wyvern:extra
Staff say farewell to Vice-Chancellor
Members of staff from across the University gathered at a farewell
reception for Professor Sir Ivor Crewe as he prepares to step down as
Vice-Chancellor after 12 years at the end of September.
Professor Crewe with his gift from the University
Professor
Crewe was presented with two gifts from the University community, a print
from the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art by the
artist Carlos Cruz Diez, and a best wishes and memories book, signed by
many members of staff.
Read the Registrar's tribute to Professor Crewe here.
Read Professor Crewe's speech to the reception here.
Dr Tony Rich's speech:
In this story of the life and times of Ivor Crewe, I’m firstly going to
look at Ivor as the …
The Political Scientist
Let’s begin with a few basic facts: Ivor was educated at Manchester
Grammar School, where he benefited from what is now almost 500 years of
promoting ‘godliness and good learning’. He studied PPE at Oxford,
emerging with a 1st class honours degree, despite the comments of one of
his tutors on an early essay: “Crewe this essay is both good and original.
Unfortunately, … the original parts are not good and the good parts are
not original”.
Ivor left Oxford to take a MSc (Econ) in Political Sociology at LSE.
His first post was as an Assistant Lecturer in the Dept of Politics at
Lancaster. He returned to Oxford for a couple of years as a Research
Fellow at Nuffield College before joining Essex in 1971. Ivor claims to
have arrived at Essex by accident. He applied for a post in Comparative
Politics, but didn’t think much of HoD Jean Blondel’s book on Comparative
Government, so with the impertinence of youth pointed to its flaws. He
didn’t get that post but was offered a different post in the Dept.
However, he was never allowed to teach Comparative Politics. Even at this
stage, A H Halsey (now Emeritus Professor at Nuffield College Oxford and
listed by Sage as one of the 50 wisest people in Britain) predicted that
Ivor would become “a leading figure among British political scientists in
the fullness of time”. But other traits were also evident: one colleague
from his Lancaster days remarked “administratively he does anything that
is asked of him swiftly and efficiently and he does not make mistakes”.
Was there already some evidence of Ivor being an administrator manqué?
In his research career, Ivor is renowned as one of the country’s
outstanding political scientists, whose work has changed both academic and
public understanding of British electoral politics. He has featured
regularly on national television, radio and the press as a political
commentator. He directed the British Election Study from 1973 to 1981 and
has published ten books on elections, parties and public opinion in the
UK. These include co-authoring a study of the Social Democratic Party, a
study of why Labour won the 1997 General Election, and a leading textbook,
The New British Politics. He also edited the British Journal of Political
Science for 13 years and served on the editorial boards of the European
Journal of Political Research and the American Political Science Review.
Ivor’s analytical ability and political nous served him well as
Director of the ESRC Data Archive (now UK Data Archive) from 1974 to 1982.
In 1982 he was promoted to a chair in the Government Dept. In 1989 he took
on the role of Acting Director of the ESRC Research Centre in Micro-Social
Change, the forerunner of our prestigious Institute for Social and
Economic Research. In 1992 Ivor was appointed as PVC (Academic) before
becoming first Acting VC and then VC when his appointment was confirmed in
December 1995.
The second stage of our story sees the political scientist moving on to
become…
Vice-Chancellor
What is the difference’ someone unkindly asked, ‘between a vice chancellor
and a supermarket trolley? You fill both up with food and drink, but it’s
only the supermarket trolley that has a mind of its own’. I can assure you
that this has not been the case with Ivor. Since 1995, Ivor has overseen
the growth of Essex’s student population from 5,500 to almost 9,000
students, and the University has engaged in the largest building programme
since its foundation. It has expanded from its original Wivenhoe Park
campus in Colchester to develop a regional presence, including a new
campus in Southend, a department in Loughton, along with UEA a major
presence in Ipswich, and partnerships with institutions across the East of
England. Ivor’s shrewd judgement and business acumen have made a huge
contribution to both the academic success and the financial solidity of
the University. Perhaps even more critically, Ivor has played a key role
in helping to restore the institution’s self-confidence.
Ivor’s engagement with the local community, as a Deputy Lieutenant of
Essex, High Steward of Colchester, founder member of the Colchester 2020
local strategic partnership, an original member of the Partnership Board
of Colchester’s stunning new contemporary arts building, firstsite:newsite,
alongside his contribution to new HE developments in Southend and Suffolk
has helped place the University at the heart of the civic, economic and
cultural development of the region.
Through Ivor’s unwavering commitment to the University’s founding
principles of excellence in research, teaching and scholarship, Essex has
won widespread recognition as one of the UK’s leading academic
institutions. In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, with 11 out of 15
departments being awarded the highest 5 or 5-star ratings, the University
climbed into the top ten in the Times Higher Education Supplement’s
research quality league tables.
As many of you know, he is obsessed with league tables and it’s a very
poor VC that can’t find a league table in which his or her University
comes out on top. Essex under Ivor has managed that feat in terms of the
proportion of professors, but there’s another league table with which Ivor
may not be so familiar. Laurie Taylor stressed the excellent performance
of the University of Poppleton in a number of league tables, leading the
way in both ‘universities with the highest proportion of admin staff to
academic tutors’ and ‘universities with the highest proportion of teaching
staff looking for other jobs’, but coming only fifth in the league table
of ‘universities with a lot of tall buildings’, where Essex came out on
top.
As early as 1970, A H Halsey talked of Ivor’s “prodigious capacity for
work”. At times this went too far. Ellen Sample once came to VAG in the
late 1990s to talk about a report Personnel had conducted on stress levels
among staff, and the need to set a lead from the top on what kind of
workload was expected. That meant working hours, she told us, and jabbing
a finger at Ivor told him that he set a very bad example, with e-mails
emanating from his PC at 5.00 am, giving rise to the wrong expectations.
Ivor then responded to the demands of his Director of Personnel to set a
good example. No e-mail came before 7.30 in the morning. Had Ivor
successfully addressed work/life balance issues? Not quite. He'd learned
to queue the e-mails he'd written from 5 o’clock in the morning and send
them all at once at 7.30.
Another behavioural trait Ivor has developed over the years, perhaps
encouraged by his 5 am e-mailing, is to close his eyes to help him
concentrate in particularly challenging meetings. One PVC recalls having
to prod Ivor with his elbow during a professorial interview panel when a
particularly uninteresting candidate was being questioned and when, to
help himself concentrate, Ivor had started gently to snore.
Given his ability to rise at some ungodly hour and to sleep at any time
in the back of the University car, I was particularly bemused by the
report from a UUK annual conference where a fire alarm had sounded at 3
am. As you can imagine, 100 + VCs pouring out of this expensive hotel in
their nightshirts in the small hours was not a pretty sight, but it was
reported in The Times Higher that Ivor emerged promptly and “immaculately
dressed as ever”.
And so to the third stage of our story. The political scientist
assuming the role of …
President
Ivor was president of UUK from 2003 to 2005. His colleagues had to adapt
to Ivor being away from the University for about half the week, which
prompted recollections of a famous response from the founding VC of
Sussex, Asa Briggs, who was renowned for spending much of his week away
from Brighton. When asked who ran the University when he was away, Briggs
replied ‘the same people who run it when I’m there’. This was not the case
at Essex, where despite the pressures of holding UUK together over the
introduction of variable tuition fees, Ivor remained in frequent telephone
and e-mail contact.
Colleagues will know that Ivor is a heavyweight figure in national HE
politics, but may not be aware of the enormous regard in which he is held.
He is liked, trusted and respected. That is true right across the sector,
which is why he could play an absolutely critical role in ensuring the
passage of the Higher Education Bill in 2004. He needed to deliver a
united sector to ensure that the opponents of the Bill could not mobilise
V-Cs on their side, and he pretty well succeeded in doing that. Ministers
still hold him in great regard and know that without Ivor's very hard and
skilful work the Bill would almost certainly have been lost and the Labour
Government defeated. That is why his recent farewell dinner from the 1994
Group saw a remarkable political turn out - Alan Johnson (Secretary of
State for Health and former Secretary of State for Education and Skills),
Charles Clarke (another former Secretary of State), Bill Rammell (HE
Minister) as well as David Willets (Tory Shadow Education Secretary) were
all there. This is indeed Impressive testimony of the extent to which Ivor
is admired and respected by key politicians as well as by others in the
university sector.
A central part of his life and times has been the friendship,
partnership and support he has received from his wife ..
The challenge as a V-C's partner, if one wishes to play that role, is to
define it in such a way that you can choose when to engage and when not to
do so. It is even more difficult to ensure that you retain a real
independence of spirit and personality and not just become a consort. Jill
has done that splendidly. She has been enormously supportive of Essex over
Ivor's years as V-C, giving a great deal of her time and energy. But she
has also pursued her own career, working on campus as a counsellor for the
Health Centre. And this was one of the many reasons why she was able to
walk that delicate line that ensured that when she participated as the
Vice-Chancellor's wife, she did so with great energy and commitment and
with an independence of spirit and ideas. I know of one wife of a former
Essex colleague, who is currently head of another institution, who has
modelled much of what she does as a V-C's partner on what she learned from
watching Jill over the years. Because she felt that Jill got the balance
‘just right'.
And so, finally to the fourth stage of our story – when the political
scientist becomes …
The Master
Ivor leaves us at the end of this month to take a sabbatical, during which
he will remain a Research Professor in the Government Department, prior to
taking up the post of Master of University College Oxford next summer. I
understand that the selection process was a rigorous, 7-stage exercise!
Moreover, the Fellows were most concerned at Ivor being a VC and therefore
a representative of management.
Inevitably, news of this appointment conjured up images of Tom Sharpe’s
Porterhouse Blue. But perhaps the philosopher (and former UEA
Pro-Vice-Chancellor) Martin Hollis painted a more cerebral picture of an
imaginary academic community that may not be entirely dissimilar from the
occasional Oxbridge college:
“St Jude’s is an obscure college at an old university. Its cellars have
always been excellent, its dons mediocre and waspish. Predictably, it has
a long history of opposition. In the last four centuries, the Fellows of
St Jude’s have opposed popery, Oliver Cromwell, the Industrial Revolution,
the holding of services in English, electricity, women, the General Strike
and colour television. But principally, of course, they have opposed one
another.” [Hollis, M (1970) Tantalisers: A Book of Original Puzzles]
Ivor has on many occasions claimed to be ‘eating for Essex’, so College
feasts ought not to present too much of a challenge. He is a man of
considerably culinary refinement and may therefore find it embarrassing to
acknowledge to University College Fellows that in 2004 he took the Queen
out to tea in a fast-food outlet.
Ivor and Jill, thank you for all you have done for the University over
a very long time. We shall miss you tremendously, but there will be a huge
number of reasons why we shall not forgot you …the name of this Lecture
Theatre being perhaps the most obvious one. Less demonstratively, but
nevertheless endearing, the Rowing Club have named one of their Men’s 8
boats after you.
Staff have contributed towards a present for you, but first of all I
would like to hand over a commemorative book, which contains written
contributions from many of your friends and colleagues over 36 years at
Essex.
Ivor Martin Crewe …this is your life.
Professor Sir Ivor Crewe's speech:
It is wonderful to see so many of you here but I must confess that I am
a bit nervous having to address you all. Of course I am used to addressing
large meetings like General Assembly or Senate, but not live audiences.
As you may imagine, to leave after all these years will be a tremendous
wrench. Being Vice Chancellor of this university is quite simply the best
job in the world and if I could live my life again I would do exactly the
same. Universities are engaged in a noble enterprise and I cannot imagine
any post that is as absorbing, fulfilling and rewarding as heading a
university. But in my case I was given the opportunity to head my own
university, where I had worked for almost 25 years, and to which I was –
and remain – and always will be deeply attached. I have been quite
exceptionally fortunate.
Of course I thought long and hard about whether and when to step down.
According to my contract I didn’t have to retire for another six years.
Whenever I mentioned this to Tony Rich he fell uncharacteristically
silent. Moreover, as I pointed out to him, by that time the European
Directive on anti age discrimination would be in force so actually I could
go on for as long as I was what the lawyers call compos mentis. At which
point Tony visibly paled.
And I was tempted. So I asked him: when do you think I should retire?
After all, I said, I have been at the University for 36 years. I know all
the answers. Yes, he said, but is anyone any longer asking you the
questions? But I didn’t want to cling on and go past my sell-by date.
When I first arrived at the University, back in 1971, as a young
lecturer in the Department of Government, of course I had no plan or
expectation that I would stay for the better part of my life, let alone
end up where I did. It just kind of happened. One thing just led to
another. Sometimes friends from elsewhere would ask ‘isn’t it time you
moved? What’s keeping you?’ and even occasionally add a snide
uncomplimentary remark about the towers or Colchester or the county of
Essex. And after I had hotly defended the towers – you may be sure that
one day, probably when they are about to crumble, a conservation order
will be slapped on them as gems of 1960s architecture - I would explain
that I liked it at Essex, that I liked it a lot, that I loved the place in
fact.
And I told them that there were three reasons why I always wanted to
stay at the University, three things that made it – and continue to make
it – a special place.
The first is quite simply that Essex is a first-class, academically
serious and intellectually ambitious university. It teaches demanding
subjects, it doesn’t compromise standards, it attracts extraordinarily
talented researchers and scholars from across the world. It may be
relatively small in size but it is an academic powerhouse with an
international visibility and reputation out of all proportion to its size
and youth. When I first came there was a tremendous academic buzz and
ferment on the campus and that has always stayed with the University. I’m
not thinking only of the books and papers that get published or the
hundreds of courses and degrees that we offer but the countless research
seminars, and guest lectures, and journals; and the new centres that are
established
The second special feature of the University is that, although we can
more than match the more ancient universities academically, we have never
succumbed to their self-regarding stuffiness or bureaucratic stodginess.
We have always been a blessedly un-pompous, relaxed, informal, tolerant
and genuinely friendly institution. Even though we have steadily grown in
size we remain, to a far greater degree than other universities I know, a
community with a common identity and not a mere organisation. Somebody
once defined a university as a large community comprising people of widely
differing skills and values united by one common interest: car parking. Of
course, there are the inevitable differences and occasional spats, felt
all the more keenly because so many care about the University, but they
have always been contained by a shared sense of purpose and set of values.
The other day I came across an item on UCELNET, the universities’ legal
network, which read:
“A tenured professor who was fired last month from the University of
Central Arkansas says administrators were retaliating against him for
exercising his right to free speech by snorting at them when they walked
by”.
My point is that even if occasionally we have felt like snorting at
each other on the corridors we are much too friendly ever to do it.
And thirdly, from the very beginning Essex has always been gloriously
international in its students, its academics, its curriculum, its
engagement with the world and as a university we have benefited in
manifold ways from our rich cultural mix. We would have been a much
duller, one dimensional, lacklustre campus without it.
When I first arrived the University was a young and raw adolescent and
over the past 36 years, it has expanded, and changed shape, and spawned
infant campuses of its own, and matured. In the last 12 years I have
presided over these changes but I have always tried to ensure that the
University kept its own personality. And I have to say I don’t think the
University has lost its soul and I believe it remains special.
Its not part of the University’s personality to boast – we are
characteristically embarrassed by it – but we have a lot to boast about.
We can legitimately take pride in a huge number of achievements, many more
than I have time to mention now.
We take students, from ordinary backgrounds, many the first in their
family to go to university, and educate them to honours degree standard in
three years, and transform their opportunities for the future as a result.
We continue to attract, in far greater proportions than other
universities, students from overseas who travel across half the globe and
whose parents spend the family savings, to come here.
We have been the first to offer courses and degrees in subjects like
human rights or graduate-entry nursing or computational finance which
other universities are now emulating.
By any measure we do the best social science research in the country
and many of our humanities departments are enjoying a renaissance of
scholarly publications. Our law and AFM departments have done a terrific
job of providing bespoke professional education to huge cohorts of
students. Our laboratory departments have gone through torrid times,
through no fault of their own, but shown remarkable resilience and
adaptability and reinvented themselves with great promise for the future.
We have built up from scratch in a very short time a large, innovative,
highly regarded Department of Health & Human Sciences, which will play an
increasingly important role in the University.
I am absolutely confident that we shall again do very well in the RAE.
And the achievements are not only academic ones. Our finances are
strong. We have occasional setbacks but we have avoided the crises,
cutbacks, shut downs, relocations restructurings and mergers that have
affected almost every other major organisation in the county. We have
grown every year and never had redundancies.
We are far better integrated with the local community, and better
regarded by it. When I arrived the university was an object of at best
indifference and at worst hostility. Now the region’s professions,
business, local councils, the NHS, the development agencies and the
voluntary sector want to engage with the University and take some civic
pride in what we do.
These are just some of your achievements. We are a university that
relies entirely on the talent and spirit and hard work of its people. We
don’t enjoy the advantages of being ancient; we don’t have massive
endowments or ivy clad honey stone buildings. We don’t own thousands of
acres or fabulous collections of rare books. We are as much or as little
of what we make of ourselves.
And here I need to correct that some of the wildly exaggerated
assertions of Tony. His remarks about me are very generous but way off
mark. He ought to know because when he was appointed he came to me on his
first day in the office and asked me how I wanted to define the respective
role of Vice Chancellor and Registrar. And I told him it was simple. We do
essentially the same job, but the VC announces the good news and the
Registrar announces the bad.
There are lots of jokes about VCs:
Take this comment in a Hong Kong newspaper at the time of the handover
to China: it was about one of the candidates for the new chief executive
position in Hong Kong, about which it was said of him: “he has ducked
every challenge that has come his way, he is conservative, uninspired and
frankly uninspiring – he would be much better off being a vice chancellor
of a university”.
You may notice a theme to these images of the Vice Chancellor. And the
theme contains an element of truth. A VC is a really a front man, an
impresario of other people’s abilities and dedication.
So it is to you all that I want to express my gratitude for all you
have done to make my job so much easier and make the university such a
success. I cannot thank each of you by name but my appreciation is
extended to each of you individually.
I want, first, to pay tribute to the unsung heroes of the University,
to all who do the unglamorous, invisible, backroom jobs that ensure that
the University functions so smoothly that outsiders take it for granted.
The University would be a much less efficient and pleasant place to study
and work in without the professionalism of the estates staff who maintain,
repair, service and keep secure our ever growing number of buildings,
despite inadequate maintenance budgets, and who keep Wivenhoe Park
beautiful and clean; and of Information Systems Services who have
developed and maintain one of the best IT networks of any university; and
of the Personnel Section who enable the University to recruit and look
after and develop all of us in a fair and sensitive way; and the
Admissions Office and International Office which play a critical role in
recruiting students – the lifeblood of any university – and External
Relations who do so much to promote the University and have turned its
image round; and the Academic Section who toil to ensure that we – and
indeed our growing number of partner institutions - comply with the
academic rules and procedures that we have imposed on ourselves to
guarantee standards and fairness; and all those sections – the
Accommodation Office, Student Support, Careers, Counselling, the Sports
Centre to name but some – who look after the welfare of the students who
have placed their trust in us. I salute and thank you all.
To the teachers and researchers here, many of whom were personal
colleagues of mine when I was an honest backbench academic in the
Department of Government, I can only say that for all my time as Vice
Chancellor I have tried to ensure that the University remains a congenial,
stimulating environment for academic endeavour of the highest standard,
whatever obstacles governments and markets put in our way. I said at the
beginning that universities are engaged in a noble enterprise and they
are. They make the world a better place. They give it better health, more
wealth, more labour saving devices, a cleaner and more sustainable
environment. They liberate human beings and help them to be more
reflective, imaginative, sensitive, public spirited and tolerant. And the
academic profession, so much more demanding than the public understands,
is at the heart of it, and no more so than here at Essex.
Indeed I intend to return in a modest way to academic life myself. All
this talk of retirement and saying good bye to Essex is slightly
misleading. The University has kindly agreed to let me return to the
Department of Government as a part-time research professor. So I am
clinging on after all; I could never leave the University altogether. So
if one evening you stumble across someone in the square or corridor who
looks remarkably like the former Vice Chancellor, you will not be seeing a
ghost, but someone who could never leave the University altogether, and
who will continue to hold the University in the deepest affection, to
rejoice in its triumphs, take pride in all its achievements, wish it every
success in the future as I wish you all.
See also:
