Three years ago my colleague Dr Charles McCreery, as an alumnus of New College, nominated me for the position of Warden of New College. His application was not accepted and I was not on the list of nominees circulated for voting.
This is the letter from someone at New College, turning down the nomination. Charles did not make any reply at the time because we thought the effort would be wasted on a single person, and we should reply only in the form of an open letter which could go on my blog.
Dear Dr McCreery,
Thank you for your letter about your colleague Dr Celia Green. You were unable to find the further details of the Wardenship on the College website because they were removed when the deadline for applications passed on 11 January. From the information you've provided, it appears that Dr Green is 72 years old, putting her above the statutory retirement age for the post, which is 70. I'm afraid this means we will not be able to consider her.
It is only now, three years later, that I am managing to put a reply to this on the blog, which in itself shows how bad is our position in exile from society, and how effectively we are stifled and censored, although there are many areas to which we could and should be able to contribute.
The fact is that a rule about retirement age cannot be held to apply to someone who has been wrongfully deprived of even starting on a career. If an egregious injustice has been committed, then it may be necessary to break an artificial rule in rectifying it.
No rules were broken in ruining my career because there are no explicit rules about an obligation to provide a person in the ‘educational’ system with qualifications appropriate for the sort of career to which they are suited and which they need to have; their need to get started on it being made more urgent, and not less, by the passage of time. There are no explicit rules which the educational system breaks in not allowing them to obtain qualifications suitable to their ability, and, one may think, this is because the educational system has the express underlying purpose of destroying the lives of those with the greatest ability. Even if one does not think this, it indicates that the educational system is extremely dangerous.