In very many ways the life of University College Dublin mirrors the life of the modern Irish state. The Catholic University from which UCD is sprung, and whose 150th anniversary falls today, has roots in Irish life that are even deeper, representing in its struggles the ambitions of the emerging Catholic and nationalist middle classes of the 19th century.
Fifty years ago when John Henry Newman's Catholic University celebrated its centenary the ceremonies could not have been more Catholic. The then Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid hosted many of the major events, and his presence and that of his ecclesiastical colleagues were everywhere to be seen and felt. This week's celebrations are entirely different. UCD is no longer a Catholic university, just as its great Dublin rival Trinity is no longer a Protestant university. Each in its own way has embraced and in many ways helped shape the new Ireland.
A century ago the UCD of James Joyce, Tom Kettle and their contemporaries was preparing itself to supply the leaders of the new Home Rule Ireland - Catholic, nationalist and European. Home Rule was supplanted by the Free State and eventually the Republic, but the State's leaders - in government and politics, law and the judiciary, the public service, agriculture, veterinary and medicine - were drawn disproportionately from the staff and students of UCD.
UCD, too, reflected the tensions and shortcomings of the Ireland of which it was such a part. The Civil War divided its faculty and students just as it divided the wider community; the radicalism of Fianna Fáil students of the 1930s was often at odds with the Fine Gael dominance of its academic councils; the general lassitude of the 1940s and 1950s reflected itself in a university grown in on itself; the new energy of the 1960s prompted one of UCD's defining presidents, Michael Tierney, to urge a merger, amounting to a takeover of Trinity, then a slumbering and diffident giant.
Today UCD, like many of our other universities, is seeking to redefine itself. It is, by any international standard, a major university. But it is an uneven university. It has its areas of excellence which stand up to any international scrutiny. In other areas it is stretched, with resources and personnel falling short of today's best standards. It has areas which duplicate needlessly with other publicly funded third level institutions and where the national interest requires rationalisations.
The current President, Dr Hugh Brady, has posed a new vision for the university. It is important for UCD and its role in this State that he succeed. But, on this 150th anniversary of John Henry Newman's coming to Ireland, it is important to remember too the richness and depth of the values elaborated by him in his great essay "The Idea of a University". Even in the midst of change, universities too need their institutional memories and a little humility in reflecting on what brought them to where they are.