"Discipline In War Counts More Than Fury" - Learning From Victory at Maynooth

On Tuesday morning, the Governing Authority of Maynooth University met in emergency session, to discuss its planned change in the way staff members of GA are to be chosen, from election (which has been the status quo) to selection by private consultants.  This plan was a tributary outcome of the Government's 2022 Higher Education Authority Act, which shrinks 'governing authorities' to a maximum headcount of 19, and fixes a permanent non-university majority of members at 10.  Faced with a letter from the Irish Federation of University Teachers rejecting this measure out of hand, with letters from international scholars in support of their Maynooth colleagues, and with the results of a petition organised by IFUT which had accumulated over 1160 signatures in a couple of weeks, GA voted to accept the current arrangement, to reject a 'hybrid' model which had been proposed (three to be elected, two selected), and to reverse its original proposal for the selection of all five members.

This victory has been achieved by the redoubtable and brave work of the IFUT Maynooth local, by IFUT staff and members more generally and by the support of a large network of Irish and international scholars and other persons interested in the future of Maynooth, of higher education in Ireland, and indeed of higher education and academic freedom everywhere.   

A victory, yes, but while one wishes to see the University work harmoniously after a period of tension, we who have fought for this achievement must not drop our guard.  We must never underestimate the forces arrayed against us.   Those forces will rally and return.   The victory achieved is one which does not wipe away many other problems at Maynooth or at Irish universities generally - commercialisation, the whole vacuous rhetoric of 'excellence', the mushrooming of often unaccountable management, the hegemonic re-purposing and use of 'radical' ideas and language to achieve undemocratic and empty ends ('equality, diversity and inclusiveness', top-down, management-led 'decolonisation' of curricula, the by-passing of departmental and disciplinary structures and democratic forms by the creation of 'schools', and much more).

We in Maynooth are deeply grateful to our comrades in Ireland and abroad for their support.    But we also have much to learn, as we strategize for the struggle which undoubtedly will continue.   We have much to learn from the crisis of public universities in the United States and from the struggles produced by the British Brown Report 'reforms'.     Even as we in Maynooth celebrate a victory today, Brighton University's management is seeking to eviscerate many of that institution's programmes and is cutting staff by 10%.   Compulsory redundancies wantonly axe careers, destroy departments, and wreck the learning opportunities of students.    All of these tactics may yet come to Maynooth.   

 

There will be much talk in Maynooth about the need now to put aside differences and work in the belief that 'we' all have the University's interests at heart.  But we do not all have the same interests at heart.   Management is concerned with students, teaching, and research only as 'inputs' and 'outcomes'.  It is in the thrall of a profoundly reified conception of learning and pedagogy.   It has no sense of the intellectual vocation, of the value of critique and dissent, and of education as a public good.

Maynooth staff and students have achieved a fine victory.  But we must remember that the moment of victory is that of the preparation for the next war, and we must plan accordingly.

Conor