A VC in turbulent times

Dealing with turbulence: Sir Zelman Cowen as Queensland University Vice Chancellor.This is the third in a three part series on the life of Sir Zelman Cowen. 

In my last column I said that while Zelman Cowen’s public activities as the University of New England’s second VC did increase the public prominence of the university, his internal influence as VC is more difficult to measure.

In his history of UNE, Mathew Jordan mentions two areas where Cowen’s influence was important.

The first was the establishment in 1969 of a separate Faculty of Education. The second was his support for the establishment of a Faculty of Natural Resources. The Commonwealth would not agree for financial reasons, but agreed to the establishment of a School of Natural Resources finally established in 1971 after Cowen’s departure. 

Both were important initiatives: the Faculty of Education was the first in New South Wales, while the School of Natural Resources was the first such institution in Australia. Both attracted students and funding.

There was a third more problematic area, adult education, which Jordoa ignores. This is an odd gap in his history. He makes great play of the establishment of adult education and then, somehow, it disappears.   

First Belshaw as Acting Warden and then Madgwick had placed emphasis on adult education. It fitted with their personal philosophies and was an important element in the Northern outreach that had been so strongly emphasized by New England’s founders.

By the mid 1960s, university extension was a critical element in the University’s integration with its regional communities, while its summer schools such as the School of Dance, a school now seen as one of the seminal influences in the history of Australian dance, had achieved national prominence. Then, somehow, it largely stopped.

John Ryan’s PhD thesis draws out some of the complexities associated with the decline of adult education.

There were internal university problems, as well as funding issues linked to changing Australian Government policies. The loss of the sense of Northerness following the narrow loss of the 1967 self government plebiscite did not help.

Zelman’s role in the decline is unclear.

He was supportive of the role of adult education, but he had to balance that with changing attitudes at Commonwealth level and the reactions within the University to increased funding constraints. I also think that he did not share the original vision of the University as a Northern institution, as well as a national and international institution.

In 1970, Zelman left New England to become VC at the University of Queensland, a post he held until becoming Governor General in 1977 after Sir John Kerr.

In both roles he had to deal with turbulence, with political and social change. He did so with a focus on rational argument, the gathering of evidence and with a grace and tact that have justly given him a place in Australian history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 November 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

University's growing pains

The appointment in 1966 of Zelman Cowen to replace Robert Madgwick as the University of New England’s Vice-Chancellor was seen, rightly, as a considerable coup. Why, some of his colleagues at Melbourne University asked, had he not gone to Harvard or Cambridge?

After the hard early days, Madgwick had overseen very rapid growth at UNE. This growth is worth recording, for it was during the final Madgwick period that the University moved from a significant to dominant driver in the local economy.

Internal student numbers had grown from 249 in 1955 to 1,396 in 1965. External student numbers had grown from a zero base to 2,568.

Residential: The original Wright College, part of the new buildings constructed under Sir Robert Madgwick. This is the second in a three part series on the life of Sir Zelman Cowen. 

Academic staff had grown from 63 in 1953 to 360 in 1966, while general staff had increased from around 100 to 693. Construction work had boomed.

Madgwick was worried about the speed of growth.

How might the University preserve its collegiate nature and special culture, its outreach? How might it overcome the tendency to become more inward looking, more fragmented, as it grew?

By 1966, Madgwick had formed the view that it might be necessary to cap the size of UNE to preserve its character and the standard of teaching and student experience.

Madgwick was right to be worried.

He did not foresee the social changes that were just getting underway, the proliferation of new universities, the constant changes that would come in policy, the rise of corporatism, managerialism and the mega-university.

However, Madgwick did identify weaknesses within UNE that would later impede its ability to manage change. As the University grew it became comfortable, turned inward, reduced its regional role opening the way for new competitors, and forgot that it had to be better just to survive.

These changes and challenges still lay just ahead when Zelman Cowen arrived in 1967.

Upon arrival, Cowen maintained his role as a public intellectual. In 1967 he prepared the case for the ABC supporting a yes vote on the Aboriginal constitutional referendum, then in 1969 he delivered the ABC Boyer Lectures.

Cowen had long been interested in civil liberties and individual freedoms. His Boyer Lectures, the Private Man, focused on the erosion of privacy, on the challenges presented to society by new technology and the need for law reform to keep pace.

These have become even more pressing topics today.

Cowen’s public activities did increase the public prominence of UNE. His internal influence as VC is more difficult to measure.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 November 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

The story of Zelman Cowen, Australian intellectual, Governor General and UNE's second VC after autonomy

Zelman Cowen, UNEs second VC, 1968.This is the first in a three part series on the life of Sir Zelman. 

October marked one hundred years since the birth of the University of New England’s second Vice-Chancellor, Sir Zelman Cowen.

Zelman Cowen was born in Melbourne on 7 October 1919, the son of Bernard and Sarah Cohen. His father changed the family name to Cowen a few years after his birth.

After studying locally, the boy won a scholarship to Melbourne’s Scotch College where he was Dux in 1935. He then studied law at Melbourne University, winning the Supreme Court Prize as top student, followed by a Rhodes scholarship.

With the onset of war, Cowen deferred the scholarship, enlisting in the Royal Australian Navy. He was in Darwin at the time of the Japanese bombing in 1942 and then served on General McArthur’s staff in Brisbane.

In 1945, Cowen married Anna Wittner. The couple became, in the words of Michael Kirby, “a partnership of intellect, culture and wit” with Anna “sometimes softening the ego that was a feature, probably inevitable, of such a brilliant man.”

One senior New England academic who, while liking and respecting Cowen, described the pair somewhat acerbically as Anna and the King of I Am.

Following his marriage, Cowen took up the delayed Rhodes scholarship at New College, Oxford. There he again demonstrated that energy, drive and intellect that had already marked his life. 

He won the Vinerian Scholarship as the top graduate in civil law and became a lecturer at Oriel. There he won his doctorate with a biography of Sir Isaac Isaacs.

Isaacs, a hero of Cowen’s, had become Australia’s first Jewish Governor-General after serving on the High Court of Australia, including a period as Chief Justice.

In 1950, Cowen returned to Melbourne University as the chair of public law. He also became Dean of Law.

While at Melbourne, Cowen began broadcasting radio commentaries, mainly on legal topics including the attempts by the Menzies Government to dissolve the Australian Communist Party.

Cowen was becoming a prominent public intellectual, a not always easy role in Australia. He was also interested in questions of civil rights and privacy, concerned about the potential erosion of individual liberties.

In 1966, Sir Robert Madgwick resigned as the University of New England’s Vice-Chancellor to become Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

As Warden of the New England University College and then as first VC of the newly autonomous University, Madgwick had steered the institution through the difficult early foundation stages into growth.

Cowen accepted an invitation to become the second VC, arriving in Armidale in 1967.  In my next column, I will look at his role as VC and beyond.

Postscript

In the newspaper edition of this column, I had Sir Zelman attending Oriel College at Oxford while a Rhodes scholar. A correspondent corrected me. Cowen went to New College.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 November 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019  

Billy Griffiths, Isabel McBryde and Deep Time Dreaming - a note

On Saturday 17 March 2018, ABC's Radio National Geraldine Doogue interviewed Billy Griffith, the author of Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia. (Black Inc, February 2018).

Billy is a historian and research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. In his book, he explores a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the simultaneous uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archaeologists.

The ABC interview is on-line and well worth listening too.An excerpt from the book telling the story of archaeologist Isabel McBryde, Haunted Country, was published in Inside Story. It is well written and will give you a feel for the book as a whole. It is also an excerpt of particular relevance to me because I was one of that group of Isabel's students that Billy talks about.

I have written a little on all this, material that I need to consolidate. Billy's assessment is to a degree limited by space and focus.This does not detract from its value, it's a very good piece indeed, but means that it does not fully reflect the scope of Isabel's work.

John Mulvaney, Isabel's mentor, has been described as the Father of Australian archaeology, while. Trowelblazers described  Isabel as the mother. Leaving aside a certain feeling of discomfort about the use of such gender specific terms, it does reflect her importance and influence.

In a paper delivered in 2010, Unrecognised and now almost unknown: explorations through the history of the broader New England, I described Isabel's contribution to the University of New England in this way:

" Isabel’s personality and approach exactly fitted the University’s culture. The results were quite outstanding for such a small institution.

Four years after Isabel’s arrival came the first thesis, Sharon Sullivan's 1964 honours study on the material culture of the Aborigines of the Richmond and Tweed Rivers.

By 1978, UNE students had written at least 22 theses on the Aborigines, 4 Litt.B's, 16 BA honours and 2 MAs. Isabel herself was awarded her PhD in 1967, laying the basis for a 1974 book, Aboriginal prehistory in New England. This was followed in 1978 by book of essays, Records of Time Past: ethnohistorical essays on the culture and ecology of the New England tribes mainly written by her former students. This included an article of mine, Population distribution and the pattern of seasonal movement in Northern NSW, drawn from my original work. The story does not end there, for there were also journal articles and monographs, including her pioneering study with R A Binns, A petrological analysis of ground-edge artefacts from northern New South Wales.

The citation for her award in 2003 of the Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology justly summarised her work this way:

Her work in New England was remarkable for its extent and depth, and Isabel's examination of the interface of archaeology and ethnography in the region shaped not only the approach taken by many later researchers but also prepared the basis for the arguments about upland regions created by archaeologists such as Sandra Bowdler and Luke Godwin."

It is now 55 years since I first became involved as a student with Isabel. My career choices took me well away from archaeology, prehistory or Aboriginal studies.Still, here I am 55 years later trying to develop a new synthesis for New England Aboriginal history. That's a remarkable reach.  

History Revisited - building creativity in region

It’s an odd thing, really. I have spent more of my life outside Armidale than living in the city. Further, in inclination and writing, I think of myself as a New Englander rather than Armidale person. By New England, I mean not just the Tablelands, but the broader New State New England that formed part of the core of my early life.

And yet, despite all this, I keep coming back to Armidale, sometimes to live, more often to visit. Even now living in Sydney with so many of my family and the people I knew dead, receded into an often forgotten past, the links remain.

One of the advantages of leaving and coming back in the way I do is that you get a picture of the ever changing city, of the pattern of its life, in a way often concealed to those who live there or who rarely return. To the first, what’s relevant is Armidale as it is now. To the second, what’s relevant is Armidale of their particular past that now survives frozen in their minds, perfectly preserved.

I first met Michael Sharkey and his fellow Armidale poets when I returned to Armidale in 1981 to do some post graduate studies in history. I already knew writers such as Gwen Kelly, but they were generally older than me, more friends of my parents or of children I knew.

Michael and I shared certain common views. Like me, he believed that existing systems discriminated against Armidale and the North. My views were based on my history, politics and my experiences as a public servant. His views and those of others in the Armidale poets were based on their experiences as poets.

To Michael’s mind, the metro based intellectual elites (my wording) were biased in favour of their own. They controlled the funding, the book distribution systems, the main poetry reviews, the main small magazines. They went with what they knew. Those outside the system found it harder to be published, to get funding or recognition. Standards were only partially relevant, access was all.

The remarkable thing about Armidale and the broader New England is that so many of us fought back. In the case of the Armidale poets, they established their own small presses to bring each other’s work to a wider audience.

The critical year was 1979.

In 1975, a group of far flung University of New England external literature students led by Tony Bennett established the Kadoorair Poetry Society. In 1979, Tony and others joined to establish the Kardoorair Press as an outlet for the Society and for writers based on the Northern Tablelands or with an affiliation with the region. In that same year, Michael joined with Winifred Belmont to establish Fat Possum Press.

Tony, Michael and others including Julian Croft joined in the promotion of poetry. Apart from adding to the texture of Armidale life, the result was a poetic flowering that is part of the story of our city.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 March 2013. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013

Re-launching the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought

Back in 2007 Rafe Champion and I started the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought as a blog because we thought that this was an important topic not properly covered by other blogs. Since then, the blog has struggled because we are just so busy.

I first really became interested in the history of thought back when I was a PhD student at the University of New England. Much history is involved with things like activities, events, trends, what happened and why. My research involved me in trying to understand what people thought.

While I was in Armidale, Professor Eugene Kamenka (1928–1994) came to deliver a seminar. Professor Kamenka was then Professor and the Head of the History of Ideas Unit at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Australian National University.

Some of his ideas were too far outside the interests of his audience, but I found him fascinating and got heavily involved in discussion. One consequence was that I got invited to lunch and so had the opportunity to continue the dialogue.

Back in 2007 I started a series of posts on the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought blog on the history of New England thought. The series lagged, but I hadn’t forgotten it.

Why New England thought?

Well, there is a fair bit of material around on the history of Australian thought, but little below the national level. That material that is there is very metro focused.

In saying this, I am not saying that the material is not interesting. I am very interested, for example, in the differences between Sydney and Melbourne thought. The two cities are remarkably different, differences that go back to differing history and social structures. Yet those cities and the way they thought are not the only or even the dominant threads in Australian thought.

I have done a fair bit of work since I started the New England thought series in 2007. Some of my ideas have changed. More importantly, I now have just so much more evidence.

Given my new material, I do want to return to the New England thought topic. But do I do it here or on the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought blog?

After thinking about it, I have decided to split the material. I am going to place the very specific material here, with some of the broader material going to the other blog. However, this raises a broader question.

I know that some of my history colleagues do read this blog. Would you be interested in helping Rafe and I re-launch the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought?

You don’t need to be a professional historian. After all, I am not, nor is Rafe. You just need to be as fascinated as us in the way Australians and New Zealanders think.

To really make a go of the blog, we need up to five contributors. That way we can get a constant stream of posts without creating too much individual strain. That way, too, we can get the interaction between authors that really aids the creation of a viable blog.

What do you think? Any volunteers?