Sir, - I write as an academic who has made a career in the Republic of Ireland; but I also write as a Northerner. Over the past 30 years I have had the utmost respect for all those who helped to sustain the integrity of the Queen's University of Belfast as an academic institution in a tragic time. Indeed, the extent to which civil society in Northern Ireland has survived a period of terrible political strife is in part due to the many individuals who committed themselves to the province's universities and their complex life.
It is therefore appalling, at the very moment when Ireland as a whole is seeking to build on the hopes of the Good Friday Agreement, that a heavy-handed administration in Queen's should "target" individuals for early retirement in the name of so bizarre a concept as "balanced excellence" (an oily euphemism for reductively managerial models of efficiency and productivity). As a result of this ideological myopia and crass historical insensitivity, many dedicated academics now find themselves unwanted by the institution they have honourably served.
Please allow me to register this public protest.-Yours, etc., Terence Brown,
M.R.I.A., Member Academia Europaea, F.T.C.D., Sutton Downs, Dublin 13.