History lesson
Is there no end, or beginning, to the talents of Swansea University’s Senior Pro Vice-Chancellor, Hilary Lappin-Scott?
So important is her 15 minutes of YouTube infamy telling the world at large about gender equality in “Move over boys: why we need more girls/women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) careers” she has chosen to re-tweet it.
But it appears that one of the ‘facts’ claimed by the professor in her video is, in fashionably post-truth style, wrong.
She says that the first female professor in the UK was a Mary Williams who was appointed to a professorship at Swansea University in 1920.
However that title can be claimed by someone else.
According to Wikipedia, MILLICENT MACKENZIE “… was a British professor of education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University) the first female professor in Wales and the first appointed to a fully chartered university in the United Kingdom”.
Close examination of the Cardiff University archives proves the point that Millicent Mackenzie was actually the first woman professor in the UK, more than 20 years before the one declared by Professor Lappin-Scott at Swansea.
Cardiff University is understood not to be best pleased by this convenient re-writing of history, and by the appropriation of one of their academic ‘firsts’.
In her YouTube video, Professor Lappin-Scott noted that she was arranging “… to make stuff up …” to celebrate the legacy of Mary Williams at Swansea University.
Perhaps that also includes making up facts?
We on The Eye believe facts are sacred, but in this case it seems they cannot be allowed to hide a good story.
Yet the professor is not alone in stressing the importance of history and the role of women.
An ‘exciting’ project for the Western Mail but no performing women in bars reported as ‘news’[/caption]
The editor of the Western Mail, Catrin Pascoe, uses Twitter to invite readers to join them in an ‘exciting’ history project about women in Wales.
They like Twitter at Media Wales.
They presumably will not include the women who dance for largely male customers in the bar they ‘report’ on in WalesOnline — Coyote Ugly.
17 so-called ‘stories’ on the opening of this bar appeared in WalesOnline last year.
Paul Rowland the editor of WalesOnline who threatened to sue us over our satirical article about the number of their ‘stories’ on Coyote Ugly[/caption]
After The Eye published a satirical item the editor, Paul Rowland told us: “… satire is no defence against libel… I will be placing it (the satirical article) in the hands of our lawyers.”
For the sake of Professor Lappin-Scott’s continuing employment, let us hope the view that facts should not stand in the way of a good story is shared not only by the owners of the Western Mail, but by members of Swansea University’s governing council.
Tomorrow on The Eye — What’s in a name part two and the outrage over cost of a planned name change for the Welsh assembly.
