A man unburdened by pretension with a happy lifelong passion for knowledge (Part 2

VB: Did you regret at any time returning to Ireland in 1986 and giving up the cutting edge research you were involved with in America?

JH: I was a bleak time to return to Ireland. It was at the valley of the economic recession. Raymond Crotty [the late economist and commentator] was proposing that Ireland should renege on the foreign debt. I remember waking up six weeks later on a Saturday morning in a cold sweat realising what I had done and it was like, you know, I could not go back, my God what have I actually done.

VB: Were there opportunities to pursue research here?

JH: It was a time when there was no money around. I got involved in the European Union research scientific programmes. They support research across Europe provided it's collaborative, provided it involves more than one country. So this was a fantastic opportunity for me because I actually got to know people from the rest of Europe. I guess that cultural diversity really made it for me. Ireland at the time I suppose was quite homogenous.

It's changed a lot now in the last 15 years but part of the shock of waking up that morning in a cold sweat was the fact that Ireland itself hadn't really changed all that much since I'd left.

I had changed a lot having gone to the States but I came back and found that Ireland had not changed. All the old provincialism was still there. It brought back all the experiences that I had before I left, like Maynooth and religion and all that. So it took a few years for me to sort that out. I suppose I had finally sorted out all the things in my head really during that first few years back here. In fact, it was a good thing to do to come back to sort out all that stuff. If I'd stayed in the States, I'd never have sorted it out, I'd probably have ended up, after retiring in the States, in a sort of crisis.

I did resolve a lot of things for myself through that time. From then on I never looked back. It's been a great experience. Really, it was the right thing for me to do.

Getting back to research, I had to set about creating the conditions about which I could do research, and that was a huge challenge at the time. Anyway, the European scene provided part of that. Then I managed to convince the Government that this area of mine, opto-electronics, was actually a strategically important area for the country, and for technology, because the future of telecommunications would depend on this. So they bought it.

VB: Who did you convince?

JH: It was the Department of Industry and Commerce. The Minister at the time was Albert Reynolds. Finally, Albert Reynolds said `I buy it, I'll go out to bat for you' and it happened.

So we put forward a very sophisticated proposal which was outlandish for Ireland at the time involving five universities. We looked for £1 million a year for research and we got it. This continued, this set me up in this department, set me up with the facilities that were as good as what I had left in Bell Labs. Imagine this was in Ireland. So, with new equipment, I came back with fantastic ideas because that was the style of research where I had come from. So, I'd great graduate students, fantastic students at the time because there was no employment.

I branched out into other areas. Hitachi of Japan set up in Dublin a research lab in the area of brain research, simulating the brain using laser beams. The brain is a highly interconnective set of neurons and memory - stored - and the connections between the brain, between these neurons; the big challenge - and it still is - is can you simulate this, because the brain can do things that computers cannot. So we had these millions of laser beams bouncing back and forth, interconnecting things at the speed of light. We actually set up a system to recognise targets, irrespective of their size.

It was great fun.

VB: Is it your view that the brain is purely a mechanical entity?

JH: Yes, I would say that it is a highly complex entity and what it can do arises from its complexity.

VB: Is there nothing else there?

JH: There's no indication to me that there is another factor in there that's non-physical.

VB: Do you think that eventually machines will think the same as people think?

JH: I'd say so, yes. Our brain is a biological material, the question is can other types of non-biological materials do the same thing, like silicone, for instance. If you could organise silicone to interconnect itself in that same complex way, would you have a thinking system?

VB: Would it be conscious?

JH: Well, that is the question. The biological material is incredibly complex and it is incredibly easy to do things with it. So, it can form bonds with itself and with other parts so easily, it can build up very complex molecules like DNA, incredibly complex molecules. So you get a very complex chemical system very quickly. That complexity is what I think it is all about.

VB: How did you get distracted from these fascinating areas of research into the mundane world of college politics?

JH: I was head of department for three years and it was expected that people in my position would engage in public service. The Provost asks people from time to time to do certain public service functions. Five years ago, in 1995, Tom Mitchell asked me to take on the function of dean of research, that is of research generally within the university, across all departments. I said yes. It involved me in all departments in the college, brought me into contact with people in all departments and introduced me into the different disciplines.

We asked every member of the staff to lay out what they wanted to do for the next five years in research. So we got over 500 plans which came through departments and which for the first time laid out what the thinking was in this university on research for the future.

I discovered a few things about myself. One is that I was fascinated with people and their ideas right across college outside of the science area, in the arts area. I came across people with incredible ideas, interesting ways of thinking about them, and it was fascinating to find out why they thought they were important. This is a further education for me. It was like what, the year I came back from England working in the pipelines, and the thirst for knowledge.

VB: When did you decide to seek election as Provost?

JH: I suppose it was about this time last year when it would be coming to the stage where I was finished that job in research. I began to see how the university could contribute to society generally, how things have changed so dramatically here and how we will have a sort of identity crisis in a few years' time and how the university could contribute (to the resolution of that).

VB: In the election campaign, did you promise jobs to lots of people?

JH: I didn't promise anything. No promises. No hostages to fortune. I came up with a campaign document, a policy document which looked at the main issues facing the college: the role of Trinity in Irish society now and for the next 10 years. It's about inclusion of students from all kinds of backgrounds, not just from middle-class backgrounds. So, in forming a new contract with society if you like, I think there are two things that we need to do. One is to broaden out the composition of our student body but I think at all costs we need to keep the quality of our teaching high. That's what really is going to sustain this country over the next period.

VB: Trinity is right at the centre of the city, right beside several inner city deprived communities, yet, unlike UCD, for instance, it does not offer night classes or facilities for adult education?

JH: That's true, apart from courses in computer science. Remember the pressure, the big pressure on all the institutions has been to cycle more kids through over the last 15 years. That's an option (night classes) that I think could be explored.

VB: Only an option to be explored?

JH: Well, to do it right and provide the kind of quality we're talking about, we're talking about more resources, more people.

VB: It seems a bit hollow to be talking about Trinity's role in the community and the importance of its context in society and all that and then hedging when the issue of providing night classes arises.

JH: Well, there's nothing in principle against this.

VB: That's more hedging.

JH: If you take it that people are working flat-out, which they are, this is just teaching; and, if they want to do research as well, we could drop research and concentrate on teaching. That's not what a university is about.

VB: When you think of university professors and university lecturers, the idea of working flat-out isn't the first thing that crosses your mind.

JH: That's the perception of a university as being a closed-off community of people who are doing a few hours teaching and going off drinking sherries and all that kind of stuff afterwards. If you're working from 9.00 until 6.00. Most people here take their work home, you find, because it's very fluid.

VB: You sound like an ASTI spokesperson now.

JH: I do, most people I know do (take their work home).

VB: Do you have any sense of the incongruity of having spent four years becoming a priest and then ending up a Provost of Trinity College? Archbishop McQuaid said not too long ago that Catholics attending Trinity were guilty of a mortal sin and were unworthy to receive the sacraments.

JH: Well I grew up in that era of mortal sins. I think mortal sins have disappeared now. In the election, religion was not an issue in fact. It did not come up at all and my particular background was not an issue at all in the election. The whole proposition of the student body has changed beyond belief. Staff are now drawn from all sectors, including internationally. The whole thinking has moved on quite a way.

When I left Maynooth, I left with the intention that I was not going to be hidebound by institutional thinking again. I made that vow to myself. I was not going to be in a place where people told me what to do, what to think. I have never left that now. Trinity, to me, coming back to Ireland was a place where, because of its history, thinking is tolerated.

VB: Are you Catholic anymore?

JH: No. I don't follow any form of religion.

VB: Do you believe in God?

JH: (Long pause, followed by a lot of "ohs" and "ahs".) Do I believe in God? (another long pause and more "ohs" and "ahs".) I believe that, that . . . ah . . . life is incredibly interesting . . . ah . . . ah . . . there's great mystery, there's great things that we don't know and understand. I think there is a fantastic mystery in life, magic in life.