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plunged into the ethics of gender – but in the 21st century, global crisis-points like AI and the climate emergency, mean that This generation of students are We do analysis and due diligence. We look at corporate governance: What is a company’s treatment of employees? What the ethical perspective is urgently sought. passionate about Across college campuses globally, the language of ethics is now everywhere. The Trinity Business School’s Strategic sustainability, human rights and confronting Plan, for instance, is titled Transforming Business for Good and promises to ‘deliver legacy colonial issues business education and research that promotes ethical leadership, eco-sustainability and humane Officers). kind of human rights diligence do they do in terms of their own practises? Are they showing willingness to evolve and learn?’ The Committee works through members coming to consensus; in exceptional circumstances the decision may be deferred to the Executive (the College business’. Hogan - who has engaged with the Business School So far Trinity has not been placed in the difficult position of, on various ethical initiatives – explains that ‘academics have for instance, those universities that accepted gifts from the always been attentive to the ethical issues in their fields but Sackler family and then had to cut ties following the opioid what we are now seeing is more professional bodies expecting crisis. But ‘we’re always vigilant lest something like this graduates to be engaging with ethics.’ She sees ‘a push across happens’, she stresses, ‘and the Committee has to be able to all professional areas, and that push is also coming from the stand over the process by which we reached our decisions.’ students. This generation of students is passionate about Her approach as chair is that ‘it is always possible to find sustainability, human rights and confronting legacy colonial money to do something worthwhile and important, but it issues.’ is very difficult to reclaim your reputation. If you lose your Professor Hogan leads Trinity’s Ethics Initiative, whose clarity of purpose, it’s gone and it’s hard to rebuild.’ objective is to embed ethics education across the university. The demands on her time are high – she is also director of EDI In that context she runs the EthicsLab, an undergraduate (equality, diversity and inclusion) in the School of Religion elective which brings together staff and students from across where she is looking at ‘embedded exclusions and how to the university’s three faculties to address the challenges of decolonise the curriculum’. But all her activities are feeding the day, focusing on identifying ethical solutions to these into her wider research: ‘I’m currently conceptualising a challenges. book that will look at the political ethics of our time through ‘My mantra has always been that our graduates are going to be setting the policy agenda and the scientific agenda of the future, so we have to teach our students how to ask the ethical questions about their disciplines, about what they’re multiple intersecting challenges, including technology, climate, challenge to democracy and economic inequality. My different roles in Trinity and beyond give me a wide perspective. A friend says I’m inhaling from many places.’ creating, and about the impacts they are having.’ The world today looks very different to the optimistic, post- The growth of philanthropy in Trinity has placed a further ethical requirement on the college: to institute a formal ethical process to assess donations. The Gift Acceptance Committee was established in 2020 to look at every gift to Trinity over €500,000, and at every individual, foundation or corporation that has given cumulatively more than €500,000. cold war ‘end of history’ period of the early 1990s, when she was starting out as an academic. But ethics remains, she says, ‘about interrogating, being self-critical, looking at arguments, understanding our blind spots and the self-deception that goes into our thinking - and all of that is as relevant today as it ever was.’ A member since the Committee’s establishment, Professor If the issues seem to have got more intractable, there have Hogan was appointed chair in July 2021. been important advances in our understanding of them: ‘The Committee has developed a robust policy that establishes the principles to take into account when considering gifts,’ she explains. ‘Obviously any funds linked to illegal activity are off the table, as are any gifts offered in anticipation of personal advancement, gain or influence in the university. Both these situations would typically be caught at an early stage, in advance of the gift coming before us. We focus on determining whether the acceptance of a ‘We are much more attuned today to the intersectionality of issues – the way in which multiple forms of exclusion can coexist. And while we are still guided by the philosophical approaches that we were trained in, we are far more aware of the power dynamics that created those approaches. We are becoming more reflective and critical of the thinking that underpins our discipline, and that is the very essence of ethics.’ gift might compromise the university’s values or reputation.
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Labour pains Delving into The (in)visibility of paid labour: Women’s working lives in Ireland, c 1965- 1990 , Dr Deirdre Foley, from Trinity’s Department of History, unveils the legal and societal dimensions that shaped women’s experiences in the workforce In 1974, a Mrs Kiernan was shortlisted and interviewed twice for the position of dental receptionist at a practice in Co Louth. She was offered the job, but the offer was subsequently rescinded by letter from one of the dentists at the practice. The letter, which survives in the papers of the Department of Labour at the National Archives, stated: Having had more time to think of it in relation to your married status with as yet no children at the moment, balanced against the difficulty of training someone into the intricacies of the position, I regret that I feel that it would not be satisfactory and I would constantly be wondering if you would come to me and say you’re leaving because you were pregnant, and I would then be faced with the problem of finding someone else and the difficulty of retraining. 1 Mrs Kiernan forwarded the letter to the Department of Labour, claiming discrimination on the hypothesis of a future pregnancy. Her situation, whilst inequitable, was nevertheless perfectly legal in 1974. This incidence, and indeed countless others which are not recorded in state archives, sheds light on women’s acutely inferior legal status in the workplace before gradual reforms, and further reflects deeply entrenched attitudes towards married women and mothers at work. My current project, funded by the Irish Research Council, is the first comprehensive historical study of women’s paid work in Ireland between 1965 and 1990. The research explores the outcome of an increasing female presence in the Irish workforce and the impact of employment equality legislation introduced in the 1970s. The presence of the civil service marriage bar from the foundation of the state until 1973 is well known. The marriage bar had legal authority only in 1 McDermott Dental Surgeon’s letter to Mrs Kiernan, Dundalk, Co. Louth, 3 December 1974, National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Department of Labour papers, 2007/109/6.
