A Scandal in Plain Sight is available from the Colmcille Press website
Derry journalist Garrett Hargan’s new book, A Scandal in Plain Sight, which investigates the 60-year refusal to set up a university in northwest Ireland, is to be launched in Creggan’s Ráth Mór Centre next month.
Longtime Derry Journal editor Pat McArt, who has provided an epilogue for the book, will preside at the event, which will take place at the Hive Studios on August 9 at 6pm.
Hargan’s research, which exposes massive regional inequality in the North’s university sector, has been used by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and others to support the case for a new, independent North West University.
His debut book revisits the scandalous decisions which denied a university to Derry and became the catalyst for the North’s civil rights movement in the 1960s. It also charts the failure of successive governments and university administrations to develop Magee over the decades since. And he explores how new proposals, developed by the RIA and the Shared Island Initiative, could at last deliver justice for Derry.
Other contributors to the book include Derry academic Killian Ó Dochartaigh of the University of Edinburgh Architecture School, Amie Gallagher of the Focus Project, and the Derry University Group (DUG).
DUG campaigner Conal McFeely commented: "This book features at its core the voices of four generations of Derry commentators, from the late, great Frank Curran [another former Derry Journal editor] to Hargan himself.
"All these voices tell the same abiding truth: the North West will flourish again as soon as it has its own university. It is time for us to build it."
Publisher Garbhán Downey of Colmcille Press said: “While barely into his thirties, Garrett is very much an old-school investigative journalist; he is thorough, determined, principled and insightful – and will certainly go far. His work is already making an impact. This is a landmark book – one that should never have had to be written, but one which could not have had a better or more integrous author.”
A Scandal in Plain Sight is available from the Colmcille Press website for £5, plus postage, and will be available from shops after the launch. The ebook can be purchased for £1
by askmac
5 comments
I’ll chuck ye a fiver to read this for sure.
It’s beyond time to start a feasibility study on Coleraine campus within UU and in general.
Nevermind the fact it should never have been opened in the first place it’s clear it’s on life support these days. The amount of courses moved from elsewhere especially Magee to artificially keep the campus going is a joke.
In terms of Magee it should probably be taken off UU and either become independant or apart of ATU. It would make perfect sense to tie it in with Letterkenny campus.
Its clear UU priorities lay elsewhere and it’s time to change that. They have done nothing but mismanage everything they touch, I still laugh how the former President Paddy Nixon fucked off to Australia when the Belfast campus went some 130mil over budget.
” Im in the RIA now, da “
Coleraine should never have got a university. It was only chosen because it’s not Derry. UU has been the worst thing to ever happen to Magee.
Went to Magee and had a great time, great city that deserves a uni! They want it all in Belfast!