In March 2012, Dr Don Randel, the President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, visited the Centre and lectured on Higher Education in a World of Inequality and Conflict. Dr Randel spoke on the importance of a broad university curriculum and cautioned that learning should not be driven by market forces, giving examples from the United States. He stressed the need for support for non-vocational subjects to be made more readily available. He justified the need for investment in the intellectual life of a society, emphasising that investment in education and research was the surest means both to lasting economic strength and creating fairness in society. The complexities and pitfalls of higher education funding were discussed with perspectives being offered from both sides of the Atlantic.