Professor, C Duncan Rice

Before returning to Scotland a few years ago, I spent over twenty-five years of my professional life in the United States, mostly at New York University and Yale. You might well ask what made me leave Scotland in the first place, but the real question is what made me turn my back on what was arguably the most exciting city in the world.

Three things were crucial.

The first was that I was being asked to lead one of Scotland’s ancient universities. I had graduated from it, and I saw that as a tremendous honour. The second was Scotland itself, where I knew that the quality of life, especially cultural and environment life, was superb. The third was that it seemed to me that Scotland was entering one of the most exciting times in its modern history.

The attraction to my University was personal, but the other two reasons – the time we’re at in Scotland and the quality of its life – are essential parts of Scotland’s attraction as a place to study, to do business, or simply to live.

A reputation for excellence

Scotland has a glorious intellectual history. My own University is over five hundred years old. At one stage during the Renaissance we had two powerful universities in Aberdeen alone, five in Scotland, when the whole

of England itself had only two.

Scotland’s universities created modern social science, invented the moral philosophy that defined the ethics of the American Republic, and forged a leading reputation for excellence in medical and chemical research. Our universities have continued today to combine those traditions of academic distinction and international intellectual perspective.

These are compelling intellectual reasons to come here, but another is that Scotland is at present in an exciting and vibrant phase of its history. Whatever the short term achievements of devolution – and there are several – one of its consequences is that there is a renewed confidence about Scotland – and nowhere more so than in the richness of cultural activity we enjoy.

The excitement of living in Scotland

We have moved ahead of the sentimental stereotypes of tartans, Robert Burns, bagpipes and heather-purpled hills on which we use to rely. But some of the inherited elements are still central to the excitement of living here.

I’m thinking partly of our song, our literature, our poetry, but even more of our landscape. It’s a joy to watch light and land continually shift and interact to produce a choreography of atmosphere I can’t imagine anywhere else. There’s a noble cultural and visual background to this changing and dynamic country, and I love living here.

C Duncan Rice
Prof Rice spent most of his professional life at New York University and Yale before returning in September 1996 to live and work in the city where he was born and educated.