David is your new Vice Chancellor, sort of like the Uni’s CEO. He’s an infectious disease expert, a guitar-maker, and a very kind man who looks a bit like a more scholastic Colonel Sanders. Critic recently sat down with David to give him a quick vibe check, which he passed with flying colours.
David isn’t new to Otago. He actually studied here in the ‘80s, before he began building a CV that reads like something out of a blockbuster movie. But even after working at one of Sir Edmund Hillary’s alpine hospitals in Nepal, helping fight childhood pneumonia, and advising Oxford University on their Covid vaccine, David somehow decided that his place in the world was back in good ol’ sunny Dunedin.
He clearly hasn’t been back long; his office was uncluttered and his bookshelf mostly empty, clear signs that an academic is still in the early stages of nesting. Speaking of books, David has not read the original Jurassic Park, but was a fan of Dune (the film, at least). He mentioned that he was still adjusting to the corporate dress code, but it’s not like he was wearing jandals or anything. We also asked David how he voted in the cannabis referendum, which he politely declined to answer. Instead, he wondered out loud if he “should answer that question or not, hmm,” before very diplomatically deciding to say that “I certainly support, as a general concept, liberalisation.”
David fully assumed his role a few weeks ago, taking over from acting Vice-Chancellor Helen Nicholson. Two days in, he was presented with his first major decision: would we move to online lectures for the first half of the year? He had to make a call. “Yeah, tough decision,” said David. “I think that if we hadn’t made the call [to move online when we did], we would’ve had to later. But this way gave us some certainty from the get-go.” The decision was made to put staff and student welfare first, he said, but no matter what happened, “it was never going to make everyone happy”. He also clarified that the average student body is not, in fact, too toxic for Covid to infect. “I don’t think that’s really how it works”, he said.
David rejected the idea that the Uni should be run as a business, insisting that “we’re very much a public service”. When pressed about why the Uni was for-profit, though, he said there was a balance between being a public service and being able to fund that service. He defended policies such as the Medical School’s Mirror on Society, saying the responsibility of a university is to “create a workforce reflective of the country… (and) fit-for-purpose,” not to “fulfil individual career aspirations”. So far, so good.
However, there was one hiccup in David’s vibe check: his thoughts on DnB. When asked what he thought about drum and bass music, he responded “well, I think drum and bass are a critical part of every band,” which was not exactly the answer we were going for. To his credit, he quickly admitted that “I don’t think that’s what you’re asking me,” and after Critic explained what he was missing out on, he even agreed to “check it out” afterwards. We’re certain it won’t take him long to be well and truly converted. Best of luck in the coming years, David.