Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Professor Linda Colley
Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Mr Mayor, Madam Mayoress, Fellow Graduands,
Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s a tremendous honour and delight to be here in
these circumstances. It is also deeply satisfying at both a personal and
professional level. In the 40 years of its existence the University of Essex
has proved itself, not only one of the best but also one of the most dynamic
and adventurous universities in the UK and outside it. This is a place that
is constantly challenging and crossing boundaries, and I relate to this very
strongly because, as your orator has most kindly said, I seek in my own work
in so far as I can, to cross and challenge boundaries, to try and work
across different disciplines, to try and make use of different kinds of
evidence and to try, while maintaining, I hope, academic respectability, to
address a broader audience as well. I do not believe that knowledge and
scholarship should be a private dinner table conversation. I believe it
should be a feast where all are welcome.
So, today, I would want to urge on you all, if you will let me, and
particularly on those of you who have just graduated, the importance of crossing
boundaries in your own lives.
Now a lot of unkind and untrue things are said in the media about ‘Essex Man’
and ‘Essex Woman’. The ‘Essex Men and Women’ I see before me today (or rather
let me rephrase that, the ‘Essex Women and Men’ I see before me today) are full
of achievement, talent, ambition, enterprise, which is exactly as it should be.
But as you move into what is sometimes laughingly called the outside world and
focus on the private imperatives of your careers and your personal development I
do hope that you will also take care to cross boundaries and pay attention, as
well, to wider public imperatives. You have all received here a great education.
It is now your obligation, it really is, to do something to make the world a
better place whatever you go on to be.
I hope, too, that you will cross boundaries in another way. I hope that you
will cross over from the private career-orientated scholarly pursuits of the
past few years of your study into applying your intelligence now more broadly.
As recent events in this country demonstrate it is important that all of us
speak truth unto power and ask questions of it. That we approach those who
govern and have authority wherever they are with a persistent healthy scepticism
which is not the same as cynicism or irresponsibility.
May you constantly cross boundaries in yet another way too. This University
has always and with conspicuous success challenged the boundaries and barriers
between different nations, different cultures, different kinds of people. So
should you. Whether you approve of globalisation or no, an ever more
inter-connected world is with us now and will be with us for the rest of our
lives. So make the most of it. Learn about and visit other countries, whatever
country is your own, and if you can learn languages. I wish I knew more
languages. I am sure that you will learn them. Please do, it is very important.
What I am trying to say, in short, is that you should not regard graduation
as a single one-off event, something that you put fancy clothes on and have a
nice time over on just one day of your life. If you live your lives well and
with imagination and are consistently curious you will graduate afresh every
day, that is what real education means.
So, it has been an enormous privilege to be in your company this afternoon
and I wish all of you and this great University a very rich, very fulfilling,
persistently enterprising and persistently challenging future.
Thank you very much.
Linda Colley
15 July 2004