Oxford Round Table
About the Oxford Round Table
Two decades ago the Oxford Round Table held its first meeting in New Inn Lane at St. Peter's College in the University of Oxford to consider public policy issues bearing on education in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other selected countries. Participants in the foundational meeting included the Master of St. Peters, the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, ministers of education from twenty countries, the Chair of the National Governor's Association and several legislators from the United States. Pursuant to the success of that Round Table, additional meetings were deemed desirable and more were held thereafter. Participation was later broadened to include university presidents and subsequently further expanded to involve scholars from many academic disciplines.[1]
The purpose of the Oxford Round Table, a not-for-profit educational organization, is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of contemporary issues that affect the public good in all its various forms and ramifications. The public good is expansively interpreted by the Round Table to include all matters that enrich the human experience and enhance the human condition. Past themes of meetings have included considerations of human rights, social welfare, economics, religion, ethics, morals, law, medicine and the liberal arts and sciences. Each session is designed around a format that enables participants to present papers and to engage in discussions regarding those papers in both formal colloquy and informal dialogue.
Invitees to Round Tables are determined based on several criteria, among which are nominations by earlier attendees, courses that invitees teach, their presentations and writings, and their professional involvement in a relevant area of interest. An attempt is also made to diversify as to the type of institution, public or private, and to involve institutions representing different levels of education, i.e. schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, graduate and research universities.
All Round Tables are held in the colleges of the University of Oxford through special and separate arrangements with each college. Over the years, Round Tables have been located at several colleges including St. Peter's, St. Anne's, St. Antony's, Lady Margaret Hall, Pembroke, Lincoln College and Somerville. Formal academic sessions are normally held in the debating chamber of the Oxford Union Debating Society, the Rhodes House, home of the Rhodes Scholars, the Examination Schools, and/or at Talbot Hall in Lady Margaret Hall College. The Round Table has a close working relationship with Harris Manchester College where it maintains an office in college.
Journal
The Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table seeks to disseminate knowledge with regard to salient issues in public affairs. This includes research and policy advancement in both the public and private sectors that address government issues at state, national and international levels of discourse. The editorial staff welcomes manuscripts of relevance to this broad area of interest. There are three criteria applied to the review and selection of articles for publication:
* First, articles must advance knowledge, theory, and practice. * Second, the content of articles must be accurate and technically competent. * Third, articles must be well written, clear, well organized, and stylistically correct.
A manuscript submitted for publication to the Forum must be original and not under consideration for any other publications. When a manuscript is published by the Forum, it become the property of the Forum with the Forum possessing exclusive right to publication. All authors will be required to sign a consent to publish form upon acceptance.[2]
Hosting College: Harris Manchester
Harris Manchester College was founded in Manchester as Manchester Academy in 1786 by English Presbyterians. It was one of the last of a long line of "dissenting academies" established after the Restoration to provide higher education for Nonconformists, who were denied degrees from the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge by religious tests. The principle of religious liberty was fundamental to the new foundation, which was to be open to 'young men of every religious denomination, from whom no test, or confession of faith' would be required. Both lay and divinity students would be enrolled.
Manchester Academy was the direct heir of the famous Warrington Academy (commemorated in a handsome stained-glass window in the College Library) at which Joseph Priestley , discoverer of oxygen, radical theologian, and Unitarian minister had taught. Teaching staff at Manchester Academy included the Quaker chemist John Dalton , and "modern" subjects were taught: science, modern languages, history and literature, as well as classics and theology. Later teachers included William Gaskell , husband of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell; Francis Newman , a classical scholar and prolific writer (a brother of Cardinal Newman); and James Martineau, the Victorian theologian and philosopher, whom Gladstone called 'first among English thinkers'.
Always adaptable to changing circumstances, the College changed location five times: from Manchester (1786-1803) to York (1803-40), back to Manchester (1840-1853), then to London (1853-1889) and finally to Oxford (1889- ). The association with the University of London began in 1840, when a Royal Warrant gave the College the right to present candidates for London degrees. The College came to Oxford in 1889 and opened its new buildings designed by Thomas Worthington in 1893, housing its students, as now, in the seventeenth-century houses in Holywell Street.
The College was granted Permanent Private Hall status in 1990. In 1996 Her Majesty the Queen gave her approval to a new royal charter for the College, granting it full college status within the University. Today the College admits mature students to read for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and is the only college in UK Higher Education dedicated solely to the education men and women mature students. Harris Manchester College has always been proud of its liberal and pioneering ethos, and considers its mature student focus as a modern means of providing higher education for those traditionally excluded from it. In its early days, the College supported reforming causes, such as the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and the abolition of slavery. In 1901 the College was the first academic institution in Britain to accept a woman candidate for the Nonconformist ministry. In the 1920s and 30s the College provided courses for the Workers' Educational Association (W.E.A.).
Centrally situated in the University and city of Oxford, Harris Manchester College has its own fine buildings and grounds, including an excellent library and a chapel with notable stained-glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.[3]