A woman heads Oxford, an Irish at that!

James Anthony Froude may have been a renowned professor of religious history at Oxford, but what endeared him to his class of Englishmen of the century gone by was their shared derision of everything Irish.

Froude became famous for his racist writings, often featuring the Irish, in the late 19th century, the oft quoted of them all being, “...more like squalid apes than human beings. ...unstable as water. ...only efficient military despotism [can succeed in Ireland] ...the wild Irish understand only force”.

We don’t know what Froude thought of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde  – both were in Oxford, he at Oriel while the Irishman was at Magdalen – and Froude would have never dreamt that an Irishwoman would head the prim-and-proper refectory of Englishness a century or so after him.

Oxford University has appointed Professor Louise Richardson as the next Vice-Chancellor. The seven-year term beginning January 1, 2016 is subject to affirmation of her name by the university congregation.

Once that formality is over, Prof. Richardson would become the first woman Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in the university’s 800-year recorded history.

She is everything a proverbial Oxfordian would not be. She is not English. She didn’t attend Eton, or any private school for that matter. She didn’t study at any English university. She graduated from Trinity in Dublin and got a doctorate from Harvard. She specializes in terrorism studies, far removed from “Greats”, the exalted subject of study at Oxford.

But then, this isn’t the first time she may be raising eyebrows for her un-English characteristics. When she was imported to the UK from Harvard and appointed Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of St. Andrews – the third oldest university in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge and where the future king of England studied and found a bride – she was not only first woman appointee to the post, she was also the first Roman Catholic in that post.

The snobs wouldn’t let her forget her trespassing. When she took up the post at St. Andrews, she was taunted by members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club – one of the oldest and prestigious golf clubs in the world, based in St Andrews and worldwide regarded as the ‘home of golf’, having been the governing body of the game for centuries. She was not made a member because she was a woman. She did not shy away from pointing out to the discrimination, forcing the club to eventually overturn their decision. Even the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown frowned in public at their membership policy.

Payback time for Oxford, some public school Britons who failed to get admission to Oxbridge said of her appointment. At least that is what is trending over there and even the grumpy English media finds it suits these times to go with the sentiment.

The Professor, on her part, hasn’t lost her Irish element a bit despite the overwhelming influences at the post-modern Harvard or the up-and-coming St Andrews. She bared her feelings, probably what she held close to herself all these years, as that of the underdog who made it despite all odds.

The first thing she said: “I look forward to the day when a woman being appointed isn’t in itself news.”

The reality she underscored: “Unfortunately, academia like most professions is pyramid-shaped – the higher up you go the fewer women there are.”

The veiled admission of Oxford’s snobbery of ignoring applications from students who aren’t from private schools: “This has been a priority for me at St Andrews, where we have dramatically increased the proportion of poor kids we accept.”

The courage of the self-made: “My parents did not go to college, most of my siblings did not go to college. The trajectory of my life has been made possible by education. So I am utterly committed to others having the same opportunity I have had.”

Chris Patten, or Baron Patton of Barnes to name his title, the university’s chancellor, said Richardson’s “distinguished record both as an educational leader and as an outstanding scholar provides an excellent basis for her to lead Oxford in the coming years”. That’s quite a eulogy, coming from the “last Englishman in Asia” as he was wont to be described as he left Hong Kong in 1997 after handing over the British colony to China.

How does Louise’s appointment impact Oxford’s age-old institutional rivalry with Cambridge? For most of their history, they didn’t permit women to study and receive degrees. It was only in the late 19th century that they established colleges exclusively for women – Cambridge leading with Girton College in 1869 and Oxford following Lady Margaret Hall in 1878. But when it came to having women Vice-Chancellor’s Cambridge has a real edge. It appointed Dame Alison Richard way back in 2003.

But all those years in the past when Britannica was best, Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis, a letter during his imprisonment: "The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison."

So, is the Oxford post Richardson’s turning point? She told The Irish Times: “I once asked my father what were his ambitions for his four daughters. He thought about it for a while and said – ‘that one enter the convent and none end on the shelf’.”