Sir, - I haven't had the pleasure yet of reading Donal McCartney's book UCD: A National Idea, but I would nevertheless ask you to allow me comment on Anthony Clare's review of it (Books, December 18th). Prof Clare has his own personal views of UCD, particularly about the 1960s, when he was a student there. He is of course entitled to his views, but I would like to correct some of his misconceptions and proffer some differing views.
His reference to the "two massive hate figures of McQuaid and Tierney" derive, I guess, from his own pen and not McCartney's; but whichever, in relation to Tierney it is stuff and nonsense. Michael Tierney was not hated by the student population, nor by the academic staff. Maybe the student Tony Clare and some of his pals hated him, but that's their privilege and problem. Tierney was president of UCD from 1948 to 1965, which was a period of continuing academic expansion and relative student calm. It was also a wonderful time to be in UCD (cf. Maeve Binchy's many publications) and apart from the occasional confrontation with Prof Clare's beloved Literary & Historical Society, President Tierney was a remote and distant figure from student activities.
As a junior member of the staff in the early 1960s, and secretary to the newly formed academic staff association, I found President Tierney very approachable, kindly, and rigorously fair, if somewhat gruff and authoritarian, in all his dealings. He established the Conroy Committee on student facilities with Judge Charlie Conroy as chairman, and this committee included junior staff such as myself and the radical student leaders of that time, such as Gerry Collins (later MEP). This representative group made many quite revolutionary student proposals for the new Belfield campus, which he readily accepted.
For the great majority of us who believed, then and now, that the move to Belfield was the correct and obvious one, great credit must go to Michael Tierney for his extraordinary foresight and brilliant strategy in quietly buying up, throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the various estates and tracts of land which now make up the magnificent Belfield campus.
There can be no doubt that Belfield is one of the finest university campuses in Europe and for this the Irish nation must be grateful to Michael Tierney more than to any other person. Unashamedly biased, to be sure, I also believe UCD to be one of the outstanding contemporary European universities in terms of the academic standing of both its students and academic staff.
It is widely reported that Michael Tierney had no great love for Trinity College, and that may well be true as this was the prevailing national stance at the time; but I suggest that it is wrong, indeed absurd, to deduce, as Prof Clare does from McCartney's text, that the move to Belfield from Earlsfort Terrace and Merrion Street (not yet complete, incidentally), was driven by his wish to get out from under the shadow of TCD in central Dublin. In 1953, the student population in UCD was about 3,000; it is now close to 20,000. This expansion in numbers was the driving force for the move and it has succeeded brilliantly.
I would like to comment also on Prof Clare's statement that "few of those who graduated out of Earlsfort Terrace have ever grown to love or identify with the new Leviathan". Again, stuff and nonsense! This is simply not true, or perhaps it means nothing. Of course, one always remembers with greater affection the buildings, customs, and lecturers of one's youth in preference to what has come later on. In relation to UCD, it has been my experience that the graduates of the pre-Belfield years have responded with extraordinary generosity and much enthusiasm to the more recent developments of their Alma Mater.
With regard to James Joyce, I have some sympathy with Prof Clare's argument that UCD has not done him proud.) It is true that despite many Joycean activities, including the very successful annual Joyce Summer School established by the late Prof Gus Martin in Newman House, Joyce is often not seen as a UCD man. I have often been confronted by the view, at home and abroad, that Joyce was a student in some other Dublin college; so I am very happy to note that Prof Clare, as the current vice-president of the UCD Literary & Historical Society , is organising on January 20th next in Newman House the centennial celebration of Joyce's powerful address to the L & H entitled "Drama & Life". It should be a splendid evening, when the repartee, the nostalgia and the glory of the very old UCD will be rekindled in those magnificent buildings. - Yours, etc., John Kelly,
Professor Emeritus and former Registrar, University College, Belfield, Dublin 4.