Trinity Symposium: 'Trinity in the Fifth Century'

The Dining Hall, Trinity College Dublin

26th September

Good evening,

It’s an honour to be speaking in the company of such great historians. On behalf of the College, may I thank them for lending their scholarship to our commemoration.

It’s my privilege to be looking at Trinity in its fifth century – which began in 1992, so that’s the last 25 years and projecting into the next 75. I’m not speaking as a historian, of course. My qualification to address you is that I lived through this period in Trinity, and was fortunate enough to play a role in many decisive initiatives. So I’m speaking as a member of staff and latterly a College Officer and Provost.

We’ve been hearing about Trinity’s rich history. The past two and a half decades do not – thankfully – compare with the dramatic violence of some of the earlier years. But it’s my contention, that in terms of transformation in research and education, they are as momentous as any 25 years in our history.

If we go back to 1992, the College certainly differed greatly from 25 years earlier, from 1967.  There were far more students, and many more of these were women, and Catholics, and Trinity was much more embedded in national life. All significant social changes.

But in terms of pedagogy and research, not so much had changed. While there was excellent scholarship on-going in Trinity in 1992, Ireland was still a poor country by European standards and there was minimal investment in laboratories and research programmes.

Essays were still hand-written, and student exchanges were within Europe and mostly taken up language students; the college was beginning to strengthen its links with industry and there was one remarkable spin-out, Iona Technologies.

The difference with today I need hardly spell out. By 1992 we were prepared for change, and the past 25 years have been the years of:

• new and emerging disciplines – I was lucky enough to spearhead one of them, Bioengineering;
• huge investment in research and scholarship;
• growth in innovation, entrepreneurship and industry collaborations;
• a revolution in information and communications technologies, and in digitisation and online education;  
• growth in international students, and in student exchanges and global research partnerships;  
• and, on the negative side, taking the last decade, they’re the years of reduced state funding on a per student basis.

This revolution has been global – all universities are experiencing the transformation in technology and communications. But it has also been driven internally – for instance, Trinity has emerged as a research leader in many disciplines, within Europe and internationally, in a driver interdisciplinarity through subjects like Digital Humanities, Nanoscience, Deaf Studies, Neuroscience, and Life Sciences.

I’d like to pay tribute to all who brought these changes about. These achievements were effected across the university, by academic and professional staff, working together.

I’m speaking as if this is a great ‘success story’. Which I believe it is. Not in every sphere. There have been mistakes, inevitably. But if I look at where we were, and where we are now, and what we had to come through, and compare us to other universities, I think “Success Story” a is fair summation.

I see these two and a half decades as a cohesive period of transformation during which the College responded to many challenges and opportunities to become Ireland’s research flagship.

You could see the last 25 years as a tale of two halves: the Celtic Tiger and the Downturn. Maybe if I were giving this talk a few years ago, that’s how I’d see it. But happily, the country is in a better place now and we have perspective. I think future scholars of the college will see a continuous sweep through, rather than disruption.

I say this because the exciting developments of the 1990s:

• the emergence of new compound disciplines;  
• the huge investment in research through national and EU programmes;
• the establishment of the Trinity Access Programme;
• industry collaboration; and
• the pedagogical use of technology.

All these developments were continued and strengthened right through the downturn. We could have responded with panic to austerity: ramping up student numbers to generate revenue, or hunkering down around a limited number of research programmes. But we chose not to sacrifice quality or plurality. We scaled up ambition.

Specifically, during the downturn we focussed on two areas which have proved crucial: global relations and commercial revenue, including industry collaborations, spin-outs, and philanthropy.

Our success with these means that we are well positioned to adapt to the global phenomenon of decreasing state investment in higher education.

The major legacy of the recent economic downturn is, perhaps, that it focussed our determination on the importance of having control of our own revenue. To further this, we have created a Provost’s Council which provides an external leadership group for the university.

Now on our 425th anniversary, Trinity is in a strong position in terms of our mission in education, research, innovation and public engagement. I won’t go through all our recent successes; they are familiar enough to most of you.
My thanks again to colleagues for their endeavours, and to friends and alumni who responded to our call for support.

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From this position of cautious optimism, projecting onwards - how do I think things will develop for the rest of the fifth century? What will the College look like for the Quincentenary celebrations in 2092?

If we’ve learnt anything from the talks this evening, it’s that there’s no answering that. In 1912 no-one foresaw what was round the corner, let alone what the next decade would bring.

And back in 1992, did we see all this coming to pass? Not the half of it.

The on-going Technology Revolution means the pace of change is exhilarating, though also potentially alarming - for instance, what will mass data collection mean for our identities?

Add to this, global challenges like climate change, inequality, migration, shortage of energy or raw materials. Any of these alone has the potential to change everything about how our societies are run, including our universities.

These challenges can’t be dealt with comprehensively by any one country or one institution; the response has to be global. To that extent, our future is out of our hands, and picturing the College in 2092 is only giving hostages to fortune.

I know what I hope it will be like. I can identify trends which, if they continue, will bring about positive transformation. Trends in:

• technology, revolutionising how we educate, research and innovate. Technology has the potential to level the playing field in a way that will allow all abilities to participate;

• and the trend towards breaking down barriers – that’s barriers between disciplines, and distinctions between science and art and empiricism and creativity. This is already happening within universities, while in society at large, barriers of age and gender are coming down. All this is unleashing vast potential because barriers and distinctions hold us back. When you say ‘I’m not artistic’, or ‘girls don’t do technology, or ‘I’m too old’ – in all these cases you are closing down potential and setting up for failure.

There is great momentum to break down these barriers but it’s not happening everywhere in the world, and it could be set back by the challenges I’ve mentioned.

Ideally, by 2092, technology and the removal of barriers will give us a world notably freer from inhibition and restriction, releasing the flow of discovery and knowledge. 

We want to bring this about. It’s not all in our hands. External events will shape society and the university. But as individuals and as institutions, we can ‘show an affirming flame’ as Auden put it. Which is a poetic way of saying, ‘we can be part of the solution, not the problem’. 

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I want to finish today by looking at what ‘being part of the solution’ might mean for the rest of our fifth century.

It means taking right decisions. And, perhaps more importantly, not taking wrong decisions.

I say, ‘more importantly’, because doing right is often well signposted. For instance, launching an initiative like E3, our new Engineering, Energy, and Environment Institute, is a good decision. But not a difficult one. It’s clear that universities should direct their ground-breaking research towards the challenges of a liveable planet.

You can plan to do right. Avoiding mistakes is trickier, because you can go wrong while trying to go right. Let me give an example of what I mean:

We’re proud of the increase in international students – this brings cultural richness to the campus.

But there are dangers: first, these students tend not to come from disadvantaged backgrounds – they come from families who can pay the fees or know how to access loans.

Second, Ireland still has the youngest population in Europe and the Department of Education and Skills estimates that the demand for third-level places will rise by 25 percent by 2028. If Irish universities reserve multiple places for international students, who will educate the Irish school-leavers?

We can all think of highly-ranked universities which have little connection to their regions. They welcome international high-fliers but don’t get involved with the towns and regions they’re located in. They come to resemble small, wealthy fiefdoms.

One vision for 2092 situates Trinity as such a university: we celebrate our Quincentenary as an expensive, highly-ranked university, welcoming elite students from round the world, with a proud mission of doing research of impact, but we direct our education towards those who can afford it, and we feel little sense of responsibility towards Dublin or Ireland.

This vision has some good parts, but I don’t like it. First, because we are the University of Dublin, located right in the city-centre, and central to Ireland’s identity; and second, because whatever great research and scholarship we do, if we’re embedding inequality in the way that we educate, then we can’t claim to be part of the solution.

This is just one example of how a decision taken in good faith might go wrong. There are many others. In most cases, the responsibility is not the university’s alone.

We cannot address global challenges unilaterally. But by identifying undesirable outcomes before they become entrenched, we can be part of the solution. That’s why a symposium like today’s is so important. Looking back at our history isn’t just about recounting a great story – it’s about identifying what went right and wrong, how to repeat success and learn from error.

I think the key to getting it right is to adhere to our values. They are our compass and our steer. Considering all decisions in the light of our values will help prevent us going places we don’t want to go.

Our values are encompassed in our mission. The mission is well-known to most here – it incorporates:

• independence of thought;
• a diverse student community and transformative student experience;
• research at the frontiers of disciplines, making a catalysing impact on local innovation and on addressing global challenges; and
• fearlessly advancing the cause of a pluralistic, just and sustainable society.  

This mission captures our commitment to the local and the global, to future discovery and to strong traditional values. It balances what we owe to students and staff, to the local region and to the planet as a whole.

I believe that adhering to this mission will keep us on a steady course and prevent us from going too far in one direction at the expense of another.

This mission reminds us that we cannot become, for instance, a think-tank – that would be to sacrifice our mission in education; nor can we rationalise around a few disciplines which offer momentary economic value – that would be to sacrifice our mission in diversity and pluralism.

Trinity has flourished through the centuries because we have been resilient and flexible while holding onto a firm sense of mission and a sense of place.

This remains our way forward.

I will close with Edmund Burke’s great words on society – I hope no-one thought I was going to get through this address without mentioning Burke! 

He is talking about society, but since a great research university is a kind of micro-society, and certainly a community, this captures, I think, our mission in plurality and our kinship with the past - our sense of drawing strength from our history to lead us to the future that we seek:

"It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Thank you.

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