Vale Lynn Meek

Leo Goedegebuure

On March 13 Australia lost a great higher education researcher. It always is a moot point who was the best and brightest but Lynn Meek by any account would be considered a leading scholar in our field. I am very grateful to Ian Dobson to be able to provide an opportunity in this journal to reflect on Lynn. I have done so in a more formal way in the journal he edited for over eight years (https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2022.2054149) but I take this opportunity to provide a more personal account. I do this by focusing on Lynn as a scholar, a mentor, a supervisor and a friend.

In higher education research, our field is widely spread when it comes to theories, dogmas and beliefs. Lynn was a true sociologist at heart, raised in the traditions of Anthony Giddens. It was evidenced from the start in his thesis on the University of Papua New Guinea, became probably even more pronounced in his often neglected study of higher education in Gippsland, aptly titled Brown Coal or Plato and still so relevant today (https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1318871) and has driven his work over the many years he was part of our community. He did have his dibs into neo-institutionalism and together we had great fun exploring evolutionary thinking to the tricky issue of diversity in higher education systems, culminating in The Mockers and the Mocked (https://www. amazon.com/Comparative-Perspectives-DifferentationConvergence-Diversity/dp/0080425631). But at heart Lynn always remained a sociologist and did not have much time for the fads and fashions that have been part of our field of study over the last twenty years or so.

He never was one for the spotlight and in fact hated presenting at conferences. Admittedly, this was not his forte. What was, was his ability to bring divergent arguments together, to get people to accept that views might be different but that collectively we could achieve a lot, and to chair complex meetings, quietly but very strongly. The best example of this without a doubt is the Changing Academic Profession project of which he was part and parcel since the start in 1992 (https://www.springer.com/series/8668). If diplomacy was ever needed, it was to get 30+ people with massive egos to agree on a common research approach and questionnaire – the United Nations in a smaller setting but with the same dynamics. Lynn was brilliant at that. He even managed to defuse the China-Taiwan contestation, though today it remains a moot point. But the real point of course is that he was not only an exceptional scholar, respected by his peers, he also was a diplomat in the true academic sense.

He also was mentor throughout his life. Leaving aside the family side – which is not for the journal but still an integral part of his life he always was there for his colleagues. Be it as a director of a research centre, head of a school, or (deputy) chair of an academic board, he would always make time for a conversation and follow that up with good personal advice. Many times, in our current hectic world, we tend to forget these “little” things, but end of day this is what makes our institutions work and our people thrive.

As for the research students I think I can speak on their behalf that Lynn was the best supervisor one could get. He cared. Whatever else was going on, he would take time out to read drafts, provide detailed comments, sit down with them, discuss and provide great suggestions for improvement. In that sense he has touched a vast number of lives and helped them. In this time and age of productivity, completion records and the like, he did not care about that – he cared about his students. This is always what academe should be about but what it has lost over the last years. But not to Lynn.

Finally, I need to write about him as my dear friend. This is hard and even after five months I still get emotional. I don’t think it is often that you have a personal bond for 35 years that completely transcends work – leaving family aside. We met in 1987 in The Netherlands when we were running the EAIR conference in Twente. A massive merger operation was on in Holland, and it was much in line with what was happening with the Dawkins reform in Oz. So, Lynn came over to share his insights. I’ve said this many times over to as many of the colleagues that would want to hear: I thought we’d see this classic Australian surfer girl rocking up in Holland.

Not so. Here comes this scruffy American-Aussie and we hit it off immediately. Together we’ve travelled the world for fascinating projects, most noticeably for us the reformation of the South African higher education system, which was a real challenge. But to end on a high note, the most memorable call I got was from the Dutch Royal Academy. Lynn and I had been successfully getting grants for academic stays in our two countries for a number of years. The call was that we were the only two applicants for the programs for that period and it had become a bit embarrassing to only fund us. In a way that sums it up: niche work and success. But also, a lifelong partnership that got me to move my family to Australia in 2005 and Lynn and Di to move from Armidale to Melbourne in 2008 for the LH Martin Institute.

A man for all seasons!

Leo Goedegebuure is a professorial fellow at both the University of Melbourne and RMIT University.

Contact: leo.g@unimelb.edu.au