The Master of Jesus College has complained that the court decision to retain the memorial to Tobias Rustat in its chapel “is not capable of accounting for the lived experience of people of colour in Britain today”. This is not the only recent claim founded on the “lived experience” of an individual or group -an idea with a complex intellectual history. While the genuine “lived experience” of an individual is incontrovertible, it is not irrefutable; and no one’s “lived experience” has primacy over that of others.