The Chancellor of the University of Cambridge is The Right Honourable Chris Smith, Lord Smith of Finsbury. The Senate elected Lord Smith in July 2025.
The Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury
Lord Smith has been the Master of Pembroke since 2015 and stepped down at the end of July 2025. He is a former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and later Chairman of the Environment Agency.
Born in 1951, Lord Smith was educated in Edinburgh and then Pembroke College, Cambridge, achieving a double first in English (and later a PhD on Wordsworth and Coleridge) and was also a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard.
He began his political career as a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Islington, becoming MP for Islington South and Finsbury in 1983. In 1992 he joined the Shadow Cabinet and held a number of frontbench posts before Labour came to power in 1997. He served as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport until 2001 when he returned to the back benches, standing down from the Commons in 2005. Immediately afterwards he was made a life peer.
He chaired the Environment Agency from 2008 to 2014; from 2007 to 2017 he was also Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority.