TCD-UCD Sociology Public Lecture Series
Edmund Burke Theatre, Trinity College
19:00, Tuesday, 15 January 2013
You are all very welcome to Trinity College and to the inaugural TCD-UCD Sociology Public Lecture.
This series of public lectures on contemporary issues by internationally acclaimed speakers is a wonderful initiative of the departments of sociology in Trinity and UCD, together with Trinity’s Policy Institute. I see also it’s part of the IIIS/TLRH new lecture series.
The aim is to offer new ideas on cutting-edge sociological issues, and to promote informed and non-partisan debate. There will be a Q&A session after the lecture, and we look forward to contributions from the floor - I know there are many here tonight with important insights to share.
These inaugural sociology lectures join the ongoing series of public lectures held in Trinity. While there has always been a tradition of public lectures in the College – I think of Erwin Schrodinger’s famous ‘What is Life?’ lectures of 1943 – the number and diversity has been stepped up in recent years, thanks to new institutes like the Science Gallery and the Policy Institute, which seek to actively engage the public with academic research.
This time last year we had the pleasure of welcoming Joschka Fischer to give the Henry Grattan Public lecture, and I’m delighted that yet again we’re kicking off the new year and the new term with such stimulating debate.
Trinity is not alone in seeking to make academic research accessible. UCD has held its own highly impressive series of distinguished public lectures. At tonight’s event, Trinity and UCD are co-hosts.
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A lecture is only as good as its speaker. We are delighted that this new series is being launched by such a distinguished academic, speaking on an issue of global significance, which she is framing in genuinely innovative terms.
Professor Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and co-chair of The Committee on Global Thought in Columbia University. She was selected as one of the hundred Top Global Thinkers of 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine, and her books have been translated into twenty languages.
Tonight’s talk is based on her forthcoming book, Expulsions. I won’t attempt to summarize her argument, since we will hear it shortly. But from what I can see, her conclusions demand our fullest engagement. Professor Sassen has gone to the heart of our current crisis.
In this country, we have been concerned with measuring the cost of the crisis in a national context. This has been essential work. But Professor Sassen reminds us of the far higher global cost on the poor and displaced.
Tonight we are here in the Edmund Burke theatre. Burke is sometimes dismissed as reactionary, or an apologist for conservative thinking – but he was passionate in his defense of justice and liberty. Attributed to Burke is the well-known phrase, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
When scholars present the results of their work - their findings – in lectures such as this, the intention is always for readers and listeners to react. If they don’t, the research is dead. The aim of this lecture series, the aim I think of all academic research, is to call us to think and to react. Academic research is a dialogue. At its best, academic research can change people’s minds, awaken the desire for reform and improvement, and inform policy decisions at all levels.
Belief in the power of academic research underpins this public lecture series. I know we will all appreciate Professor Sassen’s brilliant contextualising of one of the crisis issues of our times, and I hope it will jolt some of us into thinking about ways to use our skills to effect change.
To quote Burke again: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”
Thank you.
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