Wrixon presidency dispute a ‘common academic process’

THE feverish internal wranglings which surrounded Professor Gerry Wrixon’s presidency of University College Cork have been described as a common academic process in a new history of the college.

Professor John A Murphy’s analysis of the Wrixon tenure from 2000 to earlier this year is one of many notable features of his concise history of the college.

Where Finbarr Taught was launched last night by UCC president Dr Michael Murphy, who took over from Prof Wrixon in February. The book charts the college’s history from its first 115 students when the doors opened as Queen’s College Cork in 1849 to the 17,000-student campus today.

Prof Murphy, professor emeritus of Irish history at UCC, describes Prof Wrixon as having a vigorous approach which did not make him universally popular with the academic community, including critics who drew attention to the university’s financial position.

“With characteristic forcefulness, he denounced what he regarded as ‘a handful of people that are content to remain unambitious and who would not feel at all out of place in a mediocre institution,’” the author wrote.

He suggests the huge volume of emails between academic staff on these issues will provide future historians with a lively source to analyse the outbreak of what he calls “odium academicum”. “This is a virulent, if thankfully intermittent, fever which has raged everywhere in the groves of academe from time to time (Cork being no exception) and which often presents its unedifying face to a curious public,” Prof Murphy wrote.

“In 1994, for example, a clash between then president Michael P Mortell and registrar Michael A Moran was as distracting and divisive as it was, in retrospect, incomprehensible,” he said.

The disputes of recent years are nothing new, either, it seems as Prof Murphy highlights “town and gown” tensions between the privilege of those on campus and the city’s working classes in the 1920s and 1930s. However, he also reports a 1926 observation that there was little or no such rivalry because town knew little of gown, and cared less.

The book, edited by Nancy Hawkes and illustrated with Andrew Bradley’s photographs examines many fresh aspects of the college’s history. It is intended for graduates, staff, students and the people of Cork generally.