Reporter 19/2/03: Report of Discussion

Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 11 February 2003. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:

Report of the General Board, dated 22 January 2003, on the establishment of certain fixed-term Professorships (p. 519).

Professor G. R. EVANS:

Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor, just so that the Regent House does not lose sight of the 'location' of these Professorships in our scheme of things, I rise to remind it that they are of the kind which was the subject of Professor A. W. F. Edwards's successful invocation of Statute K,5. He got it recognized that the General Board could not go on creating Research Professorships without going through the proper gracing procedure. So here we have a Report, as we should. One individual left over from the old and unconstitutional way of doing things, Professor Fabian, has had to have his position 'regularized' (4). I am sure he will feel the better for it.

I have one other point, to repeat, for I and others have made it in the past. We are allowing outside bodies to appoint to Cambridge Professorships. It has been argued that where the persons are of the distinction it takes to get such an award as a Royal Society Professorship we cannot reasonably say that they do not also deserve Cambridge Chairs. They need not go through the normal process of getting one (and by the way, what is happening to this year's promotions round?). I observe some creep. Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowships are now to be added to the growing list of 'equivalents' to a Cambridge Chair. I do not quarrel with the substantive assertion. Probably they are. I merely point out that more and more outside bodies are being allowed to appoint to Cambridge Chairs, indeed to create them.

There surely is a policy question here and the Regent House is entitled to a Report. These outside appointees become entitled to be continued to the retiring age at Cambridge's expense. Those still waiting for their chance of promotion to a personal Chair will now find numbers limited by the available resources. They may not be happy to realize that the Chair which might have been created internally for one of them is being trumped by the continuation of an outside appointment of someone else by the Wellcome Trust.

Honorary Professorships are mentioned again (1). Are those to be Reported or reported to the University at all?

With the permission of Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would like to place it on record that, in the context of the settlement discussions between me and the University, I was not free to declare an interest in the legal fees question on 28 January; there will be no interest to declare anyway. I am sure the Registrary as Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor will not mind my pointing out that he himself had an interest to declare when he spoke at that Discussion because he is the officer responsible for supervising the University's expenditure on legal fees on behalf of the Council.

For the record, and so that I may clear my name, my sole purpose in raising this issue so many times has been to ensure that the University began to use alternative dispute resolutions and monitor its expenditure properly, for example by negotiating fixed fees and challenging its solicitors' bills, as plain good practice. The place for me to challenge bills on my own account was and is the courts, and that is where I have done so.

Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS:

Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am glad to see these proposals for fixed-term Professorships being brought before the University in the regular way decreed by our Statutes. In addition to the regularity there are two further benefits. Transparency is the first, but no less important is the fact that we can now see more clearly in what respects it might be advantageous to modernize the statutory basis of the procedure.

When I last spoke on this issue exactly a year ago I asked a number of questions. My remarks were referred to the General Board for consideration. In particular I said I would be glad if the Board could provide me with their evidence for a prestigious national competitive MRC scheme for Professorships. I have received no reply either publicly or privately, and yet in this Report we again read of the Board's belief that there is an MRC scheme for Research Professorships involving 'prestigious and external competition'. So there may be; all I want is the evidence. I know, of course, that MRC Professors exist, but I asked about the competition for Professorships, with which I was not, and am not, familiar.

Now to the proposals before us. I must declare an interest, but it is a well-balanced one. I count amongst my professional acquaintances both some who would benefit from the proposals and some who, as pre-existing University officers, might feel that this stream to a Cambridge Professorship is rather more fluent than our normal Fenland drain.

By Recommendation I we are asked to approve six Professorships for existing Wellcome Principal Research Fellows. I propose that they should be called Wellcome Professorships, just as, in Recommendation II, we are asked to approve a 'Royal Society Professorship'. After all, 'the Board consider that there are strong grounds for treating the holders of Wellcome Principal Research Fellowships in the same way as the holders of Royal Society and MRC Research Professorships'.

Whilst on the subject of titles, might I, Professor of Biometry, enter a small and I am sure ineffectual plea against the title (but not the intended holder) 'Professor of Biostatistics'? It is a shame that the dominant American culture in medical statistics should have colonized the word 'biostatistics' to refer exclusively to Homo sapiens, and sickly Homo sapiens at that, and though it is useless to resist I cannot help wince when it receives the imprimatur of the University of Cambridge. Rest assured that the 'bio' in biometry still refers to the whole of the plant and animal kingdoms, healthy as well as diseased, and that 'biometry' still means, in the words of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 'The application of statistical methods to biological investigation'.

As to the six proposed Professorships let me just say that I am not persuaded by the Board's argument 'that in other universities the holders of such [Wellcome] Fellowships are accorded professorial status', not even when the University of Oxford is included in 'other universities'.

In conclusion I regret that I have to raise a rather sensitive matter. It has become customary these days not just to expect but to require people to declare any interest they might have in the propositions under discussion. I do not think the names of the new members of the General Board from 1 January have yet been published, but Professor Bobrow appears to be one of them. It might well be in accordance with our conventions for Professor Bobrow to have appended his signature even though two of the Professorships are to be in his Department, but I think he should have been advised not to be present at all for this part of the Board's meeting given that he is one of the nine Governors, that is Trustees, of the Wellcome Trust.

Report of the General Board, dated 22 January 2003, on the establishment of a Professorship of Plant Systematics and Evolution (p. 520).

Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS:

Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor, if nobody else is going to, let me warmly applaud the proposal.

Professor J. S. PARKER:

Mr deputy Vice-Chancellor, if I might amplify slightly on that, plant systematics provides the framework for all disciplines of botany. It establishes the nomenclatural reference system while at the same time pointing towards the evolutionary processes which have been operating in lineages. Until recently, plant science has lacked a phylogeny but DNA sequence analysis is beginning to provide part of one. Molecular systematics has grown from classical taxonomic studies and the combination of these two disciplines is proving increasingly powerful in providing a predictive structure for all aspects of plant science. Together, orthodox and modern molecular studies point the way to the evolutionary mechanisms and outcomes which have led to plant diversity.

It is particularly appropriate that a Professorship in Plant Systematics and Evolution be offered in the University of Cambridge. The power and depth of analysis provided by DNA technology will be brought together with a resource of living and preserved material in the Botanic Garden and Herbarium. The Herbarium of over 1 million specimens offers both a temporal and a spatial view of plant diversity, 300 years in time and global in extent, which can be exploited in unique ways to explore comparative plant biology - in development, biochemistry, physiology, and ecology, as well as evolution and taxonomy. The taxonomic tradition of the Herbarium is very powerful. The writing of the flora of Europe was orchestrated from there, while the most comprehensive flora of our own country is currently being written in the Herbarium, backed up by specimens providing the universal reference collection.

The world has lagged behind the USA in bringing together orthodox taxonomy and modern molecular methodologies in providing the evolutionary backbone to plant sciences. There is a great intellectual opportunity to found a Chair which will be a focal point for this advance in a new area which will illuminate plant science for the new century.

Table of Contents