Did highly paid academics object because Bertie would do it for free?

FREE Education for Everyone, with the inapt acronym FEE, organised up to 1,000 student signatures in protest against the appointment of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern as a visiting professor at NUI Maynooth (NUIM). They called on the college authorities to suspend the appointment, at least until after the publication of the Mahon tribunal report.

It may have seemed like a rational protest but not when one examines what was involved. Some 36 academics, including professors and senior lectures, were behind the protest, which has been simmering for months.

It was not like 1982 when some members of the academic staff at UCD were critical of the appointment of former Senator George McGovern as a visiting professor of American history. He had an earned doctorate in history and had served in the US Congress for 16 years.