The recent controversy surrounding the decision made by University College Cork to name one of its buildings after the Nobel laureate James Watson – controversy that saw the President of the UCC Students’ Union argue that the university should redefine “the point at which racial prejudice overshadows scientific prowess” in revoking the name – might give one the impression that it is seldom that a leading academic figure with unsettling opinions is so honoured.
This, however, is far from the reality that a cursory glance at the illustrious names that label our university landscape reveals. Trinity’s Front Square has, since the 1960s, been the location of a statue of former Provost George Salmon, a man vehemently opposed to the admission of women to the College. In 2004, Trinity named its newest library after James Ussher, an honour that obscures both his questionable estimate of the age of the Earth and his beliefs that the Catholic faith is “superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical” and that “to consent that they may freely exercise their religion, and profess their faith and doctrine, is a grievous sin”. Others might take issue with the opinion of Edmund Burke, whose memory is honoured by both a statue at Front Gate and the College’s main lecture theatre, that “free trade is based not on utility but on justice” and that “a perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world”. There is nothing new in the practice of attaching the names of impressive, if controversial, figures to university buildings.
Nor can this be regarded as the preserve of the former epicentre of unrepresentative elitism that Trinity admittedly was at some stage in its history. Indeed, another of UCC’s developments, the 1998 O’Rahilly Building, might be questioned for the former UCC President’s derogatory appraisal of Anglicanism as “a little man-made church.” Nevertheless, records of any protests, recent or historical, of dedications like these are not forthcoming.
Though this recent endorsement of James Watson, who has inexcusably maintained unapologetically racist, sexist and homophobic views, has generated much by way of protest, it seems that it is, for the most part, the extent of the criticism that makes it distinctive, rather than the undoubtedly incendiary content of the views themselves.
