AT THE risk of sounding sexist, I’d say that Angelina Jolie Pitt is rather better looking than William Hague.

They do have something in common, though: both have been appointed visiting professors at the London School of Economics.

I know little more about the LSE than that it was founded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, those admirers of the genocidal Stalin and all things belonging to the Soviet Union, which totalitarian barbarism Beatrice described as “a new civilisation.”

Sid and Bea, with characteristic high-mindedness, claimed they were setting up the LSE “for the betterment of society” – which made me recall G.K. Chesterton’s plea: “God save us from the philanthropists!”

Of the pulchritudinous Angelina, I know only that she finished her formal education aged sixteen, that she was anorexic as a teenager, married Brad Pitt and starred in the very naff Tomb Raider films. Oh, and I know also that she has called on Europe to “…hold out the hand of welcome to the refugees,” which, being interpreted, means we should open the doors to every economic entrepreneur who comes a-knocking.

She will – but only very occasionally – lecture the right-on students of the LSE as part of their master’s degree in “Peace, gender, militarisation and human rights.” Commenting on her appointment, she said, "It is vital that we broaden the discussion on how to advance women's rights and end impunity for crimes that disproportionately affect women, such as sexual violence in conflict. And I am looking forward to teaching and to learning from the students, as well as to sharing my own experiences of working alongside governments and the United Nations." The course will start next year and it will be run by the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security.

Commendably, Angelina deplores violence against women and particularly rape and other nasty things that happen to them in wars. She says she wants to “outlaw rape as a weapon of war.” She is also to be praised for her disapproval of female genital mutilation. But what is the purpose of her lectures? I strongly suspect – in fact I’m sure - that the nicely brought up students at the LSE already share Angelina’s outrage and disapproval of rape and FGM. But what will be achieved? Are we to imagine that Islamic State, Boko Haram, Al- Shabab and a dozen other terrorist organisations will hearken to the protests of visiting professor Angelina and abandon their habit of wholesale rape? Will the barbarians who practise FGM in the name of religion – presently 250 million victims worldwide according to the UN – take note of the saintly Angelina’s appointment and say, “OK, the game’s up. We’ll stop all our nasty tricks immediately”?

The plain truth – obvious to everyone except the LSE, the UN and hordes of sentimentalists and wishful thinkers all over the western world – is that civilised people and nations, of which we trust Britain remains an example, at least for the time being, don’t need lectures on human rights; and the barbarians who routinely go in for cruelty on the grand scale will not take a pennyworth’s notice if Angelina lectures them on the subject day and night.

So why has the LSE appointed Angelina to her professorship? In order to scatter a little stardust on a very worthy but very dull academic institution. We live in a world ruled by the notion of image and where advertising is the blessed sacrament. And Angelina’s appointment is a publicity stunt and nothing else – except, of course, it represents the debasement of the whole idea of a university.