Parnell Summer School
Avondale House, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow
11 August 2013
Good afternoon,
It’s a very great pleasure to be here this afternoon, in this beautiful house, to launch the Parnell Summer School. I thank the President of the Society, Donal McCartney, the academic director Felix Larkin, and the other organisers for inviting me.
Like, I am sure, every university in the country, Parnell features strongly on Trinity curricula – on the history curriculum of course, but also on the politics curriculum, and on the literature curriculum via Yeats and Joyce. Every educated person must know something of this towering figure; through him we evaluate the political, social and cultural history of late 19th century and early 20th century Ireland.
Parnell was not of course a Trinity man – although I learned recently that he did benefit from a Trinity tutor in 1864 when he took grinds before going to Magdalene College in Cambridge. His tutor was the classicist, J.G. Meyer, famous for his humour and his digressions. He found Parnell a “thoroughly gentlemanly and intelligent pupil” – an assessment apparently more positive than most of Parnell’s Cambridge tutors.
I was gratified to learn that the young Charles Stewart Parnell trod our cobbles, and that there was a long Parnell family tradition of attending Trinity. His grandfather, Sir John Parnell was a Trinity graduate who rose to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1785, but was fired from his post for opposing the Act of Union. And it was the Trinity Fellow John Galbraith who initiated Parnell’s public life by proposing him for membership of the Home Rule League in 1874.
But probably the most significant Trinity-Parnell connection comes from the contribution of our historians, and graduates, to Parnell scholarship. Writing in the Garden Room of the Provost’s House, the great F.S.L. Lyons completed his seminal biography in 1977, three years into his term as Provost – an achievement which fills me with some awe, I must admit, now that I know the demands of provostship!
Lyons’ brilliant student, Roy Foster, published, at the young age of 27, Charles Stewart Parnell, the Man and his Family. And previous to this, our distinguished graduate, Conor Cruise O’Brien, published in 1957, Parnell and his Party. This legacy has meant a kind of ‘special relationship’ between Trinity and Parnell scholarship, and it’s in this context that I’m proud, as Provost, to open this Summer School.
One of the School’s aims is to explore the relevance of Parnell and his politics to contemporary Ireland - hence the theme this commemorative year: ‘John F. Kennedy and the Irish-American connection’.
This fascinating theme relates to Parnell in an obvious historical sense because Parnell’s political genius – a genius for ‘balancing’ as F.S.L. Lyons calls it – was to connect Irish-America into parliamentary politics, and maintain that connection.
But the theme also relates, in a broader sense, because it touches on issues of civic duty, of human rights, of peace studies, and of public attitudes to private morality, all of which concern both Kennedy and Parnell, and which will be the subjects of papers and panel discussions this week.
Tomorrow, a Trinity academic, Patrick Claffey will discuss human rights. Dr Claffey is from our Department of Religions and Theology. Parnell scholarship is extending beyond its traditional disciplines of history, politics, and literature. Because Parnell’s life and work is so significant, it can be brought to bear on different areas such as law, philosophy, and religion.
In Trinity we favour this kind of interdisciplinarity, because we have seen that some of the most exciting scholarship takes place at the interface between disciplines. I’m delighted that expertise on Parnell’s history and politics will feed into other areas in humanities and law, as we seek to explore the full measure of the man and his legacy.
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When John F. Kennedy addressed Dáil Éireann in June 1963, he referred to Parnell addressing the American Congress in 1880 on the cause of Irish freedom, and he referred to Parnell’s American grandfather, Commodore Charles Stewart. He made explicit the many links between the two countries.
When Kennedy received his honorary degrees from the NUI and from Trinity – which he did simultaneously in a ceremony in Dublin Castle – he chose to talk about education – about Ireland’s deep commitment to education over 2,000 years, and about Ireland’s long conviction, shared with America, that the country would “need educated men and women, when it finally became independent”.
Democracy, said Kennedy,
“is a difficult kind of government. It requires the highest qualities of self-discipline, restraint, a willingness to make sacrifices for the general interest, and it requires knowledge.”
I’m glad that Kennedy put education and knowledge into the requirements for a democracy. Parnell would undoubtedly have agreed – his enemies used to try to dismiss him as uneducated and ignorant, because he was not a brilliant student and never finished his degree, having, as you know, been rusticated from Cambridge for brawling. But Gladstone was fairer and called him “an intellectual phenomenon”, and I like very much the assessment of a French observer on Parnell’s transformation from withdrawn and indifferent speaker to dazzling public figure: “His victory in parliament was, first and above all, a victory over himself”.
A victory over oneself – over one’s weaknesses - is, I believe, one of the great aims of life. And to achieve such a victory, education is key. Among the great privileges – perhaps the greatest - of being an educator is helping and enabling young people to achieve this victory – to overcome their weaknesses, and discover their potential, whether through research and learning, or through student-organised activities like debating, volunteering, and event-management. If a university education is well planned, with sufficient time given to the student in an environment where critical enquiry is valued, then it can indeed be transformative for each individual student.
The ‘victory over oneself’ that Parnell achieved, that Kennedy achieved, can happen through education; it’s an ‘opening out’, which is, of course, the literal definition of ‘e’-ducation, coming as you know from the Latin ex duco, to lead out. Once people are opened out they are ready to use their skills and abilities, not only for their own good and advancement, but for the public good as well. This kind of education is key to participatory citizenship in a parliamentary democracy.
John F. Kennedy rightly singled out that aspect of independent Ireland of which we can all be proud - education.
Whatever the failings of the State since 1922, our education system has been, for the most part, very good. It’s not perfect – we would like to see third level education become more fully inclusive – but education is something Ireland still has a strong commitment to, and this is recognised internationally.
We here can all be grateful for this strong commitment. But when it comes to third-level education, the world is now in one of its great transition periods. Huge changes such as online education and the role of university research in economic growth, mean that the role of universities is changing fundamentally. Universities are becoming more important, not less important. We are now seeing the emergence of higher education as a globally traded and borderless activity - staff, students, and research projects are increasingly switching countries and institutions, going to where the money and expertise is. All this has created wonderful energy and dynamism in the sector. But these are big, radical changes, requiring big, radical responses.
I don’t say we’re responding badly in this country, but my fear is we’re not doing enough to keep up with the pace of change; and with other countries responding so proactively – notably in Asia with strong governmental support and many American universities with established private philanthropy – we risk getting left behind. We risk compromising one of our core assets, education.
This is something I’ve referred to frequently since becoming Provost two years ago. I make no apology for speaking of it again here. A Parnell Summer School, with a focus on JFK, is exactly the place to remind ourselves of what O’Connell, Parnell, and the men of 1916 were fighting for, and what John F. Kennedy’s ancestors emigrated for. It was for the right to control, or shape, one’s own destiny.
When it comes to shaping one’s own destiny, political independence is key - and so is education. Without education, we lack choices - and this has ever been, and is increasingly, the case. Governments must invest in education or else, to re-quote Parnell, they set a boundary on the march of the nation. I urge all of us in the education sector, and in government, to continue this country’s great tradition of education, and to respond generously, imaginatively, and constructively to the great challenges and opportunities in higher education today.
Thank you.
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