Madam, - For University College to demote Old Irish to what is in effect the point of extinction is a decision that accords perfectly with the current demented belief in the market as the object of our common idolatry. It seems peculiarly sad to me, as I bring to a close the first decade of establishing Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame as a specific form of pioneering and interdisciplinary work, that University College, where I once worked, should gain for itself the shame of so suddenly demolishing a discipline which it once had the distinction of nurturing for so long.
Irish Studies is beginning to establish itself more securely now as an innovative project in the United States and even in the British university system that has itself been half-ruined by devotion to the market and bureaucracy. I fully support properly financed and administered education.
But this sort of decision seems to be entirely innocent of its ramifications beyond UCD; for this is a loss that will eventually have economic as well as cultural repercussions. To throw away the prestige of long-accumulated scholarly achievement in an anchor discipline like Old Irish at this moment in a general renovation, to which Old Irish will contribute and from which it will benefit - although not at UCD - is so wanton that one would prefer not to believe that it is the product of calculation. - Yours, etc,
SEAMUS DEANE, Keough Emeritus Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA.