Campus architecture aesthetics really do matter, to both staff and students inhabiting a place. Wherever I am in the world, I love exploring them – they say so much about the values and character of the institution. During my two weeks here on the University of Leeds campus every day I walked a different route from the town centre hotel up the hill to the law school, through a densely-built but green campus, with lovely features to it.
One day was a faculty graduation, with students getting photographed on campus by relatives and friends. Here’s the fab four, but without the white VW, and I caught George Harrison at the back at an odd moment when he was adjusting his stance, looking down at an image of the LP cover on his phone to get it right, their photographer further down the hill waiting for the right moment.
The law school is at the top of the hill, beside Hyde Park. It was completed around 2011 – reminds me of the new QUB law school in Belfast: fresh, generous public areas, a range of different types of rooms for different types of pedagogy, good amount of work-spaces and social-spaces for postgrads, staff, etc. Lots of light flooding the open areas; but well-judged, not dominating or glaring.
My favourite building has to be the Esther Simpson Building – partly Law School, partly Business School I believe, though the eponym herself wasn’t anything to do with business.The lecture theatre is a strong horseshoe shape, redolent of theatres in older European continental universities. I loved the grays, muted tones, quiet almost quakerly colours that along with an airiness and the absence of strong colour, decoration, or ornament, speak for the values and work of Esther Simpson.
Hers was a remarkable life. A Quaker, she worked in the Academic Assistance Council and its successor organisations, from 1933-78, devoted to saving the lives and careers of scholars fleeing persecution. You can read about it here on her fine Wikipedia page. I first came across her name years ago when I was writing about Walter Benjamin, reading his life and the circumstances of his suicide, on the French-Spanish border, fleeing Nazi persecution; but had forgotten all about her, until I read the blue plaque. Her books and papers are in the University of Leeds Library Archives. I read now almost weekly in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Atlantic of the gathering assault – not too strong a word – in the US by the current Trump administration on universities, and on their students who were protesting the situation in Palestine. Scholars are already leaving – those who can.
The Esther Simpson Building is an eloquent reminder of the values of scholarship and the scholarly life. And a warning: it’s a quiet protest in architectural form. Even the art work outside is part of that. It comprises a curtain of steel, like a military wall or border, with a leaf shape cut out and the words ‘to leaf is’ on one side of the leaf, and ‘to learn’ on the other – the words are those of the poet Simon Armitage. But at the top of the wall the edge is not a parapet but is shaped and torn like a page from a notebook that has spiral binding, so it’s also a page. Everything about it is a dualism – one thing or the other, doubling. The steel is really solid stuff, but the fragility of the torn page is still there. The leaf motif references the sycamore trees around, living things – this leaf is frozen art. But it’s also a leaf of paper. And so on. It reminded me, oddly enough, maybe in its modest attention to space more than anything else, of the Menzies Library on the ANU campus that I was fond of using, years ago when I worked there.
Yesterday was the final day of my fellowship residence at the School of Law, University of Leeds. I’ve so enjoyed my time here, among colleagues. Can I call them colleagues after only being with them for two weeks? It feels right, and that’s a tribute to the warmth of their welcome. In addition to the webinar, workshop, seminars and lecture I gave I met them one-on-one to discuss scholarship in legal education, research directions, make links and so on. I love discussing ideas, projects, experiences – conversations that hopefully help to make things happen.
Passing it on, giving back, has been much more important to me recently, but in a sense it always was – a key part of being a scholar. I started the book series Emerging Legal Education with Caroline Maughan back in 2011 because there was no series anywhere in the world dedicated to legal education. I wanted it to be a platform for younger scholars, coming to the field with fresh ideas, new forms of education; and so it has been, with 19 volumes to date, and more in the pipeline. I’ve written in a previous post about the influence of a short meeting I had with J Hillis Miller, a visiting fellow from Yale when I was a doctoral student at Edinburgh University’s English Lit dept. My supervisor wasn’t especially helpful; I attended Hillis Miller’s seminar series on parable, and he seemed nothing like his daunting reputation as a deconstructionist. He told us we could come and talk to him about our work so I took courage and did so. The 30 or so minutes I spent with him turned around my entire doctorate. He had a quiet, grave presence, helped me focus but also how to expand and grow, too. Leaf / learn.
On Thursday I spent the day with staff in CIRLE at an awayday, organised by Lydia to discuss the future shape and activities of the centre. Fascinating ideas and proposals were formed, in an atmosphere of open democratic debate. I contributed what I could. The previous day Lydia had asked me to give some summing up comments. She also asked me to finish by recounting some failures that I’d had. How was I going to do this? I had to be truthful; and it had to be an account of serious failure if it were to be of use to others. She set me quite a challenge. It was necessary though, for all through the fellowship I’d been focusing on achieving success, and telling stories of that.
And so I came up with three wee stories, one on teaching, one on research, and one – well, because the story suggested itself to me, nagged at me to be told. On teaching, I told the story of my first attempt back in 1995 or so at Caledonian to integrate Scottish literature, film, indigenous cultures and jurisprudence, and to thread through it semiotic theory. One student gave me a one word reply in feedback: ‘semi-what?’ It was deserved. The course went well above the students’ heads. Not that it was all bad news – they liked the BBC producer I invited to come and talk about how a literary text was adapted for screen; they liked the Canadian who worked with indigenous peoples in ‘fly-in’ communities in the far north of Canada, talking of indigeneity. But as a whole the course crashed & burned. It stung. I wrote about it in the first chapter of Transforming Legal Education as an example of how not to do comparative jurisprudential education. Later, at ANU I put together a course on Scottish literature, art and music and constitutionalism (it was 2014 and indyref was upcoming) as an option on the Jurisprudence course, and that worked, because students had a much clearer understanding of constitutionality. The arts enriched it, and the legal discussions infused the discussions of the arts.
The research failure – I avoided the small scale stuff – you think you’ll write this or that article but for whatever good reason it doesn’t happen. Instead I talked about a book series I’d planned at ANU in the PEARL centre on assessment in legal education, took me months of prep. Six volumes, one per jurisdiction, so comparative. Only one appeared in the ANU Press, on England. I’d cued up editors for the other five, and eventually had to say with much regret that the books would no longer appear. It required the PEARL centre, which for various reasons beyond me was failing, and soon after I got the invite to join Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada, which I accepted. I still think we need big projects like this, and of course such projects require commitment; but there was no escape route on this climb once it was started. I still think it’s a great idea though, so if anyone out there is interested…
The third story was a personal moment. I was in Toronto when Covid spread internationally, and lock-down began to be talked about in Canada as a reality. I was involved in some really interesting stuff, so left it till almost the last flight back to the UK from Pearson airport. It was eerie – a couple of dozen of us on the airliner, passing through three utterly empty airports. I had a couple of packed suitcases and other stuff to take with me. One case I did need. Did I really need that second case? I remember pausing by the door of my room in the hotel on campus, considering it. Nicola my wife had advised me to bring it back. Part of me said, maybe best do that. Another part said och just leave it, this’ll blow over, and you’ll be back. It didn’t and I didn’t return. I failed the moment; the Osgoode post continued remotely and I lost 32kg of clothes, books, papers and other stuff. I think I felt compelled to tell that story because it’s an analogy for how we need to seize the moment in research and thinking. When the thought surfaces, catch it, don’t put it aside, take it with you: make the effort to clear a space for it, don’t lose it. Kind of the opposite failure of the research story above.
So there it was – two weeks of super fellowship, working with staff and students in CIRLE, which was a delight. The centre has research & innovation in its title and it lives up to it. It is open to many different forms of legal educations. It produces useful, quality research and examples of teaching innovation. Lydia personally helped to set up what’s frankly been the most successful phenomenon in legal education in recent years in the UK, namely Connecting Legal Education (CLE). It is a welcoming group of experts.