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Did the Oakeshott appointment really mean that L.S.E. had changed overnight? Actually, the appointment was part of a tradition much older than that of Laski. "We are," wrote Beatrice Webb, "perfectly bona fide in our desire to advance . . . knowledge, caring more for that than for our own pet ideas." In this desire, the Webbs—and later the self-perpetuating Court of Governors who now make all appointments—hired a good many teachers who had no truck with "Sidneywebbicalism." L.S.E.'s first director was Oxford Don W. A. S. Hewins, an outspoken Tory. Since then, in the school's two sprawling buildings on Houghton Street, the school has found space for scholars of widely divergent views, from liberal Lord Beveridge to conservative Arnold Toynbee, from middle-of-the-road Historian Denis Brogan to anti-socialist (The Road to Serfdom) Friedrich August von Hayek ("Poor Fritz, poor Fritz," Laski used to say, "he is a 1906 liberal, a Walter Lippmann Good Society man").
Last week, as Michael Oakeshott took over Laski's old chair, he did not seem out of place to those who knew L.S.E. well. "I am not a politician," says he. "I was brought up an historian." In the older tradition of caring more for knowledge than pet ideas, Michael Oakeshott felt he was right at home.
*Among Oakeshott's publications is a treatise entitled A Guide to the Classics. It is not a manual of what good books to read, but a discussion of ways to pick a winner in Britain's classic Derby, St. Leger, etc. Author Oakeshott himself still has to work for a living.