Brian G. Firth to Elizabeth Kiss on Chelsea Manning: “Response to Your Letter of June 6, 2024”
Dear Dr Kiss,
Thank you for the form letter that you sent to me, that is almost identical to the one you sent to Michael Tselentis and David Satter. Needless to say, you failed to address the concerns that I raised. While it has been said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, if Chelsea Manning is your idea of a "freedom fighter", I wonder which other "unlikeminded" unsavory people you propose to invite to speak at Rhodes House. There are a variety of terrorist organizations available to choose from, all freedom fighters in their own minds.
Your final comments that " I believe that our efforts align with the vision of the founder", (note small f ), show just how far you have distorted the real mission of the Founder when he established the Scholarships. My great grandparents knew Rhodes as a house-guest. I think the Scholarship is becoming a parody of its former self. I am incredulous that you think that Cecil Rhodes would have approved of Bradley/Chelsea Manning’s actions.
For over a hundred years, the Rhodes Scholarship has been deemed to be the premier scholarship in the world, because these scholars were selected based on 4 clearly defined criteria that went well beyond just being "bookish". The reputation of the Scholarship was not created out of thin air by virtue of Rhodes' Will but by the accomplishments of those that were selected according to HIS criteria. Yes, women were not included, because this was before the time of female suffrage. At the same time, he explicitly stated that no scholar should be qualified nor disqualified based on race or religious beliefs.... quite progressive for his time! Do you seriously think that any of the major financiers in the USA at that time would have done this? That "unlikemindedness" (a word that I could not find in the Oxford English dictionary) has now been added to the Rhodes lexicon is risible. It seems to mean even more extremely left-wing in their views than my own.
To that point, the recently published survey of recent US Rhodes Scholars by the American Enterprise Institute showed a 56 : 1 ratio of those who identified as "Progressive" versus Conservative. Any statistician could tell you that the possibility that this happened just by chance is several million to 1. i.e. this massive bias is a valid observation. That being the case, the obvious question is how this occurred? Is it because of directions, explicit or implicit, from the very liberal US Secretary Elliott Gerson over 20 years, or the two successive liberal former US Rhodes Scholars who have filled the role of Warden. If not, is it due to the profiles of those carefully selected to serve on the selection committees. Do you seriously believe that Rhodes would have wanted the world to be led by only those with a particular political affiliation? If so, he would have made this one of the criteria for selection.
Can you tell us what directives you will put in place so that this pattern of bias based on political views does not persist. At the end of the day, the US population is fairly evenly distributed in terms of their political views, and this is absolutely not evident in the observed distribution of Rhodes Scholars selected over the last decade. Conservatively- minded students deserve an equal opportunity to study at Oxford.
Yours sincerely,
Brian G. Firth, MB, D.Phil, FRCP, MBA
South Africa at Large and Exeter, 1972.