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Moral imagination

Race Discrimination

UWS Graduation Ceremony Speech

Deputy Chancellor Gillian Shadwick
Vice-Chancellor Professor Barney Glover
Dean Professor Kevin Dunn
Graduates, families and friends of graduates

May I begin by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Darug people, and by paying my respects to elders past and present. I am honoured to be speaking with you today, on what is the happiest of days for you and your families and friends. I take special pleasure in sharing today with you because I too am a product of western Sydney. I grew up in Canley Vale and Bonnyrigg Heights. My father is a proud graduate of this university.

Growing up in western Sydney, I understand how very few of us in these parts take education for granted. For many who grow up in other parts of Sydney, university may be regarded as an ordinary feature of life. There are some for whom a university degree is not so much an achievement but an expectation. Yet I suspect there will be many of you graduating today who are the first in your family to conclude studies at university. My own father was the first in his family to finish university.

Even if you aren’t the first in your family to have reached this point, you would know the transforming power of education. You never know where a university education can take you.

Quite often the journey within a university education can itself be unpredictable. In my own experience, I began my studies as a student in economics, social sciences and law at the University of Sydney. But I never finished my law degree; I quit to take up a job working in politics, and then left for England to study political philosophy. I ended up spending five years studying political philosophy as a postgraduate. All in all, I spent nine years studying at university; I then spent three and a half more years as an academic. That adds up to 12 years in a university.

During those years I learnt one basic thing – though hopefully, not just one thing. I learnt how to think.

Now, this is a fundamental skill for a political philosopher to have. A few years ago, at a reception during his visit to Australia, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, asked me what I did. When I told him I was a political philosopher, he asked me a second time, “What do you do?” I told him I conducted research on patriotism, citizenship and national identity. Growing impatient, he asked me again: “But what do you do?” Now realising the basic question he was asking, I told him, “Well, I sit, I read, I write, and I think.” To which he responded, “And they pay you?”

Knowing how to think is the most important thing one can hope to pick up from one’s education; only one isn’t necessarily taught how to think, in the conventional sense of being taught. Rather, learning to think is something that is often done through one’s own experience. You can be taught knowledge, you can be trained to do certain things, but you can’t really be taught to think. Thinking is best done not for you, but for yourself.

I should make clear what exactly I mean when I refer to thinking. I don’t mean some mechanical way of solving a problem, or some analytical way of seeing the world – important though such abilities may be. There is also a moral component to thinking. That is to say, the thinking person is a thoughtful person. This is a person who isn’t boastful of their knowledge, but humble in their wisdom.

In my current work as Race Discrimination Commissioner, I frequently return to the need for humility and thoughtfulness. While it is often said that racism is born of hate and fear, often it is something born of ignorance and arrogance. I often say about racism that it is something that is as much about impact as it is about intention. Sometimes you don’t need to be motivated by malice in order to say or do something that has the effect of injuring someone. But before you can understand the harm caused, you must be capable of realising what you did in the first place.

The kind of thoughtfulness required here is moral imagination. It is about the human power of sympathy: the ability to imagine yourself in another person’s position, or to respect another person’s dignity. As the poet Shelley wrote, “the great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”[1]

I emphasise this point only because we often regard education in the twenty-first century in instrumental terms. Universities are regarded as engines for economic growth and innovation; degrees as a means of securing a more prestigious or well-paid job. But we mustn’t devalue the real worth of an education. A truly liberal education ennobles the mind and elevates the soul. And the university should not be reduced to a place for creating better employees or entrepreneurs. At its best, it is also a place for creating better citizens and better human beings.

To the graduates today: congratulations on your achievement. And congratulations as well to all the families who have supported you to get here today. It is no small thing to accomplish what you have completed. I wish you the very best in your endeavours. And I hope that you will not be afraid of using your moral imagination. Whatever you may be doing, I hope that you will appreciate that we are all capable of moral growth, of expanding our sympathy and understanding. Because as much as there are things that you do know, there will always be many things that you do not know.


[1] PB Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (1840).

Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination Commissioner