W1B-028 TCD promotions-0.txt
DEPARTMENT OF ITALIAN TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN 2

Prof. T.N. Mitchell Provost College

22 May 1992

Dear Provost, I was recently asked by the ASA Executive Committee to write to you expressing our disquiet at the unilateral stance taken by the Fellows'group, seeking to place a numerical limit of ten on the new Fellows to be elected on Trinity Monday. That seemed to us a massively inappropriate step, particularly offensive to those applicants, or potential applicants, for Fellowship who may consider their achievements at least equal to those of some existing Fellows.

In the event, the numerical limit was not imposed, and our thirteen new Fellows include some under-represented areas and categories in College. This benign development needs to be taken much further over the coming year, so that the next election of Fellows may represent a new departure.

The current configuration of Fellowship has a number of drawbacks. Rather than stimulating a sense of commitment to research and the academic life, it suggests to the non-Fellow majority among the teaching staff that (for reasons which are not always apparent) we are considered "inferior" to certain of our colleagues, and something less than full members of College. Thus, it undermines the very real fellowship on which the work of our academic community depends. As well as being invidious and divisive, the current arrangements may even be counterproductive in terms of research; annual competitions may not bring out the best in everybody. And the present shape of Fellowship preserves, in fossilised form, a number of historical injustices - for example, College's failure, over the years, to encourage the career development of women academics on an equal footing with men.

Some of the more striking distortions in the present pattern of Fellowship are set out in Appendix 2 of the ASA submission to the Comprehensive Academic Review Committee, a copy of which I enclose.

The ASA warmly welcomes your initiative in launching that Review. As you will see, we have tried to make our own contribution as constructive as possible, and we look forward to a wide-ranging debate, involving everybody in College, once the Committee has had time to consider all the views which it has received. We believe that the Academic Review should lead on to a thorough-going reappraisal of all College structures.

With best wishes, Yours sincerely Cormac &/O Cuillean&/ain Chairperson, Academic Staff Association
