Doug Chalmers became Master of Emmanuel in 2021Tobia Nava on Varsity clearance
Sitting down on a particularly soft-upholstered couch across from my own superior at the college, Lt. Gen. Douglas Chalmers—or simply Doug, as we call him at Emmanuel—I realize that this interview will be different from the other teachers I’ve interviewed in this Yearbook. Firstly, we got to know each other quite well during my tenure of the Emmanuel Politics and Policy Society and he is the first master whom I interview and whom I met before the interview. More than that, though: Doug’s career is quite different from that of any other head of Cambridge College, having spent almost 40 years in the military.
“I did really well in my O-levels and then I got distracted,” he begins. “My A-levels weren’t going the way I expected, so I started going to night school to retake them – mainly because my dad wasn’t impressed at all,” he admits with a wry smile.
“I always thought I’d only stay three years”
It was at this stage that his career began to line up, with training at night and asphalt roads during the day: “I enjoyed the asphalt, it was pretty good. They offered to sponsor me to do an HND then some higher education, which was very attractive and I considered it for quite some time,” he recalls, “but then someone else in the family said to me, ‘Have you ever thought of joining the family regiment?’. Well, I didn’t know we had a family regiment – or at least the one most of my family had served in during the wars. So I looked him up, I was still only 18 years old and signed up as a private”. “I thought it sounded like an adventure,” he tells me, “so I decided to give it a shot,” and so began his military career.
“I always thought I would only stay for three years,” recalls Doug, “but I went through Sandhurst, then Germany during the Cold War and Northern Ireland during the Troubles, which were…pretty tough times. I didn’t leave after three, I went on and found I was reasonably well.”
I knew that although he grew up in England, Doug was actually born in Belfast and I was interested to hear if that gave him a different perspective on the 80s. “I didn’t go to school there, but my family has deep ties there,” he begins carefully. “I come from a family of judges and my grandfather was the chief justice at the time. They were all absolutely passionate about the rule of law.” Comparing his experience then with how far we have come now, Doug tells me: “Belfast is a beautiful, vibrant, vibrant city and its connection to Dublin is strong. But as a kid, my memories of it were pretty dark and gray. It sounds philosophical, but these are just my memories.”
As for the conflicts themselves, it became a difficult conversation for him, especially regarding the way violence was used in the Troubles and how it affected him personally: “It was always, ‘we’re going to win by vote and gun’ – I mean, there’s no way we can do that. I don’t like being told what to do by someone with a gun and a mask and that’s what happened to me and my family – my grandfather was blown up in Ireland for example.” Doug then returned to that idea of the rule of law that he had spoken so passionately about earlier: “The Good Friday Agreement brought everything back into the territory of negotiation.”
We then moved on to a terrorist organization that, although everyone knows the name, Doug is adamant: “People in the UK don’t know enough about them, but they really should.”
“At least the Islamic State appeared out of the blue on this scale – the problem we knew was there, but the scale at which it caught fire was unbelievable,” Doug is horrified. Doug explains that a major problem they had in fighting ISIS was that: “for the first time, we never had a back channel or a way of talking.” “They were extreme, obviously. I mean, it’s pretty hard to have a conversation with a group that welcomes the apocalypse and wants the world to burn.
“It’s hard to have a conversation with a group that welcomes the apocalypse”
When talking about the time spent training Iraqi forces to fight ISIS, it is clear to me that there is a certain sense of contradiction in the UK’s relationship with a country it invaded only a decade ago, and this is by no means lost and Doug’s. “I was deeply troubled by the invasion of Iraq in 2003,” Doug says seriously. “There was a series of what I thought were catastrophic mistakes that eventually led me to apply for my MA at Cambridge to write my thesis on the problems of coordinating government departments.” Doug explains that there was a personal factor in training Iraqi forces to fight ISIS: “It was really helpful for me to come full circle because I felt like I didn’t do the right thing. Going back, having read a lot more about Iraq in the interim, to go back and help them deal with it was… yeah.
It also led us to discuss his four tours in Afghanistan, where Doug felt the decision to go to Afghanistan was “the right thing to do, but I think the way it went, it didn’t go well”, his disappointment evident in not being included of the Taliban in the peace talks: “I don’t know of any war that has ended without all sides being at the table.” It was always going to be a problem.”
Doug thinks there’s an important thing people need to realize here: “I’m happy we’re talking about some of these paths because it’s important, but it’s uncomfortable because not everything was right or wrong – and hindsight really is 2020 “. I know that when Doug says this, he has evidence to back it up, as all of Emma’s students can attest. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Doug held an emergency lecture at Emmanuel with all students, classmates and staff in attendance, in which he explained what was happening, why, and what the most likely progression was from this point.
“For many people it was the first time there had been a war and a full-scale invasion of Europe in their lifetime, which is quite large and is dramatic – so brutal’
“I did it because people asked me to,” he tells me, “and it’s one of the few areas I know, especially because I spent a lot of time in and out of Ukraine during the 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbass—so I had an epiphany.’
“Also,” Doug continued, “for a lot of people it was the first time there’s been a war and a full-scale invasion of Europe in their lifetime, which is pretty big and that is dramatic – so brutal.”
To wrap up the interview, I was curious to hear if he was concerned about his career coming into this role. “I was very worried. Perceptions and what people think of you are important. I was very aware of that,” Doug openly admits.
“I was selected by the fellowship so that was good and I spent a lot of time meeting with the staff before I took over. However, I didn’t get to know the students until I arrived – and I was very aware that I needed to spend time building trust and finding a means to connect with the students; to try to support every match or every activity or achievement. More than any other part of the work, I have been particularly anxious about this, and I think it is right to be.
“However, there were some very big transferable skills,” says Doug proudly. “Throughout my life I have spent a lot of time helping, worrying and mentoring young adults and developing talent. And when we mess something up, I’m very good at reviewing it and figuring out why.” I guess holding down the fort at Emmanuel College isn’t a million miles away from Doug’s previous career.
Why did you take the handyman job at Emmanuel?
As I wound down my first career, I took away three things from a series of conversations about what I wanted to do in the future. I wanted to figure out where I wanted to live with my family, what was the bare minimum I needed to balance the bills, and ultimately what would bring me satisfaction. When I was here as a master in 2007, my wife and I bought a house in Cambridge; we fell in love with cambridge. I came across Emmanuel College’s MA ad and read the personal specification and everything and thought, “hey, I actually have some transferable skills here.” I sent in my cover letter and CV – just like any other job – and then went into a six-month pre-selection interview process, after which the scholarship vote.
What is your favorite part of college?
I think Emmanuel has a very real sense of community between the different types of students, different types of fellows, different types of staff that we have. We’re big enough that you can move around in your own space, but not so big that you don’t know anyone. By the time you’re in second year, you know most people. I will do my best to help continue to build this sense of community around Emmanuel.
Best and worst thing about being a college head?
My favorite aspect of the job has to do with people; trying to understand people, get to know them, build trust with them and try to help them on their journey through life. If I can do anything to help people, that’s the best.
The hardest part is not being able to do everything we would like to do. Sometimes it’s just because it’s too difficult or too expensive. But I think the hardest thing is the time. There is everything we would like to do, but deadlines are tight and people don’t have much time; building trust and relationships with people takes time and it can be difficult in such short periods. People don’t have a lifetime here to help them on their journeys. So that’s probably the hardest.
If you had to be a master of any other college, which one would you choose?
How could I choose anywhere over Emmanuel?
What would you say to your successor in this role?
Don’t think you are the most important person in everyone’s life. The job is not to tell people what their journey is or how to get there, but to try to help push everyone on their path and help them along the way. As they are looking for what the next chapter is, you need to provide some outside support for how the next chapter will appear.