*****
http://www.essex.ac.uk/research/ref/
REF 2014
Essex ranks in the top 20 UK universities for research excellence and the top five for social science research. Our politics research has been first in the UK since rankings began in 1986.
The 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), the national assessment of research quality and impact, has reconfirmed our diverse strength in conducting world-leading research. We entered 14 different subject areas into REF 2014, and seven of these were ranked in the UK’s Top 20 for research excellence, across social science, science and the humanities.
The results are used by the UK’s higher education funding bodies to allocate around £2 billion each year to university research. Ourresearch impact case studies demonstrate the benefits of this investment, highlighting how our research improves society and economic prosperity.
The REF replaced the national Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which was last conducted in 2008.
Essex subject areas in the Top 20 for 'research excellence'
- Politics 1st
- Economics 5th
- Art history 10th
- Sociology 12th
- Sports Science 13th
- Philosophy 14th
- Law 17th
In addition, Essex was ranked in the top 25 for History and for Business and Management.
Essex大學的政府系 (Department of Government) 是全英國最優秀的。希臘新政府的幾位要角是校友。
A Greek Politician Willing to Face the People - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../a-greek-politician-willing-to-face-the-people-.htmlSep 26, 2014 - ATHENS — Rena Dourou, the new prefect of Athens and a member of the left-wing Syriza Party, was taking stock of the cavernous office she ...
There has been lots of media focus on our Essex alumni with links to Syriza this week. David Howarth from the Department of Government has been speaking to The Independent about the ideas which have influenced Rena Dourou and the wider anti-austerity movement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/…/the-success-of-syriza-in-gre…
英國1977-78的Essex 大學，離創校校長1963 Dr Albert Sloman (詳下文) 到BBC發表Reith Lectures『一所新興大學之遠景』( A University in The Making，據說，他談Essex大學校地Wivenhoe Park風景優美，所以學生宿舍必須「起高樓」方式（每棟tower十來層，每樓約9-12間，每層樓約住10名學生，可以男女各居一室共處之，這在近50年前可能很新潮）。記得有六棟這種towers。大樓名字都取（政經）著名大學者紀念（英國學術天空巨星雲集，能選上代表是公認的，如羅素、凱因斯…….）。我住紀念R. H. Tawney的--那時我搞不清楚Tawney先生何許人，真是失敬：多年之後我讀他的書和紀念網頁，思考是否該翻譯一本他的著作留念。Richard Henry Tawney (1880 - 1962) was an English writer, economist, historian, social critic and university professor and a leading advocate of Christian Socialism. Richard Tawney has been called "the patron saint of adult education". [1]
Wikipedia article "R. H. Tawney".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/does-essex-university-still-live-up-to-its-radical-reputation-9978700.html
Does Essex University still live up to its radical reputation?
My teacher summed up my work succinctly. In those days (the 1960s), when teachers felt more liberated to express themselves in end-of-term reports, he said: "Garner is brilliant at politics but hopeless at economics. Would make a good Labour Cabinet minister." (Not sure about the last bit.)
Had I gone to Essex I would have studied alongside members of the Angry Brigade – two of the four convicted for their roles in the Brigade's bombing of property in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Hilary Creek and Anna Mendelssohn) studied at Essex. So did Lord Triesman, later to become Labour party general secretary, but more famous at the time for being suspended from the university for his part in a protest that caused a lecture from a visiting speaker to be abandoned.
Oh, and then there was the incident of the car that was set on fire in the main campus square, which features in a photographic record of the university's history.
Returning to its academic achievements, though, the university is proud of its record in the humanities and social sciences. It has also recently been voted one of the 10 most political universities in the world by Which magazine – as if to show that its reputation for radicalism is not on the wane. Just before Christmas, it was rated the number one university for political research in the Research Excellence Framework, which ranks all UK universities.
Goodness knows how my life would have changed had I gone there. I suspect that nearby Harlow Technical College, where I went instead to study journalism, was probably a far safer environment.
Essex, which is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, was founded as a radical university, with its first vice-chancellor, Albert Sloman, committed to providing an environment that encouraged radical thought and taking students who would challenge prevailing orthodoxies. He said of his vision: "Apart from its formal teaching, a university ought to give students the chance to think and argue about the fundamental problems of life and to stand on their own two feet."
"Albert wanted to break down barriers between staff and students," says Professor Anthony Forster, the university's current vice-chancellor.
The university was opened soon after the publication of the Robbins Report, the seminal inquiry into higher education in the 1960s, which had as its main principle that everybody who would benefit from a higher education should be able to obtain one.
Students in the 1960s might have sometimes taken Sloman's vision of the radical university a little too far. The suspension of Triesman and two other students for their role in the protest that forced the abandonment of a lecture by Dr Inch from the Ministry of Defence's chemical and biological-research facility, Porton Down, led to a stand-off between the students and the authorities. The students declared their own "free" university and began instigating their own programme of lectures and debates. The three students were subsequently reinstated.
The only way is Essex: today's students on campusAlbert Sloman's other vision – that of building the university up to 20,000 students – was also never realised. That, though, was due to the government's strict number controls over student admissions. There was also a suspicion in the university that it was being penalised by the authorities for its radicalism in promoting itself as equally committed to teaching and world-class research. "You were either a teaching or a research institution in those days," recalls Professor Forster.
In its 50th year, the university is currently making greater strides towards that goal than at any time in its history. Last year, for instance, saw the number of student registrations rise by 21 per cent, as the Government embarked on the first stage of its programme of abandoning any cap on numbers. It now has 12,000 students enrolled and the intake is split between home students and significant numbers of EU and international students. During the next two years, as a number of controls are scrapped completely, the university is intending to expand to 15,000 or 16,000 students. It will be offering a range of new courses including journalism, social work and data analytics. "We're also extending into anthropology," says Forster.
It has recently joined forces with the East 15 Acting School in Loughton and now has student campuses in both Loughton and Southend as well as its main campus in Colchester. Its alumni include the Speaker of the House of Commons, Jon Bercow, and the actor Alison Steadman. Others include Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, the current speaker of the Bangladeshi Parliament and also Rodolfo Neri Vela, a Mexican who became the second man from a Latin American country to go into space.
Its academics have also gained national acclaim – including the psephologist Professor Anthony King, whose insightful analyses of voting patterns have brightened many an election night.
READ MORE: 'I HAD A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH THE ANGRY BRIGADE'
I ask Chantel le Carpentier, president of the students' union at Essex, whether the university had lived up to its radical legacy.
"I think students still campaign – but the type of campaigning is different now from the earlier days," she says. She has been president for six months and before that was vice-president, at a time when the union ran a high profile campaign, "Boobs Aren't News", to try to stop The Sun from running its Page Three images of topless women. The students banned The Sun and the Daily Star from being sold in their campus newsagent's shop and their campaign earned an appearance on BBC's Newsnight.
"You get a certain type of academic here – especially in the social sciences – who would say to you about an idea, 'right on, go for it,'" she says. "I don't think you'd have that atmosphere in Oxford or Cambridge. The vice-chancellor is very much into the spirit of breaking down the barriers between staff and students." Le Carpentier, who is studying history, has put her studies on ice for a year as she takes on the role of student president. Next year, she will go abroad for a year as part of her course, and will then complete her final year of study at Essex.
That will make six years at Essex, so, she says, "I think you could say I like it. I fell in love with the place when I first came here with my mother."
She describes herself as "not that left wing" and adds that she favours a graduate tax to solve the dilemma about student funding. She likes the idea of loans for post-graduate education, announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his Autumn Statement, but wishes that Labour could have thought of such a radical idea first. One thing she likes about Essex is that "there is no hierarchy".
Recently, Essex appointed Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, as its chancellor, as if to emphasise its liberal heritage.
Reflecting on what he would like to achieve during his last term of office, Professor Forster says: "I'd like to look back and see that I've been in charge of a university that not only is recognised for its quality of teaching but is undertaking world-class research and providing an outstanding education for our students, producing graduates who are in very high demand and are productive global citizens.
"They should stand up to be counted, challenge the status quo and go out into the world and make a difference."
That, in a nutshell, is the history of the first 50 years of Essex University.
****
Great news - the Albert Sloman library is now open 24/7!
Recently this was only available during exam season but thanks to the hard work of the Library Advisory group, the Students Union and you, the students, the library will now be accessible at all times!
2014.6
2014年11月11日 星期二
Sir Albert Sloman (1921-2012) / Lord James of Rusholme (1909--1992)
繆詠華：我導覽時，絕不會一上來就自我介紹、強調自己是志工......
昨天聽說某大學新校長(1年多了)有個"big ego".....想起這篇：
Sir Albert Sloman (1921-2012) / Lord James of Rusholme (1909--1992)是兩位我敬佩的英國教育家。 我在2013年的書《珍重集：師友僑生‧譯藝獎‧留英追憶》(臺北:華人戴明學院，2013)中會介紹他們---此書沒寫成，遺憾。此篇這兩位是該國文化的精華。我在Essex 大學1年多，聽過校長作過著名的BBC的Reith Lectures，卻從沒一面之緣。
楊澤泉教授昨天的解釋是"校長要領導教師、職員，老師要服務/領導學生。"
Professor Ted Benton on the influential BBC Reith Lectures by Professor Sir Albert Sloman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cCZhXr-ceE
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first of the BBC Reith Lecture by Essex's founding Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Albert Sloman which set out his vision for a new kind of university. In the first of a series of short vodcasts by Essex staff, Professor Ted Benton from the Department of Sociology reflects on the impact of the lectures and Sir Albert's founding vision.
Sir Albert's BBC Reith Lectures outlined how “radical innovation” was needed to break with tradition and create a university which met the needs of the modern world. This new university would be an inspirational place for students while providing the right environment for world-leading research.
Albert Sloman 爵士 (1921-2012)是英國 Essex大學的創校校長 (1962-87
，約當了25年校長)，備受尊敬。我昨天看ESSEX effect 校友刊物，才知道他過世了。
他任內的學生有人得諾貝爾和平獎(1987)和經濟學獎 (2000)。
他1960年在BBC發表的Reith 講座，很"膾炙人口":
楊澤泉教授昨天的解釋是"校長要領導教師、職員，老師要服務/領導學生。"
Professor Ted Benton on the influential BBC Reith Lectures by Professor Sir Albert Sloman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cCZhXr-ceE
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first of the BBC Reith Lecture by Essex's founding Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Albert Sloman which set out his vision for a new kind of university. In the first of a series of short vodcasts by Essex staff, Professor Ted Benton from the Department of Sociology reflects on the impact of the lectures and Sir Albert's founding vision.
Sir Albert's BBC Reith Lectures outlined how “radical innovation” was needed to break with tradition and create a university which met the needs of the modern world. This new university would be an inspirational place for students while providing the right environment for world-leading research.
Albert Sloman 爵士 (1921-2012)是英國 Essex大學的創校校長 (1962-87
，約當了25年校長)，備受尊敬。我昨天看ESSEX effect 校友刊物，才知道他過世了。
他任內的學生有人得諾貝爾和平獎(1987)和經濟學獎 (2000)。
他1960年在BBC發表的Reith 講座，很"膾炙人口":
英國1977-78的Essex 大學，離創校校長 Dr Albert Sloman到BBC發表Reith Lectures『一所新興大學之遠景』 A University in The Making（據說，他談Essex大學校地Wivenhoe Park風景優美，所以學生宿舍必須「起高樓」（towers--每棟十來層，每樓約9-12間，可以男女各居一室共處之， 這在近50年前可能很新潮）。每一tower 都以英國學術巨擘命名，譬如說我住紀念R. H. Tawny的；以前曾想過，我必須翻譯一本他的著作留念。
Sir Albert Sloman
Sir Albert Sloman, who has died aged 91, was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, one of the seven founded in the 1960s and given (by Michael Beloff) the label “Plateglass Universities”.
The new universities were expected to break moulds. Essex’s plans, set out by Sloman himself in his 1963 Reith Lectures, were as radical as any, and alarmed the traditionalists.
Sir Albert Sloman
Its parkland campus outside Colchester was to be a university town in its own right, with study space for all its 10,000 students, whether resident or not; tower blocks would accommodate them (high-rise living being not at that time discredited), and the hope was for a vertical version of the Oxbridge staircase system.
Like his colleagues in the other new universities, Sloman wanted to break down stultifying barriers between the old subject divisions — or, as he put it in his Reith Lectures, “to emphasise the fundamental unity of human knowledge” and “combine a specialised training in depth and a truly liberal education”.
At Essex, there would be a limited number of departments, but students would specialise deeply only after their first degrees, so there would be a high proportion of postgraduates, who would share daily life with their undergraduate colleagues, as would the teaching staff.
In the event, Essex fell short of its planned size; but many of the tower blocks and interlocking piazzas were built. And often teachers and taught turned out to be almost indistinguishable from one another.
The residential towers were only a qualified success and were reported to have been used as squats by some of the less respectable citizens of Colchester; and the piazzas never gave the sense of enclosure their designers aimed at.
In May 1968, four years after the first students were admitted, Essex was swept into the student revolution. The campus was “occupied” and bonfires were lit in the main piazza. (At a later disturbance Sloman’s wife was harassed by disaffected students who threw a missile through a window of his house.)
In May 1968 the Vice-Chancellor himself had the humiliation of having to wait outside a meeting of the “liberated” university until its self-appointed masters should decide to call him in to give an account of himself. He went through this ordeal with considerable dignity — his handsome, rather slight figure contrasting touchingly with the aggressive dishevelment of the assembly — since he believed strongly in students’ right to dissent. It was only the method of dissent, he said, that was in question.
Here he was in advance of public opinion. Most ordinary people still thought of higher education in terms of the transmission of a hereditary culture, and were scandalised at the idea of mere undergraduates telling the faculty what to do.
There was a popular feeling that Sloman had been hoist with his own liberal views. But throughout his 25 years as Vice-Chancellor he never deviated from his vision of a unified community of scholars living together on more or less equal terms. (Paradoxically, one of the grievances he faced was that there were no plans for a separate students’ union building.)
There was more trouble in 1974, when 90 students were arrested and some of the more insolent insurrectionists (always a minority) invaded his study to throw abuse. But by the end of the decade the student revolt had collapsed, and Sloman was able to get on with the business of running a university.
Albert Edward Sloman was born at Launceston, Cornwall, on February 14 1921, and went from Launceston College to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. In the Second World War he was a night fighter pilot with Nos 219 and 168 Squadrons and was mentioned in despatches.
After a year at Berkeley, California (not yet the flashpoint of student revolt), and another six at the University of Dublin, he was given, in 1953, the Gilmour Chair of Spanish at Liverpool. The ascent up the ladder had been swift: he was only 32.
By the early 1950s, when he was at Liverpool, he had become involved in the work of the great 17th-century Spanish dramatist Calderón, who had been called a plagiarist because his plays were reworkings of earlier ones. Sloman was among those who were able to show that the charge of plagiarism was absurd, and that in any case it betrayed a naive misunderstanding of the 17th-century mind, which did not regard literary borrowings as reprehensible. The Dramatic Craftsmanship of Calderón, published in 1958, is a careful comparison, in the traditional Oxford vein, of the playwright’s work with his predecessors’, and reveals Calderón as a perfectionist and an original genius.
His views on higher education brought him a higher reputation across the Channel than he had in Britain, particularly for his insistence on the need to get lay support at a time when all university costs were rising, and on close links with industry — a point that was then not properly understood at home.
An assiduous traveller, Sloman was president of the Conference of European Principals and Vice-Chancellors during a period (1969-74) when many of his European colleagues were struggling to adapt a 19th-century university system to the strains of the 20th, and his vision was appreciated.
At home, from 1981 to 1983, he did his stint as chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, where he carried on his long campaign for the expansion, rather than the contraction, then threatened, of higher education in Britain. By 1987, though debonair as ever, he had become an elder statesman. He was knighted in that year.
His tribulations at Essex gave him an abiding contempt for journalists, who, predictably, turned up on the campus only when trouble was brewing, and ignored the university’s not inconsiderable academic achievements. But he was as polite to them as he was to rebellious students. Only when he met one of his tormentors at a Wadham Gaudy (the Oxonian old boys’ feast) did the mask slip. “But what”, he asked, “are you doing here?” He could not understand how a mere journalist could have been a member of his own college, and was convinced that the man was spying.
He married, in 1948, Marie Bernadette, daughter of Leo Bergeron, of Cognac, with whom he had three daughters.
Sir Albert Sloman, born February 14 1921, died July 28 2012
In May 1968, four years after the first students were admitted, Essex was swept into the student revolution. The campus was “occupied” and bonfires were lit in the main piazza. (At a later disturbance Sloman’s wife was harassed by disaffected students who threw a missile through a window of his house.)
In May 1968 the Vice-Chancellor himself had the humiliation of having to wait outside a meeting of the “liberated” university until its self-appointed masters should decide to call him in to give an account of himself. He went through this ordeal with considerable dignity — his handsome, rather slight figure contrasting touchingly with the aggressive dishevelment of the assembly — since he believed strongly in students’ right to dissent. It was only the method of dissent, he said, that was in question.
Here he was in advance of public opinion. Most ordinary people still thought of higher education in terms of the transmission of a hereditary culture, and were scandalised at the idea of mere undergraduates telling the faculty what to do.
There was a popular feeling that Sloman had been hoist with his own liberal views. But throughout his 25 years as Vice-Chancellor he never deviated from his vision of a unified community of scholars living together on more or less equal terms. (Paradoxically, one of the grievances he faced was that there were no plans for a separate students’ union building.)
There was more trouble in 1974, when 90 students were arrested and some of the more insolent insurrectionists (always a minority) invaded his study to throw abuse. But by the end of the decade the student revolt had collapsed, and Sloman was able to get on with the business of running a university.
Albert Edward Sloman was born at Launceston, Cornwall, on February 14 1921, and went from Launceston College to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. In the Second World War he was a night fighter pilot with Nos 219 and 168 Squadrons and was mentioned in despatches.
After a year at Berkeley, California (not yet the flashpoint of student revolt), and another six at the University of Dublin, he was given, in 1953, the Gilmour Chair of Spanish at Liverpool. The ascent up the ladder had been swift: he was only 32.
By the early 1950s, when he was at Liverpool, he had become involved in the work of the great 17th-century Spanish dramatist Calderón, who had been called a plagiarist because his plays were reworkings of earlier ones. Sloman was among those who were able to show that the charge of plagiarism was absurd, and that in any case it betrayed a naive misunderstanding of the 17th-century mind, which did not regard literary borrowings as reprehensible. The Dramatic Craftsmanship of Calderón, published in 1958, is a careful comparison, in the traditional Oxford vein, of the playwright’s work with his predecessors’, and reveals Calderón as a perfectionist and an original genius.
His views on higher education brought him a higher reputation across the Channel than he had in Britain, particularly for his insistence on the need to get lay support at a time when all university costs were rising, and on close links with industry — a point that was then not properly understood at home.
An assiduous traveller, Sloman was president of the Conference of European Principals and Vice-Chancellors during a period (1969-74) when many of his European colleagues were struggling to adapt a 19th-century university system to the strains of the 20th, and his vision was appreciated.
At home, from 1981 to 1983, he did his stint as chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, where he carried on his long campaign for the expansion, rather than the contraction, then threatened, of higher education in Britain. By 1987, though debonair as ever, he had become an elder statesman. He was knighted in that year.
His tribulations at Essex gave him an abiding contempt for journalists, who, predictably, turned up on the campus only when trouble was brewing, and ignored the university’s not inconsiderable academic achievements. But he was as polite to them as he was to rebellious students. Only when he met one of his tormentors at a Wadham Gaudy (the Oxonian old boys’ feast) did the mask slip. “But what”, he asked, “are you doing here?” He could not understand how a mere journalist could have been a member of his own college, and was convinced that the man was spying.
He married, in 1948, Marie Bernadette, daughter of Leo Bergeron, of Cognac, with whom he had three daughters.
Sir Albert Sloman, born February 14 1921, died July 28 2012
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