My period as Director coincided with the Vice-Chancellorship of Sir John Crawford, whom I had met 10 years before as a colleague in a Saturday tennis group. My wife, Bobbie, became a friend of his wife, Jess, and the four of us used to meet on Saturday nights, alternately at each other's homes, for bridge. Crawford was a man of great ability and industry, a superb chairman of committees and a creative Vice-Chancellor. In that capacity, he called on senior administrators such as the directors of research schools to act as Chairmen of university-wide committees to examine new proposals. He asked me to be Chairman of Committees to examine proposals to establish an Undergraduate Medical School and a Centre for Natural Resources (later the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies) in ANU, as described earlier.
On 1 May, 1973, I resigned from my position as Director of the John Curtin School to become Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies. Since there was a meeting of the ANU Council that day and I was scheduled to present my annual ‘Director's Report to Council’, I decided to give an overview of my six years as Director. After outlining the changes described earlier in this chapter, I set out my views on the role of the Director in a research school like the John Curtin, as follows. What follows must be viewed in the context of the times, the 1960s and 1970s:
Finally, may I record my personal views on a matter that is widely debated in the Institute, the role of the Director. It is clear that the requirements and opportunities differ in the different research schools, and at different periods during the development of each School. In the early stages there is no doubt of the necessity of having a senior academic as the first Head of School. In JCSMR, Florey fulfilled this role in its formative first decade of development. In a developed school (if such ever exists!) I am not so sure that one need have a person of academic eminence if the job is looked at purely from the point of view of running the School. Looking back on my five and a half years of office, there have been few occasions on which I have been conscious of providing academic leadership. In JCSMR interdisciplinary work, quoted in the paper setting out the duties of a Head of School as one of his responsibilities, is regarded with considerable suspicion by most members of the School. It is a School of highly diverse and self-contained departments, and it is the departmental heads who must provide the real scientific leadership. As I have already indicated, there have been several new academic developments in the School over the last six years. These have all been the result of discussion and debate in Faculty Board and Faculty; as Director I have merely acted as Chairman of these bodies. The only positive suggestion that I made, for a Department of Human Genetics to replace the Department of Genetics when that department transferred to the Research School of Biological Sciences was transformed into the rather different subject of Human [Population] Biology.
Much of the time of the Director is occupied in chairing meetings of committees within the School, in representing the School on University Committees, and with making decisions on what are essentially minor details of administration, such as the ranking of laboratory craftsmen, technicians or secretaries. Any experienced academic with administrative competence could do these jobs. However, it is likely that only a distinguished medical scientist would command the support of heads of departments within the School, and the respect of the Vice-Chancellor and his colleagues on the Heads of Schools and Budget Advisers' Committees to the extent that is necessary to represent the School's viewpoint on these bodies.
In addition to his responsibility to Council for running the research school, I believe that the Director of a developed School like JCSMR has real opportunities to make constructive contributions to the University as a whole; and on a wider scene, if he has the mind to do it, to Australian public life. I believe that this outside work will continue to be perhaps the major attraction of the position. The position of Director of a Research School in the ANU is highly respected in Australia and overseas, and the Director is free from the pressing need that a departmental head has of providing continuing scientific leadership in a narrow discipline. In my own term of office, I believe that apart from writing two major books on virology, my major satisfaction has come from the contributions I have been able to make to the University outside JCSMR, in four areas of innovation. In none of these would I claim to have been the prime mover, but I believe that I have been able to exert a useful influence on each. These are: (a) the development on an experimental scale of the Human Sciences Program, initiated this year in the School of General Studies [Faculties]; (b) support for the planning, primarily by Professor H. M. Whyte, and for the promotion through University Committees and the Australian Universities Commission of the proposal that the ANU should develop a Faculty of Medicine in the near future; (c) the development of the idea, published as an appendix of the Fourth Report of the Australian Universities Commission, that ANU should initiate activity in relation to renewable natural resources to its realization as a more broadly based Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies; and (d) the establishment, following initiatives of Professors Bishop and Whyte, of the Postgraduate Committee in Medicine of the ANU.
I believe that a similar range of opportunities exists for the next Director of the JCSMR. If the government agrees to proceed with the development of a Faculty of Medicine, it is of the utmost importance to the JCSMR in particular and to the University as a whole that this development should proceed with full harmony and understanding between the John Curtin School and the Faculty of Medicine. There is an opportunity for major interaction of mutual value to occur between these two large and important components of the University, and the next Director could play a crucial role in realizing the full potential of a situation that is unique in Australia, perhaps in the world.
I believe that Headships of Departments are the most important positions in the John Curtin School. They require sustained and full-time effort if the departmental head is to supply the leadership within his department and in Australian science as a whole that his position calls for, for these are the premier positions in their respective fields in Australia. I therefore wholeheartedly support Council's view that a Head of School should not be at the same time the Head of a Department. As far as the term of appointment of a Director is concerned, five or at most seven years should be long enough for a man to make any contributions that he is able to make; after that time a new point of view is needed. It is also long enough, if I may say so, for someone to go on attending to the rather boring and trivial administrative details that inevitably fall to the lot of a Head of School. However, except in exceptional circumstances I believe that the term of office should not be less than five years, if a Head of School is able to follow through any of the developments initiated during his term of office. Looking back over the last six years, I find that all the new academic developments that have occurred in JCSMR over that time were set out explicitly in the Australian Universities Commission Submission for the 1970–72 triennium, which was produced during my first six months in office…The worst decision of all, in a large and diverse School like JCSMR, would be to accept the notion of rotating 'deanships’. By deflecting the energies of successive departmental heads from their primary role of scientific leadership of their departments, such a procedure would effectively weaken a series of departments in turn. It would also be likely to provide a guarantee that the status quo would be maintained indefinitely, in a world in which the demands made on the University and research schools are constantly changing.
In conclusion, I would like to pay tribute to the generous support that has always been provided to the activities of JCSMR by Council and by the administrative officers of the University; especially, since our terms of office largely coincided, to our recent Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Crawford.