Former Irish President Mary Robinson Named 1998 Commencement
Speaker
By Alvin Powell
Contributing Writer
Mary Robinson, United Nations high commissioner for human rights and
former president of the Republic of Ireland, is scheduled to be the speaker
at the Afternoon Exercises at the University's 347th Commencement, on Thursday,
June 4.
Robinson, who was Ireland's first female head of state, has strong ties
to Harvard, having earned an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School in 1968.
Last year she returned to Cambridge to dedicate the Irish Famine Memorial
on Cambridge Common. She also visited Harvard in 1994 to speak to the Harvard
Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and Harvard's Irish Cultural
Society.
"Mary Robinson is an outstanding Harvard alumna, a pioneering former
head of state, and a vigorous leader in the pursuit of human rights around
the world," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "We look forward
to hearing her speak at Commencement, and to welcoming her warmly back to
Harvard."
"As Ireland's first woman president, Mary Robinson represents an
excellent choice for our Commencement this year," said Daniel A. Phillips,
president of the Harvard Alumni Association. "In her important new
position as U.N. high commissioner for human rights, she is taking a leadership
role in condemning any form of violence against women -- an issue which
seems to be universal in one form or another. Her important example will
empower women everywhere to decide that enough is enough and that silence
is no longer an appropriate strategy or response."
Following Harvard tradition, Robinson will deliver her speech on the
afternoon of June 4, at the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association,
to an audience of alumni, faculty, graduates and their families, and others.
Degrees are conferred during morning ceremonies.
After completing her education at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Harvard
Law School, Robinson built a career in Ireland as a prominent constitutional
and civil rights lawyer and as a law professor at Trinity College. Following
two decades' service as a senator in the Irish parliament, she became the
nation's first female head of state in 1990, and transformed what many had
seen as a largely ceremonial post into a markedly more activist and progressive
role. She emphasized values of tolerance and
pluralism, and emerged (in the words of a Time magazine profile)
as "the symbol of a new Ireland," representing the nation's "renewed
self-confidence and national pride."
Robinson left the presidency last year to take the post as U.N. high
commissioner, a position created in 1994 to further the protection of human
rights worldwide. In January, Robinson led a U.N. delegation to Cambodia
to examine the status of human rights there.
Robinson joins a distinguished list of Harvard commencement speakers,
including last year's speaker, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
Other recent speakers include Harold Varmus, director of the National
Institutes of Health, in 1996; Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic,
in 1995; Vice President Albert Gore in 1994 and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 1993.
Copyright
1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College
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