Laureation address: Professor Michael Cook
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters
Laureation by Professor Ali Ansari, School of History
Thursday 27 June 2019
Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Professor Michael Cook.
Michael Cook is Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is a scholar of international renown in the field of Middle East history with a particular interest in the rise and development of Islam. His works include a number of seminal studies including, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (2000), which was subsequently translated into both Persian and Arabic, and the provocative and highly influential, Hagarism, on the origins of Islam, published with the late Patricia Crone in 1977. His interests, needless to say, range more broadly into aspects of global and comparative history, including an essay on the Abbasid Caliphate and the Carolingian Empire, as well as a one volume, History of the Human Race. In 2010 he oversaw, as General Editor, the publication of The New Cambridge History of Islam.
Michael Allan Cook began his academic career studying European history at the University of Cambridge where in the best tradition of the noted British orientalist, Edward Granville Browne, he took the liberty and opportunity to learn both Persian and Turkish. He then pursued postgraduate research in the Ottoman Empire at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London where he secured his first post, before departing these shores for a position at Princeton University in 1986. In doing so Michael will no doubt have been unaware of the deep links he was forging with Scotland and the University of St Andrews!
Princeton, of course, is well known as one of the leading universities in the United States. Less well known is the relationship it enjoys with this University, not least in the person of Scottish Presbyterian Minister John Witherspoon – the sixth President of the then College of New Jersey (1768-1794), and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. But more importantly, Witherspoon was also a recipient of an honorary doctorate from this University in 1764.
With more than 50 publications to his credit, including nine books, Professor Michael Cook has devoted his life to exploring, interrogating and above all explaining the richness of Islamic history and civilisation to a wider public. He has received numerous honours for his work, including election to the American Philosophical Society, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Mellon Foundation, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, along with a Fellowship of the British Academy. He has received a ‘favourable mention’ in the preface to the English edition of Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the age of Philip II, and last, but by no means least, an ‘unfavourable’ mention in Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism!
Chancellor, in recognition of his major contribution to Middle Eastern and Islamic History, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on Professor Michael Cook.
Professor Michael Cook's response
Chancellor, Principal, students, parents, staff, when I learned that I could say a few words, at first I was rather scared because I thought they would have to be in Latin. But once I had realised that I could speak in English, I agreed. And I'd like to tell you how excited I was when I learnt that I was going to get an honorary degree from this university. And I immediately decided that I ought to know a bit more about this university than I did. But being extremely old-fashioned, I didn't Google St Andrews; instead I went to Rashdall's three-volume history of the medieval universities of Europe. And sure enough, there you were somewhere towards the end of volume 2. And I very quickly picked up the fact that you'd been founded in 1413, which is splendid, and that's well over 300 years before Princeton.
But, as I read on, I came across something that I found really rather disconcerting: this happened around about 1514. You got advice from Paris - Paris, mind you, not just anywhere - to establish the teaching of Arabic at this university. And I'm very sorry to have to tell you that your bureaucrats immediately rejected the idea. Now, this really bothered me, and I talked to a few people about it. And some of them said, "Look, 500 years have passed, let bygones be bygones." Others said, "Look, in the meantime, St Andrews has more than made up for that. They've established a stellar programme teaching Arabic, and what's more, they've thrown in Persian." But the best argument was one given to me by my wife, who is somewhere in this hall. She pointed out to me that St Andrews has recently been placed second in the peck order of British universities, ahead of Oxford and just behind Cambridge. And I can see that that is not in the least displeasing to you. And it also suited me down to the ground, because I was always brought up to think of Oxford as the kind of outfit that can't win a boat race without the clandestine use of an outboard motor. Whereas Cambridge, as you know from what Ali has said, is my alma mater. And I do appreciate your tact in not bumping Cambridge from the top position.
Right, that's enough about me. Let me now take this opportunity to congratulate everybody in this hall who has just been awarded a non-honorary degree. Those are the kind of degrees that are directly and simply correlated with effort and talent. Of course, the time may come when you're in line for an honorary degree, but in the meantime you have your lives ahead of you. And I wish you all the good luck in the world, in the trials, tribulations and triumphs that lie ahead of you.
Let me also just say a word to parents. Parents, congratulations on the success of your sons and daughters. I know very well that getting them to this point has meant a tremendous amount of hassle over the last 20 years or so, but I think today's the day when you can look back on those years and say, "Yes, it was worth it after all."
Thank you.