LEAVING KEELE

John Sloboda

2008

LEAVING KEELE

John Sloboda

In September 2008 John Sloboda retired from Keele. The following texts are based on remarks made at a series of events organised in his honour.

1. Lunch party attended by Dame Janet Finch, Vice-Chancellor and senior academic staff of the University, Tuesday 23rd September 2008

I’m not a person who spends a lot of time dwelling on the past. I tend to focus on the present with an eye to the future. My motivations for leaving Keele at this particular juncture are future oriented. I’ve got some things to get done which are best done elsewhere.

I will say a few things about the past, but let me first talk a little bit about the future, and how that future will hopefully allow a different, but still productive relationship to Keele.

I am very pleased indeed to have been granted emeritus status at Keele. I consider that an honour and a privilege, and one which confers real responsibilities.

That plan involves some continuing responsibilities in psychology to finishing PhD students, but other parts of that plan relate to how I might link my life outside academia to what is happening at Keele.

The Oxford Research Group (ORG), which I have now directed for nearly five years, works with similar NGOs and think tanks both in the UK and abroad. These organisations tend to share one thing in common with each other, which is financial hardship. A creative response to hardship is the development of internship schemes, whereby bright younger people spend periods of between 3 and 6 months working as volunteers in NGOs. This is of great mutual benefit. The interns gain valuable experience and skills, and often can use their internship experience to increase their employability. NGOs gain the energy and enthusiasm of sharp and quick young people.

I believe that internships and other “real world” placements are becoming more and more essential at all levels of education. I’m very much hoping that ORG can work with Keele colleagues, particularly in the School of Politics and International Relations, to link Keele students to relevant placement opportunities.

On a more personal level, I am delighted that, with the support of Jane Krishnadas and the Alternative Globalisations Forum which she convenes, a group of Keele staff and students are convening what might be the first of several meetings to consider how to better bridge the divide between academia and social activism. It’s that unfulfilled quest which has led me to leave Keele. After 5 years of trying to juggle two careers, an activist one in London and an academic one in Keele, I’ve had to find a way of refocusing my life in one place again. And I chose London.

But my route to London would not have taken place in the way it did, were it not for the opportunities and support that 34 years at Keele provided. Keele has allowed me to do a whole

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range of things, across a wide spectrum of activities, each of which has added something to my toolkit, and enhanced my transferable skills, to use quality assurance jargon. Above all, it allowed me the freedom and support to develop and consolidate a hub for music psychology here – a new sub-discipline which Keele’s support has allowed to grow and establish itself. Around 60 staff and postgraduates have contributed to that discipline from a Keele base, and that has been a huge privilege and delight.

But I’ve also been allowed to teach outside my department, in the Music Department, the Human Resources Management Department, and latterly International Relations.

I’ve collaborated on research projects with colleagues in Applied Social Studies and Education,

I’ve had the privilege of artistic management and leadership through the conducting of the Keele Bach Choir for 20 years.

I have got closely involved with some of the dilemmas of faith communities in secular societies, through my 25 year involvement with the University Chapel.

And I’ve learned a great deal about management, policy, and planning, through being given hands-on experience of being a Head of School, a Faculty Dean, and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. As a result of all of this, I don’t feel I’ve had one job at Keele, but 10 jobs. The people in this room represent many of the strands of all this. Working alongside you and colleagues has been both pleasant and instructive.

Keele has many strengths. One of them is the fact that my 34 years of service is not unusually long. Many people commit to Keele for the long term.

A second strength, related to the first, is collegiality. The day to day support which colleagues have given me, and give each other, is second to none. There are too many to name them all. But I’d focus just now in one place. For all sorts of reasons, my first year as Head of Psychology, in 2000-2001 was probably the most challenging of my career. I’m absolutely sure I would have gone under were it not for a fabulous management team in Psychology, of whom John Hegarty and Mark Trueman were two lynchpins. And outside the department, Chris Arme, as Dean of Faculty steered a wonderfully sensitive path between line manager, advisor, and wise friend. But Keele cannot be seen on its own. It is part of a system, and that system is facing immense challenges. These are challenges facing global society – challenges of resource, challenges of policy, and challenges of ideology. Universities can be the powerhouses of new solutions to the global crisis. They are peopled by fantastically clever people, with the capacity to be passionate and visionary. Yet there may be a mismatch between what Universities do and what the world needs them to do. I see Universities as an essential component of global civil society, with the capacity and resources to critically and rigorously challenge prevailing thinking, set agendas which go beyond accepted norms, and be powerhouses for progressive social change. These are capacities which are underutilised currently. Universities need to show leadership in policy circles rather than running along in the train of government.

There’s one person who I would have loved to be present today but who is not well enough to be, and that is Martin Dent. For me he epitomises what boldness and vision in an academic looks like. The Jubilee 2000 campaign was founded at Keele and brought to fruition through the

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energies that he catalysed here and outside. In some way my own path is forged in Martin’s footsteps, remembering that what was sown in Keele was reaped in historic decisions of world leaders. I think it was 2001 when by Janet’s invitation I was privileged to deliver the oration for Martin’s honourary degree. That’s a moment that I treasure as celebrating the best of Keele, and laying down a challenge to all of us all to live up to.

Keele has been kind to me, and I thank you all for your part in that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Reception attended by staff and postgraduates of the School of Psychology. Wednesday 24th September.

I’ve spent quite a lot of my working life outside Keele’s School of Psychology and increasingly outside a University setting.

That has given me a clearer perspective on the strengths of psychology departments as working environments in general, and Keele’s in particular.

I’ve got detailed experience to compare Keele with. I’m going to just point out three signal strengths of Keele psychology which have made it so rewarding to work here.

First is the advantages of long service and continuity.

Every time an experienced person leaves, wisdom leaches away and takes time to rebuild. Cohesion needs rebuilding. Being constantly on the move is not a good in itself – putting down roots is good.

Keele Psychology has been blessed with people who have stayed a long time. Several have been here as long as me or longer. In this room that includes Jim Hartley, John Hegarty, John Coleman, and Mark Trueman. For 15 years, between 1976 and 1991 there were no new incomers into the academic staff, and little in the support staff. Long servers who recently moved on include Chris Woods and Angus Gellatly.

This stability has extended across all staff categories, academic, technical, administrative. Marie Buchan is the elder statesperson of our support team, with us for 12 years. She has been a tower of strength, calm, efficient, and totally unflappable. But it is also remarkable that our 46 years has seen only 4 departmental co-ordinators, Mavis Phillips, Doreen Waters, Pam Seddon, and now Ann Ireson. That’s an average of 12 years each.

Second are the advantages of size and skill mix.

Small units are very vulnerable in all sorts of ways. Larger collegial units are very rational.

Duplication of skills, allowing cover for absence. In small units there is no cover. When someone is ill or on leave their work just piles up. The pressures of that are immense. I’ve been so grateful for colleagues who have been able to pick up my teaching or administration uncomplainingly when I’ve not been available. In recent years that burden has fallen particularly heavily on Alex Lamont’s shoulders, and I’d like to acknowledge her cheerful uncomplaining professionalism in that.

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Sharing of skills. In small units, one is constantly coming up against problems where the staff team contains no capacity to solve them. A simple example relates to IT – every time a small workgroup has a computer problem it has to call in an outside contractor who knows little about the people involved, and cares less. Every call-out brings a different person. Here, I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of the same small team of expert technical people on hand, personally involved, and amazingly responsive. Our current team, Andy Knipe, Dave Smethurst, and John Coleman, are as good as we have ever had.

The same is true on the administrative side – just to take one example, the administration of assessment – everything from the collection and sending out of scripts through to the recording and follow-up on outcomes. We have a gold-plated service from our dedicated team – this is not true of all places and times!. Music psychology been especially well supported by a series of administrators on the MSc, starting with Betty Hill, followed by Inge Saris, and now Jo Gravano. But the great thing about our admin team is that they are a real team, covering and supporting each other, so all of them Sue Wilshaw, Beverley Davies, and Margaret Reynolds, have made a real difference . Academic sharing has been invaluable too. It is great just to be able to consult a colleague on the appropriacy of a statistical test, a hard-to-locate reference, experience with a particular grant awarding body, or any other of a multitude of issues. In the hard world outside, finding the right person to ask can be very difficult, and more often than not you have to pay for the answer.

Third is the advantage of a shared disciplinary training.

No-one can accuse me of being a narrow disciplinarian. Making contributions outside the discipline of psychology is core to what I do and care about. But you can’t do good interdisciplinary work without strong disciplines to contribute to that.

The skills and ways of doing things that psychologists share are valuable, and we give maximum value by being allowed to build a strong psychology culture. Psychology teaching needs to be developed and overseen by psychologists. As does psychology research.

The Keele psychology group has been very successful in maintaining a strong psychology culture, against quite strong institutional pressures to merge and dilute in larger cross-disciplinary units. This has, above all, depended on departmental leadership showing to university management that Psychology is not only viable, but able to contribute to institutional well-being most successfully, when it is allowed too manage its own affairs. Offering attractive courses which recruit well is key to that, and we can collectively take pride in consistent recruitment successes, which has resulted in growth in student numbers in almost every year for at least the last 15. That success is down to the academic staff body which designs, projects, and delivers high quality courses, in the context of ever-declining unit resource.

In relation to that, if I were to pick two things that psychologists collectively can be proud of doing for the institution it would be

(a) the rescuing of Counselling as a discipline within the University. Following the departure of John McLeod in 1998, the University would happily have closed down Counselling for good were it not for the strenuous efforts made by several people in Psychology. Psychology is a natural home for counselling, and the incredible success of Maggie Robson and her team

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(b) the successful maintenance of a fully BPS-accredited undergraduate honours course within the dual honours system. We are probably the only UK HEI that doesn’t offer single honours psychology, and yet no-one around the system has ever suggested that Keele psychology graduates are deficient or handicapped in any way.

That’s an achievement in which everyone who works here now, and has ever worked here, can share. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Buffet supper and concert attended by friends, family, present and former and colleagues from Keele and outside, Wednesday 24th September.

It’s wonderful to see people here from so many different parts of my life, and some from far away. My family and some colleagues have come from London, and there is one valued colleague who has come all the way from Belgium just for this brief event. I feel deeply honoured. A special thanks to the musicians.

It’s both delightful but also embarrassing to be told nice things about oneself. Thank you. I just want to do two things. The first is to acknowledge the support I’ve had from you, and the second is to give the briefest sketch of my immediate future, the what and the why.

I start with my family. My mother and sister represent my immediate family, who have had to do without my regular presence in London these last 34 years, but have always supported me in my strange attachment for North Staffordshire.

My daughter Miri has seen rather more of me, because she has shared a home here in Staffordshire with me for over 20 years, and even was briefly a student in this department. But for two years she has been a Londoner too, and it seems that in my family all roads lead to London!

Music Psychology has been the constant thread of my life at Keele. Since I knew I was leaving Keele I’ve been doing a bit of historical research. I’ve compiled a list of everyone who has undertaken music psychology research at Keele, whether as postgraduate student or staff member. I’m astonished to discover that we arrived at a total of 80 this year. 11 of those 80 are here tonight. I’m so delighted.

In Music Psychology terms the grandfather of the house is Mitch Waterman, who arrived here in 1988 to do a PhD, the very first I supervised in this area. He’s number 3 on the list. He’s closely followed by Jane Ginsborg, number 10, then Gordon Dalgarno, Antonia Ivaldi, and Geraldine Leighton, in that order. They are all pursuing active research careers spread across the UK.

Then we come to number 39 on the list. Alex Lamont arrived as Lecturer in Music Pscyhology in 2001, and took on the Directorship of the MSc in Music Psychology. It took me 18 years to get from number 1 to number 39 (that’s an average of 2 entrants per year). In the 7 years since Alex joined, her phenomenal energies have helped push that up to 80, that’s an average of 6 new entrants per year. Alex has been a fanstastic colleague, and an inspired teacher. We owe her a great deal.

There’s some fascinating data here (a copy of the list is available on request). So many are now occupying responsible academic positions elsewhere. Keele music psychology graduates are working in this country at Leeds, Royal Northern College, Goldsmiths, Hull, and Keele itself.

In other countries, Keele music psychology graduates are working in Portugal, Israel, Austria, Canada, Italy, Finland, France, and Switzerland.

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There is, in fact, a worldwide network that connects Keele-trained researchers to others working music psychology and music education research. Some of these have been direct research collaborators, such as Eric Clarke, who worked with me and others for four wonderful years on a project on pianists’ fingering strategies.

Others, such as Adam Ockelford and Irene Deliege represent the key professional associations which have provided the forum and opportunies for music psychologists to meet together at conferences, and publish in books and journals. Without these w0nderful organisations, there would have been few outlets for Keele colleagues and students to present their work and build relationships.

Keele psychology colleagues, past and present, have been a great bunch to work with. You hear so many horror stories about academic departments – feuds and backstabbings, people who haven’t spoken to each other for decades. Keele has never been like that – it has been full of friendly, competent people who just get on with the job. That is certainly one reason why I stayed so long.

There are many current members of psychology here tonight, both old-timers and very recent arrivals. I want to say a special thanks to the two colleagues who have shared all of that 34 years with me, and who have both served as outstanding Heads of Department. Jim Hartley, and John Hegarty. I honestly cannot remember anything other than kindness and support from either of you. I should also say that several people have worked very hard behind the scenes to make this event happen, particularly Mark Trueman, our current head, Alex Lamont, several of our admin staff, not here tonight, and Michael Murray, who although relatively new to Keele took great pains to ensure that this happened.

So, work has played a central role, and, as a bit of a workaholic, I’ve very much needed those friends and contacts who have dragged me away from my desk. I’m really pleased that a good number of you are here too. The biggest constituency are my fellow musicians, mainly singers, with whom, through the Bach Choir I have had so much pleasure and fulfilment. But there are also those who have welcomed me into their homes, gone travelling or gone wining and dining with me, and supported me at stressful times. You have made such a difference.

Why leave this wonderful working environment, and these fabulous friends, you may well ask?

There’s no quick answer, and we don’t have all night. But it really has nothing to do with anything or anyone at Keele. It was, in the words of the late Harold MacMillan, “events, dear boy, events” that have led inexorably to tonight. And those events were ones on the world stage, acutely those enacted by Tony Blair and his opposite numbers in Washington. Three times in the last 10 years, British bombs have been dropped on innocent civilians, first in the Balkans, then in Afghanistan, and finally in Iraq. And that has been completely unacceptable to me at every level, as a citizen and taxpayer of this country, and as a human being.

Finding better ways to resolve international disagreements, ways that don’t involve people killing each other, has become my over-riding preoccupation. That is expressed through my policy work with the Oxford Research Group, but the longest commitment has been to the work of Iraq Body Count, which meticulously records the reported violent civilian deaths in Iraq day by day.

This is a project which could hardly have survived were it not for friends and colleagues connected to Keele. Bulent Gokay and Kay Williams were in from the start, and Lily Hamourtziadou joined the team later. Another key member of the team, here tonight, is Peter Bagnall from Lancaster. And some music psychology colleagues have played smaller but vital roles. The project is now coming of age in many ways. Although Iraq continues to claim lives, and we continue to record them, we’ve now begun to see that there is a bigger goal, which is to make war such a publicly unacceptable catastrophe that people will demand nothing less than complete information about all its casualties, just as we expect a complete list of the names of the victims of an air-crash or a hurricane. Changing governmental and popular

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attitudes to war is a mammoth task, but I believe an essential one. War is going to get more, not less likely, as the big global threats of climate change, desertification, and resource depletion come on stream. If we want a world that we would be happy for our children to inherit, we have to turn the world around and head it in another direction. I feel the need to give the bulk of my time to that effort, and because I have the privilege of a fantastic group of colleagues to work alongside to that end, there isn’t really an option for me.

I’m keeping a foot in the door of music psychology, and am committing to one day a week on that. But what I gladly give up for ever, is large-class teaching, and university administration. Don’t ask me to do any more of it Mark, the answer will always be “no”. But I’m sticking around to see my wonderful PhD students through to completion, and collaborate with them on publications from their theses. Karen Wise, Alinka Greasley, Annelies Van Goethem. Supervising research dissertations has been the jewel in the crown of my teaching career, a wonderful privilege, and I am so grateful to Keele for giving me the chance to do that in an area of work so close to my heart.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Opening remarks at a session on Alternative Pathways in Activism in Research and Teaching, convened by the Alternative Globalisatiosn Forum at Keele University, Wednesday 22nd October 2008.

It’s completely typical of Jane Krishnadas that a half-formed idea of mine should be transformed by her into a much broader and inclusive agenda. I’m very grateful to Jane, Susan, and everyone else who worked to bring this event around.

I’m also slightly embarrassed at being given the place of honour in this meeting. While I cannot help being personal, I hope my experience can be linked to the different experiences of others in the room in ways that point forwards to something which is larger and more systematic than a particular idiosyncratic personal story.

My story arises out of dilemmas that political events of the last decade have thrown up for me as a career academic. In the context of this meeting I am interested in what one might call “career path issues” for academic staff. The question is how can our skill, knowledge and enthusiasms be effectively deployed to have positive influence on governmental policy, when little or nothing in the way most of us were taught or developed within the academic profession explicitly equips us for such roles. I’m therefore addressing the “research” half of the title of this afternoon. I don’t really have anything specific or worked out to say about teaching.

For me, positive influence means influence which increases human well-being in ways which uphold core values. These values include

Equity - my gain cannot be at the expense of your lossJustice - everyone is judged by the same criteria- no double standardsSustainability – we cannot jeopardise the future to solve present problems

Governments, including our present government, struggle to consistently implement these values in the way they operate.

The activists with whom I identify, and who have inspired me, are those who see their own government falling short, and feel compelled to actively and publicly dissent from their government’s decisions. But dissent, important as it is, can be a dead-end if it only involves

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protest and opposition. Dissent needs to lead to creative and transformative action, which offers new ways forward, and unlocks new energies.

In 2003 a group of people, many connected in one way or another to Keele, decided to channel their passionate opposition against the military options chosen by the Bush-Blair alliance into a new documentation project, based on new tools provided by information technology and the world-wide-web.

Iraq Body Count thrust into worldwide public awareness all that was being learned, on a day-by-day basis about the ultimate human cost of the Iraq invasion and occupation, the loss of innocent life. And it still provides, to this day, a reliable and continuous record of the daily violence in Iraq, which informs the understanding and analyses of the many thousands of individuals and organisations worldwide who come to our site for the breakdowns and analyses we provide.

Although it did not have to be academics who started this project, there are very good reasons why academics are particularly well suited to handle the work. It requires meticulous discovery, storage, close reading, and extraction of precise information of multiple sources. In effect, our front line staff are performing a daily literature review of the published media. It requires the analysis and manipulation of data to uncover meaningful patterns and trends. It requires the dissemination of our findings, in traditional formats (such as articles) but also in innovative formats, such as automatically updated web-forms and web-counters.

One of the things I have noticed about the thinking of our foreign policy makers is how high on rhetoric and how light on data most of their pronouncements are. It is only in the last few years that decisions about which treatments will be offered on the NHS are informed by a rigorous assessment of the available evidence . Its about time that those charged with decisions about “the national interest” need to prove that their formulations are grounded in comprehensively collected data, rather than “sexed up” and fragmentary “intelligence”. Academics remain key guardians of the processes of transparent evidence-based analysis. Politicians need such analyses for their decision-making, not anecdote and wishful thinking.

But as important as its data is, the IBC project goes beyond data analysis and dissemination. It aims to transform public discourse about conflict, so that it would be increasingly unthinkable to wage future wars without a record of the cost in innocent life being at the forefront of public awareness, just as it is now unthinkable in our society that a train-crash or a flood should be allowed to pass without recording a full list of the names and other details of the victims. This is the only way forward for any society that purports to call itself civilised.

When academics engage in processes aimed at transforming society, this does not mean publishing their results in one or two places and then sitting back. It means engaging with key opinion formers and hubs of influence the wider world, whether it be in the media, the world of business, the world of politics, or the world of culture and the arts. Opinion formers tend not to read academic work – they need the outputs packaged and delivered in ways that allow them to use it. For newsdesks or desk officers in the Ministries this generally means the well crafted “executive summary” in which the key ideas are expressed on no more than one side of A4, while maintaining academic standards. For those closer to power this means the establishing of relationships of mutual trust that allow for the well-placed phone call or one-to-one briefing session.

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As a result of careful relationship building carried out by my colleagues at ORG over 20 or more years, we now have personal relationships to a wide range of senior people with influence in or on government. For instance, in the last week ORG was able to provide a platform for Prince Turki al Faisal of Saudi Arabia to meet with Israelis, Palestinians and Europeans to promote the Arab Peace Initiative, believed by many, including reportedly Barack Obama, to be the best chance of resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict. We were able to brief Ian Black, Foreign Editor of the Guardian to write a well-judged report of the meeting in Saturday’s Guardian. After a roundtable we organised in Egypt last week I was able to meet with the British Ambassador to Cairo to press home a number of key messages, distilled from opinion formers gathered from all over the region.

I am not saying this to name drop, but simply to indicate that intelligent strategic reaching out to those whose decisions you want to influence is an integral part of the toolkit. This does not mean becoming co-opted. Speaking truth to power is the aim, but to do that you have to be regularly in the presence of power and ensure that their ears are at least somewhat attuned to you. These outcomes require skills which push academics beyond their comfort zone.

My personal case is perhaps unusual. My lifelong academic specialism of music psychology offered no content expertise which I could deploy to affect UK decisions on war and peace. I had to learn my politics and international relations in out-of-work time. However, generic research and management skills have proved immensely valuable. No-one forewarned me that quantitative scientific research, appearing on radio documentaries, running a department, applying for grants, and writing minutes for committee meetings, would provide me with needed skills to promote non-military conflict resolution options with policy-makers, or publicise the terrible consequences of one particular conflict, but so it has proved.

My question for Keele is this. Can the institution (which is actually no more or less than the sum of the people in it) deploy its resources, including staff development resources, networking resources, research support capacity, human resource management capacity, to ensure that academics who aspire to influence our government’s policies to become more equitable, just and sustainable, are better equipped to do so? What is the right mix of informal and formal processes? Where can effective strategic investments be made? And above all, how can creativity and risk-taking be nurtured in an environment where the major prizes generally go to those who play safe, and don’t “rock the boat”.

Talking openly about these issues in forums such as this is a start. It doesn’t happen that often, and it is to the credit of Keele and Keele colleagues that we are talking together. I want to stop talking now and hear what others think.

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