Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before travelling to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
You can’t keep Jacinda Ardern down. She’s now muscling in on my action, going around universities in the world picking up cushy positions. And she never even had to study, write papers and do the teaching that was required of the rest of us.
She must’ve left off her CV how after she quit being NZ prime minister: the place became mired in stagnation ever since. According to her preferred ‘narrative’, which she’s so brilliant at ‘shaping’, that’s the fault of the two non-charismatic Christophers, Hipkins and Luxon, who don’t know how to lead like she did. What a genius. So what’s she up to now? Ardern has been appointed Distinguished Fellow of the World Leaders Circle, where she’s going to teach how to lead. The two Christophers better enroll in her course fast, at least before the next election.
What’s the back story? In 2008, a gift to Oxford University by Leonard Blavatnik, a Soviet-Ukraine born oligarch, was brokered by Kiwi John Hood, former vice chancellor of Auckland University, who then became VC of Oxford. Hood was a Rhodes Scholar. Blavatnik grew up in Russia and immigrated to America in 1978 at the age of 21. He’s worth $NZ 60 billion and gifted $150 million to start the new “Blavatnik School of Government” at Oxford.
Hood promptly installed fellow Kiwi Ngaire Woods as dean. She was an NZ Rhodes Scholar, just like him. Now Woods has appointed Ardern as a Distinguished Fellow. Let’s trust Ukraine’s Zelensky, Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi and America’s Trump attend her classes and she gives them one heck of a lecture on the importance of “empathic leadership”, which has become her new catch cry. (It jettisons “kindness” in favour of the less corny, more edgy, “empathy.”)
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
