President's Address

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT  (17 October 1981 - UA RG 285, Box 1, File 2)

Your Honour ...

UNB's fall convocation almost always takes place on or about Thanksgiving. Whether intended or not, the propinquity of these two events is appropriate. A convocation is, or should be, a time to experience gratitude and give thanks to whatever larger reality we believe in. Or at least to reflect humbly upon our good fortune in being able to participate in an occasion that celebrates intellectual effort and attainment. It should be as well an occasion to remind ourselves of the splendidly rich tradition of knowledge in the arts, the sciences and the professions which we have inherited and to which, in our several ways, we seek to contribute.

It is fitting too therefore to remind ourselves, more particularly and concretely, of those whose support has made possible the achievement symbolized in this convocation. First, the people and successive governments of New Brunswick who despite other more clamourous and palpable needs, have given a high place and faithful support to this University and taken pride in its accomplishments. Second, those faculty, staff, students, and alumni who over the years have, through their own achievements and commitment, sought to repay the trust and justify the investment made in them. Third, and of particular aptness today, those special friends and patrons of this institution who have contributed in some special way to its development and success.

It will, I think, offend on one and diminish no other benefactor if I say that chief among this third group is Lord Beaverbrook. This is not the time or place to estimate, or even enumerate, what Lord Beaverbrook did for UNB in the fifties and sixties. He is not lacking in monuments or witnesses to his enlightened generosity. This is a fitting occasion, however, to be grateful that his interest in UNB has been carried on by his son, Sir Max Aitken, our Chancellor. It is, as always, a matter of regret to all of us that Sir Max's health will not permit him to be with us at Convocation. Today, however, we are singularly pleased and honoured that he is represented here by four members of the Aitken family: Lady Violet, son Maxwell and his wife Susan, and daughter Laura. In the name of the Board and Senate of the University, and on behalf of its students, staff, and faculty, I welcome you most warmly to this Convocation and to UNB.

Your Honour, I am pleased to report that the University of New Brunswick, while, like universities everywhere, going through a period of financial retrenchment in which many difficult adjustments are being made, is nevertheless carrying out its manifold mission with commendable vigor and dedication. Valuable scholarship and research continue - scholarship and research aimed at improving the quality, efficiency, or comfort of life; our students are being instructed and encouraged to develop their diverse talents and interests; the needs of our province and nation are being assessed and addressed in ways too numerous and complex to describe here.

Your Honour, there is strain in restraint, and I cannot pretend that the current funding levels for universities are not taking a toll on programs, services, and morale. This University is having to contemplate retrenchments that would have been almost unthinkable a couple or so years ago. The recent Report of the Parliamentary Task Force on Federal-Provincial Arrangements has documented and endorsed the need of universities in Canada for increased public support. But more than that, the Report eloquently reaffirms the importance of universities to our national life. Speaking of post-secondary institutions in general, the Report says:

The enduring strength of a society ultimately rests more on these institutions than on economic, industrial or military power. They are avenues along which people pursue knowledge of themselves, their values, their goals as individuals, their reasons for existence.

If that indeed be true, then it behooves all of our governments - federal, provincial, and municipal - to grant our post-secondary institutions higher priority in their funding allocations than they have been doing.

But, realistically, our governments cannot be expected to carry all of the load themselves. They too are experiencing the rigors of restraint. Support from the private and corporate sector will also have to increase if universities are to continue to fulfill the expectations our society has of them. And UNB will be doing its best to gain such support next year when it launches its third ever national fund-raising campaign.

Your Honour, it is foreign to me and inconsistent with the occasion to use a convocation for the recitation of a litany of any kind. It is best for himself and his institution if a university president is an optimist - even if he must at times be an optimist without hope! It is neither fashionable nor easy to be an optimist these days. The planes of our social, political, and economic life are inhabited by hordes of two-horned dilemmas that threaten to gore or trample us no matter which way we turn. Or so the media soothsayers would have us believe.

Yet not to take pride and hope from our own and others' achievements; not to feel gratitude and take heart from the help and support we have received in the past; not to resonate to the excitement of the challenges that frequently disguise themselves as adversities is surely to bury our heads in a slough of fashionable despond and pretend we're being realistic.

The world that awaits you who graduate today is no more nor less complex and bewildering than it has ever been. Someone once said, 'the best part of remembering is recreating.' There's a truth in that. Memory has a habit of oversimplifying the past. How often have you heard people say: 'Things were simpler when I was growing up.' Don't believe it. Life has always been what it is now: an incomprehensible matrix of raw materials - emotions, sensations, ideas, images, ambitions, fears, and dreams - out of which we weave, if we can, a mosaic of meaning. Into that mosaic we must fit our work, our leisure, our potentialities, our limitations, our commitments, our concerns, and a thousand other factors. Whether we make of life a mosaic or a muddle does not depend upon how smart we are, nor how conventionally lucky, nor even how hard we work, but upon how much integrity we have or manage to achieve. The world you are inheriting needs the skills and knowledge you have learned in University. Still more, it needs men and women who bring to their own work and lives high standards of professional and ethical integrity, and who have the courage to ask them of others.

For almost two hundred years this institution has been educating young people to give leadership in their society and to be of service to others; helping them to see and feel the connections and relations among things, ideas, people, and events; to examine and value the assumptions and principles upon which our culture rests; assisting them to fit themselves for a more useful and meaningful life. In so doing it has striven to give them the wherewithal to build out of the world they live some of the structures of the world they would wish to live in. It has tried to teach them to examine ideas and values rather than accepting them at face value. It has tried to cultivate a healthy scepticism. To the extent it has succeeded in this, to that extent has it fulfilled an essential part of its mission.

Scepticism is one thing. Cynicism is entirely something else. To the extent universities have encouraged their graduates to be cynics, to that extent they have betrayed their essential mission. I fear that in our society, and perhaps especially among the university educated, there is a tendency towards a glib and fashionable, but nonetheless dangerous, cynicism.

It manifests itself in a ready attribution of selfish motive to all human behaviour, no matter (or perhaps especially) how apparently charitable or socially constructive; in an unwillingness to get involved in collective efforts to improve things; in carping, uncharitable, and unhelpful criticism. Above all it seems to feed on a suspicion of and contempt for leadership - especially political leadership. The danger of such cynicism, whatever its causes, is obvious, and A. B. Giametti has summed it up as well as anyone: 'If a society assumes its [leaders] are venal, stupid, or self-serving, it will attract to its public life as an on-going self-fulfilling prophecy the greedy, the knavish, and the dim.'

I'm not of course asking anyone to believe that human behaviour and motivation are ever purely anything. I would merely suggest that an honest esamination of our own motives will lead to greater tolerance of the views and actions of others. W. H. Auden, as he was wont to do, said it exquisitely in a poem that deserves to be better known. It's entitled 'As I Walked Out One Evening', and these are two stanzas near the end:

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.'

You have learned much in university that should stand you in good stead in your lives and careers. But no lesson is more important or more contemporary than this, that the great moral business of life is to love our crooked neighbors with our crooked hearts. It is no doubt true that we should love our enemies, but few of us have many enemies or many opportunities to love the ones we do have. Loving our neighbors, behaving with kindness and courtesy towards them, is just as important and often just as hard.

Here endeth the sermon; though not quite yet my remarks.

Your Honour, it would be remiss of me if I ended these remarks without making reference to yourself. I have talked about the value to UNB of our special friends; I have spoken of integrity and the need for it in private and public life; I have talked of tolerance as an antidote to cynicism. In all these matters, Sir, you have been exemplary. You have brought to our graduation ceremonies, as you have to your office, a dignity and dedication that are altogether admirable. We cannot allow you to take your leave of us and of the Lieutenant-Governorship of New Brunswick without telling you so.