{"id":478,"date":"2017-01-18T14:18:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T14:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/management\/?p=478"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:21:10","slug":"dont-mention-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/2017\/01\/18\/dont-mention-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t mention the War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Dunne, Lecturer in Social Theory and Consumption and the School, considers the strange role played by mottos in the marketing of Higher Education\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the University of Leicester recently changed its corporate logo, the decision was made to omit its inaugural motto from the crest\u2019s imagery. And so a few Latin words, themselves translations of an earlier spiritual vernacular, were excised. Here’s a brief explanation<\/a> of what that decision amounted to, why it was taken and how it was made.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the upper middle class targets of Universities once knew, the Ut Vitam Habeant<\/em> which used to adorn the corporate logo makes a conspicuous nod to John 10: 10. It is there, those chaps used to have to recognise, that Jesus Christ presented to the Pharisees the nature of his pastoralism which had been and implied the promise of his sacrifice which was to come. He suggests the way to his followers, that is, in order “that they might have life”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The new logo no longer obliges audiences to know what\u00a0Ut Vitam Habeant<\/em>\u00a0means or even where it came from. Rather than being invited to process the previous logo\u2019s peculiar invocation to compare the University of Leicester to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, contemporary target markets and the wider stakeholder community receive a very different message. The word of higher education brand consultancy now has it that image shall supersede text. With this, the life given by the Lord withdraws from the world of our logo. To those who would listen, the new logo speaks only of its own silence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How has this shift in emphasis been received? Well on the one hand, \u201c[C]urrent and potential students\u201d, following \u201cnearly 18 months work\u2026involving workshops, focus groups and one to one interviews\u201d are said to have welcomed the new logo\u2019s \u201cmore modern, digital feel\u201d. But the move hasn\u2019t been seen as a blessing which has entered everybody\u2019s lives, by the responsible agency\u2019s own admission, since \u201csome alumni, naturally rooted in their pasts, are mourning the loss of some of the more traditional elements\u201d. The new logo\u2019s very existence symbolises the victory of the \u2018modern\u2019 over the \u2018traditional\u2019. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been asked to believe by the agency, in any case.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is strategic marketing in action. The decision to remove Ut Vitam Habeant<\/em> implies that bookish Latin – and all the legalised bureaucracy and theologised obedience that goes with it – is no longer the contemporary university\u2019s principal currency. Rendered affirmatively, we might say that an appeal to the idea of a University as a site of rational dialogue, whatever its linguistic mode of expression, has become obvious if implicit. You don\u2019t need to be able to speak Latin to come here, the present absence of a motto now says. All the world\u2019s languages can make equal claims on learning, it follows. And there is probably some progressive reassurance to be found in the crediting of such an interpretation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An alternative interpretation \u2013 not necessarily that of \u201csome alumni\u201d \u2013 renders the omission of\u00a0Ut Vitam Habeant<\/em> as a proxy for the anti-intellectualism through which Universities seek to substantiate their contemporary function.\u00a0And why not?! What good is the naive and anachronistic appeal to rationality and impartiality these days while we\u2019re being drip fed the idea that we\u2019ve had it<\/a> with expertise, given up on truth<\/a> and capitulated to populism<\/a>! Wouldn\u2019t it be much better if contemporary university occupants got involved in the real world, instead of clambering further and further up the ivory tower? Isn\u2019t it time \u2013 now more than ever \u2013 for academics to intervene within political affairs, to put their erudition to use? That\u2019s what many people now say.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But that has always been what many people have said. It predates 2016. It predates the Book of John. It even predates Thrasymachus, who told Socrates that \u201cThe just is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger\u201d. <\/em>Those who find little consolation in the reign of real-politic, by contrast, aspire to a juridical situation in which reason, rather than arbitrariness, reigns sovereign. Universities have provided one possible foundation for such an aspiration, one practical manifestation of the Christian determination to make contemplation its own reward, one institutional articulation of the Socratic ethos which invites wisdom\u2019s light into the world. Their very existence suggests that reason, powerlessness in the face of violence, remains nevertheless capable of disarming power. The symbolic abandonment of such an institutional principle isn\u2019t just a strategic marketing consideration, then, though it is at least that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for \u201cUt Vitam Habeant\u201d<\/em>, it hasn\u2019t been utterly sacrificed to strategic marketing\u2019s requisite pragmatism. Whenever it now appears within University of Leicester communications, the motto now evokes a collective debt to the war fallen, it reminds us of the institution\u2019s inaugural foundation as a symbolic mode of literal memorialisation. The maintenance of this implication, today, is both entirely well-meaning and utterly disingenuous. John 10:10 makes a general appeal to all those who might live on, not a particular appeal to some of those who have fallen. Ut Vitam Habeant, <\/em>then, is a humanist ethical principle which need not be disparaged as exclusively Christian. But it must not be construed as exclusively or even predominantly a British principle either. Neither then or now. Remembrance should not be a political obligation. And it should not be a unique selling proposition either. The institutional expectation – even the organisational invitation – for the\u00a0spiritual salvation of the British Monarch<\/a> is precisely not what\u00a0Ut Vitam Habeant<\/em> means. It comes closer to its opposite, in fact. We should remember the fallen not because we are told by others that we should do so but because our inherent capacity to reason might compel us to do so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And don\u2019t even get me started on Elite but not Elitist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Dunne, Lecturer in Social Theory and Consumption and the School, considers the strange role played by mottos in the marketing of Higher Education\u00a0   When the University of Leicester recently changed its corporate logo, the decision was made to omit its inaugural motto from the crest\u2019s imagery. And so a few Latin words, themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}