Convocation Address June 2008

Thank you Mr. Chancellor.

Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to add my warm welcome and to thank you for joining us to celebrate the success of those graduating today.

But let me begin with a special thank you to the Chancellor who has recently been re-elected for a second term.  SFU is very fortunate to enjoy Brandt Louie’s friendship and support, and especially to benefit from his exceptional leadership.  Mr. Chancellor, thank you and congratulations on your re-election.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the graduating class, this is your day, and we are here to celebrate your success.  Each of you has much to be proud of.  After much hard work, and in most cases after some struggle and difficulty along the way, you have earned your degree from one of the leading universities in Canada.  Because of the strength of your faculty members and fellow students at SFU you leave here today as one of the best university graduates in the country.

We know that as SFU students you have learned a great deal about your specialized fields.  We also know that you have satisfied SFU’s most demanding breadth requirements outside of your specialization; and we know that as a result of studying at a major research university, you have been exposed to the methods and practice of leading-edge research, so that you can engage in truly independent thinking and creative problem-solving, rather than passively accepting what others preach or teach.

But in addition to these benefits of your degree, I hope that you have learned as much from the extra-curricular life of this university.

I hope, for example, that you will have learned the great benefits of living in a community that celebrates diversity and inclusion, and that you never cease to value the openness and tolerance of disagreement which is such a part of SFU and which makes a multicultural, multilingual society possible, as well as so stimulating and creative.

I hope that you have also learned at SFU the value and necessity of “thinking of the world,” as our tagline says we do:  that you have grasped how lucky we are to live in this gateway to Asia, where the most momentous changes in history are taking place; that you have sensed the futility in North America of resisting these changes, insisting on a unilateral dominance of the world; and that you have embraced as Canadians our country’s historic role in expanding the scope of international law, international peace keeping, and the responsibility to protect those who suffer from the most extreme abrogation of human rights.

I hope that while you have been at SFU you have also learned from the strategic initiatives undertaken at this university.  That you have learned, for example, from debates over the establishment of our new Faculty of Health Sciences the urgency of balancing the costly preoccupation with the medical care of sickness, important though that is, with a deep commitment to the non-medical policies and practices which prevent disease and which promote public and population health.  I hope that you have learned from similar debates over the establishment of our new Faculty of Contemporary Art, Communications and Technology that we must balance the preoccupation with applied science with a recognition that there are other fields which are as fundamental to the creative economy and the quality of life.  And I hope that you have learned from the debates informing a new Faculty of the Environment at SFU that we must move from denial in the absence of certainty to action in the face of abundant evidence for human-induced climate change and environmental crisis; that we must find ways to mitigate the continued destruction of the environment as well as ways to provide fair and effective means of adaptation in the face of the serious environmental impacts we cannot now prevent.

In conclusion, I hope that when you look back at your time at SFU you will remember not only the detailed knowledge that you have mastered in order to get your degree, not the tough times or even the fun times along the road to this graduation, but that you remember the big issues that confronted Canada and the world while you were here, the leadership that SFU gave in tackling those issues, and the obligation of SFU graduates to continue tackling such issues for the rest of your lives.

Our university crest declares “Nous sommes prêts,” and you are now truly ready and well prepared.  Congratulations on your success at SFU.  Thank you for all you have contributed to SFU.  And thank you for what you will contribute as graduates of SFU in the wider world.

Our very best wishes for your future success and happiness.  Congratulations to you all.