Universities in a post-fact political world

One of my colleagues in Trondheim admitted that as he gets older the tears seem to come more readily. They did on Friday 18 November. Perhaps I should explain.

NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in Trondheim awarded me a doctorate honoris causa, their 91^st. The ceremony was a wonderful mixture of Nordic pomp, clockwork precision and Norwegian informality. Apart from two honorary doctors, twice a year approximately 150 students get their doctorates. Impressive.

Like all graduations it was a moving occasion. Certainly, I was moved. My short acceptance speech was along the following lines:

I love graduations. You, dear doctoral graduates, have worked so hard and now you are to be rewarded. You will go out into the world and use your knowledge and skills to make the world a better place.

I find this this graduation occasion special for three reasons. The first, not so important, is that it makes us happy. I work at UCL. The auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham sits in box outside the office of the University President and Provost. Bentham emphasised that social progress should aim at the greatest good for the greatest number. By each of us graduates being happy we add to the world’s utility. But I am not really a Benthamite.

A second more important reason why today is special is because it is a wonderful celebration of what we do in Universities like this one. It stands in stark contrast with what is going on in the world of politics at the moment. With Brexit, far right parties in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and across Europe, the US election, some politicians have declared war on truth, logic, consistency, reason and social justice; not to mention the assault on statistics. What we stand for in universities is all those things: truth, logic, consistency, reason and social justice. We have a vital role to play in standing up for these civilised and civilising values.

The third reason for my valuing this occasion so highly is because I take the award to me as an award to the field in which I work: social justice and health. What I do relies on evidence-based policies and social justice. I am chairing a new Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas. At a recent meeting in Washington DC I walked in the Mall and found myself in the area devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. Dr King said:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

The world’s problems are our problems, your problems, my dear new doctors.

My colleagues here in Trondheim asked me if I am optimistic, given all the bad things happening in the world, as I have just laid out. Yes, I am optimistic because I do believe that evidence-based policies and social justice will win out. Martin Luther King said it better.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Another Norwegian professor, as if accounting for his colleague’s tendency to shed a tear, said: you spoke from your heart to our hearts. I shed a tear.

Read more about the event.

Celebrating Scholarship

It has been a fortnight of celebrations. Celebrations of scholarship.

University graduations are moving occasions: times of celebration of achievement and hope. There will be time for disappointment and frustration, time for cynicism and loss of ideals. But not now, not at graduation. Now is the opening up of possibilities to make a difference. Perhaps that is why the Americans call the completion of University studies: commencement. In Sweden they call it promotion – my fortnight was bookended by graduations in Yale and Lund. In both cases, the University itself put on a grand occasion to honour their graduates – to celebrate scholarship. It is wonderful and moving, and a special interlude in the rhythms of what we do the rest of the time.

When in Britain the previous government raised university fees, the arguments seemed to be that lucky university students will gain economic benefit from a degree; therefore, they should pay. And Universities are pushed to show that they contribute to the economy. They do. But universities are about much more than enhancing earning power for individuals and the nation. They are places of scholarship and commitment, of morality and reason. And graduation is a time to celebrate this higher calling.

I was at Yale on 18 May for their graduation. I come with my inequality baggage of course. Yet awareness that these Yale students, many of them, had enormous privilege just to get to Yale, and accumulate even more being a graduate, didn’t stop my enjoyment of the splendid occasion. In the School of Public Health graduation ceremony, Jordan Emont, who spoke, brilliantly, on behalf of the students said they were united in their desire to contribute to a healthier future for the population, to confront the challenge of health inequalities. He spoke not of increased earning power but of the special bond with his fellow students and their joy of learning.

I gave the commencement address to the School of Public Health graduating class.

I was slightly disoriented. The academic procession, in full academic regalia, was accompanied by Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March. Shades of ‘Last Night of the Proms’, the BBC’s annual patriotic flag fest. Land of Hope and Glory, a British patriotic ode, in the US? The Dean, Paul Cleary, assured me that there was no political significance; they always played Elgar at Commencement. Paul was a great host and clearly a great dean as one graduating student after another hugged him. An oxytocin surge to warm up a formal afternoon.

Yale awarded me the Centennial Winslow medal in commemoration of the Founder of Yale School of Public Health in 1915. I quoted Winslow. In 1940 he wrote: In 1890 public health was an engineering science. In 1940, it is a medical science. Tomorrow it may be a social science. We must “pay attention the social environment that man has made for himself and in which he lives and moves and has his being…” Not a bad description of social determinants of health. Thank you, Charles-Edward Amery Winslow.

Winslow understood relative inequality. He wrote: “the sense of inferiority due to living in a substandard home is a far more serious menace to the health of our children than all the in satinary plumbing in the United States.” Wish I’d said that.

Some American politicians seem to be mired in pre-enlightenment thinking. Quoting Kant, I suggest to the graduating students that each of them “have the courage to use your own understanding”; and still moved by my meeting with him, I quoted Bernard Lown: Never whisper in the presence of wrong.

Could you take someone seriously who looked like this?