Alasdair Smith
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Alasdair Smith is currently a professor of economics and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sussex. He is a noted international economist whose studies (often developed in concert with fellow economist Tony Venables) have been used by the European Union.
Smith was born on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Oxford University. He later taught for 17 years at the London School of Economics before moving to the University of Sussex in 1981, and becoming Vice-Chancellor in 1998.
His controversial pro-Top Up Fees stance resulted in the University of Sussex Student Union calling for a vote of no confidence in his leadership in a student election in February of 2003. The members of the student's union voted against Smith in large numbers. Smith later referred to the vote of no confidence as "a clever piece of electioneering by some of the candidates standing for election as Student Union officers."¹
Footnotes
¹ University of Sussex Bulletin, February 21, 2003 (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/press_office/bulletin/21feb03/article15.shtml)