Born July 7th, 1943
Died October 17th, 2024
Tom Garvin, who has died aged 81, was a political scientist and author who lectured generations of students during a career in UCD that spanned more than four decades.
He was born in Dartry, Dublin, the middle child of Kathleen Daly and John Garvin. John, a Joycean scholar and secretary of the Department of Local Government, was also the boss, and a friend, of the writer Brian O’Nolan, also known as Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen.
After attending Belvedere College, Tom completed a degree in history and politics in UCD and spent a year at the Institute of Public Administration before joining the Civil Service. He did an MA in politics in 1966 while working in the Department of Finance and found himself drawn back to academia. In a 1996 interview with the late Eileen Battersby in this newspaper, he said his father had discouraged his return to UCD, telling him: “Don’t go in there. You’re not religious and you’re not related to anyone”.
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But he did go back, taking up a position in the Department of Ethics and Politics in 1967. He quickly found his feet in academia, and his lectures were described as “a breath of fresh air”. He held his audience with ease and thrived on interactions with students.
Online condolences to his family included many tributes from grateful students, who talked about his inspiring lectures, his infectious enthusiasm, his huge respect for independent thinking and his rebellious approach to authority. Many people recalled his witty repartee in the old Common Room in Belfield.
During lectures he was prone to go off on enjoyable tangents on subjects as diverse as the origin of the kilt. Eileen Battersby wrote that his conversation was a frenetic stream of consciousness, which he happily acknowledged. “I go all over the place ... I’m interested in lots of things,” he told her.
He was awarded his PhD at the University of Georgia in 1974 and would return to the US on numerous occasions for work at Georgia, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, Boston College, Mount Holyoke and Colgate University. The Irish Studies department at Boston College remembered him as “an outspoken public intellectual, an inspirational teacher and a marvellous raconteur”.
He was instrumental in the establishment of the Political Studies Association of Ireland in 1982 and was involved in the early years of the European Consortium for Political Research. One of his proudest moments was when he was appointed professor of politics and head of department in 1991. He was one of a cohort of academics, along with Brian Farrell, Maurice Manning, Richard Sinnott and Fr Feargal O’Connor, who cemented UCD’s reputation for fresh political thinking.
In a tribute to their former colleague, faculty at the UCD School of Politics and International Relations described him as an outstanding scholar and true intellectual. “During Tom’s tenure as professor and head of the Department of Politics, the characteristic features of the School of Politics and International Relations as we now have it were laid down – a place where the methodological and substantive pluralism among our academics is welcomed and celebrated, in a growing and increasingly diverse academic centre,” they wrote. “Tom was as sceptical of academic bureaucracy and hierarchy as he was of any other, and the department also became what it continues to be today: highly collegial, mutually supportive and characterised by a lot of good humour and sociability.”
He was a prolific author, publishing his first book, The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics, in 1981. He wrote nine books, co-authored two more, and published more than 60 articles and book chapters. His books included biographies of former taoiseach Seán Lemass, and Daniel Binchy, Irish ambassador to Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. Other books examined the development of nationalism in Ireland, profiled the Seanad and explored why Ireland remained so poor for so long. With former colleague Bryan Fanning he wrote The Books that Define Ireland, while he co-authored Dissecting Irish Politics: Essays in Honour of Brian Farrell with colleagues Maurice Manning and Richard Sinnott.
When he became a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003, the citation described him as one of the world’s foremost authorities on contemporary Irish political history and said his books combined “a keen appreciation and knowledge of recent Irish history with the insights of modern political science”.
Prof Garvin became emeritus professor upon retiring from lecturing duties in August 2008 and continued to write extensively. He sparked a debate on the role of the university in 2010 when he argued in this newspaper that academia had fallen into the hands of a managerial class of “grey philistines”. It was a topic he often returned to, believing that the value of education had never been truly recognised in Ireland and arguing that there was a “commerce-driven” loss of respect for blue-skies thinking in universities.
Mourning his passing, political scientist Prof Michael Marsh wrote that he was unfailingly a kind and generous friend to his students, colleagues and collaborators while Brigid Laffan, emeritus professor at the Robert Schuman Institute, said he was a “major contributor to the establishment of political science in Ireland”.
Not only did UCD shape his life professionally, it also shaped his personal life when he met fellow student Máire Tuomey, whom he went on to marry. Their three children credited him with instilling a love of languages, travel and the outdoors in them from an early age. He died after a short illness and would no doubt have been enraged at missing the US election, given his fascination with American politics.
Predeceased by his brother John, he is survived by his wife Máire, daughters Cliona and Anna, son John, sister Catriona, sons-in-law Tony and John, grandchildren and extended family.