Why is Catherine Bennett so outraged by Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao’s donation to Oxford (“An Oxford college is about to link itself to a bikini airline. Now that’s what I call classy”, Comment)? It is hardly front-page news when wealthy capitalists make large gifts to elite universities. Nor are these institutions usually much troubled by the source of their benefactors’ wealth, whether oil, coal, diamonds or expropriation of personal data from internet users. Elite universities are locked in a competition that compels them to seek vast amounts of money to keep them at the top of the pile. University presidents are paid high salaries to raise these sums. That is their job.
So Vietjet used a tasteless marketing gimmick for a while. Shame on them, but they are hardly the worst of the Oxbridge or Harvard, Yale or Stanford donors.
