A few weeks ago, I heard about the ‘Dear World’ campaign, a campaign by the University of Cambridge. I heard that it was designed to publicise the amazing research different academics and faculties pursue. It was designed to get people excited, to make them feel inspired, to show them why what we do matters. It would – so the person who told me about it, buzzing with excitement – give a voice to all of us junior researchers and all of the diffident senior academics who never quite managed to explain our work.
But then, I watched the video introducing it, and my heart sank. The opening few minutes will show you why. The video opens with a classic classroom scene; a voice – humming with vibrato like a badly-tuned cello – orates the words of the title: Dear World. And onto the screen paces David Starkey, in character…
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