Transcript
debatablediscussions: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. You join us for a very exciting episode today as we are joined by Lord Haig.
Dejan: Lord Haig is the current Chancellor of Oxford University. and has previously held several positions in politics such as foreign secretary. He was also the leader of the opposition.
Dejan: and the leader of the Conservative Party. But before becoming the Chancellor, He studied at Oxford himself. for BA in PPE. and I just wanted to know how do you think Oxford changed? So I just matriculated this Saturday.
Dejan: Looking back at your matriculation, how did Oxford change? And what's still the same about it as a place?
Lord Hague: Right. Well, hello and thanks very much for asking me to talk to you on your podcast. and it's changed a lot in that time you know my matriculation was in 1979 as an Oxford student Now, probably at your matriculation this Saturday, half your fellow students were women.
Lord Hague: So that would definitely not have been the case in 1979. In fact, that was the first year that most Oxford colleges, including mine, at Magdalen, took women for the first time, took women students for the first time. So that seems incredible to us now, but that is within my lifetime.
Lord Hague: that most Oxford colleges thought The right way to go about higher education was not to...
Lord Hague: Not to admit any women. So that's a big change. And in so many other ways, Oxford is dramatically more... diverse in ethnicity, as well as gender, in nationalities, in the range of views you can find in Oxford. So it's changed a big way in that sense, much more diverse. it's much more international you know there are many there are now more postgraduate students than
Lord Hague: undergraduate students, another big change. from when I was a student. and that contributes to it being much more global there are 170 nationalities among the student body at oxford which is most nationalities on earth and then it's got many more schools and institutes.
Lord Hague: You know, last night I was at dinner at the Blavatnik School of Government. Well, that didn't exist. when I was a new student, nor did the Said Business School, nor did countless other institutes. And it's much more at the forefront of developments in the world particularly in medical science than it was in 1979 so oxford's done pretty well for an 800 year old institution
Lord Hague: the last that 45 year gap between my matriculation and your matriculation as a student has been full of a lot of positive change. actually, which is good news.
debatablediscussions: You sort of touched on it there about your passion for Oxford. And that sort of links to why did you choose to become? during the election to become Chancellor of the University. Obviously, sort of many of our listeners will know that you're content. some of your contemporaries from politics. have sort of entered the heights of Silicon Valley and sort of high finance. So why did you decide in particular to become the Chancellor of Oxford?
Lord Hague: Well, I suppose three reasons just very briefly one is that It was a formative time for me, my time as a student here. That three years doing...
Lord Hague: politics, philosophy, economics. I was very active politically then, you know, president of the union and things like that. I was obsessed with all of that. But meeting the range of friends and having the education that I did was a transformative thing. In my life, I went to a comprehensive school.
Lord Hague: in South Yorkshire, where nobody had been to Oxford for as long as anybody could remember. They couldn't quite remember which college they went to 15 years before. It was a really big thing for me to get into Oxford. Go to Oxford and of course I've always felt that opportunity should be there for later generations So I believe very strongly in all of that then a second reason I got involved as a young consultant when I was working at McKinsey
Lord Hague: in designing Oxford's first development campaign, seeking philanthropy for the first time in a long time in the 1980s. and since then that's become a very big thing and we're currently engaged in raising we hope billions of pounds in the term of the current vice chancellor to support graduate scholarships and things like that well i was really in at the beginning
Lord Hague: of designing all of that in my 20s, that type of development campaign. So I felt that I was equipped, if I became the chancellor, to... continue that work. And third, it is a way of, if you've had a lifetime of, I've been very, very fortunate in my career.
Lord Hague: had quite quite a few misfortunes along the way but that goes without saying but really enjoyed being at the top of politics in so many ways.
Lord Hague: I strongly believe in public service and that you reach a point in your life where your main thing is you're giving back again. and This is a great way to do that with something I do very strongly.
Lord Hague: believe in because we've got great universe one of the one of this country's greatest assets. is we have quite a few. globally leading universities more than we we are stronger in that sector than anything else even in football you know do we have actually three of the top 10 in the world maybe two of the top 10 players in the world but in universities we've got three of the top 10 in the world or five or six of the top 20 or 30.
Lord Hague: and Being able to give time and energy back to support that. just feels right to me at this stage of my life. Now I'm 65 years old.
Dejan: And how do you think your time at Oxford has helped you? for your roles in politics. You've always been described by the media as very good at the dispatch box during PMQs.
Dejan: Do you think the Oxford Union and your time here has helped form you as a better debater or critical thinker or Do you think that was always somewhere inside? Oh, so they just managed to... take it out a bit more.
Lord Hague: Yeah, it was deaf. It was always inside. I mean I was giving speeches when I was 13 years old. In fact, I gave a very... a still famous speech when I was 16 years old. at the conservative conference in 1977 probably the best speech i ever made actually and it was when i was a teenager so i was already like that when i came to oxford
Lord Hague: But Oxford gave me the... complete blend of practical politics. i .e. student politics with the academic study.
Lord Hague: of politics. And that's a combination that equips you well. certainly for the political. world because at all the times that i was a that I was active in politics and for about 20 years in the front line of politics.
Lord Hague: I was also a student. I remained a student of politics. I remained fascinated by electoral trends, by the strength of institutions, and, of course, by international relations, in which I ultimately spent a large part of my political career. So the fact that I had studied... When I became Foreign Secretary... It was definitely an advantage.
Lord Hague: that at Oxford I had studied international relations, that I'd studied European political institutions. that I'd studied the politics of sub -Saharan Africa.
Lord Hague: when i was a student you know i actually had a familiarity with these topics and history. That. I wouldn't have had if I'd studied a completely different subject. So... Oxford actually did equip me for the, people often wonder, is a PPE degree of any actual use? And in my case, since I became a politician.
Lord Hague: It really was a useful thing to do.
debatablediscussions: And... Many of our listeners will obviously know you from your career in politics. To sort of briefly touch on it, if you had to give us one moment. that perhaps defined your career or that you will always remember from your time in politics? What would that moment be?
Lord Hague: Well, there are lots of candidates for that in my career, particularly not winning the 2001 election against Tony Blair, and then I quit as leader of the Conservative Party. And it's not a moment, but my whole time as foreign secretary was the main thing really in my political career. But a moment actually is one that is less well known.
Lord Hague: which is that In the 1990s, when I was in my early 30s, I was the Minister for Disabled People. And I actually... draft had put together and took through parliament the disability discrimination act which was at that time the landmark piece of disability legislation, the first law in this country that said that employers have to adjust.
Lord Hague: to reasonably to employ disabled people and buildings. had to be modified in the future. for disabled access and so on. And I think it's, to me, it's...
Lord Hague: that was the main thing in legislative terms that was the main thing I ever achieved my political career and it's an example of how for all the problems of politics and I can see why it's not an attractive career. to most people. anymore uh in the world of social media and so on sometimes you get the opportunity to do something that actually changes positively the lives of millions of people.
Lord Hague: and to design that yourself and take it through yourself so the For me, that was... the most important single moment. drafting what became the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995.
Dejan: and drawing on your experience both as Foreign Secretary, Disabilities Minister, leader of the Conservative Party, what do you think the biggest challenge is?
Dejan: are today facing the United Kingdom and how do you think education and especially higher education can help? mitigating and combating them.
Lord Hague: Well, that is a huge... question i mean our biggest uh challenge is that the world is changing extremely quickly particularly with the arrival of AI of course.
Lord Hague: But also but in every other way related to that and partly uh now exacerbated by that we have rapid changes in geopolitics in the way the world economy works, in the way society works.
Lord Hague: And... Our our usual timetable for thinking about these things is too slow. We regulate and legislate on a five year time cycle, really, in a democracy that has an election every four or five years.
Lord Hague: But think how much the world has changed in four years since chat GPT. first launched itself on the world or since Putin invaded Ukraine four years ago.
Lord Hague: So this five -year time cycle is no longer very good for that. So speeding things up, to put it crudely. is the biggest challenge of the United Kingdom. You know, so we talk rightly about... an oxford cambridge growth corridor you know that's now a priority of the government which is great
Lord Hague: But you can't spend years consulting about that and take as long to build a railway from Oxford to Cambridge as it has taken to build. HS2.
Lord Hague: there's a need for speed and for investment in critical new technologies in the uk and to build up our defenses quickly in a dangerous world situation so i think being moving quickly enough in a world where the US and China are clearly quite dominant in technology and geopolitical strength.
Lord Hague: It brings together several things that the UK... really needs to do and I feel I my most of my political career was in a more settled time. It didn't always feel settled.
Lord Hague: Because we did have a global financial crisis and the Iraq war and I was in and out of Afghanistan all the time. But compared to today, that was a more settled.
Lord Hague: State of affairs and now we've got to adapt for a world of really rapid dramatic change
debatablediscussions: You sort of touched there about the role of AI in this sort of... dramatically evolving landscape of the world and politics. Could you almost offer a prediction of...
debatablediscussions: how you think AI will affect things like... the job market, higher education. and all these other avenues of life it's a bit of a million dollar question but do you have any predictions
Lord Hague: Well, I could predict, but I'd definitely be wrong.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Lord Hague: I mean, there are multiple futures available to us. And it's not possible to make some deterministic prediction. of the future. This can go either way in a very big way.
Lord Hague: It could be AI that actually saves humanity. that leads to such extraordinary breakthroughs in medicine, a lot of those we're working on in Oxford.
Lord Hague: or in new materials or in clean energy you know and something like nuclear fusion that it literally saves. Humanity. from the very the environmental and other catastrophes that uh that threaten us so It could be that good.
Lord Hague: On the other hand, of course, it could
Lord Hague: It could be the end of democracy to take the other extreme used by totalitarian states to put everybody under. surveillance dividing and destroying any trust in society through deep fakes and so so it can go in any direction all we know i think is we have to take action to put it to push it in the right direction and on in education
Lord Hague: there is education is really critical universities are really critical to this because our task is to is to use AI for all those good purposes that I was mentioning and be at the forefront of the research with it, but to fully preserve the human mind.
Lord Hague: at the same time if the human brain with all its versatility and power. is not preserved in great universities. then it's not going to be preserved. It is going to subcontract its thinking. to machines in a way that then leaves us dependent. on them so that's a really central challenge in every faculty and every and in all of our own daily lives we have to work out how we're going to use AI.
Lord Hague: but still retain the full functioning. of the wonderful thing we were born with, which is our brain.
Dejan: You've mentioned some of the things Oxford is doing towards research surrounding AI. and education. what are some of the things that Oxford is researching that really at the forefront of life.
Dejan: whether that be medical sciences or humanities research what are sort of three pieces of of knowledge being produced at Oxford that everyone in the world should know about.
Lord Hague: Well, three quick examples where AI is relevant to show how things are changing. What very exciting development in medical sciences. is that we have several projects going on about vaccination against cancer. in the future but one i went to visit uh last month
Lord Hague: is a supercomputing project it brings together the use of large language models and robotics and deep knowledge of vaccinology so this is the one play oxford is so expert on vaccines this is one place you can really bring all those together.
Lord Hague: And they are working on having personalized cancer vaccines in the future. So that if someone develops cancer. a few years from now. There is a good chance they will then receive a vaccine after an operation designed for them and for that cancer.
Lord Hague: that will stop it. that is the objective. well think of the great increase in human welfare and lifespan for some people if we made that breakthrough. Then I visited the rare earths, sort of the earth sciences faculty. Also a few weeks ago.
Lord Hague: To see all the work going on on critical minerals and rare earths this night. This has now become something of vast economic and geopolitical importance this whole subject but it also causes a lot of environmental damage digging up critical minerals around the world.
Lord Hague: Well, here at Oxford, a lot of work is going on to see where those minerals actually can just be extracted from rivers with much less environmental damage or where you can find where they are without having to dig a hole.
Lord Hague: And so or even in some cases grow them so That's the... that's exciting work and on the humanities side the use of ai has recently enabled the partial unscrambling of the scrolls that were burnt in the... eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. So 2 ,000 years ago, the scrolls were wrapped up in a library.
Lord Hague: You can't read them without breaking them. because they were under volcanic ash for so long. But now with AI, you can start to decipher them. And so we have the possibility not only of...
Lord Hague: of knowing, of having a more confident future with the other things I've described, but understanding more about our past. including the ancient. world so you can see how on multiple fronts and these are just quick examples There's a tremendous intellectual excitement.
Lord Hague: in the development of AI, as well as a major threat to many traditional ways of doing things.
debatablediscussions: Bringing together that sort of idea of innovation you mentioned there and your own career in policymaking. What's the main change or perhaps even a continuity that you would like to ensure as Chancellor? of Oxford.
Lord Hague: Well, there's a lot of continuity, because Oxford has...
Lord Hague: immense strengths, something that's been here for 800 years. and has been a world -leading institution at that time is definitely doing something right. uh over over history And here we have things like the college system and the tutorial system.
Lord Hague: It's very human. It's on a human scale. And there an intimacy to teaching and discussion. in Oxford.
Lord Hague: between human beings. And these are immense, these strengths become more important in this age of rapidly changing. technology and an age where many people including young people are actually lonely because there's less human contact. some tremendous strengths that are the that are the continuity.
Lord Hague: but the the change i suppose well it's the things we talked about we have to be at the forefront of all that the use of ai across all those disciplines and we have to make sure we have the developments for The future, the talent can always flow here.
Lord Hague: for the future. And that's why we're placing so much emphasis on graduate scholarships, for instance, because for people to be graduate students. They have to find a lot of money.
Lord Hague: And the university at the moment is not in a position to say, well, if you're good enough, we can make sure you're okay financially to come here. But we ought to be able to put ourselves in that position.
Lord Hague: if we can find the people, the philanthropists who can help us with those graduate scholarships in the future. So that would be an important change.
Dejan: and for any students watching. What would you say your role as Chancellor entails? What is your... day -to -day but also what do you do for special ceremonies and For those ceremonies, which one so far has been your favorite? in your last year.
Lord Hague: Well, I stress that it's the vice chancellor who really runs the university. The vice chancellor is the executive. at the heart of it all. she does all the hard work she does a brilliant job professor irene tracy
Lord Hague: so the chancellor is you know is decoration by comparison and uh i am the ceremonial head of the university my work is ambassadorial it is fundraising it is advocacy it is celebrating and supporting what goes on around the university it entails a big job every now and again which is to preside over choosing the next vice chancellor
Lord Hague: That's a really critical moment. That doesn't come up for another. few years, I'm glad to say. But most of the time, it's a supporting role. actually being of service.
Lord Hague: to the university rather than actually running it. But I love doing that. I'm steadily getting around all colleges, most faculties, going to a couple of hundred events per year.
Lord Hague: And what is the I've really added meeting more students, which wasn't really part of the role of the chancellor. But I went to Freshers Fair.
Lord Hague: at the beginning of this term and I met a lot of wonderful people. i go to things like eights week i speak to student societies if invited so i've added all that in on ceremonies well we have some very wonderful ceremonies and you can't beat this this is not a student ceremony but and senior is the end of the academic year that takes place at the end of june after the end of trinity term every year.
Lord Hague: It's where we put on all our finest robes and speak in Latin. But in doing that, we're not just being old -fashioned. We are recognizing. We have benefited from the work of centuries.
Lord Hague: And we will keep the greatest traditions alive. And we give honorary doctorates at that ceremony to tremendous people who've... who've really earned it in their lives recognition by the university So that's a very special all day.
Lord Hague: ceremony that marks the end of the academic year.
debatablediscussions: We... I've also just sort of been at Freshers' Fair a few weeks ago and me and Diane were discussing how when you go in there, you sort of get... confronted with this vibrant array of societies which you mentioned You've been to a few.
debatablediscussions: Is there one society you've seen perhaps that has sort of made you think, actually, I would quite like to join?
Lord Hague: Well, I am the patron of the Oxford Judo Club.
debatablediscussions: Bye.
Lord Hague: So in a way, I am a member of that. And martial arts are my sport. Although I'm not.
debatablediscussions: okay
Lord Hague: don't practice them very often now but so it was good to see all that side of things thriving. Interestingly, I mean, there's so many fascinating. societies but the I was very interested to see that We're doing well at some pretty obscure sport. So I found them obscure like there's a sport based on Quidditch from the Harry Potter
Lord Hague: And it turns out, I don't know how LSE is at that, but Oxford is really outstanding. It's quite a violent. sport. And... Also, I met the Blind Wine Tasting Society, and it turned out Oxford's Very good at that. Well, I'm not at all surprised. that interestingly though some new societies that have sprung up in the last couple of years concerning AI safety.
Lord Hague: and various aspects. of AI. And I can see why, if I was... a fresher you know i i would want i would sign up to some of those because i think understanding all the issues some of which we were just touching on is going to be really important over the next few years.
Dejan: And now... towards the end of the episode we always do this section where we ask our guests for some advice for our audience so The first question really is if you were a first year university student again.
Dejan: What is something you would do differently?
Lord Hague: Oh, I personally... having been so politically obsessed when I was a first year. student. I would be... I would be half obsessed. with politics and actually make space for other things i could i think i could have been more multi faceted.
Lord Hague: student. and I actually missed a lot of the things. in Oxford that I now as the Chancellor, hugely. appreciate. Like we were just talking about sport.
Lord Hague: and i would definitely make if if i was i don't know if i'd be any good at it but the i would make time for rowing which is the really the great the most the sport in Oxford with the highest participation because that's really at the core of the college community and being athletic and so on so I would do that differently so my advice is
Lord Hague: you know be quite rounded that particularly in this new age we've been talking about where actually the you know to be a leader it is going to be it's going to be a big test of character more than of specific competence. in the future.
Lord Hague: and really having many different activities. I know that makes life very busy. But that would be my first piece of advice. Do a lot of what you're most interested in, but find something you think you're not interested in and take part in that as well.
debatablediscussions: And with that I think we'll conclude. the episode. It's been great being able to talk to you Lord Hague. and I think you've shared many insights. from a very exciting career both as I suppose a politician and now uh A sort of full circle moment. at Oxford and in higher education.
Lord Hague: Great pleasure. Thank you very much and good luck.
Dejan: Many thanks for coming. And as always, see you next week.
debatablediscussions: See ya.
