The Rebel and the Dame
Dame Louise Richardson is a wonder of contradictions. A leading light at Oxford University whose writing on terrorism has educated policymakers, she grew up singing Irish rebel songs, gathering for assembly at school in Co. Waterford beneath the crucifix and the Proclamation of the Republic in daily commemoration of the 1916 martyrs.
She admits that as a girl, she was ‘a rabid republican’, aware of ‘one version only of Irish history, and that was of Irish heroism and English perfidy.’
Some fifty years later, in an astral climb from those beginnings, Prof Richardson was appointed a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of her contribution to higher education. Her academic career has taken her from Trinity College to the University of California and Harvard University to St Andrews, and from Oxford University straight into her latest role as 13th President of the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York (linked to some eighty libraries built in Ireland by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie).
Richardson is a testament to the vitality of education in informing political choice. Growing up in Tramore, Co. Waterford, she was exposed to an ‘emotive, oversimplified’ version of Irish history and national identity – urged along by those fighting Irish songs she was able to learn by heart from listening to The Waltons radio programme.
Richardson was interviewed at a public discourse titled ‘Conversations on Britishness and Irishness’ by the political scientist and historian Richard English, Dean of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University, in the Royal Irish Academy on Dawson Street, on Tuesday, 15 October 2024, as part of the ARINS conversation series.
In a sparkling conversation with English, she offered perspectives on what national identity has meant to her and shared some of the insights and prejudices she has encountered as an influential Irishwoman abroad. Not alone a ‘rabid republican’, Richardson has previously been quoted as saying she grew up with a ‘passionate hatred of England.’ When asked by Richard English to expand on this, Richardson recalled her childhood summers in the holiday town of Tramore, when her parents would turn her family home into a B&B and she and her siblings slept in one room while the other rooms were rented to tourists. English guests came to stay, and Richardson discovered that the colonisers she had spurned were in reality harmless: ‘It was then I decided I hated the English government rather than the people.’
Richardson has written about how she hitchhiked from Tramore to Trinity College in Dublin soon after her 17th birthday, becoming the first in her family to attend university. A figure perhaps best known for her work recruiting underprivileged and ethnically diverse students to Oxford and St Andrews had a challenging start of her own, working two jobs during terms as an undergraduate to support herself.
After Trinity she got a scholarship from Rotary International to study an MA in political science at the University of California Los Angeles. There followed further scholarships to study an MA and PhD in government from Harvard University, where she spent 20 years on the faculty of the Department of Government, teaching on terrorism and counterterrorism. By then she had long left republicanism behind. Though she says that ‘being a citizen of a small, poor country that was colonised had an enormous influence on how you saw the world and quite different from an English or British perspective.’
When Richardson took up the role of Principal and Vice Chancellor of St Andrews in 2009 it was, in English’s words, a ‘febrile moment’ in the political climate, with the Scottish Independence referendum set for 2014. The late Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, invited her to sit on the Council of Economic Advisors for the government. Richardson felt that because she was Irish it was assumed by many Scottish nationalists that she would support Scottish independence, whereas her beliefs had long evolved: ‘One of the great benefits of the EU was to downplay the importance of borders.’
As for the Brexit referendum in 2016, Richardson said she detected in Britain a ‘disinterest’ in Ireland. Little or no effort was made to understand the implications of Brexit for Ireland north or south: ‘I was surprised to discover in some parts of the British establishment a sense that Ireland was not a fully independent country, often perceived as somehow a part of the United Kingdom’.
‘The biggest surprise to me was the number of people in Britain who never really adapted to Irish independence or felt that Ireland could or should rejoin the rest of the UK. My sense of the British government’s attitude towards Ireland historically was indifference rather than malevolence. They simply didn’t think about the implications of Brexit for Ireland, north or south, although some British politicians who had worked to bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, such as Tony Blair and John Major, did try to remind them. The British government assumed the EU would throw Ireland under a bus in the Brexit negotiation and the EU refused to do so. It was a very difficult time to be Irish in Britain.’
She has seen the ‘devastating effect’ of Brexit for diversity in UK universities. In Oxford at undergraduate level, the number of EU students dropped in half, from 8% to 4%: ‘We are losing these extraordinary, smart kids who used to come from Eastern Europe and beyond.’ Moreover the end of participation in the Erasmus programme for both British and European students has been a significant loss.
‘It is generally accepted that Brexit has not been a success for any part of Britain. They should do everything they can to improve relations short of reopening negotiations.’ She sees progress in the regime change of Keir Starmer and Labour’s more open relationship with Ireland: ‘there is an attempt to repair those ties which were damaged. We are entering a period that will enhance relations between Britain and Ireland.’
Richardson cut out a path in academia in an era before women held positions of leadership. She has served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and at the University of St Andrews, and as Executive Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University – the first woman in history to hold these positions.
Asked by an audience member whether she encountered ‘grumbling’ on account of the prominent roles she has earned, she said with confidence: ‘I never knew whether the main objection was my gender, my nationality, or my religion. So I chose not to worry about any of it.’ Married to physician Thomas Jevon, with three adult children, she has balanced a demanding university career with writing and publishing. Her books include the post-9/11 What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006), which seeks to unpick the roots of terrorism and has informed government decisions.
She is a rigorous thinker who spoke with wit and character across a broad sweep of subjects, from the importance of Gaelic games to Irish neutrality (‘we’re having our cake and eating it too’) to the possibility of a referendum for a united Ireland: ‘They haven’t thought through what price they would pay. One side of Ireland [the north] is a member of NATO and the other is not. We haven’t thought through the implications or the trade-offs.’
As for the meaning for Ireland of the US election, a close contest whose outcome no one can at this moment predict, ‘neither Trump nor Harris has a natural affinity with Ireland.’ Richardson said she saw President Biden as the last of the Irish American presidents. She said that polling suggested that gender was proving to be a significant predictor of support for Trump or Harris with women overwhelmingly supporting Harris.
In 2022, the DBE recognised her contribution to higher education, including her work negotiating a deal with AstraZeneca to develop and distribute the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine at the cost of production, and her focus on ensuring access to Oxford for undergraduates from underprivileged and non-traditional backgrounds.
She has ten honorary doctorates from all over the world, and sits on a great number of boards, including the Booker Prize Foundation. Last year she was independent chair of the Irish Government’s forum on security. As President of Carnegie she divides her time between New York and Boston, and observes of American life: ‘The scale of polarisation is really off the charts, with people actively disliking people with a different point of view.’
‘We are doing everything we can to mitigate this political polarisation which is doing a lot to undermine American democracy. America has had the draft. Today a form of “national or community service” would be a good way of bringing Americans together across race and class.’
Carnegie are supporting a ‘raft of initiatives’, from funding local news media (desecrated by the big news corporations that divide American society into Republican and Democrat), to Narrative 4, a collaboration with the author Colum McCann that brings children from different backgrounds together to build empathy through storytelling. ‘Storytelling is the way of the future,’ says Richardson. ‘Education is really critical to changing the culture.’
Richardson, the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and honorary doctorates, has written about her belief in the transformative power of education, seeing it as an ‘end in itself and as an engine of social mobility’. History is her discipline and she passionately wants to ‘use history for the purposes of depolarisation. Not enough history is taught in schools anywhere and I would increase it.’
‘Universities are the last bastion of the optimist. And education is the solution to every problem,’ she said without a hint of irony.
‘Our universities have accommodated a degree of ideological conformity which is not very helpful,’ she said, as it adds to the polarisation in American life that is making young people lose faith in democracy. She welcomes the positive developments of universities across the US in setting up forums to ‘help students disagree responsibly.’
The discourse concluded with a rallying cry for inclusivity, as Richardson recalled a lecture she used to give matriculating students each year at Oxford. ‘I wanted to give the message that you are going to hear views you don’t like and you must try to engage with them. I used the Augustinian mantra: Audi alteram partem. Listen to the other side.’
‘Conversations on Britishness and Irishness’ is an ARINS event. The Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame launched the Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South (ARINS) initiative with a view to generating authoritative, independent and non-partisan research and analysis on a range of important issues for contemporary Ireland. The next event in this series will take place on 12 November.
