Professor Louise Richardson was a 14-year-old Catholic girl, one of seven children living in the small seaside town of Tramore in the south of rural Ireland, when she heard news that 27 civil rights marchers had been shot, and 13 of them killed, by the British Parachute Regiment.
Already a republican, the news of Bloody Sunday in January 1972, stirred her emotions to a point that her parents had to lock her in her room to prevent her travelling 300 miles to a protest in Newry.
“I‘d have joined the IRA in a heartbeat,” she wrote in the introduction to her book “What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy” published in 2006.
Instead of turning to violence, she became the first person in her family to go to university. No mean feat given that her brothers did not even finish secondary school! She studied history and political science, becoming an academic in America and a leading authority on political violence.
At a recent conference, Professor Richardson, who lived and worked in the USA for many years, controversially stated that the Americans had “over-reacted” after 9/11, because violent extremism was a “new experience” in the US.
Now, with just weeks to go until her seven-year term as principal of St Andrews University ends, and she moves on to become the first female vice-chancellor at Oxford University, Professor Richardson has warned that western leaders, and the media, need to be careful their response to the Paris attacks doesn’t give so-called IS terrorists exactly what they want.
In an interview with The Courier, she said: “I still believe that America over-reacted to 9/11.
“I think what we need to understand about terrorists it was true about the perpetrators of 9/11, it’s true about the perpetrators of the Paris attacks is that they are deliberately trying to provoke us into an over-reaction. “Any democratic government whether it’s President Bush or President Hollande, one can fully understand the response from them that ‘we are at war’. But what we have to realise is that is exactly the response that the terrorists are trying to provoke.
“I open the papers every day and I see pictures of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks.
“And I say ‘I wish the papers wouldn’t do that’. That is what these guys want. No one had heard of them weeks ago, now they are famous the world over. That will serve as an incentive to other alienated young people to want to have their moment of glory.”
Professor Richardson’s interest in understanding terrorism should not be confused with an effort to sympathise with them. Her whole argument about counterterrorism is that to combat it, you have to understand the nature of the adversary you face.
And she believes that universities have an important role to play in combatting extremism.
Now aged 57, Professor Richardson has led St Andrews University since January 2009, overseeing one of the most high profile chapters in the 602-year history of the university.
When her appointment as the university’s first female principal was announced in 2008, she said she wanted the university to go for “global glory”, and refused to play the gender card. “I want to be a terrific head, not a terrific woman head,” she said.
The university has certainly made its mark, both at home and abroad, during Professor Richardson’s reign.
St Andrews is higher in the UK league tables than it has ever been third behind Oxbridge in The Guardian Good University Guide 2016 and fourth in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2016. It is the only Scottish university ranked among the UK top five and has not been outside the top 10 for over a decade. For the first time in its history, it is established among the top 100 universities in the world (Times Higher and QS Rankings).
The university has raised more money since 2009 than any point or during any period in its history. Its 600th anniversary campaign launched in 2008 has raised over £68 million to date for bursaries, scholarships, academic programmes and capital developments.
Other highlights include the conquering of New York with a major fundraising event at The Metropolitan Museum of Art which raised £2.2 million in December last year, and the awarding of honorary degrees during the 600th anniversary celebrations to the likes of Hillary Clinton, culminating in a parade through St Andrews and a spectacular fireworks display at the beach.
Milestones within the town include the university taking over and resurrecting the Byre Theatre, a new leasing arrangement for the Botanic Gardens and a major capital investment programme.
She speaks fondly of some of the “less public“ highlights such as staff and students dropping in to her “open office hour” sessions.
But if there’s one regret that she has from her time as principal, then it’s the failure of the university and Fife Council to work out a deal over a new Madras College.
A proposal to build a new school as part of the proposed St Andrews Western Expansion at Wester Langlands failed to get off the ground.
And more recently the university’s offer of the so-called ‘pond site’ at North Haugh as a direct swap for the existing South Street building of Madras, was flatly rejected by Fife Council in favour of a controversial site at Pipeland. This has divided opinion in and around the town whilst the council’s decision-making process remains the subject of a legal challenge by a group of tenacious campaigners.
Professor Richardson said: “The biggest disappointment of my time, without a doubt, is the fact that we have not been able to pull off the Madras deal. I think that was such a golden opportunity to do something really really different, really beneficial to the town, as well as to the university, and it’s certainly my biggest disappointment that we weren’t able to do that.
“The offer we made (for the pond site) is still on the table, we’ve never pulled it from the table. It’s still there. And I still think it would be wonderful to have a secondary school of the calibre this town deserves, and that was closely integrated with the university. That’s my biggest disappointment.”
When Professor Richardson arrived at St Andrews, one of her early concerns was that the university was perceived as a “posh” institution.
But she said this is a “complete myth” and “wasn’t consistent with the facts”.
She said the “real tragedy” about Scottish education is that relatively few children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds can challenge for entry to St Andrews University, because they do not have good enough grades.
She said: “At the high end, Scottish kids can compete with the best in the world. At the low end, they are doing very very badly. At the high end, they are on a par with countries like Singapore. At the low end they are on a par with countries like Turkey.
“This isn’t my information this is readily available empirical information.
“The real tragedy for an institution like us which really is trying to attract students from the most deprived backgrounds is how few of those students have the minimal requirements to get into an institution like ours.
“If you look at the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), something like 232 students from SIMD had three As at Highers last year (the minimum to be considered for St Andrews). That’s the tragedy. It’s the fact that kids from deprived areas are not coming out of secondary schools with the qualifications necessary to get into a selective institution like this.”
Since 2009, St Andrews University has expanded and developed its Widening Participation programmes to the point that over a third of its first year Scottish entrants are now admitted with access markers (such as free school meal entitlement). In 2015/16, approximately 80 of its entrant Scottish class of 500 students came from the country’s most deprived areas.
As part of the 600th anniversary celebrations, the university offered a £7500 per year four -year scholarship to the dux of every school in Fife who applied and was admitted to St Andrews.
Yet Professor Richardson said that every year there was an “outcry” that selective institutions like St Andrews, which takes around 30% of its 8200 students from overseas, are not taking more kids from deprived Scottish backgrounds.
She said this “completely missed the point.” Firstly, the Scottish system of funding higher education from the public purse rather than tuition fees effectively caps the overall number of Scottish students who can go to St Andrews to around 500 per year.
And secondly, she was “completely unrepentant” that of the Scottish students who were admitted, the focus had to be on excellence, irrespective of their socioeconomic background. She added: “We’re not going to admit kids here who we don’t think are going to thrive here. That’s setting them up for failure. That’s the worst thing anyone can do.
“The point is we need to be investing in education very early on in these deprived areas, at least to ensure that the kids emerge with the qualifications necessary to thrive in a selective university.”
She said she was by far the most successful of her family, and fully appreciated “the power of education to transform lives”.
She added: “It’s been enormously important to me that we’ve been out there recruiting the smartest the students with the best potential irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds. I think it’s a complete myth that we are only interested in posh students.
“It’s also a complete myth that only posh students come here! And it’s been very important for me to change that, coming from a background like mine.”
Despite refusing to play the gender card when installed at St Andrews, her role as a woman has been more significant than first imagined.
St Andrews now has more female representation in senior management than any Scottish university. Half of the senior management team are women. When Professor Richardson took office, she was the only woman in the senior team.
Professor Richardson’s attempts to avoid gender becoming an issue were challenged when she successfully pushed for the students’ all-male Kate Kennedy Club to admit women.
But perhaps her role in the debate over the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews admitting female members has proved the most controversial.
A keen golfer who admits she’s “never played” during her seven years in Scotland, she said she’s delighted the R&A has voted to admit women and looks forward to the day when women’s membership is “completely normalised”.
But following her recent revelation that R&A members taunted her by waving their ties at her during a function, is she slighted that the R&A never asked her to join? After all, it had become traditional for the principal of St Andrews University to be granted honorary membership.
Refusing to be drawn on any detail of the dispute, she smiled and said: “Life’s too short to take umbrage at things like that. I understand that change is difficult for people and I understand there are probably hard feelings for my role in this change, and I can fully understand why people feel that this change has been hard for them and they have hard feelings about it. I’m just delighted that the women are members and the women who are members have been very appreciative of my role in this, so that’s more than enough for me.”
Sitting in the principal’s office at College Gate, off North Street, it’s clear that the town of St Andrews has made its mark on her in other ways. Alongside pictures of her husband Thomas and three grown-up children, and an image of Trinity College Dublin where she studied as an undergraduate, there are paintings of her favourite sea views, including St Andrews harbour.
And it’s the beauty of the place she’ll miss most. She added: “I grew up beside the sea. I love the coastal path. I’ll really miss the sight, the sound, the smell of the sea, and just the physical beauty of the place. I had not appreciated until I came here just how uplifting it is for your spirit just to be in such a beautiful place.
“I work very long hours, seven days a week. And it’s just wonderful to get strength from being in such a beautiful environment. I’ll miss the atmosphere, the strong sense of community, the scaleI’ll miss the same things that students miss when they leave. I leave as students leave with real sadness for what I leave behind and a sense of adventure for what lies ahead. I think this is such a unique and wonderful place. It really does imprint you. When I talk to graduates that have been out of here 50 years, they remember it with such affection. And I know I will too.”
But as she prepares to start a new chapter of her life in Oxford, Professor Richardson is looking forward to seeing more of her physician husband Thomas who works in America. She added: “We have a six week rule. Never let it go longer than six weeks. I wouldn’t recommend it, and wouldn’t have been possible (to be apart for so long) when our children were a lot younger, but much to our own surprise we made it work. I think we’ll see more of each other when I’m at Oxford. It’s slightly easier to get to.”
Meanwhile, a new St Andrews University principal will be announced in due course.
A St Andrews University spokesman said: “On appointment of new principal, we have a selection committee comprising members of academic staff, professional staff, a student representative and external representative. There has been open consultation (open meetings and online) with our staff to elicit feedback on the qualities we should look for in our next principal, and this feedback has helped inform the preparation of a detailed job description.
“A full international search has been carried out in tandem with worldwide advertising of the post. We remain on course to make an appointment in spring 2016.”