non-academic books, all these accessed easily on account of the spatial concentration of the city, facilitating movement by bicycle or on foot.
It might have taken Cambridge centuries to reach this level, as suggested by the conflicts between the university and other inhabitants after the founding scholars of what would become Cambridge University migrated there from Oxford, following problems in that first university in England. These tensions are not wholly gone, as suggested by the complaint that the high rents charged by the university, described as owning most of the city, make it hard for businesses to survive, with a number of bookshops, my favorite kind of shop, closing due to challenges from both rents and from the growing digital reading culture.
Tensions Between the University of Cambridge and the City of Cambridge and Inadequacies in the City's Knowledge Network
These closures meant, that by December 2017, when last I was there, Cambridge did not have any bookshop dedicated to sophisticated Christian texts, such as in theology, one of my interests.The only bookshop in this field I met there, the RSPCA shop, had been shut down. As of the same period, Cambridge also did not have any bookshop dedicated to Western Esotericism and new Western religions such as Paganism, another interest of mine and a central but largely marginalized current in Western civilization, until the flowering its scholarly and practitioner activity in this field in relatively recent years. The only bookshop in this field I met there was shut down. Cambridge booksellers rarely stock texts in this field, with Cambridge UP's flagship bookshop on Trinity Street coming closest to that in their volumes of Richard Westfall's Never at Rest: A Life of Isaac Newton and his abridgement of that book, Newton being the most famous exponent of the adaptation of Western esoteric thought to building the foundations of modern science, an orientation Westfall examines at length, with Rob Ilfe providing a more up to date presentation in Newton: A Very Short Introduction, an Oxford UP series sold by Heffers in Cambridge.
Thus, in a city where the Reformation has been central,and where Newton worked, one could not stroll into a shop dedicated to the Christian and esoteric cultures represented by Newton, at their most powerful, the ability to acquire books being central to developing a knowledge culture and such a culture being critical to the transmission of knowledge and skill represented by the development of civilization.The Christian bookshops in Cambridge at that time what may be described as stocking mid-level literature, inspiring, but limited in enabling access to the cognitive wealth of Christian culture. St. Leo's bookshop at Ikeja, however specializes in such books at the most sophisticated and impacful levels of the Catholic and Protestant traditions while the city is rich in bookshops selling the mid level texts of the kind in the Cambridge Christian bookshops, but the Western philosophical texts at St. Leos are not readily visible at other shops in Lagos, while they are readily found in Cambridge but the texts on African philosophy at St. Leo's were nt visible in Cambridge shops, which hardly stock books published in Africa.
Benin-City as a Cognitive Matrix
I studied and was a lecturer at the University of Benin and traversed the entire city in my cognitive quests, Benin being another city enabled for pervasive learning by its traditional organizational structure, through its pervasive shrine locations, these being nexus of spiritual and historical significance, as well as a concentration of experts in classical Benin thought, this classical system amplified by its newer Western style educational institutions and rich book selling culture. My essay "
Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina's Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being" describes my learning from Benin babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, Joseph Ohomina.
I also worked in Benin at different times as a TV program guest over a number of episodes, a teacher in two secondary schools and a private examination preparation scheme, a taxi driver and a construction site labourer, so I would not describe myself as fixated on campus life. I am simply moved at my first experience of an academic community, and one operating in an academic centre, these being ideals pursued by other institutions and locations I had experienced before my encounter with Cambridge but where the potency of these ideas had not affected me as it did with my Cambridge experience.
Sources of the Strength of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge's strength and the amplification of this through its relationship with the city may be seen as due to the sustaining and development of its resources and strategies across centuries, being centuries older than even UCL, the oldest of the University of London's constituent universities and the first English university after Oxford and Cambridge. London has huge potential for perhaps going far beyond the kind of synergy achieved by Cambridge, on account of London's massive university systems and its magnificent economic systems but that would take a lot of determined visionary planning, long term operational activity and consistent economic investment.
Part of Cambridge's strength is the sustaining and development of its resources and strategies, in relation to the city, over centuries, Cambridge being many centuries older than UCL, the oldest of the University of London's constituent universities and the first English university after Oxford and Cambridge. Each of Cambridge's colleges may also be seen as a mini university, this collective, along with a similar collective of colleges at Oxford, representing economic force unrivaled by all other English universities taken together, according to a report, Trinity College, alone, for example, describing as building Science Park, a magnificently landscaped location that is a central initiative in England's efforts to adapt the US Silicon Valley model, initiated by Stanford and representing the world's greatest incubator of technology companies.
The same report describes the economic strength of Oxford and Cambridge is nowhere near near that of some US universities, particularly those in the Ivy League, although beyond economic power in and f itself is the question of how well it is used in evoking the best of human potential.
In terms of racism at Cambridge, various students have highlighted examples of this. The university is often described in England as meaninglessly elitist, its admissions procedures titled towards class demographic that is enabled to access its arcane standards, these standards being a narrow picture of human possibility to which most schools in the country do not have access. Interacting with Nigerians, other Africans and Asians at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Cambridge, however, people coming there from Nigeria and outside, I observed a pattern of absolutely determined people. I wrote up my survey of the admissions criteria from the various colleges gained through interviewing admissions officers in a number of colleges, "
Cambridge University Admissions: Empirical and Non-Empirical Assessments".
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