The University of Galway has for long been one of the jewels in the crown of Irish higher education and intellectual life. Readers of Irish will perhaps be most familiar with the fictional and even picaresque portrayal of University and Galway life in the 1940s by the late Breandán Ó hEithir in Lig Sinn I gCathú.
One wonders what he might have made of the fact that David J Burn, the President of the University who took up his role this week, is the first since the 1920s not to speak Irish. Aengus Ó Snodaigh of Sinn Féin and others have criticised the appointment of someone with no Irish to the Presidency of the only bilingual university in the state.
Burn, who is from Newcastle in England and whose speciality is medicine, issued a message on Tuesday in which he said that he was learning the language. Which is the same sort of reply that all of the candidates for Áras an Uachtaráin have or most likely will make other than Catherine Connolly, herself an alumnus of NUIG.
That is not the point however. For the unique role of Galway in the practical efforts to maintain and enhance the position of the language was until recently a statutory requirement. Beyond that it has other significance through its geographical location and the high standards it has set in the academic study of Irish. All of which is emphasised in its current Straitéis na Gaeilge.
In the University College Galway Act of 1929 the increased State grant was made contingent on “SECURING THAT PERSONS APPOINTED TO OFFICES AND SITUATIONS IN THAT COLLEGE SHALL BE COMPETENT TO DISCHARGE THEIR DUTIES THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE.”
Other clauses referred to scholarships for students from the Gaeltacht and that “an increasing proportion of the academic and administrative functions of the said College shall be performed through the medium of the Irish language.”
Those provisions were amended by the University College Galway (Amendment) Act in 2006 which replaced a “requirement” with a “commitment.” Which was the basis for the governing authority of the college deciding in 2016 to set aside the requirement that the President would be competent in the language.
At the time it was claimed that the requirement under the legislation was “limiting the pool of potential candidates. In particular from overseas.” Perhaps it might be recalled that Galway was the recipient of almost $80 million from the Atlantic Philanthropies whose fingerprints are on so much of the “social and cultural change” pushed through universities and NGOs to get us up to speed.
On the off chance that we might lose sight of all of that, both the University and Burn himself have gone large on ticking all the right boxes. When he was ratified last month, the University stressed that in his former position at Newcastle Burn had promoted “transformative change initiatives to restructure faculty, accelerate research performance, advance equality, diversity and inclusion and drive internationalisation.”
Is that an Athena SWAN Gold Star I see rising over the Claddagh? Indeed, that body of English sociologists who have the power to determine third level funding on DEI grounds here are given several nods in the NUIG Performance Agreement with the Higher Education Authority.
They even list the awards received from the Jeremys and Jessicas of Anglo diversity like a little child bringing home a drawing that teacher had festooned with a little star.
So if anyone dismisses the ditching of ‘the Erse’ on the grounds that it was just a sentimental comfort blanket tied to outdated ideological concepts of nationalism and “insularism,” ask them since when was a University meant to promote nebulous concepts such as “equality, diversity and inclusion?”
The very notion of a University is that it is supposed to be about excellence and being the best. The best at medicine or engineering or Greek or biology or Celtic Studies. Of course everyone should have the right to qualify to be there and to be rewarded, but on the basis of their God given abilities and effort not for any other reason.
And it is apparent too that ditching the requirement for the President to be competent in our language is part of that left liberal prospectus. That is made explicitly clear in the Performance Agreement where a target is set for a minimum of 15% of all professional, managerial and support services staff to be recruited from people from “minority ethnic backgrounds.” (p55.)
The reason why NUIG has not overthrown the “acute under-representation of ethnically diverse staff” to date is “due to historical Irish language requirements for all staff up to Grade 3.” Which clearly implies that the language requirement must fall as part of the Great Leap Forward. Who better to lead this than the President who has no Irish and who is deeply committed to Pollyannaism.