Politicians like to provoke them, academics like to analyse them. Yet most people don’t even know what they’re all about
Last week produced an eventful but not untypical weather-front of news stories about culturally contentious issues. There was the microstorm about the Queen’s photo being taken down in the common room at Magdalen College, Oxford; the tiny tempest of Test cricketer Ollie Robinson being dropped for racist tweets dating from when he was a teenager; the squall over the England football team’s commitment to taking the knee; and the sudden shower of Oxford academics boycotting Oriel College over its decision to retain its reviled Cecil Rhodes statue.
These, along with the deathless headline “Law student cleared after saying women have vaginas”, were examples of what might also be called skirmishes in a larger and ongoing series of battles: the culture wars.
