Dr David Daintree retires after 11 years with the Dawson Centre
By Catherine Sheehan
Reflecting on the past 11 years as Director of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, Dr David Daintree AM said he hoped the Centre had gone some way towards achieving its overall aim to “restore the good name of the Catholic intellectual tradition”.
“I think that’s the thing we’ve tried to do, to emphasise that being a Christian is rational and sensible,” Dr Daintree said. “That Christianity is not a mere opiate, but it’s an intelligent and well-founded faith built upon sound rational principles.”
Dr Daintree, who finishes up in his role as Director at the end of this year said he was proud of the many achievements of the Dawson Centre over the past decade, particularly the annual Colloquium, summer schools, and teaching Latin and Greek to beginners.
“Teaching Greek to beginners I found personally satisfying,” he said. “I think the technique I use, which I’ve developed myself, is reasonably effective.”
He considers the greatest achievement, however, to be influencing a school to adopt classical education. After four staff members from a Christian school in Toowoomba attended the Dawson Centre Colloquium one year, they were so inspired they decided to change the school’s entire curriculum to a classical education approach.
“I think the biggest triumph was actually influencing a school to make a decision to become a classical school, to follow the classical curriculum,” Dr Daintree said.
The Dawson Centre was founded by Archbishop Julian in 2013 after his installation as Archbishop of Hobart. Archbishop Julian asked Dr Daintree if he would establish an organisation to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition and suggested naming the organisation after Catholic historian Christopher Dawson. This immediately struck Dr Daintree as “a great idea”.
“Christopher Dawson was arguably the best Catholic historian of the 20th century,” Dr Daintree said. “He was a convert, like so many other people, to Catholicism from an Anglican background.
“His central thesis was that no culture can survive without religion. And so he saw both communism and Nazism, or Fascism, as instances of societies that had lost their religion and therefore lost their moral compass and their true purpose.”
Dr Daintree himself has had a distinguished career in the field of education. Born and raised in Sydney, he left school at 15 to work at a commercial art company.
After completing his secondary studies by attending night school, he studied Classics—Latin, Greek and English—at the University of New England, graduating with Honours in Latin.
He taught Classics for some time at Geelong Grammer’s prestigious Timbertop campus before relocating to Cambridge in the UK to complete a master’s degree in mediaeval Latin followed by a PhD. While in Cambridge he met and married his wife Elizabeth in 1980.
They returned to Australia, settling in Tasmania where Dr Daintree took up the role of Principal at Jane Franklin Hall, an independent college of the University of Tasmania. He held the position for 18 years.
He went on to serve as Rector of St John’s College at the University of Sydney for six years, and then became President of Campion College in Western Sydney, Australia’s first liberal arts college, from 2008 to 2012.
Instead of settling into a restful retirement after leaving Campion, he accepted Archbishop Julian’s invitation in 2013 to establish the Dawson Centre in Tasmania.
The Centre had been run “off the smell of an oily rage”, he said, but managed to hold regular events such as guest speakers and the annual Colloquium which attracted attendees from around the country each year.
Dr Daintree said the Colloquiums had brought together those who saw the need for a “readjusted focus on education”, and who had “a wider appreciation of history”.
Through his role as Director, Dr Daintree said he had met “a lot of wonderful people” for which he was grateful. The Dawson Centre has hosted many eminent speakers over the years including former Labor minister Gary Johns, politician Greg Donnelly, Professor Peter Kurti, Professor Nigel Biggar, author and evangelist Ralph Martin, Professor Ian Plimer, President of the Population Research Institute Steven Mosher, and journalist Greg Sheridan.
Dr Daintree described Archbishop Julian’s support for the Centre over the years as “terrific” and “encouraging”.
“He’s always been extremely supportive. And he’s also given me a very free hand,” he said. “He was always willing to do everything he could to be helpful and obliging.”
Over the past 11 years the Dawson Centre has played an important role in upholding both the Catholic intellectual tradition and the dignity of the human person, Dr Daintree said.
“We provided constant commentary on the dangers we believed Christian civilisation was facing from radical social engineering movements, including same-sex marriage, gender fluidity and the censorship of opinions that ran counter to the radical narrative.
“We stood up for the uniqueness of the human being within creation, denying that the difference between humans and animals was merely a matter of gradation.
“We sought to show that the Christian intellectual tradition was worthy of deep respect and that it could more than hold its own in the forum of ideas: we insisted on its right to be heard.”
Dr Daintree said he hoped to spend his retirement reading more Greek, especially poetry and drama, improving his Hebrew, and enjoying working in this garden.