Graduation address: Thursday 23 June morning ceremony

Graduation address by Professor Richard Whatmore, School of History

Chancellor, honoured guests, colleagues and graduates.

On this great and glorious day for everyone here the first necessity is self-congratulation. You are graduating after some of the most challenging educational experiences in living memory. Your time in higher education may have been odd. You may have spent a lamentable lockdown sick of the sight of your parents, siblings, guardians, and partners. But again, you are nevertheless graduating with a degree from what the most objective and accurate league table ever made throughout recorded history has identified as the highest ranked university in the country. Celebrate then and congratulate one another.

A second necessity is to bear a thought for those parents and guardians who will have suffered at least as much as you through being cooped up together. Contributing to your studies may have near bankrupted them. It will have worried them, at times pained and strained them. They may well have aged prematurely. So now is a time for them as well to relax, to shout “we made it”. All parents, partners and guardians deserve special congratulations and applause.

One of my sons, who has yet to graduate and is not at this place, says to me he feels ”mugged off” by the educational experience he has had under Covid, with cynical staff, depressed students and a rotten world out there afterwards. He has a point. The world, especially for people like me, was a lot easier than yours. We had more funding, prices were more related to incomes, and the world was less obsessed about grades and performance, and we were ignorant about the environmental calamity we were causing (and even when we knew about it few people did anything).

Does that mean that you should emphasise how bad the present is because of the failures of my generation? Perhaps. But I want to tell you to be more optimistic because of the experience of St Andrews. It gives hope. I will explain what I mean.

St Andrews is a community of aliens brought together from all parts of the earth. No nation or culture predominates. ‘The Bubble’ is genuinely cosmopolitan. There are lots of academics in each subject, classes are small and as students you have been both looked after when you needed it and directed educationally to the position of excellence you have evidenced in order to be celebrating your graduation today.

St Andrews is a small republic with a diverse community that has to be tolerant and kind towards its citizens, respecting each other while toiling academically.

This is a remarkable achievement because republics – I can tell you because I am a historian of political thought – are prone to civil wars and internecine domestic conflict. St Andrews too was once a fanatic community whose members wanted to kill one another. You will all have seen the Martyrs’ Monument to those who were burned alive and the marks on the pavement showing the spot where exactly this happened.

The terrible history of intolerance and civil violence derived from division about religion and the belief that murdering your enemies was what God wanted you to do.

In the present there are plenty of people who believe that the only successful community derives from negativity, from the social glue that arises from defining your enemies and hating them, blaming them for everything that has gone wrong, seeking their exclusion and banishment from the community. Hatred is a powerful force, especially for democratic politicians who want to hide their uselessness as problem solvers.

The best communities are the opposite of fanatic. You have experienced one here (yes, of course, partly it works because you can escape from fellow students and staff during long holidays). But remember the lesson – avoid exclusive and fanatic communities. But above all celebrate this day. During your time here you have seen St Andrews rise above Oxbridge. Go out, have confidence and continue to support your alma mater so that, without hatred, superiority or division, a future objective international league table will state that not only Oxbridge have fallen behind St Andrews but Princeton, Yale and Harvard too.