Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The pre-Gutenberg University
Ferdie never ceases to amaze me. Actually, that's not true; he never
surprises me at all. Put narcissistic disorder together with serious
dissociation on top of perhaps the worst piece of legislation ever to go
through the Oireachtas (the 1997 universities act) and one produces
this creature.
Ferdie lost the Paul Cahill case, and cost the taxpayer several millions; yet, it has not occurred to him that, given his total lack of qualifications and experience, he was put in his exalted position ONLY to win whatever became the test case for the statute – and he lost, very publicly. The government will never touch him again with a pole of any length. His grip on reality is not sufficient to understand that, and he will continue to try and look for another job, as exemplified by this attack on Dylan Evans;
http://universitydiary.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/bringing-the-veil-down-on-the-fruit-bats/
Ferdie's tenure (now, fortunately, about to end, as he wished for all tenures) was characterized by an authoritarianism within DCU that it is not inappropriate to call “fascist” (summary dismissals, a war on academic freedom, canceled elections) and a vigorous PR campaign outside DCU which promoted a cult of personality, as fascists will. The idiot journalists we have in Ireland like Geraldine Kennedy, Loise Holden, Sean Flynn, and Rachel English chose to portray this moron as somehow a visionary, an advocate of freedom, und so weiter.
Evans needs to get a high court injunction, immediately. While I regarded his contact with Kennedy's wife as inappropriate – and, like most Irishmen, I would have talked to him one-to-one and convinced him to stop – his putting the material on the web was an immense public service. He should stop denying that he did so; it is clear from the following website that he is in fact responsible;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/sex-fruit-bats-and-politi_b_576597.html
Sometime around 1455, the “Gutenberg” bible was printed. The 1997 universities act resembles legislation for the halls of learning drafted around 1450 by legislators who knew nothing about what Gutenberg, carefully and with full knowledge of the consequentiality of his project (as the record shows), was trying to do. In 1997, it was perhaps not clear to the drafters who were listening to Danny O'Hare telling them about what a wonderful world it would be with all university power centralized in one person that soon all the world's knowledge would be available, 99.9% of it free, merely a click away.
The issue is now how Ireland can add value. As soon as ferdie disappears to well-merited obscurity, baring the odd high court appearance as we sue him in person for misfeasance, fraud, et cetera, we can talk about this topic; how to leverage a history of at least 5,000 years of proven schooled thought into value.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 19u Bealtaine 2010
Ferdie lost the Paul Cahill case, and cost the taxpayer several millions; yet, it has not occurred to him that, given his total lack of qualifications and experience, he was put in his exalted position ONLY to win whatever became the test case for the statute – and he lost, very publicly. The government will never touch him again with a pole of any length. His grip on reality is not sufficient to understand that, and he will continue to try and look for another job, as exemplified by this attack on Dylan Evans;
http://universitydiary.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/bringing-the-veil-down-on-the-fruit-bats/
Ferdie's tenure (now, fortunately, about to end, as he wished for all tenures) was characterized by an authoritarianism within DCU that it is not inappropriate to call “fascist” (summary dismissals, a war on academic freedom, canceled elections) and a vigorous PR campaign outside DCU which promoted a cult of personality, as fascists will. The idiot journalists we have in Ireland like Geraldine Kennedy, Loise Holden, Sean Flynn, and Rachel English chose to portray this moron as somehow a visionary, an advocate of freedom, und so weiter.
Evans needs to get a high court injunction, immediately. While I regarded his contact with Kennedy's wife as inappropriate – and, like most Irishmen, I would have talked to him one-to-one and convinced him to stop – his putting the material on the web was an immense public service. He should stop denying that he did so; it is clear from the following website that he is in fact responsible;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/sex-fruit-bats-and-politi_b_576597.html
Sometime around 1455, the “Gutenberg” bible was printed. The 1997 universities act resembles legislation for the halls of learning drafted around 1450 by legislators who knew nothing about what Gutenberg, carefully and with full knowledge of the consequentiality of his project (as the record shows), was trying to do. In 1997, it was perhaps not clear to the drafters who were listening to Danny O'Hare telling them about what a wonderful world it would be with all university power centralized in one person that soon all the world's knowledge would be available, 99.9% of it free, merely a click away.
The issue is now how Ireland can add value. As soon as ferdie disappears to well-merited obscurity, baring the odd high court appearance as we sue him in person for misfeasance, fraud, et cetera, we can talk about this topic; how to leverage a history of at least 5,000 years of proven schooled thought into value.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 19u Bealtaine 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Call for Murphy's resignation
I make it clear again that I do not know Dylan Evans; for the record, I
find his behaviour - at best - both puerile and a waste of taxpayers'
money. Nevertheless, he has been unfairly treated – in fact, illegally
so – and those responsible should resign.
I quote further from the Gilligan High court judgement on Fanning versus UCC ruling that Horgan's appointment was illegal;
"Was the appointment of Mr. Horgan ultra vires?
It has already been established that the plaintiff was not required to adhere to the provisions of Statute E or the Disciplinary Procedures. Similarly, the defendant had no power to apply them to the plaintiff’s case. However, even if it is accepted that the defendant had jurisdiction to apply Statute E and the Disciplinary Procedures to the plaintiff’s case, it is clear that there is no provision for the appointment of Mr. Horgan. In fact, as has already been noted, the defendant concedes that this is the case. Rather it seeks to justify Mr. Horgan’s appointment by claming it was necessary to afford the plaintiff a layer of protection not provided under Statute E or the Disciplinary Procedures. The defendant claims that this decision was “in ease of Professor Fanning”. If Mr. Horgan concluded that no prima facie case existed, then disciplinary proceedings would not be initiated. In my view this submission is without foundation in law. Neither Statute E nor the Disciplinary Procedures afforded the defendant the power to appoint Mr. Horgan. As Mr. Horgan’s appointment was ultra vires, the President of UCC/Director of Human Resources at UCC should not have allowed themselves to be influenced by Mr. Horgan’s finding when no provision had ever been made for his involvement in any way."
Source http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2005/H264.html
Let us note that Murphy is in fact influenced by Horgan et al in precisely the way that Judge Gilligan forbids;
Ferdie was caught out as far back as 2002 but was allowed wreak havoc for nearly a decade afterward; the delay in Paul's and my cases is almost certainly evidence of further protection. It is the national interest that Murphy resign immediately, before he embarks on a similar trail of destruction.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 18u Bealtaine 2010
PS 18/5/10 I just heard for the first time that Paul's case has been resolved wholly in Paul's favour, with DCU (ie the Irish taxpayer) carrying all costs)
I quote further from the Gilligan High court judgement on Fanning versus UCC ruling that Horgan's appointment was illegal;
"Was the appointment of Mr. Horgan ultra vires?
It has already been established that the plaintiff was not required to adhere to the provisions of Statute E or the Disciplinary Procedures. Similarly, the defendant had no power to apply them to the plaintiff’s case. However, even if it is accepted that the defendant had jurisdiction to apply Statute E and the Disciplinary Procedures to the plaintiff’s case, it is clear that there is no provision for the appointment of Mr. Horgan. In fact, as has already been noted, the defendant concedes that this is the case. Rather it seeks to justify Mr. Horgan’s appointment by claming it was necessary to afford the plaintiff a layer of protection not provided under Statute E or the Disciplinary Procedures. The defendant claims that this decision was “in ease of Professor Fanning”. If Mr. Horgan concluded that no prima facie case existed, then disciplinary proceedings would not be initiated. In my view this submission is without foundation in law. Neither Statute E nor the Disciplinary Procedures afforded the defendant the power to appoint Mr. Horgan. As Mr. Horgan’s appointment was ultra vires, the President of UCC/Director of Human Resources at UCC should not have allowed themselves to be influenced by Mr. Horgan’s finding when no provision had ever been made for his involvement in any way."
Source http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2005/H264.html
Let us note that Murphy is in fact influenced by Horgan et al in precisely the way that Judge Gilligan forbids;
Ferdie was caught out as far back as 2002 but was allowed wreak havoc for nearly a decade afterward; the delay in Paul's and my cases is almost certainly evidence of further protection. It is the national interest that Murphy resign immediately, before he embarks on a similar trail of destruction.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 18u Bealtaine 2010
PS 18/5/10 I just heard for the first time that Paul's case has been resolved wholly in Paul's favour, with DCU (ie the Irish taxpayer) carrying all costs)
Monday, May 17, 2010
DCU and UCC violate due procedure requirement
By the time I get up on Tues 11/5/2010 in California, there will have
been yet another major demonstration in Ireland focussed on the fact
that the Irish state is attempting to over-extend its powers.
Specifically, it is attempting to fix its citizens with a bill for the
excesses of a pampered self-appointed elite over the past decade.
This inappropriate use of power has been going on in the universities for some time. Ferdie's excesses have been well documented; UL 's president seems to behave like a feudal baron with a central role been allotted his concubine, and following Ferdie, a stately pleasure dome for himself; and Cork is currently disgracing us internationally. Now we find that a vice-president at UCC has witnessed an illegal procedure visited on a colleague of his wife for her alleged harassment.
It is as well to recap pol sci 101 for Ferdie, as for those who were brought up dogmatic catholics with the consequent idea that there was a “Spiritual' truth that trumped all apparent temporal injustice; long ago, the rule of law has been achieved in every civilized society that has ever existed. Hammurabai's code dates back nearly 4 millennia; restrictions on the power of the monarch were achieved in magna carta from nearly a millennium ago, arguably following experiences with the Gaelic system. Yet the universities act of 1997 creates an absolute monarch;
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0024/sched4.html#sched4
Specifically, a dictatorship is created;
“. The chief officer of a university shall, subject to this Act, manage and direct the university in its academic, administrative, financial, personnel and other activities and for those purposes has such powers as are necessary or expedient. “
So if the chief officer wants summarily to dismiss anybody, (s)he simply can ignore agreed procedures and cut off his salary while instructing the thugs like Ray Wheatley who “work” there as security to bar the person from campus. I can testify to this; it happened to me, and to my students. In fact, my students were victimized, once it became clear they refused to give perjured evidence against me; Paul "Gogo" gogarty was exercised about this, until he got into govt
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0569/D.0569.200306190019.html
See also 18/12/2002(again, sorry for the imperfect scan);
I do not know Dylan Evans, and consider sexual harassment a dreadful crime, if proven. Yet, since magna carta, such proof requires (inter alia) that one confronts one's accusers in open court. Evans has been given no opportunity to do this. Secondly, the Star Chamber involving DCU's own John Horgan was ruled invalid in the High Court. Fanning case, Dylan – get the judgement, which says
"In light of the fact that there was no provision made for the appointment of Mr. Horgan, I am satisfied that his involvement in the disciplinary proceedings and more specifically, his decision that there was a prima facie case against the plaintiff, had the effect of contaminating the entire disciplinary procedure. "
I include some of the documents involved, thoughtfully put up on a link from Arianna Stassinpoulos's website (in joke, which I hope Dylan will get)
Finally, I have now gone through 11 years of illegal DCU procedures. In the 1999 case, they could not even keep the sanctions straight among themselves. Luckily, there is neither statute of limitations not institutional protection for fraud.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 16u Bealtaine 2010
PS I just found out the protest this post mentions does not start until 7-30pm
PPS (10/6/10) I note Dylan has taken my advice and gone to the High Court;
http://highcourtsearch.courts.ie/hcslive/common.processNavigationButton
This inappropriate use of power has been going on in the universities for some time. Ferdie's excesses have been well documented; UL 's president seems to behave like a feudal baron with a central role been allotted his concubine, and following Ferdie, a stately pleasure dome for himself; and Cork is currently disgracing us internationally. Now we find that a vice-president at UCC has witnessed an illegal procedure visited on a colleague of his wife for her alleged harassment.
It is as well to recap pol sci 101 for Ferdie, as for those who were brought up dogmatic catholics with the consequent idea that there was a “Spiritual' truth that trumped all apparent temporal injustice; long ago, the rule of law has been achieved in every civilized society that has ever existed. Hammurabai's code dates back nearly 4 millennia; restrictions on the power of the monarch were achieved in magna carta from nearly a millennium ago, arguably following experiences with the Gaelic system. Yet the universities act of 1997 creates an absolute monarch;
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0024/sched4.html#sched4
Specifically, a dictatorship is created;
“. The chief officer of a university shall, subject to this Act, manage and direct the university in its academic, administrative, financial, personnel and other activities and for those purposes has such powers as are necessary or expedient. “
So if the chief officer wants summarily to dismiss anybody, (s)he simply can ignore agreed procedures and cut off his salary while instructing the thugs like Ray Wheatley who “work” there as security to bar the person from campus. I can testify to this; it happened to me, and to my students. In fact, my students were victimized, once it became clear they refused to give perjured evidence against me; Paul "Gogo" gogarty was exercised about this, until he got into govt
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0569/D.0569.200306190019.html
See also 18/12/2002(again, sorry for the imperfect scan);
I do not know Dylan Evans, and consider sexual harassment a dreadful crime, if proven. Yet, since magna carta, such proof requires (inter alia) that one confronts one's accusers in open court. Evans has been given no opportunity to do this. Secondly, the Star Chamber involving DCU's own John Horgan was ruled invalid in the High Court. Fanning case, Dylan – get the judgement, which says
"In light of the fact that there was no provision made for the appointment of Mr. Horgan, I am satisfied that his involvement in the disciplinary proceedings and more specifically, his decision that there was a prima facie case against the plaintiff, had the effect of contaminating the entire disciplinary procedure. "
I include some of the documents involved, thoughtfully put up on a link from Arianna Stassinpoulos's website (in joke, which I hope Dylan will get)
Finally, I have now gone through 11 years of illegal DCU procedures. In the 1999 case, they could not even keep the sanctions straight among themselves. Luckily, there is neither statute of limitations not institutional protection for fraud.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 16u Bealtaine 2010
PS I just found out the protest this post mentions does not start until 7-30pm
PPS (10/6/10) I note Dylan has taken my advice and gone to the High Court;
http://highcourtsearch.courts.ie/hcslive/common.processNavigationButton
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The DIY University
I am painfully aware that both Paul Cahill's and my victories could well
be Pyrrhic. DCU would not have attempted summary dismissal without
connivance from SIPTU. The latter are fully aware that allowing an
employee to languish without salary for more than 2 months (let alone 8
years as in my case) means that bills will go unpaid, and a house will
be lost – as indeed happened – and Arthur cox et al also were fully
aware of this. While SIPTU are apparently no longer insisting on a
closed shop at DCU (on hearing this, I resigned from SIPTU
immediately), they are insisting on sole negotiation rights, despite
their radical incompetence in this area. A first step in rectifying
matters is getting rid of these “rights” and staff hiring someone other
than failed labour local and general election candidates to conclude
negotiations which have now lasted over a decade, with many lives ruined
as a result.
All of this discourse, including this blog, may soon seem mediaeval in any case. The Irish state no longer wishes to run “universities”, as this term has been understood for close to a thousand years. What it preferred, it seemed, was commissioning a crazy moron from a third-rate British university to introduce summary dismissal – through the front door, if his Teutonic deities were to grant him victory; and through the back by a system of very expensive appeals, making use of all the loopholes in the pathetic Irish IR situation as well as SIPTU's corruption, if even Odin, Thor et al cavilled at the monstrosity of what this lunatic was attempting. In the meantime, the state suspended the rule of law vis a vis abuse of students by management to facilitate what is truly along the lines of Ed Wood's “plan 9 from Outer space”- see links from
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/
No self-respecting student or staff member is going to put up with this given the alternatives readily available.
One alternative is currently being worked out in the USA. Having put their institutional credibility at risk, public universities are now competing with the likes of the University of Phoenix (UP), with often disastrous results for students. In particular, the level of students debt in the USA, at $750 billion, now approximates that of total credit card debt. Nor do these private colleges guarantee jobs for their students; as this is being written in May, 2010, Congress is considering a bill to force these colleges to get jobs (“gainful employment”) for their graduates, who are often poorly trained. UP finished a lawsuit from the government with a $67.5 million payment; 17 students have joined a lawsuit against Argosy; the list is for all practical purposes endless. In terms of the quality of their accreditation, there is nothing distinguishing the Irish unis from these colleges; no honest accreditation has been done at the Irish unis for over a century (if ever).
There is room for private colleges to do cutting-edge programmes in areas that the unis cannot cater for. Instead, the former tend to put their money into sales ; UP's marketing budget in 2009 at $130 million exceeded Revlon. Grand Canyon;s was $25 million, about twice what it spent on its teaching staff. Yet this is the game that the Irish education authorities have decided to enter.
Another alternative is compiling a set of courses that people might find interesting on a single wiki site
The DIY University
It shows how far we've sunk that any responsible academic would recommend this unstructured approach in favour of the cauldrons of abuse and waste that DCU in particular has become
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 13u Bealtaine 2010
All of this discourse, including this blog, may soon seem mediaeval in any case. The Irish state no longer wishes to run “universities”, as this term has been understood for close to a thousand years. What it preferred, it seemed, was commissioning a crazy moron from a third-rate British university to introduce summary dismissal – through the front door, if his Teutonic deities were to grant him victory; and through the back by a system of very expensive appeals, making use of all the loopholes in the pathetic Irish IR situation as well as SIPTU's corruption, if even Odin, Thor et al cavilled at the monstrosity of what this lunatic was attempting. In the meantime, the state suspended the rule of law vis a vis abuse of students by management to facilitate what is truly along the lines of Ed Wood's “plan 9 from Outer space”- see links from
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy/
No self-respecting student or staff member is going to put up with this given the alternatives readily available.
One alternative is currently being worked out in the USA. Having put their institutional credibility at risk, public universities are now competing with the likes of the University of Phoenix (UP), with often disastrous results for students. In particular, the level of students debt in the USA, at $750 billion, now approximates that of total credit card debt. Nor do these private colleges guarantee jobs for their students; as this is being written in May, 2010, Congress is considering a bill to force these colleges to get jobs (“gainful employment”) for their graduates, who are often poorly trained. UP finished a lawsuit from the government with a $67.5 million payment; 17 students have joined a lawsuit against Argosy; the list is for all practical purposes endless. In terms of the quality of their accreditation, there is nothing distinguishing the Irish unis from these colleges; no honest accreditation has been done at the Irish unis for over a century (if ever).
There is room for private colleges to do cutting-edge programmes in areas that the unis cannot cater for. Instead, the former tend to put their money into sales ; UP's marketing budget in 2009 at $130 million exceeded Revlon. Grand Canyon;s was $25 million, about twice what it spent on its teaching staff. Yet this is the game that the Irish education authorities have decided to enter.
Another alternative is compiling a set of courses that people might find interesting on a single wiki site
The DIY University
It shows how far we've sunk that any responsible academic would recommend this unstructured approach in favour of the cauldrons of abuse and waste that DCU in particular has become
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 13u Bealtaine 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Why DCU staff do not trust their management
It has always been my opinion, as evidenced here, that FvP will return
to his earlier lefty views, particularly given the spectacular demise of
the neocon/neoliberal dispensation that he has espoused for perhaps a
score years. My analysis cuts a little deeper; FvP is dissociated to an
dangerous extent, particularly given the scope of the powers the 1997
universities act affords the “chief officer”. The legislative vacuum in
DCU (see below) due partly to SIPTU's reverting to their FWUI/Bertie
ahern roots allowed a chance for a “chief officer”to grab something like
absolute power over the lives of his staff (Perhaps the historical
analogue in the early 1940's will strike some readers). Paul Cahill and
I, inter alia, wake up to the consequences of this power-grab as we
survey the ruins of what once were precociously brilliant careers.
The main reason DCU staff do not trust DCU's management, and have in fact voted "no confidence" in them in a formal ballot, is that their management do not merit trust; where it has been given, it has been betrayed. The second reason is that this management is grossly unqualified and incompetent; I recall their reaction when my very bright students were first presented with the spectacle of Martin Conry (the secretary/Provost) and Marion Burns (HR head) in early 2003 (Specifically; they said they would not have gone to DCU had they known about the caliber of the management). It is consistent with my predictions that FvP is now forgetting his history of rampant abuse of power, including cancelling elections and attempting to browbeat his staff into renouncing their rights by having hand-delivered to their homes, late at night, utterly illegal instructions;
Ignore summary dismissals- Ferdie tells us he's really a nice guy
The following is a cartoon about what losing tenure is meant to signify in the US system; lest we forget, for FvP tenure, such as it was, equalled the job at MacD's. He went to the supreme court, spending at least E2 million of taxpayers' money, to assert his right on summary dismissal of a senior academic, and personally gave evidence at the EAT in order to destroy the terms and conditions of those of us employed by NIHE (at a guess, this venture cost 500k, as well as the loss of my brilliant students and their work, then and later endorsed at its highest level by Stanford, and probably thus worth at least in the tens of millions );
The remainder of this entry is simply a recapitulation of the main themes of this blog. What I have been trying to do is first to ensure that DCU staff know about the devious tricks by which DCU management have been trying to destroy their job security; and, secondly, on a national level, to prevent these tricks spreading through the universities so that good academics like Morgan Kelly end up being silenced.
It is as well to get certain fallacies out of the way;
1. Academic Tenure is NOT immunity from dismissal. There should indeed be dismissal procedures in place, and plenty of academics deserve dismissal, starting with ferdie, smeaton and Morris for the behaviour cited here.
2. Academic Tenure as conceived of in the USA is immunity from being made redundant; realistically, few get tenured in the USA before the age of 35. It is also bound up with the concept of academic freedom.
3. Academic freedom, in turn, is the notion that academics should be free from influence by university management in their expression of opinion in the same way that judges are free in their judgements of government pressure. Likewise, students must feel comfortable in class that they can freely express opinions; the progress of knowledge depends hugely on academic freedom. Ferdie's going after me in 2002 and submitting me to disciplinary charges for exposing the fact that the computing degree had a 65% first year failure rate is a stark violation of academic freedom. Morris' going after Fergus Moloney was not just sadistic; it violated F's freedom.
4, Academic Tenure is also vital for the supervision of students who require perhaps 10 years of formation after their primary degree. To reduce it to the right to 3 months' notice, as DCU has unsuccessfully tried to do, makes Ireland uncompetitive
So now let's look at our contracts. The image here is the first two pages of the ONLY valid academic contracts that exist at DCU. The next page has a section giving academic freedom; this contract was drawn up with care. If hired after 1995, like Paul Cahill, you have an illegitimate contract which gets rid of tenure, and academic freedom, and specifies a place of work (meaning you can't do what academics do everywhere else, and work from home);
The behaviour of DCU management has been so criminal that only their wholesale replacement by mac Craith will allow proper discussion of these issues. In the absence thereof, and given the state's tolerance of the most foul abuse both of staff and students, it is highly likely that the better students will self-educate using web resources. Follow the links from
http://www.catonmat.net/series/mit-introduction-to-algorithms
to see what can be done with one staple of a comp sci course; algorithms.
For general science, see
http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/
What intelligent students would inflict the likes of ferdie, smeaton and Morris - not to mention Conry, Burns et al - on themselves, given that this resource is out there?
The ball is now well and truly in the court of the government administration to rectify matters, and reintroduce proper civility, respect and - oh yes – decent academic standards
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 7u Bealtaine 2010
PS (9/5/10)I forgot to mention - the PRSI rate you pay as lecturer means that you are NOT eligible for any SI-related money. In other words, you can try and get the dole at best.
And now for the punchline. The social welfare dept does not allow "Lecturing" as a suitable job description. In other words, if fired by the likes of that lunatic FvP and his criminal cohort, you can get neither social insurance funds nor the dole. Perhaps they should tell us this when we apply for jobs at DCU?
The main reason DCU staff do not trust DCU's management, and have in fact voted "no confidence" in them in a formal ballot, is that their management do not merit trust; where it has been given, it has been betrayed. The second reason is that this management is grossly unqualified and incompetent; I recall their reaction when my very bright students were first presented with the spectacle of Martin Conry (the secretary/Provost) and Marion Burns (HR head) in early 2003 (Specifically; they said they would not have gone to DCU had they known about the caliber of the management). It is consistent with my predictions that FvP is now forgetting his history of rampant abuse of power, including cancelling elections and attempting to browbeat his staff into renouncing their rights by having hand-delivered to their homes, late at night, utterly illegal instructions;
Ignore summary dismissals- Ferdie tells us he's really a nice guy
The following is a cartoon about what losing tenure is meant to signify in the US system; lest we forget, for FvP tenure, such as it was, equalled the job at MacD's. He went to the supreme court, spending at least E2 million of taxpayers' money, to assert his right on summary dismissal of a senior academic, and personally gave evidence at the EAT in order to destroy the terms and conditions of those of us employed by NIHE (at a guess, this venture cost 500k, as well as the loss of my brilliant students and their work, then and later endorsed at its highest level by Stanford, and probably thus worth at least in the tens of millions );
The remainder of this entry is simply a recapitulation of the main themes of this blog. What I have been trying to do is first to ensure that DCU staff know about the devious tricks by which DCU management have been trying to destroy their job security; and, secondly, on a national level, to prevent these tricks spreading through the universities so that good academics like Morgan Kelly end up being silenced.
It is as well to get certain fallacies out of the way;
1. Academic Tenure is NOT immunity from dismissal. There should indeed be dismissal procedures in place, and plenty of academics deserve dismissal, starting with ferdie, smeaton and Morris for the behaviour cited here.
2. Academic Tenure as conceived of in the USA is immunity from being made redundant; realistically, few get tenured in the USA before the age of 35. It is also bound up with the concept of academic freedom.
3. Academic freedom, in turn, is the notion that academics should be free from influence by university management in their expression of opinion in the same way that judges are free in their judgements of government pressure. Likewise, students must feel comfortable in class that they can freely express opinions; the progress of knowledge depends hugely on academic freedom. Ferdie's going after me in 2002 and submitting me to disciplinary charges for exposing the fact that the computing degree had a 65% first year failure rate is a stark violation of academic freedom. Morris' going after Fergus Moloney was not just sadistic; it violated F's freedom.
4, Academic Tenure is also vital for the supervision of students who require perhaps 10 years of formation after their primary degree. To reduce it to the right to 3 months' notice, as DCU has unsuccessfully tried to do, makes Ireland uncompetitive
So now let's look at our contracts. The image here is the first two pages of the ONLY valid academic contracts that exist at DCU. The next page has a section giving academic freedom; this contract was drawn up with care. If hired after 1995, like Paul Cahill, you have an illegitimate contract which gets rid of tenure, and academic freedom, and specifies a place of work (meaning you can't do what academics do everywhere else, and work from home);
The behaviour of DCU management has been so criminal that only their wholesale replacement by mac Craith will allow proper discussion of these issues. In the absence thereof, and given the state's tolerance of the most foul abuse both of staff and students, it is highly likely that the better students will self-educate using web resources. Follow the links from
http://www.catonmat.net/series/mit-introduction-to-algorithms
to see what can be done with one staple of a comp sci course; algorithms.
For general science, see
http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/
What intelligent students would inflict the likes of ferdie, smeaton and Morris - not to mention Conry, Burns et al - on themselves, given that this resource is out there?
The ball is now well and truly in the court of the government administration to rectify matters, and reintroduce proper civility, respect and - oh yes – decent academic standards
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 7u Bealtaine 2010
PS (9/5/10)I forgot to mention - the PRSI rate you pay as lecturer means that you are NOT eligible for any SI-related money. In other words, you can try and get the dole at best.
And now for the punchline. The social welfare dept does not allow "Lecturing" as a suitable job description. In other words, if fired by the likes of that lunatic FvP and his criminal cohort, you can get neither social insurance funds nor the dole. Perhaps they should tell us this when we apply for jobs at DCU?
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tom Garvin's shameless hypocrisy
I first pointed this out in a short review on Amazon a year ago. In any case, here is the relevant excerpt from chapter 5 of my book:
"Garvin (2004) is concerned with establishing how deluded old Ireland was before the onset of technical education and transnational capital. In other words, a country that essentially was debt-free was inferior to one in which personal debt was €315 billion and state debt €35 billion going into 2007. (note; these figures are now in 2010 much higher ) Of course, as the former figure mounts, the latter decreases as the state exacts tax on private debt. After NAMA, state debt is around €150 billion with a current account shortfall of over €20 billion expected every year for the foreseeable future.
Garvin recruits Senator WB Yeats, speaking in 1926, to the cause as one focus of Garvin’s book is going to be how vastly superior technical education is to a classical one:
"For two or three centuries people thought that their various religious systems were more important than the child. In the modern world the tendency is to think of the nation…there is a tendency to subordinate the child to the idea of the nation." (In Garvin, 2004, p. xi)
Garvin ignores the fact that Yeats had recently undergone a conversion to Fascism:
"Yeats’s political speeches of this period are not pleasant reading. On August 2, 1924, he spoke with cautious satisfaction at a public banquet of the curtailment of liberty which he foresaw: We do not believe that war is passing away … a great popular leader (Mussolini) had said to an applauding multitude, ‘We will trample upon the decomposing body of the Goddess of Liberty.’" (Ellmann, 1978, p. 248-9)
The subtitle of Garvin’s book is “Why was Ireland so poor for so long?” as distinct from “How did Ireland manage to run over a trillion dollars in debt without producing anything that was not there in 1995, destroying its software and music industries, renouncing a historically valid claim on its north-east corner, bringing in a half-million immigrants in a bizarre attempt at multiculturalism, and deluging its populace with pornography?” As a historian, Garvin makes some valid points:
"The political split of 1921 seriously demoralized Sinn Féin and led to a much-documented but not quite measurable culture of cynicism and disappointment.” (p. 4)
Indeed; it could also be argued that the brutality of the Civil War allowed Fianna Fail to posture as anti-establishment even after over a half century in power. The continuing imbroglio over NI allowed it room openly to interfere with the legal process right up to 2002 and, as we will indicate in the final chapter, beyond this.
Garvin (p. 31) correctly points out that the “Irish state was born between 1850 and 1870, when the Catholic Church was reorganized, the Dublin administration was modernized ... and the mass of the population became literate and English-speaking.” The Irish revolution unfortunately failed to restructure this state. This thesis is corroborated by Coakley (2008, 29) who argues that, after 1922, “the control bureaucracy continued with little change”. Indeed, post the act of Union, 19th century Ireland witnessed a concentration of power in the executive, in the absence of a domestic elected assembly
Garvin’s haste to identify the root problem of the putative Irish crisis as educational reaches apotheosis toward the end of his monograph (pp. 210-214). He excoriates Newman;
"The nation that there were ‘high ideas’ which had little connection with the mechanical arts is Platonic and aristocratic." (p. 210)
Garvin misses the point entirely; the bubble in Ireland’s economy from 1997 to 2007 was almost entirely an artifact of the availability of credit in international financial markets. In actual fact, native tech and manufacturing contracted during this period. While there is nothing as significant in Irish scientific history as Newton and his rivals (described ably in Clark et al, 2001), we have seen that Mac Cnaimhin (1966) did not lack for exemplars of Irish scientific genius. It is is this context that we should read;
"Here we have the real root of the fatal innocence about science and the link between scientific theory and practical application…which actually shocked the OECD team in the early 1960s." (p. 211)
By his own admission, Garvin is a neophyte in economics and the innocence is his downfall. (Let us acknowledge, also, that the very existence of political “science” is controversial) Practical applications of computing technology typically take a part of civil society like social networking, the humanities Garvin’s brave now Ireland is to repudiate, and implements it in systems like Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube.
The remainder of Garvin’s argument is equally specious. Above all, he seeks solace in Mancur Olson’s work, from the quantitative end of political science. Garvin interprets this as proving that social change may not happen because “free riders” do not participate in the political process, even though it be at their own cost not to do so. However, here as elsewhere, Garvin is naïve; we shall see a much more realistic analysis in David McWilliam's work. Aumann (2000a, p. 35) summarizes;
"The ‘competitive price of a vote’ is an idea that appears … in voting for ‘non-exclusive’ public goods … the ‘price of a vote’ is next to nothing, and so the vote becomes insignificant."
Aumann gives an example; if a populace is divided into those who prefer public libraries and public TV, there is so little to be gained for voting in state investment in either that it is hardly worth one’s while:
"In a voting game with nonexclusive public goods, each voter will enjoy the public goods eventually produced no matter how he votes. He is a free rider … he sells his vote for whatever it will fetch, producing cutthroat competition which drives its market value down to zero." (Aumann, 2000b, p. 350)
Nonexclusive goods we can also term non-rival resources (2005). This does not at all hold when we are dealing with exclusive resources or “exclusive public goods.” What Garvin assumedly meant was the phenomena of blocking coalitions:
"In the convention example any coalition with more than one-third of the members is blocking." (Aumann, 200a, p. 31)
There are in fact many results from game theory that apply to Ireland, which has two main parties and many smaller ones:
"Let us next consider a parliament with two large parties and many small ones. Suppose, for example, that each of the large parties has one-third of the seats … it would be foolish for the small parties to form a ‘common front.'" (ibid, p. 34)
Garvin also fails to mention the many incursions on personal freedom that even the initial healthy economic recovery from 1992 to 1997 was built on; social partnership agreements that effectively neutralized unions; closed shop agreements in the public service with no recourse for a bullied or fired public servant. The clash between individual republican citizens and a corporatist state will surely eventually produce a Kundera-esque literature (with hopefully less controversy than Kundera's alleged spying career excited). "
What a nerve the bould Tom has!
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 5u Bealtaine 2010
