Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean
Speech on the Occasion of the Presentation of an Honorary Doctorate from McGill University
Montreal, Friday, November 10, 2006
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I am delighted to be here with you today to continue the tradition according to which the Governor General of Canada is your “visitor.”
McGill University is one of our oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Its influence has far exceeded our borders over the years.
As an English-speaking institution, in the very heart of one of the largest French-speaking cities in the world, your responsibility does not stop at merely shaping minds. It goes much further than that to include bringing cultures together.
And that responsibility now falls to you, the Class of 2006. It is your turn to go forward, into our country and the world, as ambassadors of this reputation for excellence and spirit of openness.
Today, you do me a great honour in conferring upon me the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.
By welcoming me so generously into your fold, you have invited me to share with you a few of my concerns.
I am troubled by a world in which, all too often, the very act of thinking is scorned, and limits are imposed on understanding. Ours is a time in which forums for thought and reflection are being sacrificed in the name of speed, haste, entertainment and “close enough.”
How could this not be troubling, when we know that acquiring knowledge and sharing ideas are our greatest sign of hope?
I was raised to believe this to be true.
Art, philosophical questioning, intellectual achievement, curiosity, passion and perseverance have always been core values in my family.
My father and mother, both from very modest upbringings, had that hunger and drive to learn. In a country like Haiti, where the vast majority of the population is illiterate, being well-read and educated is seen as one of life’s greatest achievements. It was this conviction that led my parents to believe that education was the key to freedom. It was this conviction that would guide all their actions.
I am grateful to them for having instilled in me at an early age a joy of learning and an enthusiasm for the realm of the mind, so to speak; for having taught me that there is nothing so precious as that “mental vibration,” to quote François Ricard.
I think it’s safe to say that I have never lost that joy or the satisfaction derived from hard work, the certainty that there is still so much to learn. I continue to nurture the student inside me, as do so many others who share this love of learning.
And I hold in the highest regard all those who allow thought to flourish, to express itself, to explore.
This is why I am so concerned.
I think that we all need to take a closer look at the increasingly predominant place given to trendsetters, merchants and opinion peddlers.
It does not bode well for our society that we often relegate to the margins the women and men working patiently, diligently, for years at a time, in the quiet of libraries, laboratories, or workshops. Or that we ignore those who embody courage in the heat of debate or the clash of ideas as they face the discomfort of life’s harsh realities and uncover facts that make us question what we have long held to be true.
Can you accept that we hear so little from these women and men, whose work and dedication have such a profound impact on the quality of our lives?
This is why it is so important that we make our universities not only places of learning but also places that are open to society, in the very heart of society.
Universities must remain, perhaps now more than ever, bastions of thought.
Bastions against the conformity of minds.
Bastions against ready-made ideologies that restrict and confine.
Bastions against the existential illusions of an immobile world closed in on itself.
Bastions against reducing thought to that which is most profitable.
Universities offer a kind of resistance in favour of multiple viewpoints, lifelong curiosity, the very essence of civilization, and dialogue.
History reminds us that those societies that have encouraged thought and expression have most enriched humanity’s legacy.
But let’s not forget courage. For there can be a risk associated with the act of thinking when thoughts begin to stray beyond our commonly held beliefs. There will always be those who maintain that the “whole truth” should not be told.
It is no simple task to point out when one’s fellow citizens are being fake or blind.
He who witnesses and speaks the truth can risk his very life.
The journalist I once was now feels compelled to call to mind the name and courage of Anna Politkovskaya, who dedicated her life to stopping the spread of lies and whose death has left a void in this world.
But speaking out—such a necessary risk—should never come at the cost of one’s life. Because when we take that risk, things change, thought is renewed, the unknown discovered.
There is no greater danger to our future than the arrogant and increasingly pervasive attitude that all thought should be removed from public forums under the assumption that no one is really interested or that it is somehow undesirable.
To adopt such an attitude is to wipe out, in a single stroke, thousands of years of civilization and human dignity.
And by thought, I mean taking a necessary step back so that one can truly understand the world in all its frailty and diversity. This step back would seem to suspend time so that we can learn from what we are experiencing. So that we can transform what we see and experience into knowledge. So that we can take time to process what is going on around us, from the infinitely obscure to the brilliantly luminous.
And there is nothing more luminous than that leap from an individual adventure to a more universal one.
It is only by thinking that we are able to invent, transcend and create.
And of course, to think is to act. But thinking is not without responsibility. We must continuously weigh the interests of some against the needs of others. We must find a balance between openness to the world and the cultural imperatives of each.
We must measure the truth and today’s facts against history. Against a history that doesn’t manipulate the facts because, as Hannah Arendt so wisely wrote, ideas are inspired from different interests and passions. And though each generation is entitled to write its own history, it does not have the right to rework or manipulate the facts so that they align with its own point of view.
Thought, therefore, must honour the truth and take reality into consideration.
We must also be able to project ourselves out into the world rather than fall back into a place of indulgence where the individual, as Tocqueville warned, “encloses himself entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”
This may seem somewhat ambitious, perhaps even daring. But I see it as the opportunity we are all given to compare the present with the past, to change the way people think, to expand our points of view, to improve our circumstances, to leave behind traces that will guide generations to come.
It is through thought that we can discover new ways to celebrate life.
It is through thought that we can find new ways to make life a little easier, to harmonize it with the greater good.
And it is through thought that we are able to “[translation] redefine values that relate to matters of great consequence,” as Charles Taylor so eloquently put it.
I believe this is especially important in a country such as ours, which defines itself by the values we uphold and that bind us to one another.
Our shared citizenship, a source of pride in this country, is above all an expression of those most basic of values: equal opportunity, gender equality, freedom of expression and respect for the rights of minorities within the majority.
And the voices of our fellow citizens, to which I am trying to give a forum with my mandate as governor general, are the most powerful and, if you will, most precious expression of this.
Silence kills when it is synonymous with indifference. Just as boredom, despair and violence threaten us when thought is removed from our societies.
We must nourish this very human drive to continuously dig beneath the surface to find new paths and solutions to the problems facing the world.
For is this not the only way to keep ourselves from becoming mired in what we have already learned?
Thought is not a commodity. It can neither be bought, nor can it be consumed; it develops and unfolds.
My love for universities stems from the fact that they stand as one of the few enclaves where freedom of thought is still possible. They serve as vital a function as the water in our rivers, the air in our lungs, the fire in our hearts, and the earth beneath our feet.
Without them, we are forever lost.
Let us rejoice, Class of 2006, that we live in a country where universities give us the freedom to think. But even now, as we all know, such freedom is little more than a dream in many of the troubled regions of the world; in some cases, punishable by death.
But let’s not forget that even in our most evolved democracies, we must never let our guard down. We must constantly rekindle this freedom of thought and speech through our own search for meaning, our own questioning, and our own aspirations.
It is precisely because they are alive with thought that we must protect universities and ensure that they can continue to shape and influence society.
I salute you, graduates, and offer you my best wishes for happiness as you set out on the adventure before you. The time has come for you to live your dreams out in the world and give your very best.
This will be your greatest gift to the rest of us. A gift that has no price but whose worth is invaluable for humanity.
I thank you, with all of my heart.
