In 2016, the university's Equality and Diversity Unit embarked on a project to look into
the way that women and underrepresented minorities appear in Oxford's iconography.
A specific concern was that the overwhelming predominance of the male establishment not only misrepresented modern Oxford,
but also was damagingly discriminatory in itself.
The examination schools were and are dominated in the main halls where students take their exams by portraits of men,
often in judicial or Episcopal robes, with the occasional Kagan or royal prince occupying pride place.
There was hardly a woman to be seen. Dining halls of all former men's colleges similarly exhibited an overwhelming picture of masculine dominance.
These, the ultimate authority figures, hardly suggest to any female or to any non-white or traditional male or transgender person that they themselves
might ever aspire to high positions either in the university or in the nation or even in their own college.
What sort of vision of their place in the world did these portraits engender in female and non-traditional students?
Were they not intimidated in ways that white males would not be by a collective picture of authority and success?
That very graphically excluded them. Not only that,
but the fact that the vast majority of these portraits were and still are of white
men seriously misrepresents the changes that have taken place in recent decades.
It simply does not do justice to the modern university.
And if there was an uneasy feeling that gender and racial stereotypes might in fact still linger not only on the university's walls,
but also in some of its minds, that made the task of reform more urgent.
The Equality and Diversity Unit, led by Rebecca Surrender as pro vice chancellor and advocate for diversity and inclusion.
And by the then executive head, Trudy Decode designed a project to change all this.
They started by cataloguing over 230 existing portraits.
And the next step with the help of funds from our first woman vice chancellor, was to commissions some new ones.
The project invited the public to nominate candidates for inclusion in a list of just over 20 new portraits of alumni.
I was honoured to be invited to chair this phrase phase of the project.
The way that Oxford even now excludes or at best downplays the role of women in its
history is something that all members of the university will experience personally.
That is the point of this project. So allow me to digress for a moment with some personal background and reflections.
I am a graduate of Somerville College from the days when all of Oxfords colleges were still single sex and the undergraduate body was.
I remember being told in a ratio of as much as five to one, male to female.
This college's portraits, however, were and still are overwhelmingly of female subjects.
Beginning with Mary Somerville herself known as a great scientist and scientific writer in her own lifetime in the 19th century,
but debarred from holding office as a fellow at the Royal Society or a professor,
and now reaching to the colleges, to prime ministers and the long still all female list of principals.
I don't remember questioning the dominance of male portraits much when I was a student.
Far too busy with life and academic work except to take pride in the great iconic figures like Nobel Prise winner
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and the long lists of leading novelists and public figures associated with the college.
Nor do I remember noticing the larger than life sized portraits of worthy or unworthy gentlemen in the examination schools as more than wallpaper.
But I did believe that women, of course,
could achieve whatever they wanted to and very parochially that the first woman prime minister of the U.K. would probably be a sum of Éliane,
Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher. Whether two contenders at that time.
This feeling was reinforced by the role models portrayed on the college walls.
Further reinforcement came from the emergence of the Indira Gandhi, also as some civilian as prime minister of India.
In 1966. Rita Chakrabarty, the journalist and BBC presenter, an alumna of Exeter College and from a later generation than I seems to have felt.
Much as I did that she was too busy with her own life to worry about the overrepresentation of men and people of exclusively white ethnic background.
But she has said of this project. I loved my time at Oxford.
There weren't then many people from my background at university there.
But that didn't stop my experience from being overwhelmingly good.
I hope this project will show that Oxford is open to everyone and that it wants to be more so.
I hope, too, that it reflects present day Oxford back at itself and that it encourages an ever more diverse range of people to study the.
When in 2010, I became principal of the mixed female and male college that Somerville now is.
I took great pride in leading one of the great institutional standard bearers which had been founded, as I like to say, to include the excluded.
I believe it's true to say that Somerville's as the only college dining hall where the permanent portraits are exclusively of of women.
In my experience, many male undergraduates, as well as the women,
are proud of the college's progressive reputation and regard the strong female presence as a token of that identity.
Even so, it needs to be borne in mind that male students will not find men so well represented at Somerville.
As in other parts of the university.
And that absence, that absence probably needs to be rebalanced to some extent, though, as principal, I didn't get round to doing so.
Correcting the overall university imbalance in the other direction seemed more urgent.
Institutional pride extends, of course, from the colleges to every part of the university as a whole.
We are now grappling as never before, with the inherited iconography of empire and race.
Rhodes must fall. Black Lives Matter.
And the continuing fallout from the events and campaigns of the past few years have replaced gender inequalities at the top of the most public lists.
Though transgender is now a hot topic, Oxford might like to be a leader in progressive attitudes to these issues.
But it's more often portrayed as part of the problem. It is instructive to see the feminist agenda through the lens of these developments.
One case from the Diversifying Portraiture Project is particularly pointed.
I wrote to invite Jan Morris and received back a polite but firm refusal.
Dear Dr. Prohaska, thanks so much for your letter. I am, of course, flattered and grateful to find myself on your list of teas.
If there is such a word, but I feel I must say no to being one of them.
I prefer not to be remembered for long for my sexual diversity, which is, I am sure what my kind proposes have in mind.
And I pray that perhaps in probably my portrait might one day hang in Christchurch.
Well, anyway, to remember just another writer, diverse or conventional.
But again, my true thanks for the suggestion and every good wish from Wales and from Jan Morris.
I wrote back. Thank you for your kind. No, I quite understand your position.
And of course, I won't press you, but I did just want to take this opportunity to say that while your sexual diversity was one
reason for your being selected as one of our short list of 25 potential suitors for portraits,
mostly female, that was very far from being the only one.
If I may so presume, I'd like just to say that I am one of very many people I know who admire you and are grateful to you for two special reasons.
One reason is your personal courage. And another is simply I love of your writing.
Whenever anyone offers a list of good writing about Oxford. Very parochial, I know, but people are often asked.
Your book is at the top of the list. And then the conversation develops with people comparing notes on which of your many works.
They have read and which they love most. I can promise that your work is loved and admired here by legions of people.
Well, I'm not interested in or possibly even aware of your long ago change of gender.
I'm sorry. We can't look forward to adding a portrait of you to the list of those we are commissioning.
I'd be much more sorry if you thought that the suggestion came simply from an
interest in your sexual diversity rather than your immense distinction as a writer.
And then I came back a quick response. Oh, my goodness.
Dr. P. Thank you so very much. What an encouraging letter to reach me with my taste of butter.
How kind of you. And incidentally, how persuasive can I change my mind and accept that invitation?
After all, it had anyway occurred to me in the far reaches of the night that my inclusion might be an
encouragement to young people in my own sexual situation and that I was too hasty in my response.
And now your letter, besides boosting my already inflated ego, has confirmed the thought.
Do forgive me. First rule of life. Count up to 10. Well, first rule in our house is put the books back again.
Thank you. And forgive me, Jan. So a beautiful fort, a photographic portrait of Jan Morris is part of our collection.
And I am glad to say that Christchurch, which is considering further diversifying its image,
has a photograph of Jan Morris hanging in a prominent position in its senior common room.
This raises some questions about tokenism and iconography,
and it also led me to think carefully about the individuals at the centre of our project, their own sensibilities,
and the importance of remembering them,
not just as people whose portraits might help to improve to boost modern credentials of the University of Oxford, but as proud individuals.
Surely one of the fundamental injustices of the historic suppression of women,
in addition to the denial of opportunity, is the denial of that individual greatness.
Diversifying portrait of project concluded with an exhibition of all the new portraits of the
Bodleian and the collection is now displayed in the examination schools since it was completed.
Others have followed. Thick and fast colleges that have embraced diverse portraiture include Hartford,
where the dining hall portraits were replaced for a time with photographs of women, Keibel, Lincolns, of PITAs and others.
And then there are the projected two new sculptured heads outside the Sheldonian Theatre on Broad Street.
If all souls are seen in the outside world as a special bastion of academic exclusion,
it's group portraits of college servants must have helped to dent that image.
It is probably true by now that all Oxford colleges are moving towards greater intensity in their public iconography.
Alexandra Wilson, a black graduate of 2016, now portrayed in University College's young unit of Galerie, underlined the great shift with these words.
I couldn't be prouder to have my picture hanging on the wall of the oldest college at Oxford University.
Today, we celebrated 40 years of women at Oxford.
Next year, we'll have our first female master at Univ and the first black master at Oxford.
We're making history. I conclude then with some questions.
Women predominated and the choices we made for the diversifying portraiture project.
And that was an important step towards a more true representation of the University of Oxford.
We also included people of colour and ethnic minorities, gays, people who have conquered physical disc disabilities,
and some, like the film director Ken Loach, who have given a public voice to underrepresented minorities in their work.
Each one of these groups and counters prejudice and roadblocks in different forms.
And it is hugely valuable for the university to embrace them publicly and acknowledge their achievements.
But where we feel we've made true progress while all of these diverse individuals can still be brought together under a category of exclusion.
To what extent does a project designed to rectify the wrongs of exclusion and underrepresentation risk making individuals?
Into token representatives while leaving behind the vast majority of others.
Any listed people and groups necessarily excludes others.
There are still so far to go. And how will we know when we've got the.