Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO
Global rewards
12 August 1999
Early last week, on a hotel bus at Heathrow, I bumped into one of our professors from AGSM. We last met three weeks ago at an alumni function in the House of Lords, so I could detect his desperately concealed moment of horror - the instant when he assessed whether I had yet to find Terminal 4.
Such concern is not entirely misplaced. Although university presidents, rectors and vice-chancellors are trained to go where they are sent, they respond with all the smooth efficiency of supermarket trolleys. According to my colleagues in Michigan and Washington, it has something to do with being pushed around by state governments.
The latest circumnavigation began in Seattle where the Universities of Washington and Sydney signed two agreements, one for student exchange and one for general co-operation. The encouraging feature of this initiative is the fact that it was pushed along by the Seattle business community after a civic delegation visited Sydney in March.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Chancellor and I enjoyed the ripping yarns of our North American alumni at the annual SUGUNA conference and, in a moment of memorable forgetfulness, flagged down a police car in mistake for a taxi. The charming driver told us he knew we just wanted to wish him a warm and personal good-day, which we duly did - on behalf of all the people of Queensland.
That weekend 26 people died of heat exhaustion in Chicago, while New York, our next alumni port of call, was stifling too. Nonetheless the detailed level of interest in the University’s progress shown by our highly successful graduates there was refreshing to find.
In Cambridge came the pleasure of renewing mathematical acquaintances as well as meeting new faces. The native drums must still beat efficiently, for there was a considerable knowledge of and intense interest in our enterprise bargain. Cambridge has introduced a new bonus scheme for professors. Those who seek extra salary must apply to be evaluated. The top 5 per cent will receive significant addition, the bottom 50 per cent nothing, and there are intermediate graduations.
As an orbiting Australian-Scottish Passepartout I feel able to set a brainteaser. Which famous social commentator and Cambridge resident praised a colleague for bringing us the blessed insight that “within the tungsten carapace of our dignity quivers a secret nosepicker?”
The laurels were offered to Billy Connolly by Clive James. Clive spoke brilliantly at our London alumni evening and will certainly do so again on the occasion of his forthcoming honorary degree. Connolly, who extended his range by playing John Brown in the next-to-eponymous movie, started as an apprentice on the same day and in the same shipyard as our Professor of Aeronautical Engineering.
The intersections of four-dimensional world vectors continue to surprise and reward.