Graduation address by the Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Thank you very much to Dr Hill for her magnificent contribution. I’d now like to add some remarks of my own, the first of which is a simple and wholehearted congratulations. Each of you is now a graduate of the University of St Andrews. This is an outstanding achievement, and you and your families have every right to be very proud.
As you now know, studying is hard work. It requires commitment, endeavour, and motivation. Each of you can recall times when it seemed too difficult: the panicked moments before an exam, the lab results that wouldn’t cooperate, and being awake at 4 am before a deadline with half an essay still to go. But you persevered and triumphed, and you are now a graduate – no one can take that achievement away from you.
While studying is laborious, it’s also one of life’s most enriching and rewarding activities and I hope that each of you continues to learn, whether in formal education or in your spare time. This can be as simple as reading a book on an unfamiliar subject or taking a new class. Reading, learning, and thinking critically elevate your perspective on the world, raise your consciousness, and allow you to engage with life on a deeper and more nourishing level every day. That’s why we refer to education as a ‘gift’, and it’s a particularly valuable one because it never expires.
The St Andrews education you have received is also an immense privilege. As students, you came to us from over 130 countries around the world and you each possess a different story. But now, as graduates, you hold one of the highest quality educations that it is possible to attain from one of the world’s premier institutions of learning. You are in an immensely fortunate position, and you have a responsibility to use this education for good.
The past few months have made this responsibility clearer than ever. As the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe, governments turned to their scientists and scholars, many of whom were new graduates, to lead the way. University-educated people from every discipline are guiding society through and out of the pandemic, conducting research which will provide solutions to the virus, providing healthcare in hospitals, working in the civil service to support health and government services, and taking on many other crucial roles in our societies.
The accomplishments of our guest speaker at this ceremony, Dr Fiona Hill, speak in another way to how education can serve our society. When Dr Hill and her fellow alumnus, David Holmes, testified to the US Congress last autumn, they demonstrated their capacity to judge incisively and to articulate their thoughts courageously in the high-pressure environment of the world stage. Throughout Dr Hill’s distinguished career as a political adviser and researcher she has displayed enormous potential to excel and the capacity to act morally, righteously, and in the common interest while so doing. This is the way to utilise a University of St Andrews degree.
Yet manifesting your responsibility as a graduate must also be demonstrated through smaller actions on a daily basis. At the end of May, we were all profoundly shocked and angered by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, which has since sparked a global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement has inspired and demanded accountability from each of us, pushing us to ask ourselves how we may conform with, or perpetuate, the systemic racism present throughout our societies and institutions. As a University, we are committed to confronting and to addressing our historic inadequacies when it comes to engaging with the experiences of BAME people by further implementing programmes which increase our diversity and furthering the support available to BAME people in St Andrews. We acknowledge in so doing that the term BAME itself is inadequate and that the lexicon of engagement with racial and ethnic diversity continues to evolve.
However, change at an institutional level is not enough: it must also be individual. As graduates, each of you must use the skills, knowledge, and awareness that your time at St Andrews has engendered to assess the way your behaviours impact on others, to encourage others to participate in conversations about injustice, and by so doing, to realise positive change in the world around us. Only when change is collective is it meaningful, sustained, and permanent.
Racism requires our urgent attention, but it is not the only area where we have the ability and the responsibility to help. We are yet to achieve global gender equality and many women around the world are victims of oppression and assault; and LGBT+ people, particularly trans people, continue to fight for freedom and, in many cases, for the right to exist at all. These struggles for social justice are symptomatic of larger political instabilities and, across the world, extreme political regimes and economic turmoil have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic: as a result, countries are closing their doors at a time when international cooperation is more urgent than ever. Underpinning each of these challenges is the climate emergency, which poses an existential threat to human society as we know it, and the ramifications of which will be felt in your lifetime. You have inherited these issues, but with your education, you have also inherited the capacity and the responsibility to confront them: it is your generation of policymakers, writers, scientists, and campaigners who will change our world in every way and for the better.
Yet as we look to the future, it is informed and shaped by our past. The academic year 2019 to 2020 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of J M Barrie, and the 100th anniversary of his election as Rector of the University of St Andrews. Barrie is remembered posthumously as the author of the well-known children’s book, Peter Pan; but in his time, Barrie was a celebrated Scottish playwright and man of letters, for which he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit by King George V in 1922.
On 3 May 1922 at the end of his time as Rector, Barrie delivered an address to the students of St Andrews on the theme of ‘Courage’. The time in which Barrie lived was not easy: the University grappled with the consequences of the First World War which had severely disrupted life for the institution and its students – the parallels with our own time are clear. In ‘Courage’, Barrie told each student that a better life and society were within reach and could be obtained using the tools that a St Andrews education provided. Barrie saw his own generation, which had allowed the war to occur, as incapable of tackling the issues of its day; but he also saw a student body who felt powerless and incapable to affect change.
Barrie asked each student to look around them and recognise what must be improved – what long-established rituals and traditions should be challenged – and then to go forth and challenge them. He said:
I want you to take up this position: That youth have for too long left exclusively in our hands the decisions in national matters that are more vital to them than to us.
How do you achieve this? A St Andrews education, Barrie said, gives you courage – the courage needed to demand change with conviction and to bring it about. Each of you has access to this courage and the skills necessary to enact change: the onus is now upon you to realise it. The upcoming academic year will see the election of a new Rector, who advocates for students at the highest level of the University and who represents them to the world. That election is an opportunity for our current students to step forth and contribute to the change they wish to see in our community, and I encourage each of you to share this opportunity with the community of friends you leave behind in St Andrews.
Barrie ended ‘Courage’ with what he described as ‘a final passing thought’:
Were an old student given an hour in which to revisit the St Andrews of his day, would he spend more than half of it at lectures? He is more likely to be heard clattering up bare stairs in search of old companions.
Barrie’s reference to students as male reflects the era in which he was writing, but his sentiments retain a consonance with your experience. Your time as a student at St Andrews is now at an end. But wherever you are watching this, and wherever life may take you, you will always be a part of our University; the friendships, knowledge, and experiences you have acquired here will stay with you for ever. In due course, each of you will be warmly welcomed back when you return ‘in search of old companions’, whether that is for the rescheduled Class of 2020 graduation ceremonies, or whenever you next choose to visit our cherished town. In the meantime, go forth with kindness, responsibility, and courage – with the knowledge that you can and must make the world a better place – and you will continue ever to excel.
Professor Sally Mapstone
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews