Ten Years a Growing

Advertise • Help • Contact Us • Permissions

Discussions Groups Events Blogs Photos Premium Irish Circle

Edit Profile Friends Requests Messages Updates

Discussions Groups Events Photos Blogs Irish Pubs Local Networks Expat Info GAA Clubs Rugby Clubs Dating Worldwide

Working in Ireland Working Abroad Currency Converter Jobs Ireland Banking Ireland Irish Sites

Info Ireland Vacation Packages Hotels Car Rental Golf Ferries Hostels Day Tours

Irish Name Register Passenger Lists Advice & Resources

Irish News Music & Songs Recipes Proverbs e-Postcards History & Archaeology Heritage & Culture Mythology Irish Studies Literature Gaelic

Jewellery Books Food Heraldry Crystal Food baskets USA Seasonal Items Clothing

Irish Voice

Columnists

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Read newsletters

Enter your e-mail address to receive our weekly e-Newsletter:

Editorial / Periscope - Niall O'Dowd

Ten Years a Growing

May 30, 2008

Editorial

LAST weekend in Dublin over 300 Americans and several hundred Irish gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Keough-Naughton Institute of Irish Studies at Notre Dame. It was a remarkable weekend, from dinners at the Mansion House and Dublin Castle, to degree conferrings and concerts hosted by students.

It was attended by, among others, Father John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. Also on hand were Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Irish government minister Mary Hanafin, former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald (whose father, Desmond taught at Notre Dame) and former Justice Minster Michael McDowell.

Since the program began over 1,000 students from all over the U.S. have come to Ireland to study at either Trinity College or University College Dublin.

It is astonishing to note that until the Irish Institute came into being, there were no official links between America’s greatest Irish university and the ancestral land that gave it birth. The two entities were like ships in the night, never actually crossing paths despite the incredible shared history.

While millions of Irish were aware of the Fighting Irish football team, it is safe to say that the role of Notre Dame in forging the Irish consciousness and pride in heritage in America was utterly lost on them.

Equally for generations of Notre Dame students, Ireland was a distant ancestral memory with little connection to their lives on campus. That has now changed utterly.

It began when Donald Keough, former president of Coca-Cola, took matters into his own hands and established the Keough Center for Irish Studies.

Keough has become one of the greatest Irish business leaders in the U.S., not just for his own success but also for forging links with Ireland that had become sundered over the generations. He and wife Mickie made the new Keough Institute into a vital link in that newly established chain.

Seamus Deane, Ireland’s leading intellectual, came on board, and soon the word spread that Notre Dame was in the business of seeking to establish the premier Irish studies institute in the U.S.

Later Martin Naughton, a successful Irish businessman with a deep love of philanthropy and the arts, joined Keough in creating the current expanded Keough-Naughton Institute.

Judging by the caliber of the present students and the alumni who turned up in Dublin the program has achieved its goal.

It is vital for Ireland and America that the flow of scholars and students between both countries continues. At a time of greatly decreased migration between the two countries, the need to replenish and build new bonds has never been greater.

The Keough-Naughton Institute has its own Irish home, the handsome Georgian house in Merrion Square in Dublin that Daniel O’Connell, “the liberator” and architect of Catholic emancipation in 1828 once lived in.

The impact on the students’ lives was clear to see last weekend as the alumni poured in from all over America and indeed the globe. They talked about what the Irish experience had meant to them and the profound impact their time in Ireland had on them.

So many of the present group of students are involved in volunteer activities, including helping the homeless and working with groups that handle inner city problems. They are showing by example the best of what America has to offer at a time when this country’s reputation is at a low point abroad.

Given the plans in the hopper, the next 10 years of the Keough-Naughton Institute will show it going from strength to strength. That can only benefit the two countries concerned.

Share this story: digg this | Add to del.icio.us

Print Save Discussions

Discuss

Email a friend