Graduation Address

"University of New Brunswick: Encaenia Ceremony C." (23 May 2002). (UA Case 67, Box 3)

Chancellor, President, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honour to be invited to deliver the Encaenia Address this afternoon.

I must start with congratulations, and a particular expression of pleasure. First, let me congratulate all those who are to receive their degrees this afternoon. It marks the end of a number of years of hard work, and I am delighted that you have all succeeded at the end of the day. I congratulate you – and indeed you families – on that achievement. You should not think, however, that that is the end of the hard work. It is only the beginning!

Secondly, the expression of pleasure is that I have to say that, for three reasons, I feel very much at home at UNB. First, I am conscious that this University is the oldest English-speaking University in Canada, as my University, Oxford, is the oldest English-speaking University in the world – though both of us are outranked in age terms by French-speaking Universities. Secondly, we are delighted in Oxford to welcome graduates of this University, and I have in mind, particularly, that there are currently in Oxford 3 Rhodes Scholars from New Brunswick. Finally, the name of this ceremony – Encaenia – provides a further link. It was an Oxford graduate, Edwin Jacob, the head of King’s College, Fredericton – the predecessor of UNB – who instigated the ceremony, he having been familiar with it from his time at Oxford. Once a ceremony for the commemoration of founders and benefactors it has now become in both Universities a ceremony at which honorary degrees are conferred. So, I have a treble pleasure in being here today.

One of the great works written on higher education stems from lectures given by John Henry Newman (later to become Cardinal Newman). Much of what Newman said then is as true today of the purposes of higher education. Universities are important places of teaching. That is one of their fundamental objectives. I also believe that they should be places for the teaching of universal knowledge within the limits of what they are established to do, however uncomfortable that may be for some, whether in the higher education institution or outside of it. As a nation’s major resource of intellectual, artistic and culture endeavour, higher education establishments should be open to the ideas and conflicting cross-currents of the society of the day.

Where I think we have moved away from Newman’s idea is that he concluded that universities were exclusively places of teaching, and not places of research. That certainly has changed in the modern technological world in which we live. The university of today is a place of original enquiry. It is a place where there is a research focus on specialisms of great variety. It is, as has been said, a sanctuary for the avant-garde and a place from which theories of social reconstruction issue. A major influence on that latter process is the fact that the members of a modern university, young and old, provide a much broader cultural, social, racial, religious and educational mix than was to be found in any university existing in the middle of the 19th century. Furthermore, the complex society in which we live places increasing demands on universities to satisfy not just the scientific, but also the technological, demands of our complex age. What better example can there be than the work done at UNB in all the disciplines represented here this afternoon.

Universities have a broad political influence. I do not refer to influence in the party-political sense, but rather in terms of the challenges which such institutions can pose to the established course of society. Students should want to improve a world that they believe an older generation to have made a mess of. You may, like my generation once was, be naïve and impatient in this respect; but society needs the vigour and renewal that you provide. The ferment of ideas that you produce should, and will, influence the society in which we live. Furthermore, higher education institutions need a self-assurance within themselves, and an acceptance within society, to enable them to give space to the iconoclast, to the intellectual or artistic revolutionary. That is not because I am an advocate of the overthrow of the social or culture order of the day, but I do support a critical questioning look at the assumptions of each generation. One reason for my view is that I have been struck by how often what are perceived to be the idiocities of today have proved to be the wisdom and orthodoxies of tomorrow. If we do not give them an opportunity to flourish, at least to the extent of being rigorously tested, then we are in danger of betraying the next generation.

It is also the case that scientific and medical advances generate a continuing range of social issues to be addressed – how do you, should you, ration health care? Where does the balance of advantage lie in the context of genetic engineering of food and of human beings? Is animal experimentation justified and, if so, when? These are but samples of the ethical and philosophical issues posed by scientific advances. Universities offer society a powerful tool for the investigation of them in an inter-disciplinary way.

Furthermore, universities exercise an important cultural influence. They play a major part in the general education of society. They give impetus to new authors, playwrights, composers, actors and other performers as well as providing, for successive generations, a fuller and deeper understanding of the literature, music and culture not only of the societies from which we are drawn but also from across the world. It is not just the case of teaching particular subjects to a particular group of students but of providing an influence which civilizes society as a whole.

I know that you, the new graduates, will be very conscious of all the particular information and specific skills that you have acquired during your time at UNB. There are, however, other skills that you have developed and which will be, at the end of the day, just as important as the specific facts of techniques which you have learnt. You will also have learnt to organize your time, to work with others, to run things, to do projects and assume responsibility for them. All these are important skills which you will need in later life, whatever career you go into. You need to reflect for a moment that you have spent the last few years developing all of these important life skills – in the jargon of today described as transferable skills. Indeed, these is much truth in the statement that education is what survives after all that you have learned has been forgotten. At the end of the day, the challenge for us all whether within universities or in the wider world is to ensure that we succeed in meeting Benjamin Disraeli’s ideal of a university as a place of light, of liberty and of learning.