New chancellor will 'protect academic freedom'

Former Culture Secretary Lord Chris Smith said his priority as the new chancellor of the University of Cambridge would be "protecting academic freedom and the freedom of speech".

Lord Smith, 74, was formally installed in the elected role, which dates back more than 800 years, at a ceremony on Monday.

He will preside over the university's major ceremonies, advise senior staff, support its strategy and help fundraise.

The former minister, who was elected in July, said he was concerned by the US government's attempts to pressurise leading universities in America.

"The assault on academic freedom in the United States is deeply worrying," he told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

"We've seen universities - very prestigious universities like Columbia, Harvard - attempting to be told what they can teach and say by the US administration and that is a road we must avoid British universities going down at all costs.

"The moment you destroy academic freedom, you destroy the ability to research, to discover, to learn.

"It produces an impossible world for academics and students alike."

Lord Smith said he had spent 10 "wonderful" years as the master of his former college, Pembroke, where he achieved a double first in English.

He went on to complete a doctorate on the Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge before taking up a scholarship at Harvard.

His election as the 109th chancellor followed a vote which attracted 10 candidates, including anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig.

It was the first time the election process had included online votes, with about 23,000 alumni and staff taking part.

Lord Smith said his other priorities during the decade-long role would be to promote Cambridge as a hub of UK innovation and to get the university and colleges to work more closely together.

The former Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury served as secretary of state for culture, media and sport between 1997 and 2001.

In a statement Lord Smith wrote as part of the election process, he said he was committed to diversity, and described himself as the "first openly gay cabinet minister anywhere in the world".

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