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Speech at Award of Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws Graduation Ceremony

University of Liverpool, 22nd July 2015

I am greatly honoured to receive this honorary degree from the University of Liverpool and to know that I join such an impressive and prestigious roll call of previous recipients of this honour.  

The University of Liverpool has a distinguished reputation as a world class centre of research and a proud history of academic excellence across many fields. It is also a space of learning which has welcomed many Irish students over the years, and it is a very special occasion indeed to be here today to accept this honorary degree. 

The University of Liverpool is also of course renowned for its ethos of fair access, articulated in your strategic goal to become the world leader and innovator in widening participation as part of the reinvention of the role of a civic university in a global context. The university has much to be proud of and has achieved considerable success in opening the gates of possibility for students from traditionally low participation neighbourhoods.

I was the first, and of course at the time the only, member of my family to attend university. At that time in Ireland a secondary education was a privilege while further education was viewed as the preserve of the wealthy and the elite. 

The experience of a person such as me in a university, in the 1960s, was a mixed one. There were rich friendships and rewarding relationships, but there was too the feeling of strangeness, the demands of the effort to belong. It is something that many who were the first in their family to push open that important door to third level education would recognise and I am sure some may still recognise this experience today. 

I have often stated that what happens in education is crucial in the life of a person. Indeed, as a former politician, my choice to enter a life of public service was influenced more than anything else by the tragic waste of humanity that accrues from the placing or the maintaining of obstacles that might prevent the developing by any of our citizens of their full potential to flourish.

There can be no doubt that if we are to craft a society defined by inclusion and justice we must work together to make the journey through the educational landscape less arduous - removing barriers to the achievement of full possibility  and the realisation of each individual’s true potential. 

In a modern world, education is sometimes seen as a commodity, emphasising a conception of the student as a future worker rather than as an active citizen.  The grind of neo-utilitarianism, the demand for demonstrated short-term results, and often on a narrow agenda, demands a cruel price. 

A university education is a source of personal liberation and empowerment, but this liberation must be about more than simply the freedom of an individual to access better-paid employment.  Access to educational opportunity is crucial, but at least as important is the quality of the education that is available to you within the university.  The values instilled and released in students by our education system, are carried forward into society not only through our occupations, but also through our interpretation of our role in the wider community.

I have spoken, on many occasions, of the importance of encouraging and supporting critical reflection and a more holistic approach to knowledge; and of the need above all else to encourage curiosity and debate by providing a pluralist intellectual environment.  To extricate thought from the “circle of belief”, as Gilbert Rist puts it, is not easy.  Escaping old and failing paradigms towards new and necessary modes of thinking is replete with risk, but it is worthwhile.

We must ensure that members of our society are equipped with the skills to question and challenge decisions made by individuals and institutions in positions of power and authority, so as to ensure that such decisions are ethical, based on fairness and not based on any privilege derived from wealth or class or social status.

Here in Liverpool, with your rich history of organised labour and social activism, you are given the opportunity to understand the real value of a participative society and active and engaged communities.

You are fortunate to have been educated in a university where these ideals are valued and put into practice.  You are fortunate too to have been given the opportunity to access a world-class education in a vibrant intellectual environment, where your skills have been honed and nurtured.  

You are graduating at a moment in history where great challenges lie before us all that will define the future of our planet – the challenge of tackling climate change; the opportunity to address global poverty and development; the challenge of addressing rising unacceptable inequality at a global level and within states; the opportunities, and the dangers too, associated with rapidly emerging technologies; and the real threat associated with a retreat into xenophobia, extremism and intolerance as social cohesion is challenged.  These are great challenges.

I encourage you, as you go out into the public world to play your own part in meeting the challenges of our time – and I have great confidence that you will do so.  I urge you to always remember the importance of ideas and education, and to remember the responsibility we all have as citizens of the world to never stop questioning the world around us, its institutions and the dominant modes of thought.  I urge you to work towards replacing old and failing paradigms of theory and policy with new ones that meet the demands of humanity, not only now but for the future.  

In such a spirit of curiosity there can be great joy and fulfillment in life, and in such a spirit the possibilities ahead of you are truly limitless.