Oxbridge not enough

I endorse the views of the vice-chancellor of Durham University ("Our stars were not born in a vacuum", Opinion, June 8). Research needs feedback, criticism, extension: ideas were not born in a vacuum, either.

And if response can come from anywhere in the world, it can only come from somewhere because someone has bothered to sustain a wider academic community within their local (regional, national) orbit.

We might wish to sustain Oxbridge for the world, but what is the world if there is no one out there?

Marilyn Strathern
Girton College, Cambridge