Cross border John Hume University should be located in Derry
Fine Gael TD Colm Burke believes a cross border John Hume Memorial university would "right a wrong".
Colm Burke TD
28 June, 2021 01:00
A north west cross border university could incorporate existing higher education facilities such as Letterkenny Institute of Technology (pictured).
Derry is the fifth largest city on the island of Ireland, closely matching Limerick in population size. Of the six largest cities on the Island, Derry is the only one without a university.
The decision in 1965 to establish Northern Ireland's second university, now Ulster University, in Coleraine and not in Derry was strongly influenced by political and sectarian considerations. Had the right decision been made in 1965, Northern Ireland might have followed a different path in the decades that followed. Nationalists would have seen that a politically frozen system might be capable of change by peaceful means. John Hume subsequently claimed that the decision not to build the new university in Derry was the immediate cause of Northern Ireland's Civil Rights movement and reduced the space for a peaceful solution to the sectarian divides within Northern Ireland.