Seminar Program
Assessing a Vice-Chancellorship: George Whitecross Paton
Professor Emeritus John Poynter
George Paton was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne for seventeen years, a tenure unlikely to be surpassed. The popular young Dean of Law was widely praised when appointed in 1951, and even more widely criticised—on several grounds, some of them contradictory—when he retired in 1968. His role over such a long period is indeed difficult to assess.
John Poynter, who wrote of this period (with Carolyn Rasmussen) in A Place Apart and has recently written the entry on Paton for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, had a good deal to do with him (mainly in Rhodes Scholarship matters) from 1951, and much more after becoming Ernest Scott Professor of History in 1966, two years before Paton retired. He was involved in the restructuring of the University under Paton’s successor, David Derham, first as a member of Council, then as Chairman of the Professorial Board and finally as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Now a Professorial Fellow in the School of Historical Studies, he discusses in this paper the main issues to be considered in assessing Paton’s Vice-Chancellorship.
1-2pm, Wednesday 21 October
Leigh Scott Room
First Floor, Baillieu Library
The University of Melbourne
A pdf flier is available for download here: Poynter-Paton4.pdf
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