So what was all that about, then?

There will be few, if any, disciplinary procedures against staff at the Irish universities for the remainder of our lives. In short, we won. The legal issues were always clearcut, and management together with their legal advisers should be punished; it is the political dimension that I will focus on here.

The 1997 act creates a “chief officer' at the Irish universities in whom all aspects of the universities converge. Whether such a role has any place in a democratic society is a moot point; yet a succession of Irish “chief officers”, egged on by the government, acted outside the law for over a decade, with dreadful consequences for people's lives. Now that the neoliberal dispensation of which this was apart has failed, there will be hell to pay for this violation of the social contract

This writer must confess that he oscillates between anger at the Irish Times for creating VP as a media figure, and relief. The relief arises because this cast VP out with the other bullshitters who expostulate on our national media. Unlike the rest of them, VP had actual power; yet he failed to use it, and we are all the better for this. However, there is a more fundamental point.

Academic freedom will henceforth primarily be a function of how the state chooses to police the internet. The Irish tradition is MacSwiney's; intellectual freedom is about our choice in our lives. The main significance of what went on at the Irish universities 1999-2011 is the attempt to create an entity, funded by te taxpayer, that could function outside the law. It is in many ways incidental that it happened at the universities; something similar was going on in the health service.

The effects on students and staff has been documented here. Thanks to some brilliant academics at Stanford (all their course materials are available free) we now have the capacity to say “Nie wieder!” (never again!). Accreditation is now a nonsense; 20,000 students passed the AI course, 6,100 + passes teh databases course and now try and tell your employer that your “accredited' course is better than the Stanford one. What I conceive of is a transfer of credits scenario, and here is how it would work out for the cog sci course.
_____________________________________________________________
A cognitive science course, reparsed

Stanford courses as credits (coded as *) – we assume an average of 4 credits/units each. 45 credits must be gained, and this will be done over 3-4 years

A sign-off by the lecturer or audited work during course as assessment. It is not insinuated that these are accredited by Stanford. Rather, what is happening is that certain of these courses, offered by Stanford faculty on-line, are acceptable to us as equivalents of our courses if the lecturer at Stanford signs a certificate of satisfactory completion for the student. Alternatively, the student can take only our in-house courses. Stanford courses are marked *; my own, already available online, **

Introductory material – for example, linear algebra – is often reduplicated over several courses (eg ML and AI) and in any case there are many good and free tutorials on the web For several of the courses, my “search for Mind” is used

Year 1

Semester 1
Algorithms * http://www.algo-class.org/
CS 101 ( may be an essential for the computing stream) *http://www.cs101-class.org/
Cog sci ; chapters 1 and 2 of “search”

Semester 2

Software as a service (Berkeley) * http://www.saas-class.org/
Sci and Society – 2 credits **
Cog sci Chapter 3 and 4 of “search”
Irish culture - 2 credits **

Year 2
Semester 1
Databases (encompasses bioinformatics) *http://www.db-class.org/course/class/index
Biosemiotics **
Intro to AI (encompasses some of biosemiotics) *https://www.ai-class.com/

Semester 2
Complex systems *http://www.modelthinker-class.org/
Nat lang proc (encompasses some of biosemiotics also) * http://www.nlp-class.org/
Cog sci; Remainder of “search”
HCI *http://www.hci-class.org/


Year 3
ML * http://www.ml-class.org/course/class/index
Neuroscience and experience **
Specialist projects; work experience; on-line discussions. Likewise for year 4 if this is necessary


Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. Stanford
Stanford University 5u Eanair 2012