The University of Oxford announced on Wednesday that William Hague, a former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, will be its next chancellor. He narrowly beat out Elish Angiolini, who would have been the first woman in the role.
Mr. Hague, 63, was chosen in an online vote of about 25,000 Oxford alumni and staff members. He will begin his 10-year term early next year and will serve as Oxford’s 160th chancellor. The role is largely ceremonial but also involves advocacy and fund-raising work, the university said.
“What happens at Oxford in the next decade is critical to the success of the U.K.,” Mr. Hague said in a statement, calling his election “the greatest honor of my life.”
His victory comes after an unusually colorful contest for the position. A zumba teacher and an “anti-woke” Anglican clergyman were among those who cast their hats into the ring.
After an initial vote, five candidates emerged from the 38 in the running. Two of them were women. Many wondered if Oxford might, after about 800 years, pick its first female chancellor.
The contest came down to Mr. Hague and Ms. Angiolini, a lawyer and principal of St. Hugh’s College, one of Oxford’s 43 constituent colleges. She had led a public inquiry into the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman in London, by a police officer. In the final round of balloting, Mr. Hague won with 12,609 votes to her 11,006.
Mr. Hague, who said he was the first person in his family to go to university, is vocal about how much he loved Oxford. He was the president of the Oxford Union, the storied debating society. For decades, Mr. Hague stayed actively involved in the school and its fund-raising.
“I wasn’t ever intending to stand in another election in my life,” he said in an interview with The Times of London this summer. “But this one might be the exception.”
After he graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1982, he worked in business, then politics, serving in Parliament from 1989 to 2015. He led the Conservatives from 1997 to 2001, when they were in the opposition, and served as foreign secretary in David Cameron’s government from 2010 to 2014.
Some had framed the race for chancellor as an ideological contest between Mr. Hague, a Conservative, and Peter Mandelson, who has held multiple cabinet posts in previous Labour governments.
Mr. Mandelson, who is also in the running to be the next British ambassador to Washington, was quickly eliminated from the final five candidates. Mr. Hague had criticized him, in the final days of the race, for pursuing both jobs at once.
“I am diplomatically saying it is not compatible with full-time employment in another country,” he said in an interview this month. “Being a ‘ceremonial figurehead’ was only one part of the job. It has changed in the last 20 years.”
Despite the politicking, being a figurehead is a main part of the job — which Mr. Hague readily acknowledged in his candidate statement.
He noted that higher education in Britain faces real challenges: Many universities are in a spiraling financial crisis. Mr. Hague positioned the Oxford role as a way to work on other issues in the country’s higher education system, arguing that “it is also vital to give a lead when necessary, keeping the potential of great universities at the heart of public policy.”
He also said that he would focus on preserving freedom of speech on campuses, finding solutions for how the state finances universities, and focusing on technology and science. Like his predecessor, Chris Patten, Mr. Hague will have to keep the university academically competitive with its elite American peers, despite its much smaller endowment.
But he has said that he is ready for the challenge.
“I have secured large donations for many causes,” Mr. Hague said, in the candidate statement. “Speechmaking is in my nature and I am not averse to wearing robes.”
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