'Public interest' at the heart of our education & research agenda

At a recent celebratory conference in Athlone marking 30 years of the Irish Association of Law Teachers, (the Annual Conference IALT Saturday 19th November 2011) I was asked to join a plenary session on the public role of the academic lawyer. Given the growth of legal scholarship in Ireland during that time which has been marked by a celebratory publication launch the night before, and given that we had also recently marked more than 10 years of the IRCHSS, I chose to reflect on how much has changed in higher education and research in our country in that time. Literally distinctive Irish legal academic scholarship had emerged, and the architecture (IRCHSS) supporting research and literature in the humanities and social sciences (including business and law) appeared.
The following is the piece of musing or writing which emerged, which I offer with apologies for the long silence and still incomplete thoughts. (Within you will glean how events such as the recent announcement of the merger of IRCHSS and IRSET intervened to distract me from my blog!) Happy holidays to all!


The Public Role of the academic lawyer
Annual Conference IALT Saturday 19th November 2011


As the theme of this conference is “Added Value(s)-The Role of Law in contemporary society” and in this plenary session we are asked to focus on “The Public Role of the academic lawyer’, I thought I would examine the role of the academic lawyer in the public sphere from perspectives, reflective of my own experience of that role, within the spheres of:
(1) education for democracy and active citizenship (as well as occasional but not compulsory legal representation); and
(2) the nature of the academy within which we work and our students study; and
(3) the research and education environment in which we currently find ourselves and where and with whom our shared interests lie when fiscal considerations transfix governments.




(1) Starting with education, one of my current favourite quotes on our role is that of Martha Nussbaum in Cultivating Humanity
“It is up to us, as educators, to show our students the beauty and interest of a life that is open to the whole world, to show them that there is after all more joy in the kind of citizenship that questions than in the kind that simply applauds, more fascination in the study of human beings in all their variety and complexity than in the zealous pursuit of superficial stereotypes, more feminine love and friendship in the questioning and self government than in submission to authority. We had better show them this, or the future of democracy in this nation and in the world is bleak.”


Nussbaum speaks of cultivating in ourselves ‘a capacity for sympathetic imagination’ that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves. She notes that the arts play a vital role here: cultivating powers of imagination that are essential to citizenship. There is a tension she identifies however between the liberal arts and a move towards vocational education (& away from humanities) which given the challenges facing governments in a time of financial constraint may influence policy development in that area.
This movement and phenomenon is what Nussbaum in her later publication Not for Profit-Why democracy needs the humanities (Princeton University Press 2010, p2) terms ‘a silent crisis’
as
“... the humanities and the arts are being cut away, in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation of the world. Seen by policy makers as useless frills, at a time when nations must cut away all useless things in order to stay competitive in the global market, they are rapidly losing their place in curricula, and also in the minds and hearts of parents and children. Indeed what one might call the humanistic aspects of science and social science-the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought-are also losing ground as nations prefer to pursue short term profit by the cultivation of the useful and highly applied skills suited to profit making.”


If we think that too farfetched consider the forthcoming Forfas paper on research prioritisation - in it there is not one reference to the social sciences and the only reference to the humanities is in the context of digitisation. A second relevant development nationally is that of the technological Universities which will pose a considerable challenge to the traditional Universities, in that as Nussbaum again notes (at p 23)
“...all over the world, programs in arts and the humanities, at all levels, are being cut away in favour of the cultivation of the technical. Indian parents take pride in a child who gains admission to the Institutes of Technology and management; they are ashamed of a child who studies literature or philosophy, or who wants to paint or dance or sing. American parents, too, are moving rapidly in this direction...”


For lawyers any such impoverished view will lead to a move away from much of what we have gained as we moved closer to the heart of the academy-a focus on us as the ‘regulation or policy implication additions on to scientific inquiry-the campus lawyers (unpaid) or simply the pathway to vocational riches in legal practice.
The reason I liked or related to Nussbaum’s concept of the cultivation of a narrative imagination, is that I recognised it as coming close to encapsulating some of what has motivated my teaching criminal justice and evidence. In that realm the ongoing and continuing challenges to liberal democratic regimes posed by the accommodation and occasional disruption of political dissent and/or terrorism as manifest in the absorption of the state’s extraordinary response has fascinated me for many years. That theme of how much we tolerate in the name of our values in liberal democracy resonated for me with how much we tolerate in a trial in the name of justice and fairness; and how challenged we are by our (in)ability to identify with the accused-whether s/he is one of us, and what if they are not? The construction of a public discourse on these issues, the role of the media and the absence or compromise of democratic debate also proved a powerful element in consideration of this contemporary cultural interplay. A masters course emerged from this work, and in due course grew to an LLM in Criminal Justice. The option I offer on that programme Dissonance Terrorism and Criminal Justice focuses on these issues and themes, from a lawyer’s perspective, but drawing on material from other worlds that of the ‘real’ world of legal practice as well as those of literature and film where possible. In some senses the course merits a health warning for the law students as it attempts to engage them in a process of ‘unlearning’ what they had been taught as undergrads. Side by side with the clinical experience for those on the LLM Criminal Justice and its crash course on the realities of the practice of law, and the input of those who work in that general area (probation officers, victim support, the police and prison services etc), it can prove a heady combination. Although it offers no certainties however, and asks more questions than it ever answers, is run as a seminar or ongoing conversation with the students, where they have to do advance reading and lead the discussion (ie do most of the hard work!) it has proved to be the most satisfying course of my career-and I gather the students like it too. In sum, the course has its genesis in what might be termed legal deafness or the blindness of perspective, as manifest in the legal system, and the education of law students. Ultimately the aim is to develop a counterveiling wariness of assumption and certainty as well as of bias; and a sensitivity to the ‘other’ point of view. (hence the recognition factor in Nussbaum). A degree of respect for and comfort with the messiness, or straightforward inevitability of contradiction, is also helpful in navigating the course materials, as well as an appreciation of the value of dissent. It seems to me there is a lesson there not simply for lawyers or law students-but for all those interested in citizenship and education; and the value of these issues for our democracy where as Nussbaum’s warns :
“It would be catastrophic to become a nation of technically competent people who have lost the ability to think critically, to examine themselves, and to respect the humanity and diversity of others…It is therefore very urgent right now to support curricular efforts aimed at producing citizens who can take charge of their own reasoning, who can see the different and foreign not as a threat to be resisted, but as an invitation to explore and understand, expanding their own minds and their capacity for citizenship.”


Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak a literary critic and theorist who participated in the Cork Caucus on art possibility and democracy devised by the National Sculpture Factory as part of Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture, made the observation that her teaching experience over the past few decades, has firmed up her conviction that education, whether verbal or visual is to teach how to construct the object of knowledge. (Emphasis added)
“Therefore, for me, education is upstream from content. You can change your mind about content more easily than you can change the habit of a mind that makes you build what you know as you do. I also believe this is the only way to share epistemic formations. It is the only way to form a collectivity. I believe further that such formations are nearly always in the nature of unintended consequences. I think this is because education-this teaching how to construct, deliberately or not, the object of knowledge through the arts, through literature, through philosophising-is at best an un-coercive re-arrangement of desires. And yet, the element of persuasion in teaching is not so far from benevolent and patient coercion. That is where the element of surprise, of unintended consequence, of the ‘will have been’ comes in. You must let go so that you can be surprised, because otherwise-and given the educative process itself you cannot- in spite of the best intentions and deliberately non-hierarchical behaviour-you cannot altogether not coerce benevolently.”


I am sure that any of you who has struggled with the certainties of a newly minted law graduate in a Masters class, or the lifelong banker or tax inspector in an evening class, know what I mean-sowing the seeds of doubt in a mind that has been well schooled in a particular fashion is not an easy task-but a worthwhile one when it works! The height of my own success was when an elderly retired bank manager, a student in evening law having listened to me opine and occasionally rant over the course of a four year evening degree, with Introduction to the legal system (which I transformed into feminism 101); followed by criminal law where there was copious reference to MacKinnon and Dworkin (Andrea); through to the law of evidence (lots of terrorism) and labour law (more equality), he finally said to me after those four years of togetherness: “ I suppose there is another way of looking at things-you’re not right mind, but I see there is another way.” Success!


The LLM course I now teach focussing on the partiality of legal construction (at trial) and how terrorism and criminal justice interact explores that view. It forces students to think about what thinking like a lawyer means. It does so in an attempt not just simply to have them ‘un learn’ what they know but to explore how we might challenge the lawyer-or law student- perspective by looking at things differently –and at different things. The limits of the past affect how we see the present (Douzinas) as the role of art is often to force imaginings where reasoning will not go (McCann). The trial as the most visible (though not real as experienced-hence symbolic) aspect of the legal structure serves admirably as the locus of an inquiry into how such a framework constructs the past through the present while influencing the future. The result is illusion (not to say elusive) in its resemblance not at all to ‘what really happened’, but it constructs/decides/identifies for us what is truth, fairness, justice even just as it nominates who we are and who are other(s). In that sense the trial becomes a kind of moral compass for our lives.


Dame Sian Elias (CJ New Zealand) in the 8th Sir David Williams lecture 16 May 2008 on ‘Taking rights seriously’ makes what she terms a pratical point with some relevance here:
“…a critical role played out by law in our societies is as a method of argumentation. ....Expression of values which bear on the outcome promotes understanding and participation. Now this is not a claim for a process based theory of the Constitution, it is a more modest and practical point for the explanation of constitutional law through common law method and real controversies is valuable in itself”.


Our method is part of what we do and teach in legal education, and part of our contribution to the public is the training of lawyers- in a form of argumentation and consideration which exposes them to the other point of view-enabling them to empathise with the other, represent the other point of view, articulate from the narrative imagination.


How does this tale relate to the public role of academic lawyers –outside of that which is involved in the education and training of our students many of whom will become lawyers? Here I want to turn to focus on and within the University, considering the nature of the academy within which we work and our students learn.


(2) Nature of the academy
There is a parallel process of challenging our own disciplines and that of the structures within which we work- or there should be.
Kathy Lahey whom I quoted when delivering the UCC Annual Equality lecture many years ago wrote about tenure expounding the view that we should pass it to that ‘irritating young person down the hall’. While I am conscious that I am no longer that irritating young person (though the adjective still may have credence!), within our discipline of law the narrative of my own work reveals an interesting truth:
For years I focussed on the crime of rape -the choice an obvious perhaps even a stereotypical one you might say. Reform of the law on rape focussed initially on how it is named and defined-anatomical constraints etc-a very male point of view.(Andrea Dworkin-what bits go where in case we’d get it wrong)
Engagement with and of activists became part of that narrative and the long struggle that led legislatively to rape being on the legislative floor twice in Ireland in the decade 1980-90 (manifesting Carol Smart’s giving power to law)
The reality of course was that of the change in the law-the nomenclature-not working to effect what was wished for-a more effective method of investigation prosecuting and judging this crime perpetrated against (predominantly) women. The reason why requires uncovering the hidden truths of the male narrative-that of the power of adjudication in translation-the narrative that would be believed and recognised by the system of police prosecutors and juries-the importance of a story that has cultural resonance and recognition in a way that marginal stories of existence sometimes do not (the date rape scenario for example). These issues were ones of credibility-legal assumptions and rules about same (corroboration) and assessments and barriers to relevance-past sexual history having something to say about consent for example.
The court room and trial narrative-cross examination and the factual context-and therefore belief-on the part of the jury are powerful layers here. The judge and jury will ultimately endorse a story which they recognise as true and society will comfortably mark as unacceptable behaviour which it already knows is-and so the pattern is circular and the voice which attempts to challenge that is silenced.
Hence my interest now in the underbelly of the criminal justice system-the way allegations get turned into truths and fact finding a creative and interpretive process. So how is this tale which might be described as a tale of misdirected energies limited effect and hence defeat, reflected in particular in University hierarchy where some of us occasionally find ourselves?
If you have ever felt the real conversation is being held elsewhere-or that once you are on the Committee the really important meeting is held before that committee meets, I think you are probably part of that community of voices that don’t get heard in the corridors of power. One of course needs critical mass to change narrative/challenge assumption & truths. You also need bravery on the parts of those there not simply to buy into the assumptions and presumptions of truth that about-nor indeed the ready roles you will be given! Challenging a narrative in a powerful way sometimes involves embracing the ‘other’. In my area of interest Justice Catherine McGuinness did this powerfully in my view when in constructing ’fairness’ she pointed out it was just as unfair to assume credence on the part of an allegation of a historical claim of sex abuse, as it had been to automatically disbelieve rape victims. That alternative narrative she endorsed there offered a genuine alternative perspective and is in that sense a ‘game changer’.
The challenge for us is how in our universities to have the hierarchies know that same effect.
Kathleen Hall terms 'a new politics of knowledge' the "…setting the perameters for how we think about the purposes of education and is silencing alternative forms of politics, educational visions and expertise by challenging their usefulness, relevance or scientific rigor".
This is significant because defining what is 'relevant' 'useful' or 'credible' knowledge-or what delivers limits our view:
To quote Hall again in the context of education:
"This discourse is producing not only strategies for improving education, but the boundaries of what remains outside-unspoken, unspeakable, and unthinkable-within the terms of this debate. Fundamental questions about the purposes and politics of education and its relation to the common good cannot be easily formulated within a system orchestrated by the logic of calculation and of measuring outcomes and results. What matters is what works, it is said. Yet is knowing what works all that matters?"
The old humanities idea after all was that knowledge is capable of being its own end (Cardinal Newman). In terms society and influencing public policy, I would suggest that the public interest dimension to the academic endeavour is key. To quote from Kathleen Lynch in a recent paper presented to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) where she reminds us that Universities and other higher education institutions have justified public funding for their activities on the grounds that they serve the public good:
"[Universities and other higher education institutions] have traded on the Enlightenment inheritance that they are the guardians and creators of knowledge produced for the greater good of humanity in its entirety."
Some such as Wang speak of 'the decline of the Humanities as a precursor to its likely collapse in the not too distant future'.
This decline Wang says "…signifies more than the disintegration of the institution itself. Rather it represents the demise of the idea of the University as such. The idea that intellectual inquiry is worth pursuing in its own right has been not only a justification of the existence of the Humanities, but the very foundation upon which the entire edifice of the University rests…Unless the current trend is stopped…higher education will sooner or later cease to be an institution informed by intellectual autonomy; instead it will become an appendage of corporations, a place of professional and technical training tailored to the needs of industry and commerce. If this indeed comes to pass, it will perhaps be only in museums that future generations will find out what the University was once like. The farewell to the Humanities, for which we have been prepared step by step, will thus be farewell to the very idea of the University."
Lieberwitz has identified commercialisation of the University as a crisis for higher education:
"Commercialisation of the University is a crisis for higher education. By bringing market models into the core university research and teaching functions, universities have damaged their mission to serve the public. Crucial to the integrity of the university is the independence of faculty and the university from private financial interests, including those of corporate donors. This long standing principle …has been linked to the value of faculty academic freedom to pursue research and teaching that breaks new ground and challenges the status quo. These well-internalized academic values have created a strong presumption against the legitimacy of university commercial activities, given the contradiction between the university's public mission and the private good of the market"


Even though this may appear too ‘far fetched’ for the Irish academy, just consider the following:
• Proliferation of industry & university collaboration on research the recent Forfas prioritization exercise being a case in point.
• The power of the science paradigm in research. This is now since last week exacerbated by the merger of IRCHSS and IRSET risking loss of autonomy, dedicated funding streams for AHSS and law and social scientists diverting energies into 'collaborative' (funded- science identified with law as a policy implications 'add-on') research, neglecting other areas of enormous public interest (or none at all).


• Measurement (under the guise of accountability). RIS 'measurement/peer review may mean research similarly (mis)constructed. Citation indeces (and counting) may threaten public dissemination of research. Wang brings home the implications of this process of measurement (in which we are already involved, not to say complicit) and its implications for our disciplines:
"…one's position in the academic hierarchy has little to do with the "what" of one's work but everything to do with the "where", and the "where"- whether one publishes in prestigious journals or obscure ones-is determined not by whether one's scholarship provides original insights into important intellectual issues, but by how visible one has managed to become by following academic trends or by "subverting" them here and (535) there within the broad parameters of these trends. The determining factor, in other words, is not so much the intellectual choice and treatment of the subject matter as the relative standing of the venue of one's publications: so long as one publishes with the prestigious academic presses and journals, one's publications are "excellent"."


• Time (loss of the sabbatical) in a high teaching load environment where our disciplines may be treated as the cash cow of the Universities, threatening the solitary scholarly monograph (which takes time but breaks new ground). A mention also of the 'disappearing' academic- when one looks at the staff statistics and profiles in our institutions, it is striking how many are not traditional academics but research staff whose tenure may well be related to a certain grant or centre. Moreover the increased 'casualisation' of academic staff caused by the ECF, moves us away from academic tenure which Lieberwitz identifies succintly and powerfully with the heart of the academy :
"The tenure system creates a foundation to support the values promoted by academic freedom: free expression of controversial ideas-theories; experimentation with new research agendas; teaching that challenges majority views; disagreement regarding university policies; full collegial debates on academic decisions, including curricular development and peer reviews; participation in faculty self governance bodies such as faculty senates and policy committees and public statement concerning social issues."


These concerns need a voice. I might suggest ours because legal academics don't need a client-unlike their practitioner friends. They explore similar issues but with a broader brush, a different angle– that can be the public role (in part at least) of the academic lawyer.


(3) The research and educational environment.
A Shared project: Reconstituting 'public interest' at the heart of the academy and our research infrastructure


One of the interests we share in the humanities and social science and one that is critical for the future is precisely that of research which is driven by no agenda other than curiosity, acknowledges no standard except excellence, and aims at an understanding and contextual appreciation of the ‘grand challenges’ facing human existence. Addressing these questions at a critical time for university education and society in Ireland, is part of an endeavour which links our research and teaching, ensuring a quality future where teaching is not 'hived off' as a secondary, ill resourced, cash generating activity to bolster more expensive research activities elsewhere. By linking the two and making it integral to our methodology we will do our students a favour by ensuring they are not badly served, we will also secure the future of our discipline within the academy and our own. We will also challenge the orthodoxy that research is something performed by great teams in a lab at great expense to be promulgated by a select few in peer reviewed esoteric publications with no communication to the general public either feasible or desirable. It will meet head on any tendency to reallocate university budgets from arts social sciences business and law to subsidise science and engineering. But it does something more in insisting that the sum of knowledge is not quantifiable or manifest in technical tools or widgets, that the solution to all our ills (including jobs) is not in science and technology-and asserts that the really important line of inquiry may be the one not predetermined by a programme of funding but a scholar looking at the margins-turning things around, reading things backwards perhaps. The space for those contributions formed part of the European Horizon 20:20 discussions in the aftermath of the green paper which I attended in the British Academy in London, where it was acknowledged by our own Maire Geoghegan Quinn the relevant European Commissioner that the ‘grand challenges’-like climate change or security for example are not just to be solved and addressed by science. That is an important fissure in the straightened assumptions heretofore and we need to broaden that aperture and get in there. It needs reflection and repetition nationally where the new ‘research Council’ will need a strong HSS input and presence.




Barrett already questions"[t]he dilution of the higher education subsidy, by universities placing undergraduates in large class sizes and the downgrading of undergraduate lecturing by universities to cross subsidise other activities…[which is]...seriously open to question from the perspectives of taxpayers, students and the wider society."


Universities have transformed over recent times into powerful corporate networks, whose public values have been seriously challenged. Lynch's conclusion is that
"[t]he university operates in a complex cultural location in many respects. It is at the one time a product of cultural practice and a creator of culture; it is a powerful interest and a creator of interests. There is a sense in which its intellectual independence is always at risk, given its reliance on external funding from many sources, and yet its history grants it the capability to reclaim its own independence (Delanty 2001). To maintain its independence, the university needs to declare its distance from powerful interest groups, be these statutory, professional or commercial. It must not only do this rhetorically but also constitutionally. Maintaining a critical distance from the institutions of power is vital if one is to protect the public interest role of the university".


Liberwitz makes a similar point, that " [a]s Universities take on the identity of commercial corporations they may lose their unique position in society as institutions trusted to engage in independent research for the public good."














Our aspiration for the academy has to be a framework for securing traditional (and still important) disciplines as well as new emergent ones, which involves scholars and students engaging with the construction of the public interests. Internationally the identification of the issues and the questions which will be funded under Horizon 2020 and future programmes, are and will be significant for us. We have things to say about the grand challenges such as the sustainable society and security from crime, that are greater than the sum of the technocrats’ ability to design ever more sophisticated surveillance or tracking devices for instance. The importance of preserving space for research guided by the ground up-not programmatic-individual inquiry and alternative narratives is vital here in the public interest. Nationally for Ireland, it is important to have the architecture and capacity for research in the Arts Humanities and Social Science (including business & law) which will allow us to stay on and influence that European field. The merger of the IRCHSS and IRSET into a new conjoined research council undoubtedly weakens that structure, unless we are very careful indeed to preserve the autonomy and funding streams within what emerges. The legacy of the celtic tiger for many of those disciplines including law, for instance, that is often forgotten or unacknowledged, is the body of newly or recently minted PhD graduates who were IRCHSS scholars, many of them who had opportunities in this country well beyond previous generations’ imaginings. They are the intellectual capital of this economy and society.
At the national European level we need to claim the relevance of our disciplines to the grand challenges by addressing issues that are central to AHSS. In terms of engagement with the University as a whole we need to be part of a community of scholars central to the academy and committed to public interest and the cultivation- and on occasion- of dissent within the academy and research.
Law has over the past 30 years in the academy in Ireland exhibited a transformative capacity, as celebrated by the IALT last night. I believe that leaves us well placed to do more outside that place of ours – and that for the sake of the public that we should. Having moved outside my comfort zone of the Law Faculty in UCC (still my true home), I can offer some perspective on that and also a minor health warning connected with my own experience of now being on the margins out there and how that feels. Here I quite like a quote from Tony Judt in The memory chalet (at p.206-7):
“I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another-where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life
...To be sure there is something self indulgent in the assertion that one is always at the edge, on the margin. Such a claim is only open to a certain kind of person exercising very particular privileges. Most people most of the time would rather not stand out: it is not safe.” (emphasis added)
“But if you are born at intersecting margins and thanks to the peculiar institution of academic tenure-are at liberty to remain there, it seems to me a decidedly advantageous perch: what should they know of England who only England know?”

The Value of Arts Humanities & Social Science Research

It has been a busy time of the academic year with conferrings –graced by former graduates as speakers extolling the virtues of a liberal arts and social sciences education- and the launch of a research showcase month in the College, which highlights the research activities ongoing in the College and launches a research website and a brochure full of activities: workshops, conferences, summer schools and seminars.

There has never been a more important time to mark the significance of research within the College, as in the national context we await the Forfas prioritisation report which may have implications for the amount of research funding made available for AHSS. Given that as noted in a recent opinion piece in the Irish Times (July 2^nd 2011), by Professor John Kelly that over the period 2005-2009 some €1.35 billion of public money was spent on research in our universities, with : “85 per cent allocated to the disciplines in sciences, 8 per cent to engineering and 7 per cent to other, mostly arts, disciplines”, it is notable that a total of 93 per cent of public research monies thus went to so-called STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), with the remaining 7 per cent distributed amongst AHSS (arts, humanities and social sciences) disciplines.

Consideration of the national research spend is inevitable at a time of fiscal restraint, but it needs to take cognisance of the fact that research monies to date, both from the state and from private industry sources, are more readily available to the sciences than to arts, humanities and social sciences. That is not to deny the costliness or underestimate the value of scientific endeavour, but rather to emphasise the often obscured reality that arts, humanities and social sciences, while benefiting from neither a large pot of available public monies in the national arena, nor from funds from certain industries (e.g. pharmaceutical), have performed very well in international competitions such as those for research funding in Europe. Additionally in Ireland, these disciplines have attracted, and graduated, large numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate students, especially PhDs. They are pivotal to our national strategy for economic recovery in terms of the cultural and historical economy, and international recruitment into education. That this has been achieved with proportionally little investment, and where the return is considerable, in terms of both employment (of postdoctoral fellows and researchers) and leveraging of European funding, has to be taken into account in any debate on research strategy.

The current Forfás exercise on research prioritisation brings government policy on research into sharp focus. There is an apprehension —perhaps unspoken— that research investment will be seen as a mechanism to simply input monies into certain industries. This could happen if all or proportionally most of government funding for research goes into certain identified areas. Furthermore, an economic model of research which equates the latter with commercialisation and employment and which only values applied research is mistaken and dangerous. In this respect the academic communities of sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences would agree that such an approach at the very least will ensure that once blue skies research is no longer being carried out, there will be little to be applied. There must be space for blue skies research in all disciplines, and the autonomy of scholars individually and /or collectively to pursue ideas must be fostered since such autonomy is key to innovation, imagination and progress. The view that any government prioritisation exercise is, or can be, the whole story when it comes to research or research funding, must be rejected, and any dialogue whereby innovation is limited to applied and commercialised research criticised. Indeed, one might also challenge the wisdom of the government deciding to prioritise what will probably be the same areas as every other country in the world,  and choosing to do so using the very limited methodology of simply building on past research success .  After all, where the next ‘big idea’ will come from is not yet known, but it is  unlikely to emerge from those already well-trodden fields. It is more likely that the next ‘big idea’ idea will emerge from the cracks between disciplines.

Ironically, in an era when much lip service is paid to the cross disciplinary and interdisciplinary initiatives, attention to the methodology whereby such scholars talk to and work with each other is fairly scant. Countries which provide structures to support this work and which make provisions to encourage emerging or early-career scholars  to work in these areas will have an inbuilt advantage in future research and discovery. Hunt, in its rejection of hyper-specialisation at an early stage of higher education and a valuing of deep disciplinary foundations, contains a similar message which also must be echoed in research policy and in the later stages of education. As the HEA/IRCHSS report Playing to our strengths (at p17)  notes: “…the expectation that SET research is best suited to ‘create jobs’ is to misunderstand what drives creativity in the first place and understates the importance of AHSS as well as the underlying importance of generic skills in promoting innovation and productivity. ,,,[W]hile the AHSS provide skills for specific occupations and sectors which contribute directly to economic sustainability, they also enhance quality of life and help to make Ireland an attractive place to live, work and do business.”

There is also an additional societal dividend in terms of the ensuring a sustainable society and democracy which merits attention. The focus of academic inquiry and the methodology of our arts humanities and social science scholars has much to offer, not simply in terms of input to public discourse and debate, but in terms of methodology and approach. Despite the occasional lip-service paid to the world of knowledge by politicians in the context of the knowledge economy and society, the recent economic crisis and the focus on utility and transformation of ideas into commercial ideas may often make short shrift of the value of a more traditional approach to knowledge. The latter is one that prefers an ability to critically appraise information and subject the certainties of the moment to analysis in a long-term framework to the dictates of a particular vision of the ‘smart economy’. The ability to articulate and give expression to a dissenting view is exactly what we need as politicians, policy makers and citizens.  Indeed, the failure to do precisely that and to challenge the prevailing consensus may well have been the harbinger of our current difficulties. To forestall any reoccurrence, we therefore need to look to those skills of reflection and analysis and have the courage to dissent and foster an education system which hones them. That means fostering the arts humanities and social sciences in our universities and institutes of higher learning by embedding them more generally in the curriculum across the disciplines (precisely as envisaged in Hunt and Playing to our strengths). In this way we can ensure that the skills in those areas are represented in decision making and policy in all areas and at all levels in our society.

We need to extend a welcome in the College to those students who are now entering the first year of our courses, where the disciplines explore how we might challenge perspective by looking at things differently –and at different things. We need to ensure those disciplines remain central to our educational mission, and enrich the educational opportunities offered to all our graduates by ensuring that the influence of the liberal arts in education are not confined to students registering for such courses.

 There is an important opportunity here in research policy and education to carry the ‘richness’ of the some of the traditions Ireland claims as its own on the world stage, and mark their general and global significance by making them central to our educational and research mission. Showcasing our research is a first step in that process.

Customisation or the freedom to wander.

I recently spent a Monday at the Royal Irish Academy listening to the new Minister for Education’s speech on third level and the implementation of the Hunt report. It was an interesting meeting-the Minister stayed for the first discussion session- and striking for the opportunity on the day to engage, particularly the invitation from the Minister for future engagement (which we should embrace), as well as the number and variety of contributors including those of student leaders, as well as quite a number of retired academic staff (in some cases retired Presidents). Of course retired staff may be best placed to dissent and so comment on how things might be without feeling the constraints of living within-though naturally that could also well cut both ways! The occasion marked however the beginning of a dialogue which it is important we have, and it was good that the commitment to continue to engage was evident and manifest on the part of those within the institutions (staff and students) as well as those including policy makers outside. The most damning contribution on the day, however, in my view came from the Students’ Union education officer who claimed that if you removed the University crest or logo from all the course descriptions in our Universities, you would then be unable to tell them apart, so similar are they in content. An indictment of our similarity of mission perhaps, or of the homogenisation of our institutions as we attempt to customise what programmes we offer to the generally held view of what is relevant or necessary?  Let us hope that in any event this conversation with the Minister continues and involves not just preaching to the converted but includes many more new voices-particularly those who are on the ground delivering in our institutions of higher education, who are best placed to offer challenges to our curriculum and celebrate the appropriate distinctiveness in our missions thereby justifying our autonomy.

I reflected on this as I read last Sunday Observer’s article on Google and the feature they now offer, since December 2009 (news to me I admit) whereby what one gets when one ‘googles’ something is not the same response as for everyone else, though the query might well be identical. This is because Google, based on information they already have (from previous searches etc.) will have filtered, pre defined or selected what that person might like or be interested in. This was the subject of a recent talk given by Ell Pariser at TED where he argues that the major internet players may therefore be isolating us in our preconceived world views, by adapting what we find to our known tastes and interests. It is a little like Amazon telling you what books you might like, and in that same sense marginally more worrying than the recommendation of a choice of wine you might like from your wine store, or a cheese suggestion from your local market stall. The idea that we are already predictable and known in our habits-that our selection of movies, food and politics is already charted leads to a longing-on my part at least- for the unexpected. I love to discover something unexpected or unknown about someone- when a colleague sells concert tickets for instance and you get an insight into their music choice (you know who you are!!)

 All of this musing brings me back to the RIA and resonates with something in the Hunt report which I think should find favour and be welcomed. This is the Hunt report’s recommendation of a movement away from too restrictive or prescriptive course offerings, and endorsement of the ability and facility for students to wander and wonder amongst the broader sweep of subjects, particularly important as part of the first year  in University. Not narrowly focussing simply on what is seen to be ‘of the moment’ or strategically important or economically lucrative is also important throughout the undergraduate experience it seems to me. Hence the importance of an arts degree and of the first year in particular offering –as it does in UCC-a breath and diversity in first year-four subjects-some familiar and some new, from which the student can choose to elect to take to degree level those which are to them the most interesting and challenging.

In a sense it is a plea to allow ourselves and our students not to become (yet) parodies of ourselves-and allow our own instincts and natures to be challenged. As we tailor our reading to what we already know we will like-so our media, for example, is pre-selected to contain certain articles on certain topics (not just from a certain perspective). This can more easily happen if we receive or filter our media on-line- and less likely to occur if we have to hold and pass over all of the pages of a newspaper, so that our eyes might then alight on something we might not otherwise have known or wondered about- in the sports pages perhaps! It is the same when we wander through all of an exhibition in an art gallery, or browse the shelves of a book store or library- allows for the unexpected discovery and avoids a narrowing of life. Just as many of us are familiar with the phenomenon of not understanding how a vote goes a certain way in an election or referendum-because no one we know thinks that way- all of us are guilty of surrounding ourselves with ‘people like us’. So a bit of diversity-a chance to choose-a facility for an unexpected encounter in first year with a subject or a lecturer hitherto unknown is all the sweeter because it is unexpected and should be treasured. Our learning and curricular structures should allow for that unexpected something to happen, should avoid the customised route and our personal mission should also be to make it harder for Google to read us- be a little contrarian in nature.  As we have noticed nationally recently, some of that goes a long way.

Irish Identities

It has been a week when identities and Irish identities in particular have been the subject of much comment consideration-at home and abroad-and also a cause thankfully of celebration. It has been uplifting in a way which we have not seen in Ireland for a while and in UCC we had a small piece of that with the Queen’s visit to Tyndall, as we will have an ongoing connection with the visit of President Obama through the ongoing Frederick Douglass project. The connection of identities with many of our disciplines in CACSSS and the recent development of the exciting link in Irish Studies with Notre Dame and opportunities of exchange of our postgraduates, leads to the question of how we should best mark our College’s engagement with this issue. Here the College owes a great deal to Dr Jean Van Sindern Law who brokered the deal with Notre Dame identifying both a potential sponsor and the partner College; the President of UCC who championed the issue as part of his NYC visit and Prof Pat Coughlan who ably represented the College on that visit, articulating the case for Irish Studies eloquently as you might expect; but as you may not appreciate along the way (at the Ireland fund dinner no less) meeting both Mohammad Ali & Enda Kenny!! -All in a day's work for an English Prof.!

Next week will also see the celebration of the honorary conferring in UCC which will in part mark the generous support of scholarship within the University and the College. It is therefore timely and appropriate to reflect on the engagement of people on a worldwide scale with Irish identities and its themes, and ponder how they might best be connected with what happens in our College and made aware of our scholarship and expertise. (Also I confess that Jean asked me about this, and I do feel we owe her!)

I think what is exciting about the project of Irish identities in UCC is the opportunity it offers for people to appreciate what we offer in this area in UCC (particularly -but not exclusively- in CACSSS). It will facilitate first an engagement with these issues initially on line, perhaps leading some to later follow up with a visit to our campus while on holiday; then progressing to take a taster course or attend a summer school; resulting in someone sending a student-or enrolling themselves in a MA. The potential is huge. Our audience is literally anyone who wishes to engage with the issues we are researching and studying-and here it is significant that we remember, as Bill Clinton reminded us recently on St Patrick’s Day, what we are good at.- In our case as a University it is research and education- manifest in learning, thinking and our engagement with ideas. The UCC Irish identities project can and should showcase our expertise-the books we author; the projects we research; the conferences we host;- but it should also do more and allow that engagement to develop by facilitating a living dialogue or conversation if you will on Irish identities with academics working in the area at its core. Making that connection between the academics researching and exploring the issue –which is what we are about as a University- and the interested public, should be central to all our endeavours and at the heart of the public face of the University.  -Whether this is manifest through engaging with our archives; our collections; interpreting for others and communicating what we have discovered-and what we are about-what we possess (digitisation of our collections here is key)-what we write and have written and are writing-what collective seminars and dialogues we might publicise-it will all further flourish through creating a ‘live’ intellectual space through which people find out about Irish identities, and engage with the scholars at its core. This is a golden opportunity to bring the atmosphere and excitement of the lecture theatre and seminar room in UCC onto a global stage.

To give a concrete example of how this might happen. Those teaching on the MA in Irish Studies might decide to offer a forum around the themes being explored as part of that programme whereby students on the MA reflect on and articulate what they are doing and why; explore what they are learning, and academics comment and opine. It could both serve to highlight the fact that interested people can further engage with issues such as these through the MA, as well as act as a ‘live’ learning journal for those students. There may be other and much better ideas-but common to them should be an engagement in a dialogue that is current and living. So to answer Jean's question, that is what I think we need and what CACSSS will be happy in co-operation with you and others to provide.

Source of power on campus?

A conversation recently with someone unfamiliar with UCC included the question where the source of power was-perhaps unsurprising as academic institutions can be particularly opaque to the uninitiated. I was of course unable to say, and asked merely that if they found it they let me know. As I have been someone who often felt that as soon as I was on a committee the decisions happened at the pre-meeting, I am not often surprised at an inability to discover where an actual decision is taken. This may frighten those who think college heads have power, (and reassure others who hope they do not), but it illustrates a general point that the really interesting meetings and decisions are often not in the obvious fora but elsewhere. In fact that realisation -when I noticed the small attendance at College Assembly meetings- was in part the inspiration behind this blog-and reflects a fact which I should have known from my own research, which is that what is really interesting and significant happens on the margins-the periphery. I have always used this to argue for and examine the centrality of emergency legisaltion in the criminal process, so I should not have been surprised that in my role as college head the headiest and most insightful experiences would be outside regular stuctures.
And so to some of the interesting 'off site' meetings i.e. outside structures and so possibly invisible if you were that martian looking for the source of power and decision:
the College 'forfas' rountable discussion on research themes where real intellectual robustness and creativity was displayed by all present in an exciting clash of ideas at times-which did lead somewhere in terms of identification of themes for that process (however flawed);
the College school recruitment committees with staff expressing great and innovative ideas about promoting our courses & in particular the BA;
and roundtable discussions regarding the MA in Irish Studies where I am learning a lot and those participating are showing great patience (with me) as well as good humour and energy in planning that academic programme.
In the institution itself it is also true that the 'big ideas' will be on the margins: -between disciplines perhaps in small isolated offices or emergent in conversations over coffee between scientists and arts/humanities people, and that it is these that will change our education and research. Rarely will the oft mentioned 'innovation' happen in a committe or indeed a structured meeting. The one exception and occasion when ideas that challenge and will change our world emerge in a structured way -and not infrequently but with great regularity- is in the lecture theatre and class room, and they were perhaps my best and favourite moments of this term, when occasionally I saw my students exited by ideas, and literally bursting to articulate them. Like all academics it is that which keeps me going-that is where the real action and power on campus lies. Everything else we do whether as college heads or elsewhere should be to support that learning process. It is those revolutions of thought that will change our worlds, and so that is where the true power is and should be on campus.

Dear Minister: A letter to the new Minister for Education

A meeting with American High School counsellors this week and with a visiting Vice President for racial diversity sparked conversation and so reflection on what the Arts Humanities and social sciences offer the world at this moment in time, and what in particular the Irish context offers of value to that realm. The American counsellors were concerned about the fact that fewer students in the US are now choosing to study the humanities in College, opting instead for business and professional courses. As this is the topic of  Martha Nussbaum's upcoming lecture to be hosted by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and social sciences which I chair this coming Friday, I was curious to pursue this a little and establish what then the counsellors thought might attract their students to Ireland. I was informed that just as they will opt go to Milan to study fashion, these American students who have a global view of opportunity might come to Ireland to study say, literature. In addition as the VP for diversity informed me, American universities are now very conscious that global citizenship is very much part of their mission in education, and so American schools and educational institutions are -lately-coming to that view of the importance of internationalisation.
Well here's a thought-we have long been a nation that reached outwards and understood in the educational context the importance of so doing. Our exchange programmes-early Erasmus initiatives in Europe, and US links- have been forged and joint degrees and programmes now charaterise offerings in all our higher education institutions. As we are once again in the grip of emigration, but this time it is our graduates who are leaving-direct from the University campuses in many cases, thus taking their skills and our intellectual capital investment if you like with them, why do we not think of a way in which we can make that journey a rewarding one for them and for us? They are currently being warmly welcomed by states such as Canada, and although some fledgling efforts are made to engage graduates in training on some programmes while abroad, there is not enough, and nothing like the support that exists under Socrates and preceeded it under Erasmus to support undergraduate programmes. It was the latter in part which helped forge the strong links now exisiting in Ireland with EU instutions which are the envy of our American visitors, and which strengthen collaborative bids for international research funding opportunities thereby enhancing our research and development capacity. Can we not now find some mechanism to support initiatives which might harnass the capacity of our young bright graduates for their and our sake, by ensuring that their travelling abroad is enriching for them and for us, rather than leaving them to the vagaries of chance and opportunity? Instead of settling for snowboarding in Canada or waitering in Australia (though not to dismiss the value of either), why not ensure that they can also choose to be part of a programme of work opportunity and learning (new skills and acquiring foreign languages perhaps) -or of further training and work in their areas which enriches their CV; provides a safer passage and transition which will ease their families anxiety; and provides a possible route back here to the benefit of employers nationally and so our society and economy? Ensuring that this is a nationally sponsored government initiative -jointly perhaps with higher educational institutions- might deliver on a number of things:

• keep the talent and so profit from the expenditure already invested in the young educated of the country within the Higher Education Institutions at a time when restricted recruitment constrains our campuses, thereby ensuring the lifeblood of our academic staff is not depleted and the undergraduate curriculum fed with the direct and cutting edge of research
• ensure that some of those who do go abroad upskill and do so in a strategic manner which will ultimately assist the economy and society here on their return-by planning for that departure and ensuring some will return with certain skills acquired rather than leaving this to happenstance and luck
• walk the walk as well as talking the talk of this country as being a place that fosters youth and education that values ideas and creativity and does not put all of its money in the stratjacket of applied learning and vocational education, thereby submerging the imaginations of its young and not so young.-For as so often has been the case in the past -the really great idea that will help us emerge from this mess-the big idea -will be found in the least expected or anticipated place. But it will be fostered by what has always fostered great research and ideas-breadth of opportunity, and space, as well as the ability and opportunity to piece together things that might previously have been kept apart. That freedom is what scholars share worldwide as a value-it is what is common to both science and art-it is what should guide our education policy and opportunity now. It is what mandates that we keep some of our youngest and brightest connected to home.

So how about it Minister Quinn?

Austerity off campus-profits on campus?

This week I had lunch with the International Education office and a visitor from a strategic partner in the US. It was a working lunch and obviously hemmed in between other meetings and as was probably most convenient on this occasion on campus, but as I had seen a new initiative on campus offering lunch at the Glucksman Gallery & I am a great fan of same, I asked the College staff to change the venue to the Glucksman. I was informed on return just before lunch that we were not going to the Glucksman as we could not go there -or rather could but only if we also paid for the lunch in the staff rest as well (or we could of course send another group of people to the staff rest to eat it!). I fumed silently, but as it was too late to do otherwise, went along with the original booking.

Now a number of points-

1.       The ‘designated’ lunch was not in accordance with any special menu as if it were it would have included a vegetarian option (which I (semi) am-(I eat fish)) but the starter option was in fact meat -so I had bread.

2.       Surely we should be able in good time to cancel like anyone else-if say I reserve a table in Cafe P-there will be waiter service & yet if I cancel do I pay?—I think not. This is not to say anything against the service in the staff rest which was charming and efficient as ever –just to question the management message here to regular and good customers.

3.       In addition I regularly sign requisitions for staff to use research monies etc., to for example entertain people- often those with a particular dietary requirement- off hours & off campus. Is this a useful use of my time or theirs where they obviously have the funds and have decided it is an important initiative?

On the bigger picture do we as an Institution not have a commitment to assist the local economy-not just the one on our immediate campus?  Does it occur to people that it might sometimes be useful to showcase to our guests the wonderful hinterland of the University? I know we do in many other ways, but the means of doing it through traditional hospitality in our local culture is closed off as an option. Whenever I have travelled abroad to Universities, part of the hospitality involved showcasing their local city & its hostelries. I have happy memories for example of a meal in downtown St Louis with international staff and students (albeit with a rather shaky taxi ride home from Joel who picked up en route a musician friend who needed his medicine-another story!) which led to a successful and ongoing student exchange.  As a nation known for its hospitality and Cork a city with a reputation as a gourmet capital what are we doing? Our current austerity measures-or cost cutting as it is euphemistically called-arguably only serves to ensure that the captive campus market for catering is probably the only growth industry in the country!! Yet I am not entirely sure that what must be an increased market (with lower costs) has resulted in obvious price reductions? However even if I am not correct there, should this ban on off campus/preference for on campus hospitality (which is certainly not specifically stated to be based on cost) not go? Any views?

 Another small point-given the week that is in it-is it not fantastic to see former President Mary Robinson sitting on the floor in Chad with a women’s group (Sunday’s Observer newspaper magazine)?  Showing the admirable resilience, idealistic commitment and true pioneering and leadership spirit that is her hallmark, and not always found in former Presidents, and sporting rather unpresidential looking socks, the picture so marvellously understated and accidental in its revelation reminds us of what it is great about being Irish and what is important about leadership and sister power! Happy international women’s day!

Celebrating the importance of Art(s)

The most interesting email I got this week was one from Christopher Clarke of the Glucksman asking for my piece on the drawing that hangs over my desk-a Michael Quane drawing which depicts a male figure in a gymnastic leap. In true Morris Zapp mode it occurred to me that I might use that request and comply with it also populating my (lonely-is there anyone out there?!) blog with the same said piece.-(Indeed surely this kind of reutilisation or recycling deserves particular credit in a research publications world where numbers, hits and citation indices are the flavour of the moment?) The drawing arrived when I requested some for the CACSSS offices on taking up the post as Head of College. My aim was to brighten the place up, but aside from painting the wall in the social area purple-the College colour- I was arguably not very successful in this mission, in that the large painting that now hangs outside my office – a figure with its back turned which I quite like- was relegated there as it was judged too depressing by the staff in the office –who quite wisely pointed out to me that it was not very inviting for students....

The collection of paintings which included the Michael Quane drawing, came from those available in the Glucksman collection & in that sense were pre selected or chosen for me, but I picked the Quane drawing for my office from the selection proffered, as I have always liked his sculpture pieces which grace the President’s garden. It is a quiet but powerful drawing and although I might have had bolder more colourful pieces in mind when I first moved into my office, perhaps this quieter more sombre depiction  symbolises what is more apt (& realistic) for me to aspire to as Head the College-reflective I hasten to add not of my strength of ambition for the College as a whole, but perhaps of the pace of change. However as I reported to College this Monday, we did get a return of monies from ‘moderation’ recently (reversing that strange practice whereby monies are passed from one side of University (ours) to the other to subsidise activities (theirs)). That return is truly a change, and a cause for celebration-though only what is just, and just, I trust, a beginning!

But I digress. To return to the drawing, I like the rough appearance of the texture of the paper -proving Ruscha’s point that background is important. I also like the lines, strong, powerful, visible and yet with the figure not overly drawn but still in formation. It is a muscular drawing-some might say very masculine but I don’t think so- certainly full of movement but graceful, depicting both beauty and strength, much as a ballet movement might. I often look at it during the day-glancing upwards from the lines on my laptop and it gives me pause and refreshment, which is something that changes the day-or can do. The aesthetic environment in which we work is an important part of our lives, and in UCC we are lucky in the institution to which we belong where the campus is a beautiful one, and I have been struck since I moved from one end of the campus to the centre how the architecture of learning, worship and play work so well there together, blending both ancient and new.

In an era when we may find ourselves surrounded with very many arguments about the utility and economic value of the arts, which can be admittedly useful, it is important to celebrate it simply for its own sake. In the same way an education and a degree should be an end in themselves-rather than seen as a means to a utilitarian end. That is not to dismiss the importance of a job in these difficult times, but rather to remind ourselves of the important point that the more flexible and adaptive graduates are, the better they will fare in whatever field of endeavour they choose. The recent Hunt report on higher education is welcome in so far as it celebrates and commends flexibility in degrees, and recommends broad choice in first year of University. Certainly courses which open opportunities and are amenable as pathways to a variety of career paths would seem to be the wise choice for the graduates of the future, and in this respect an arts degree has few rivals.

To return to the drawing, there is another point here that merits a mention, one made by Robert Hughes in reflecting on his TV series on art The Shock of the New. He made the point that what the Box can do is show things and tell, but the inaccurate image on the screen is not the real painting, and not a substitute for the real experience of art. There is a point here about the experiential value of education (the campus, the student societies), the importance of place, and of an education which involves presence on a (multicultural and diverse) beautiful campus. That presence (even for a limited time perhaps) has a value for Irish students, and also for visiting students from abroad. It is quite a different experience I imagine, to study Irish theatre when doing it in Ireland, performing it with Irish actors with Irish accents, in the environment which fostered and may explain the subject matter of that play. Understanding the political and legal system and how it forms part of the local culture and interacts with the European mission is also easier when living there, breathing the air-and drinking pints of Guinness as my American Summer school students used to tell me-than simply reading the law and political structure in texts and online. That is a factor concerning place, art and education, which must form a part of any discussions we have regarding online /e-learning and distance education (a topic perhaps for another day).

Like a fish needs a bicycle - Does a Head of College need a blog?

Patricia Williams’ book The Alchemy of Race and Rights- Diary of a Law Professor has always appealed to me, in part because I liked the vision of her sitting in her candlewick dressing gown writing high flying thought about law-and property law in particular which always struck me as a mystery accessible only to a very elite cult of academic lawyers. I also adored her story about how when walking down Fifth Avenue in New York she overhears the parents of a child explain that there is no difference between two dogs-one a slavering wolfhound and one a Pekinese-(such iron clad objectivity in her view confirming them as lawyers)-when the child can clearly see the difference (as can the wolfhound to which the Pekinese looks like a lamb chop!) Being the owner of a Shih Tzu myself, I particularly appreciate the reference to the ‘fox trotty step’ which stops the Pekinese from ever been taken seriously (of course appearances can be deceptive and I know better what steely determination that walk obscures!) All of this is by way of a long winded introduction to the posting of my first blog which I guess is a kind of a diary, but unlike Patricia Williams is not (or not exclusively) in my role as Professor of Law but rather as Head of the College of Arts Celtic Studies & Social Sciences (CACSSS) in University College Cork .  Why in that role and why now? Quite simply because I was struck by a comment at our last Assembly meeting regarding the need to find a creative space in which to communicate with the members of the College and the Assembly/Council, which is too large even to fit in the assigned meeting room- that is if we ever did reach the enviable position where all 300+ members would want to attend! That fact combined with a feeling of being unable to reach or communicate with very many of the members and staff of the College since I was appointed Head of College in October last. Many people cannot or do not -for whatever reason- attend College meetings, which would have been my anticipated forum for discussion, and that has led me reflect on how I might better communicate with such a large and diverse grouping as exists within this College on matters of ongoing interest or concern. In this I am conscious of, and driven by,the need to harness the wealth and talent there lies within the College-and hear the different, divergent and dissenting views which should inform my decisions as Head of College. There has never been a more important time for the Arts Humanities & Social Sciences to collectively combine wisdom ideas and insight into how our research and educational mission might influence the University locally and nationally, as well as contribute to public policy, national dialogue on educational and cultural affairs, and the curriculum offered to our students and graduates. If this blog provides such a forum for such ideas, that is success. At the very least it should provide a quicker means of engaging with colleagues than perhaps than a physical ‘tour’ around all the schools and their premises -though I will not exclude the possibility of doing that either, and admit the latter might well have the additional merit and similar effect as that fondly recalled by my colleague the Inspector of prisons Judge Kinlen on our visiting Cork prison that the smell of fresh paint (like the Queen) greeted him on every occasion!

I am also conscious, though by no means a techie, that it is the technology that will enable us to reach other audiences-with our research, our programmes-recruitment wise and for collaboration- and which perhaps may even eventually assist us in our educational mission through finding a larger audience for online offerings.  After all Theo Dorgan in his inspirational address to our graduates this winter (which I will upload here if I can manage it) commended our graduates to do so-and Philip King our Alumni award recipient this year celebrates and practices the embracing of technology and its power for the sake of creativity in the arts in West Kerry and around the world.

So is it a good idea for the Head of CACSSS to have a blog? What do you think?

Caroline Fennell