We are assured by officials at Oxford’s Linacre College that heaps of due diligence mean it’s fine for this proudly sustainable establishment to rename itself, in exchange for £155m, after a Russian-educated Vietnamese airline billionaire, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao. The Department for Education is now similarly satisfied.
But still, you can’t help wondering: did anyone Google “bikini airline”, as this donor’s Vietjet is widely known, and somehow miss the contribution of girly calendars and mid-air burlesque to its fortunes? “We don’t mind people associating the airline with the bikini image,” Thao has said. “If that makes people happy, then we are happy.”
Supposing the college was also happy with bikini money, did its investigations extend to human rights abuses in Vietnam, where Thao chairs a company described (by the MP Julian Lewis) as “extremely close” to the government – and find this information compatible with Linacre’s transformation into Thao College, the academic version of her personalised numberplate?
If so, it’s fabulous news for anyone with a spare £155m who has ever fancied being an Oxford college but concluded that some perceived association with abject sexism, political repression or contributions to the climate emergency might make investment in a Johnson peerage more straightforward. Oxford colleges, as Linacre defensively points out, have occasionally been renamed – though not, perhaps, after philanthropists who use degrading images of young women to boost their profits. Equally as illustrated by Linacre’s sale, it would be a shame if recent disputes around people and objects with colonial associations were mistaken, by donors with enough money to soothe the cultural sacrifice, for an unshakeable attachment to tradition. Oxford’s chancellor, Lord Patten, who recently condemned some students’ removal of a royal portrait as “offensive and obnoxiously ignorant”, has yet, it appears, to denounce the disposal of the Renaissance scholar Thomas Linacre – a contemporary of the original Faust – whose breadth of learning the college still advertises as its model.
The snub went down less well in Wigan, where Linacre was rector for four years from 1520. Nor does the disrespect to the Wigan man stop there. “The College will invite suggestions from the Benefactor in developing a new crest and finding suitable new College colours,” says the part of the Thao agreement called “Promotion of the Gift”. It adds: “The Benefactor may use the College name and crest for publicity purposes if agreed in advance.”
So, though it’s too late for Hugh Hefner, there could hardly be a better time for, say, Hooters, which has met some resistance in the UK, to consider a renaming bid for, if not Balliol or Magdalen, certainly one of the younger colleges within this ever more broadminded university. Already Oxford’s radical exercises in philanthropic acceptance – whereby its centres of learning can be named after, say, after a Trump-supporting private equity plutocrat or a chemicals company renowned for its pollution – must have given many an unloved asset-stripper ideas about a reputation refresh. But, as Linacre completes its reinvention as, essentially, Faust College, yet more implausible deals can never have looked so attainable.
Assuming its approval by a privy council led by the Johnson loyalist Mark Spencer, Thao’s agreement will shortly entitle her to deeper involvement in college life: “The Benefactor may, subject to the approval of the College, propose ‘Thao’ or other relatives [sic] name for buildings, facilities, scholarships or fellowships funded directly by the Donation or income derived from the Donation.” In return, Vietjet’s parent company, Sovico, promises to be net zero by 2050. The agreement notes: “The responsibility for creating and implementing the net zero plan remains exclusively with the Benefactor.”
The involvement of Sovico, a company engaged in fossil fuel extraction, was, next to Vietjet’s bikinis and the purging of Linacre, the most prominent objection after the deal was announced at Cop26 in the presence of the Vietnamese prime minister, Pham Minh Chính. Linacre’s principal, Nick Leimu-Brown, responded that the benign impact on Sovico’s strategy “will be substantially greater than any impact we can have through our own net zero progress”. They’ll be able to fact-check that in 27 years.
On the Vietnamese side, there has been some surprise that Thao should prefer to immortalise herself within one of the world’s richest universities rather than invest in her own country. Nor is it clear why, since Thao studied and made her first fortune in the former USSR, she didn’t try to rename her alma mater, Moscow’s Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. After Cop26, Julian Lewis, chair of the intelligence and security committee, repeatedly raised parliamentary questions about the propriety of the deal, given Vietnam’s abysmal human rights record, receiving no adequate response.
To be fair to Linacre’s diligence, the deal was signed before Vietnam’s imprisonment of Nguy Thi Khanh, an internationally recognised environmental leader who would, in fact, make an excellent figurehead for any climate-aware organisation that tired of its old name. Three fellow campaigners have also been imprisoned in what appears to be the orchestrated harassment of activists whose goals Linacre still ostensibly shares.
Nor, of course, could Linacre have anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a crime that might seem incidental to the college’s current ambitions were it not for Sovico’s “excellent relationships” with the Vietnamese government that abstained from condemning the invasion. Perhaps when Thao’s college representative, chair of a new advisory council (“to report to the Benefactor on the impact of the Donation”), is seen around the place, there will be a chance for Thao students to confirm that their Benefactor takes a more principled view.
Alternatively, there might be still time for Linacre to reconsider or scale down a deal that now stands out only for being so comprehensively wrong. Is its promised wealth and new graduate centre worth an eternity as Bikini Airlines College? Even Marlow’s Dr Faustus reconsidered – though, as many Linacre students will appreciate, too late.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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