Madam, – It has been pointed out that there are few responses from current members of academic staff at UCD to Prof Tom Garvin’s article (Opinion, May 1st). There is good reason for this: under the regime of Dr Brady and his senior management team (SMT) there is a pervasive atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and mistrust.
The Universities Act, 1997 is supposed to provide a measure of protection for academic staff, but this (to the best of my knowledge) has never been tested in a court of law. Someone has to stand up and speak the truth as they see it, rather than cower silently in corners. I’m sure that the requisite response will be forthcoming, denouncing me as a malcontent and dissenter.
As an example of the Stalinist atmosphere that saturates much of UCD, the governing authority, at the instigation of the president and SMT (in reaction to a highly negative response to a survey conducted by Irish Federation of University Teachers), commissioned an online survey of staff, carried out by an external consultancy, Mercator. The results were in general negative, given the restriction that many of the questions were very highly loaded in favour of the “reforms” introduced by Dr Brady.
However, the response rate was relatively low, and at least in part that is a measure of the mistrust of, and a suspicion of, the nature of the current UCD regime: quite a number of my friends and colleagues did not respond because they either thought that UCD could track their IP address, and link a given reply to them, or that in schools with a small number of staff of a given gender, by responding to the questions asking the respondent to specify their gender, etc, they could again be linked to their reply.
Undoubtedly Dr Brady has instituted a few valuable reforms, but these are swamped by much that is morale-destroying and is indeed damaging to the academic culture in the university. A university is a community of scholars, and the president is simply primus inter pares; any attempt to “manage” the academics is ill-advised: they can be persuaded or coaxed, but issuing orders is not advisable if morale is to be maintained. Upon acceding to the presidency, Dr Brady informed us that we were living in a “comfort zone” (Irish Times, April 26th, 2004): not a good way of boosting morale.
Too late in the day, I suspect, I advise Dr Brady and the SMT to read, and understand, the two books by W Edwards Deming published by MIT Press. It should also be noted that Field Marshal Slim (commander of the “Forgotten Fourteenth Army”) in his memoirs of the Burma campaign identified morale as the most important feature to cultivate in his force.
I could write more, but much has already been very well addressed by Prof Garvin (safely, and it should be noted, only very recently retired, despite the disingenuous statement by Professors Daly and Laffan (Opinion, May 6th) that he is “no longer engaged in the day-to-day life of the university, and he is therefore somewhat distant from the challenges we confront”.). – Yours, etc,