Sunday, March 28, 2010
Up in the air; ferdie's career transition
George Clooney famously did not win an Oscar for “Up in the air”,
perhaps the most searching exploration ever of wage slavery. In the
movie, he plays Ryan Bingham, an employee of “Career transition corp.”
(CTC) whose job is essentially flying around the USA firing people. Yet,
as he points out to his apprentice, it is not firing; it is actually
the announcement of redundancy, and as such should get at least tacit
consent from the ex-employee. In fact, he correctly points out that he
does not have the right to “fire” many of the employees he successfully
gets rid of; the creation of a scene in which consent is manufactured,
often with enormous emotional pain, is his trade.
Like the Nazis (described in Shirer's masterpiece) who advocated driving Jews around in trucks with gas being fed into the cabin as gentler than shooting them, Bingham sees himself as a humanitarian, and revolts at the “termination engineers” who are brought in to do the process over the internet. The movie plays with the obvious question of what kind of person would want to do Bingham's job; his family welcome him tepidly to the wedding of his sister, involve him in getting the reluctant groom to commit, but refuse to allow Bingham walk her up the aisle for reasons not made clear ( looks are exchanged). Bingham starts a relationship with a woman whom he sees as his soulmate, similarly always en route; while it is clear that it is forcing him into a maturation process, a process he sees as healthy, it turns out that she is simply playing with him, and is appalled when he turns up in her “real” life.
Her assumption, one is meant to conclude, is that only a lunatic would consider affairs generated in the midst of CTC-type work as real. What then of someone who takes a job as firer-in-chief of an Irish university? What happens when, with 3 months of his contract to go, he cannot fulfil his goal of introducing summary dismissal? How are those who have survived his temporary tenure under massive pressure to behave? How are we whose lives he has ruined to react? Indeed, as he heads into well-merited obscurity having cost the Irish taxpayer a fortune, who is Ferdie?
We know that Dyckerhof, his father's company, did use Jewish slave labour and this was part of a complaint in US federal court in 1998. In “The transformation of Ireland” (547-548) Ferriter makes reference to burnings of the property of German nationals just about the time Ferdie's father was establishing himself in Westmeath.
Thomas Kinsella wrote about those 1950/60s German immigrants, in the register of a venal civil servant.....
"Our labour pool
the tax concessions to foreign capital
how to get a nice estate through German...
I cannot take my eyes from their pallor
A red glare plays on their faces
livid with splashes of blazing fat. the oven door closes”
Ferdie's campaign was disproportionately aimed at Irish natives; his two biggest losses were to Profs Cahill and Horgan. “Up in the air” ends with CTC's reaction to a suicide of one of the dismissed ; the
“termination engineers” are themselves terminated, and Bingham is back in the air. In fact, he is instructed to do follow-ups of those fired, and one is led to assume that he will grow up, perhaps even into a real relationship with someone or other.
There will be no such second chance for Ferdie, who became president of a university a mere 20 years after his primary degree, and with no practical experience in law. Like Jesus, he has missing years; for some reason, he returned from a booming germany into recession Ireland in the mid-70's. What he was attempted to implement goes well beyond CTC, in that it was summary dismissal without cause, and indeed there was a suicide (Josh Howarth). If this blog has contributed to finishing ferdie's career in Ireland, it has been worth every moment I put into it.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 28u Marta 2010
Like the Nazis (described in Shirer's masterpiece) who advocated driving Jews around in trucks with gas being fed into the cabin as gentler than shooting them, Bingham sees himself as a humanitarian, and revolts at the “termination engineers” who are brought in to do the process over the internet. The movie plays with the obvious question of what kind of person would want to do Bingham's job; his family welcome him tepidly to the wedding of his sister, involve him in getting the reluctant groom to commit, but refuse to allow Bingham walk her up the aisle for reasons not made clear ( looks are exchanged). Bingham starts a relationship with a woman whom he sees as his soulmate, similarly always en route; while it is clear that it is forcing him into a maturation process, a process he sees as healthy, it turns out that she is simply playing with him, and is appalled when he turns up in her “real” life.
Her assumption, one is meant to conclude, is that only a lunatic would consider affairs generated in the midst of CTC-type work as real. What then of someone who takes a job as firer-in-chief of an Irish university? What happens when, with 3 months of his contract to go, he cannot fulfil his goal of introducing summary dismissal? How are those who have survived his temporary tenure under massive pressure to behave? How are we whose lives he has ruined to react? Indeed, as he heads into well-merited obscurity having cost the Irish taxpayer a fortune, who is Ferdie?
We know that Dyckerhof, his father's company, did use Jewish slave labour and this was part of a complaint in US federal court in 1998. In “The transformation of Ireland” (547-548) Ferriter makes reference to burnings of the property of German nationals just about the time Ferdie's father was establishing himself in Westmeath.
Thomas Kinsella wrote about those 1950/60s German immigrants, in the register of a venal civil servant.....
"Our labour pool
the tax concessions to foreign capital
how to get a nice estate through German...
I cannot take my eyes from their pallor
A red glare plays on their faces
livid with splashes of blazing fat. the oven door closes”
Ferdie's campaign was disproportionately aimed at Irish natives; his two biggest losses were to Profs Cahill and Horgan. “Up in the air” ends with CTC's reaction to a suicide of one of the dismissed ; the
“termination engineers” are themselves terminated, and Bingham is back in the air. In fact, he is instructed to do follow-ups of those fired, and one is led to assume that he will grow up, perhaps even into a real relationship with someone or other.
There will be no such second chance for Ferdie, who became president of a university a mere 20 years after his primary degree, and with no practical experience in law. Like Jesus, he has missing years; for some reason, he returned from a booming germany into recession Ireland in the mid-70's. What he was attempted to implement goes well beyond CTC, in that it was summary dismissal without cause, and indeed there was a suicide (Josh Howarth). If this blog has contributed to finishing ferdie's career in Ireland, it has been worth every moment I put into it.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 28u Marta 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Announcement; talk at UC Berkeley about attack on tenure in Ireland
Mar 16, 2010 Room 119, Moses Hall, 12 noon
3rd annual St Patrick's lecture
On June 29, 2009, the management of Dublin City University (DCU) set a world first; they pleaded at their country's supreme court for the right to dismiss a senior academic summarily and without cause. Yet this full-frontal attack on academic tenure was merely the logical outcome of policies that university had pursued for nearly two decades. Moreover, parliamentary proceedings in Ireland make it clear that DCU's goal to finesse privatization by refusing to discuss it - while removing state universities from all effective oversight by statutory bodies - has the current Irish government's full support. As part of this project, the National University of Ireland (James Joyce's alma mater) is being shut down
This talk first goes through the history of the attack on tenure and heavy-handed use of security staff, leading to the suicide of at least one academic and illegal dismissal of over a dozen. It then outlines the legislative and governance vacuum that allowed abuse of both staff and students to continue unchecked. It argues that the power granted the regents in the UC system affords the same dangers. The final conclusion is not without optimism,despite first appearances; it may be the case that at some point the notion of the public university may be superseded by technological advance as the locus of freedom of schooled thought and expression thereof.
Seán Ó Nualláin
Sean O Nuallain holds an M.Sc. in Psychology from University College, Dublin (UCD) Ireland & a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has been a visiting scholar at both Stanford and UC Berkeley, eventually being appointed a faculty member by academic senate in both institutions, and directs the independent non-profit Nous Research.
He is the author of a book on the foundations of Cognitive Science: "The Search for Mind" (Ablex, 1995; 2nd ed Intellect, 2002; Third edition Intellect, 2003 and co-editor of "Two Sciences of Mind" (with Paul Mc Kevitt and Eoghan Mac Aogain (Benjamins, 1997); editor of "Spatial Cognition"; co-editor of "Language, Vision, and Music" (Benjamins, 2002) and of "Mind in Interaction" (Benjamins, in preparation). His "Being Human: the Search for Order" (Intellect, 2002) sold out its first print-run immediately and has been published in a second edition (2004).
He worked the French jazz circuit and the American folk circuit between 2002 and 2005 as a guitarist with his partner Melanie O' Reilly after winning a landmark judgement preserving academic tenure in Ireland. In recent years, he has published with Walter Freeman, Richard Strohman of UC Berkeley, as well as being a single author of biology and neuroscience refereed papers, and had his courses at Stanford endorsed by Patrick Suppes.
He is also an avid sportsman who has won squash championships in Ireland, the US, and Canada.
The St Patrick's lectures
This series was set up as a response to the lack of Irish studies at UC Berkeley. The 2008 talk focussed on the destruction of the medieval and neolithic monuments in the environs of Tara; the 2009 talk on Shell's low-level warfare against the citizens of County Mayo as it builds a gas pipeline
This talk is being hosted by the institute for governmental studies at UC Berkeley.
I will post a precis after the talk
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 15u Marta 2010
PS:We also did a more cheerful event on the 17th itself;
http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=29651
Precis as promised, with a mistake on "2010" versus 2009;
“Privatization and policing of the Irish universities”
0
commen
3rd annual St Patrick's lecture
On June 29, 2009, the management of Dublin City University (DCU) set a world first; they pleaded at their country's supreme court for the right to dismiss a senior academic summarily and without cause. Yet this full-frontal attack on academic tenure was merely the logical outcome of policies that university had pursued for nearly two decades. Moreover, parliamentary proceedings in Ireland make it clear that DCU's goal to finesse privatization by refusing to discuss it - while removing state universities from all effective oversight by statutory bodies - has the current Irish government's full support. As part of this project, the National University of Ireland (James Joyce's alma mater) is being shut down
This talk first goes through the history of the attack on tenure and heavy-handed use of security staff, leading to the suicide of at least one academic and illegal dismissal of over a dozen. It then outlines the legislative and governance vacuum that allowed abuse of both staff and students to continue unchecked. It argues that the power granted the regents in the UC system affords the same dangers. The final conclusion is not without optimism,despite first appearances; it may be the case that at some point the notion of the public university may be superseded by technological advance as the locus of freedom of schooled thought and expression thereof.
Seán Ó Nualláin
Sean O Nuallain holds an M.Sc. in Psychology from University College, Dublin (UCD) Ireland & a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has been a visiting scholar at both Stanford and UC Berkeley, eventually being appointed a faculty member by academic senate in both institutions, and directs the independent non-profit Nous Research.
He is the author of a book on the foundations of Cognitive Science: "The Search for Mind" (Ablex, 1995; 2nd ed Intellect, 2002; Third edition Intellect, 2003 and co-editor of "Two Sciences of Mind" (with Paul Mc Kevitt and Eoghan Mac Aogain (Benjamins, 1997); editor of "Spatial Cognition"; co-editor of "Language, Vision, and Music" (Benjamins, 2002) and of "Mind in Interaction" (Benjamins, in preparation). His "Being Human: the Search for Order" (Intellect, 2002) sold out its first print-run immediately and has been published in a second edition (2004).
He worked the French jazz circuit and the American folk circuit between 2002 and 2005 as a guitarist with his partner Melanie O' Reilly after winning a landmark judgement preserving academic tenure in Ireland. In recent years, he has published with Walter Freeman, Richard Strohman of UC Berkeley, as well as being a single author of biology and neuroscience refereed papers, and had his courses at Stanford endorsed by Patrick Suppes.
He is also an avid sportsman who has won squash championships in Ireland, the US, and Canada.
The St Patrick's lectures
This series was set up as a response to the lack of Irish studies at UC Berkeley. The 2008 talk focussed on the destruction of the medieval and neolithic monuments in the environs of Tara; the 2009 talk on Shell's low-level warfare against the citizens of County Mayo as it builds a gas pipeline
This talk is being hosted by the institute for governmental studies at UC Berkeley.
I will post a precis after the talk
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 15u Marta 2010
PS:We also did a more cheerful event on the 17th itself;
http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=29651
Precis as promised, with a mistake on "2010" versus 2009;
“Privatization and policing of the Irish universities”
