Monday, November 30, 2009
Magdalenism in the Irish Universities
The Murphy report on sexual abuse of children by the “religious” in
Dublin diocese has disgraced Ireland internationally yet again. It is
increasingly clear that the Roman Catholic Church was allowed act
outside the law for decades in Ireland; the toll in ruined lives is
painfully clear. Yet this pattern is being repeated in the universities ,
as we shall see.
Let's first look at the variety of roles that a public university is asked to play in society in exchange for its generous taxpayer funding;
1.It is asked to assist in the intellectual and moral formation of young adults. To wit, it is asked to provide them with a safe environment in which they can begin to engage with societal forces as adults.
2.Specifically, it is asked to provide professional training if the young adult has already decided on a career route; to provide a rich array of thinking skills if not
3.The scholars who constitute the university faculty are given the protection of academic tenure to comment on pressing societal issues, both within and outside their universities
4. In return, they are asked responsibly to mentor young men and women, and maintain a high level of intellectual and other culture
5.The university is asked also to provide a neutral, open venue in which great issues of the day can be debated
6.More recently, it has been asked to spearhead R+D
7.Within the past few decades, it has been asked to act as mainstay for the economy
What we have seen at DCU is (7) at the expense of all the other roles. Let us be clear; an immediate effective privatization of DCU would be a short-term bonanza. Much of the land could be sold off, and academic courses sponsored by corporations. In the same way, it would be a medium and long term disaster, as – to take one example -the antiquated programming methods used for Vista are exposed as vastly inferior to rigorous formation, and the graduates effectively end up semiskilled, at best.
What has been truly disturbing, however, is the ruthlessness and criminality with which this “vision” is being implemented. After the first credible reports of bribery and bullying of students were raised in the Dail, the Minister said that universities' behaviour was ultra vires his office;
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy
While undoubtedly incorrect as an interpretation of the 1997 act, in that “academic freedom” is interpreted as freedom of the university authorities to abuse the people they are temporarily given custodianship of, the echo of Dublin diocese and the Magdalene laundries is loud indeed.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/30/09
PS Who did the deal that passed the bill for clerical abuses from the RC church onto the taxpayer? Arthur Cox, of course. This is a warning to them; given the assault on women that we have seen from the likes of Martin Conry in the past, any repeat of their theatrical excesses of the past few sittings will end badly for them. In particular, my partner has had to give up work in order to give evidence to refute the lies of DCU management in the last sitting. She is recently bereaved;
Mel's mom
John O'Dwyer of Arthur Cox – my most assiduous readers – you have been warned.
Let's first look at the variety of roles that a public university is asked to play in society in exchange for its generous taxpayer funding;
1.It is asked to assist in the intellectual and moral formation of young adults. To wit, it is asked to provide them with a safe environment in which they can begin to engage with societal forces as adults.
2.Specifically, it is asked to provide professional training if the young adult has already decided on a career route; to provide a rich array of thinking skills if not
3.The scholars who constitute the university faculty are given the protection of academic tenure to comment on pressing societal issues, both within and outside their universities
4. In return, they are asked responsibly to mentor young men and women, and maintain a high level of intellectual and other culture
5.The university is asked also to provide a neutral, open venue in which great issues of the day can be debated
6.More recently, it has been asked to spearhead R+D
7.Within the past few decades, it has been asked to act as mainstay for the economy
What we have seen at DCU is (7) at the expense of all the other roles. Let us be clear; an immediate effective privatization of DCU would be a short-term bonanza. Much of the land could be sold off, and academic courses sponsored by corporations. In the same way, it would be a medium and long term disaster, as – to take one example -the antiquated programming methods used for Vista are exposed as vastly inferior to rigorous formation, and the graduates effectively end up semiskilled, at best.
What has been truly disturbing, however, is the ruthlessness and criminality with which this “vision” is being implemented. After the first credible reports of bribery and bullying of students were raised in the Dail, the Minister said that universities' behaviour was ultra vires his office;
http://universitywatchdog.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/the-greens-and-opportunistic-hypocrisy
While undoubtedly incorrect as an interpretation of the 1997 act, in that “academic freedom” is interpreted as freedom of the university authorities to abuse the people they are temporarily given custodianship of, the echo of Dublin diocese and the Magdalene laundries is loud indeed.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/30/09
PS Who did the deal that passed the bill for clerical abuses from the RC church onto the taxpayer? Arthur Cox, of course. This is a warning to them; given the assault on women that we have seen from the likes of Martin Conry in the past, any repeat of their theatrical excesses of the past few sittings will end badly for them. In particular, my partner has had to give up work in order to give evidence to refute the lies of DCU management in the last sitting. She is recently bereaved;
Mel's mom
John O'Dwyer of Arthur Cox – my most assiduous readers – you have been warned.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
VP envy
(with apologies to Mel Brooks)
The EAT on my case, with consequences for everyone tenured before June 16, 1997, is set to convene again on Dec 7th 2009. DCU management know full well that their case is lost, leaving them the usual resort of wasting more taxpayers' money to appeal, and dragging things out even more. Yet the losses have meant that many decent, bright, and diligent people have now been spared this abuse of our employment law since 2002. Please forgive me for being proud about this; the rest of staff - those employed post 1997 - owe a huge debt of gratitude to Paul Cahill. SIPTU now needs to intervene firmly to regularize their contracts. I believe it possible that the Supreme Court will not rule until the new president is announced.
This will mean that DCU management have now lost in the Labour Court (twice), High Court (twice), EAT (twice), and equality commission within 7 years. Apparently, their leader claims an honorific and military ancestors. It took me some time to find a suitably qualified military ancestor(though, for American readers, the 49er's lamentable Mike Nolan makes the point perfectly);
Dumb, with an accent
Lewis Nolan led the charge of the light brigade, and was son of a consul to Milan to boot. This surely allows me to sport whatever the Gaelic equivalent of “Von” is? Alternatively, surely the better path to follow would have been that of my colleague on many programme committees Walter v. Hahn, who believes that the use of these honorifics is mediaeval, and utterly inappropriate for a 21st century republic?
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/28/09
The EAT on my case, with consequences for everyone tenured before June 16, 1997, is set to convene again on Dec 7th 2009. DCU management know full well that their case is lost, leaving them the usual resort of wasting more taxpayers' money to appeal, and dragging things out even more. Yet the losses have meant that many decent, bright, and diligent people have now been spared this abuse of our employment law since 2002. Please forgive me for being proud about this; the rest of staff - those employed post 1997 - owe a huge debt of gratitude to Paul Cahill. SIPTU now needs to intervene firmly to regularize their contracts. I believe it possible that the Supreme Court will not rule until the new president is announced.
This will mean that DCU management have now lost in the Labour Court (twice), High Court (twice), EAT (twice), and equality commission within 7 years. Apparently, their leader claims an honorific and military ancestors. It took me some time to find a suitably qualified military ancestor(though, for American readers, the 49er's lamentable Mike Nolan makes the point perfectly);
Dumb, with an accent
Lewis Nolan led the charge of the light brigade, and was son of a consul to Milan to boot. This surely allows me to sport whatever the Gaelic equivalent of “Von” is? Alternatively, surely the better path to follow would have been that of my colleague on many programme committees Walter v. Hahn, who believes that the use of these honorifics is mediaeval, and utterly inappropriate for a 21st century republic?
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/28/09
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Arthur Cox: Ireland's mafia law firm?
Interpolation Jan 2014 - looks like this was not even remotely cynical enough
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rte-stars-judges-and-rugby-elite-who-owe-anglo-millions-29887499.html
There are varying fundamental notions about the role of law in society.
For some, the rule of law is to be a positive force, aiding human
potential. Others take a purely instrumental approach, in which the law
is used as a tool to achieve often dubious ends. It is surely not unfair
to say that a university management which would use millions of
taxpayers' money to go after individuals is in the latter camp. The
resources they control allow amorality. The next move in Ireland has
historically been to cover the crude fiat of use of taxpayers' money to
get a judgement with the sheen of the “rule of law”, whereby it would be
seen as following the natural order of things to deny all basic
employment rights, as distinct from being the result of a vicious and
fraudulent 15-year campaign – as we shall see.
The end toward which the law is being used as an instrument in DCU is one in which globalized corporatism gets a slave university. Let us be clear; law as instrument in Nazi Germany led to genocide, and German judges post 1945 were NOT given allowed argue that "they were only following the law/obeying orders", and were imprisoned. In DCU, tenure, and basic rights for students, are both to be excised. Negotiation with staff union is to be extirpated; instead “the law” is to be used (The fact that Ireland is now being threatened with complete shutdown by strikes like today's indicate how truly bonkers this idea is; not even this government attempted to get a court injunction against today's strike).
In 1995, DCU management promulgated a fraudulent comprehensive “agreement” with its closed-shop union, SIPTU. This document excised academic freedom, the right to choose one's place of work, and tenure defined in the classical Irish way as a job until 65. These new provisions were never agreed with the union; neither of course was the later restriction of tenure to 3 months' notice. The signatures on the document were copied from the 1985 agreement; 3 of the 4 were out of office in 1995. This is out-and-out fraud, and renders contracts after 1995 at least moot, and probably invalid.
Who is to blame? DCU management, certainly; both O'Hare and Conry need to be called to task on this. Yet the abominations of the past decade could not have come into existence without the help of DCU's lawyers, Arthur Cox.
It is important that readers outside Ireland realize that, after a brief flirtation with “republican courts” - which were recognised by the great majority of the nascent citizenry – the new Irish state's legal system devolved into a pastiche of the bewigged farce of Victorian Britain. (Thomas Mallon, the thug used inter alia at the EAT and supreme court, looks and acts like a grotesquely obese Leo “Rumpole” McKern sans his intelligence and sense of humour).
Here in the US, there are legal infractions like malicious prosecution of a case;
Imagine how the Joshua Howarth case would have been treated
In Ireland, complaint calls to the Law society are treated with thinly-veiled contempt Given that, in a clear conflict of interest, Cox are allowed represent both NAMA and the bank of Ireland, there is little chance of our being able to get justice for their infractions.
For infractions there certainly were. At some point, someone will have to take responsibility for the waste of money, trust, and staff goodwill. A law firm has an obligation to advise its clients about the law; a mafia law firm tells its clients how to break the law, and get away with it.
I once had occasion to ask Cox for advice; the case has since been won in Britain, and is about to be heard in the US. They pulled out as soon as it became clear that they would have to confront the deeply criminal IMRO;
A US solution to an Irish problem
They suggested that I talk to the Irish cops, and temporarily get some critical documents from them, while they (our heroes of Cox) waited in the car park to see the documents. It was clear that they had done this before, despite the immediate sense that it came from the many bad gangster movies they no doubt have seen. They also noted that they were “hated” by the corporate enforcement authorities in Ireland, and so would not be appropriate to pass on the many infractions of Irish company law that now form part of a US federal case.
Arthur cox, in my experience, is purely and simply a mafia law firm. The first thing the new president of DCU needs to do in order to restore civility and trust is get rid of them.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/24/09
The end toward which the law is being used as an instrument in DCU is one in which globalized corporatism gets a slave university. Let us be clear; law as instrument in Nazi Germany led to genocide, and German judges post 1945 were NOT given allowed argue that "they were only following the law/obeying orders", and were imprisoned. In DCU, tenure, and basic rights for students, are both to be excised. Negotiation with staff union is to be extirpated; instead “the law” is to be used (The fact that Ireland is now being threatened with complete shutdown by strikes like today's indicate how truly bonkers this idea is; not even this government attempted to get a court injunction against today's strike).
In 1995, DCU management promulgated a fraudulent comprehensive “agreement” with its closed-shop union, SIPTU. This document excised academic freedom, the right to choose one's place of work, and tenure defined in the classical Irish way as a job until 65. These new provisions were never agreed with the union; neither of course was the later restriction of tenure to 3 months' notice. The signatures on the document were copied from the 1985 agreement; 3 of the 4 were out of office in 1995. This is out-and-out fraud, and renders contracts after 1995 at least moot, and probably invalid.
Who is to blame? DCU management, certainly; both O'Hare and Conry need to be called to task on this. Yet the abominations of the past decade could not have come into existence without the help of DCU's lawyers, Arthur Cox.
It is important that readers outside Ireland realize that, after a brief flirtation with “republican courts” - which were recognised by the great majority of the nascent citizenry – the new Irish state's legal system devolved into a pastiche of the bewigged farce of Victorian Britain. (Thomas Mallon, the thug used inter alia at the EAT and supreme court, looks and acts like a grotesquely obese Leo “Rumpole” McKern sans his intelligence and sense of humour).
Here in the US, there are legal infractions like malicious prosecution of a case;
Imagine how the Joshua Howarth case would have been treated
In Ireland, complaint calls to the Law society are treated with thinly-veiled contempt Given that, in a clear conflict of interest, Cox are allowed represent both NAMA and the bank of Ireland, there is little chance of our being able to get justice for their infractions.
For infractions there certainly were. At some point, someone will have to take responsibility for the waste of money, trust, and staff goodwill. A law firm has an obligation to advise its clients about the law; a mafia law firm tells its clients how to break the law, and get away with it.
I once had occasion to ask Cox for advice; the case has since been won in Britain, and is about to be heard in the US. They pulled out as soon as it became clear that they would have to confront the deeply criminal IMRO;
A US solution to an Irish problem
They suggested that I talk to the Irish cops, and temporarily get some critical documents from them, while they (our heroes of Cox) waited in the car park to see the documents. It was clear that they had done this before, despite the immediate sense that it came from the many bad gangster movies they no doubt have seen. They also noted that they were “hated” by the corporate enforcement authorities in Ireland, and so would not be appropriate to pass on the many infractions of Irish company law that now form part of a US federal case.
Arthur cox, in my experience, is purely and simply a mafia law firm. The first thing the new president of DCU needs to do in order to restore civility and trust is get rid of them.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/24/09
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Nazi connection
What has happened in DCU will soon seem impossible, particularly as the
search for a new boss there seems oriented toward a safe pair of hands -
as distinct from a maverick who did not even figure in the top 2 in the
initial round of interviews. Like the WWII concentration camp inmates,
it is critical that we document as much of it as possible.
Surely a background check should have been done on this individual's family background before he was allowed play with the lives of thousands of Irish citizens?
The fact is that we have had a President who, by his own admission, does not believe in negotiation in industrial relations, preferring the law as instrument (see next week's entry on Arthur Cox);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Prondzynski
This is called a more "moderate" approach; the rest of us find it extreme, with the reductio ad absurdum being the attempt summarily to dismiss senior academics. Elsewhere, he has at least been honest about his approach; the universities should effectively be privatized and mass immigration should continue. Moreover, one can (unlike Schwarzneggar) unapologetically speak of a forebear who fought for Hitler, another who worked in Hitler's Ministry for Labour, and the Irish do not have any racial Celtic origin (as if such could exist)
Following are some more interesting web sources;
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/98-10/98-10-19/0015.html
(search on dyc to get} “NEW YORK (Reuters) - Philipp Holzmann AG, one of Germany's biggest
construction firms, has been sued for profiting from the work of
Nazi-era slave laborers and said Monday it would be willing to
discuss a possible settlement. Holzmann was among a group of German
and Austrian firms named in two separate suits filed after business
hours Friday in Brooklyn federal court. Plaintiffs' lawyers
representing Holocaust victims had announced plans to file the suits
during a news conference last Thursday. Other German building
companies sued along with Holzmann were Dyckerhoff AG and Leonhard
Moll AG. '
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/germanco1.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=EpAOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=dyckerhoff+nazi&source=bl&ots=9XVzw3aU0G&sig=tBqkgOeK8xzZMCtdX6btqvTb70A&hl=en&ei=-MYES4_JK4S2sgPgzKHKCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1881766
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:9Kxzy6q709cJ:www.industrialnistopy.cz/UserFiles/File/excursions_en.pdf+Dyckerhoff+AG+nazi&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
und so weiter – Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/18/09
Surely a background check should have been done on this individual's family background before he was allowed play with the lives of thousands of Irish citizens?
The fact is that we have had a President who, by his own admission, does not believe in negotiation in industrial relations, preferring the law as instrument (see next week's entry on Arthur Cox);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Prondzynski
This is called a more "moderate" approach; the rest of us find it extreme, with the reductio ad absurdum being the attempt summarily to dismiss senior academics. Elsewhere, he has at least been honest about his approach; the universities should effectively be privatized and mass immigration should continue. Moreover, one can (unlike Schwarzneggar) unapologetically speak of a forebear who fought for Hitler, another who worked in Hitler's Ministry for Labour, and the Irish do not have any racial Celtic origin (as if such could exist)
Following are some more interesting web sources;
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/98-10/98-10-19/0015.html
(search on dyc to get} “NEW YORK (Reuters) - Philipp Holzmann AG, one of Germany's biggest
construction firms, has been sued for profiting from the work of
Nazi-era slave laborers and said Monday it would be willing to
discuss a possible settlement. Holzmann was among a group of German
and Austrian firms named in two separate suits filed after business
hours Friday in Brooklyn federal court. Plaintiffs' lawyers
representing Holocaust victims had announced plans to file the suits
during a news conference last Thursday. Other German building
companies sued along with Holzmann were Dyckerhoff AG and Leonhard
Moll AG. '
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/germanco1.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=EpAOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=dyckerhoff+nazi&source=bl&ots=9XVzw3aU0G&sig=tBqkgOeK8xzZMCtdX6btqvTb70A&hl=en&ei=-MYES4_JK4S2sgPgzKHKCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1881766
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:9Kxzy6q709cJ:www.industrialnistopy.cz/UserFiles/File/excursions_en.pdf+Dyckerhoff+AG+nazi&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
und so weiter – Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D 11/18/09
Monday, November 9, 2009
Good money after bad; restructuring the Irish universities?
The example of Stanford, Yahoo, Google and so on is often used as a justification for encumbering the taxpayer with the lifestyles of star academics. This writer has been a faculty member at Stanford; the Google story is that the nascent search engine was rubbished by eminent Stanford academics, and Google's founders moved off-campus with the loss of tens of billions in possible licensing revenue for Stanford . Variations of the same story occurred with Yahoo, and indeed Hewlett-Packard.
A quick analysis should work wonders. Star academics, particularly imported ones, need many drones to implement their plans. The fact that these drones end up with PhD's is irrelevant; we are already over-producing them. So the many gifted young men and women doing graduate work are being removed until age 30 or so from the opportunity – indeed, the felt need – to start a business. At this point, and having been de-skilled by immersion in an often cloying academic environment, the 30-year old is lost to entrepreneurship for life. The expensive work of the star academics itself is often done in an antiquated paradigm, and will prove evanescent, whatever the immediate impact in terms of citations etc looks like.
It is obscene to ask the tens of thousands of 3-hour-a-day (and more) commuters to continue to pay additionally for academics already earning more than 6 figures. It is also counter-productive, and effectively ensures a decline in entrepreneurship, with the Irish Sergei Brins and Larry Pages being tied up by the kind of academics (like Don Norman, who publicly admits his mistake) who will stifle them. The pot of gold that the Irish state believed it had back in the old Medialab days is gone; it is time now to scrap SFI and PRTLI as well. I invite readers to look at my 2001 interview with the WSJ to check my track record here;
The Medialab disaster
With this in mind, it is remarkable to see the person who has done most to attempt to centralize non-accountable, arbitrary power in universities inveighing against government “interference” while simultaneously asking for sustained government help;
Creathadh mhála
What we have seen since 2000 is a project which would remove universities from any state control, while requesting funding for frivolous lawsuits, union-busting, and allowing attested bullying both of staff and students. The person who has most driven this will soon be gone, Deo Gratias; let us look for a better way to operate after his (unfortunately relativistic) 15 minutes of fame is over.
First of all, it is as well to point out that there was science in Ireland before SFI; indeed, substantially better science than SFI will ever produce. Indeed, there is a rather beautiful summary of it, as Gaeilge, in MacCnaimhin, Séamus (1966). Eireannaigh San Eolaiocht. Dun Dealgan: Magowan.
How much funding did Hamilton need to produce the idea of Quaternions, and to rephrase Newton's second law in that elegant formalism we call simply “The Hamiltonian” with its multifarious other uses? What forms did Boole fill out to produce his eponymous logic? Granted, Boyle had the inadvertent gift of a large part of Munster to work with, but the indigenes in this book (Keane, O'Higgins, O'Sullivan) did not.
The extravagant funding by SFI et al is likely to lead to bad science, as well as a decline in entrepeneurship, as grant applicants follow fashions rather than do the kind of deep reflection that most recently was done by our Nobel laureate Walton. The attempt to destroy tenure has probably cost as much as SFI itself; apart from the immediate legal costs, there has been the resignation apparent in many of the more experienced staff, who have reduced their commitment to DCU and simply calculated that their house value should be able to see them through if they are summarily dismissed, as is the plan. The contempt shown them by management in its attempt to install summary dismissal is worsened by the fact that many of these staff sacrificed the best years of their lives for DCU and their students.
What we have seen is essentially an attempt by the 1997-2009 government to create its own scientists to replace those already there, exactly as the botched Medialab project was a hamfisted attempt to create its own software creators. Every project announced by SFI should be seen as a defeat; it is the replacement of an autochtonous alternative by a highly expensive and usually both imported and inferior alternative. The commuters who wake at 5-30 am to start their day are unlikely to remain patient for much longer.
In fact, there is a much deeper argument to be made about a state that will soon have to borrow more than it raises in tax in order to meet its basic obligations. It is very possible that the Irish state may soon be largely irrelevant to the lives of most of its “citizens”. Those of us who set up DCU in the first place - and indeed found paid work placements for students at the likes of Stanford – are ready to step up to the plate again.
Seán Ó Nualláin Ph.D. 9u Samhain 2009
PS 19u Samhain
Two of the great world advances in biophysics and subatomic physics may not have been obvious to Mac Cnaimhin. Schroedinger published "What is life?" while living in WWII Dublin; absent Church resistance, which led to no publisher in Ireland being ready to take this "atheistic' book, there is at least a chance that Irish researchers following themes from this work could have beaten out Crick and Watson. Schroedinger loved Ireland, and spent 11 years there after WW2 ended
JS Bell wasa one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, and a sure candidate for a posthumous Nobel, if such existed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell
With quantum entanglement in biological systems - initially perhaps an epiphenomenal electronic coherence - one of the truly fascinating recent discoveries, why doesn't SFI wean itself off its immunology obsession and ask for tenders to synthesize the contributions of these two greats?
