Kevin Myers: Irish academia is dominated by cowards and philistines
TOM Garvin is one of the few academics to contribute clearly and decisively to the intellectual life of this country. A week ago, he nailed the equivalent of Luther's '95 Theses' on to the door that is 'The Irish Times'. In this rightly angry prospectus, he bewailed the power of the colourless apparatchiks who had taken over our campuses: "A grey philistinism has established itself in our universities, under leaders who imagine that books are obsolete, and presumably possess none themselves."
Fine: but how is this substantively different from the way our universities have always been? When government censors banned some 5,000 titles -- as they had by 1956 -- in what way did Irish academic life oppose such philistinism?
It simply didn't. UCD was an academic extension of the archepiscopal palace in Drumcondra; Trinity was an abject, cowering outpost of a beleaguered unionism; UCC and UCG were craven technical colleges that specialised in literacy-&-Catholic conformism; and Maynooth was, of course, the Beyreuth of this Wagnerian tragedy.
The real issue for libertarians is not what people believe, but what is tolerated and, in practice, Irish academic life has generally defended intellectual diversity as much as a consistory of cardinals has cherished voodooism.
Of course, Irish academics will usually declare that they are on the side of the angels. But if anyone ever attempts to prevent an alleged Lucifer from speaking, Irish academics will usually accept Lucifer's subsequent silence as an inexplicable mystery of life. No one devoted to the freedom to dissent has ever entered Irish academic life in the belief that this central and defining liberty would be vigorously defended there.
To be sure, over the years, Irish university cultures have changed. The crude authority of the Catholic Church is gone, and a new commercial ethos -- the one that Garvin so deplores -- largely stands in its stead.
I am only half with him on this: universities that do not relate to commercial realities become sterile, unreal and self-regarding. The great universities -- and they are just about all American -- are both intensely interconnected with big business and yet profoundly dedicated to academic excellence. Harvard Business School is connected by budget, culture and location to Harvard's Department of The Classics, one the foremost such schools in the US. This is not a coincidence.
This doesn't make Harvard immune to all the inanities of our age, as the economist Lawrence H Summers could testify. His academic career was brought to ruins by his suggestion that the differently constructed brains of men and women might be the real reason men outperform women in the upper reaches of organisations. The Summers affair became a major talking point in academic life in the US. What in the name of God would animate Irish academics, other than the issues of pay and tenure?
However, the fate of Larry Summers has one melancholy echo in Irish academic life, where the twin ideologies of feminism and political egalitarianism that scuppered him now share a tripartite sovereignty with the needs of commerce.
The idea of an idea for an idea's sake, free of either ideological or economic function, is almost dead in Irish universities. Indeed, there is -- God help us -- probably more diversity of thought in the Irish media than there is in Irish academic life. And when the first public sceptic towards our prevailing intellectual norms is sacked, or even imprisoned, what will be the response in Irish academic circles?
WE can be reasonably sure that that martyr will not be from a university: Irish academics' innate timidity -- truly their most enduring forte -- would probably be their trusty shield and guard against anything so untoward befalling them. Intellectual courage is as much a characteristic of Irish academe as arm-wrestling is the preferred sport of an oyster bed.
Irish academics have never seriously stood up for freedom of thought or speech at home, whether it was over Section 31 in RTE, or the ludicrous censorship of books and film throughout the history of this State, or threats to individual journalists.
Yes, to be sure, Irish academics can probably be relied on to get a little exercised if the victims of intellectual oppression (and therefore the oppressors) are at least a thousand miles away, and their names all end in "ovsky".
Indeed, the only recent domestic issue that seems to have caused a fluttering of feathers in the academic dovecote -- prompting even Seamus Heaney to append his name to a public letter of protest -- was the cancellation of funding to the Equality Authority. To which I can only reply: Sweet Jesus Christ Almighty.
Needless to say, when this columnist was under garda investigation two years ago for urging an end to all aid to Africa -- yes, an official police enquiry, with a view to prosecution in a special no-jury court, and with me facing the prospect of a sentence of up to six years' imprisonment, just for uttering that opinion -- not one single academic spoke out in my defence.
Tom Garvin is right. Irish academia is utterly dominated by grey philistines, and one might add, cowards too. But Tom, what else is new?
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent
