Trinity is undoubtedly culturally, historically, and religiously, alien to Ireland. Once the site of the Catholic Priory of All Hallows, the Reformation in Ireland effectively closed all monastic institutions, though not without resistance. When Henry VIII introduced legislation to the Irish Parliament to legalise the closure of the monasteries in 1537, he faced significant opposition, only succeeding in closing sixteen monasteries out of an estimated 400.
This was, of course, until his Tudor Conquest of Ireland, which granted former monastic lands to local allied Lords, closing about half of the monasteries in Ireland. On its founding in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I, it was hoped that higher education would increase British state power over Ireland and strengthen the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation in Ireland gained a markedly different character from Martin Luther’s exhortations against Catholic corruption, abuse of power, and doctrinal innovations, becoming oppressive in its own right.
In Trinity, this abuse of power was clear in its discrimination against Catholics, requiring them to take oaths against the Pope and transubstantiation, as well as barring “Popish or heretical opinion” from being held by students and staff. While barriers to Catholics graduating were removed by Catholic Emancipation, some barriers still remained for staff, but the Catholic Church banned its members from attending the university until 1970.
The Britishness of Trinity, then, and to some extent, now, sticks out like a sore thumb to many. Its history is objectionable to the vast majority of us, being both a symbolic and real representation of the oppression of the people of Ireland. I find it objectionable, however, that people variously seek to denigrate, destroy, or deconstruct these institutions that have been passed down to us, as well as to forget those characters, many of whom undoubtedly did morally objectionable things, but nonetheless made Trinity a culture of learning.
It stands that we benefit from the ideas of those we find morally objectionable; Francis Bacon’s pioneering of the scientific method helped bring mankind out of superstition, and into scientific advancement. Similarly, Trinity Alumnus George Berkeley helped reconcile science to religion, and laid the foundations for empiricism, leading to liberalism, and the human rights that we know and love today. Bacon and Berkeley, however, made a number of disparaging and hateful remarks towards Irish people. It would also be wrong of me to mention Berkeley without his practice and defence of slavery in America, the main reason why his name was removed from the soon-to-be-renamed library.
These things happened, and these people existed, and whether we like it or not, have had, and continue to have, a great impact on us. The fact that I am writing in this paper in English, and not Irish, is a testament to that. That does not mean that we should fall to pessimism and intellectual dishonesty; the future is ours, not theirs, and through the ideas and institutions that we have inherited from previous generations, it is our task to critically engage with them.
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis criticises those who criticise for criticism’s sake, writing: “A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional, or (as they would say) ‘sentimental’ values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process”. Our values, a complex interaction between those who came before us and the present conditions of today, will also be subject to harsh criticism in the future. Should we want to be treated fairly by future critics, perhaps we should begin by being fair critics ourselves.
Despite its foundation in empire and oppression, there is some real, tangible, good to Trinity that has existed from the start. We may never know exactly what combination of circumstances and policies produced such a long list of renowned writers and scholars, such as Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Henry Grattan, and Ernest Walton. Furthermore, if we change the institution, we face the danger of producing mediocrity.
From the start, Trinity has been an autonomous institution, governed by an elected Provost, along with Fellows, and Scholars. We should not dismiss Trinity’s harsh, repeated, criticism of government higher education policy; it is a feature of an institution run by those who are passionate about knowledge.
As an academic-led institution, Trinity could act as a bulwark against policy choices variously described as “neoliberalism”, “managerialism”, and “commercialisation, that nevertheless cause our academic institutions, students, and staff alike, to stagnate and suffer at the hands of the profit motive. It would be a mistake to embrace the student radical vein of idealism. Ignoring their upper-class angst, we should instead gratefully understand our place within a tradition that does not care about our biases or opinions, embracing the positive parts of that tradition that produced, and continue to produce excellence.
