Françoise accepted the honorary degree, she said, with gratitude and “as an encouragement to continue, with others, the path that has given me meaning to my life”.
The university’s role, she said, is to support “in a court of excellence” teaching and research while providing a concrete experience of knowledge, free of any authority.
She said universities were unique places of emancipation for social and ethical values such, of open-mindedness and for prevention of exclusion, for social justice, pluralism and for respect of other cultures.
But institutions, she said, were just “empty shells” without those who, on a daily basis, dedicate their energy and their talents to these principles.
“And in the field of fundamental rights, the works of Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour (Professor of Law and Anthropology in the university’s 香港六合彩资料 Business School) are in my view, and I am weighing my words carefully, among the best ones today.”
Professor Dembour’s works, she said, were among the most creative: “Professor Dembour is a model of what independent, emancipated, critical and serious academic research must be and I want to thank you most sincerely my dear Benedicte.”
With regard to human rights and, in particular, the right of freedom guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights, she said that fundamental rights belong to everyone and everyone, she said, shares the responsibility to be vigilant.
“Sometimes I have this dream that I think is rather a nightmare – what do we not see today in the reality that surrounds us and for which we will be criticised tomorrow, and probably rightly so, the growing intolerance heightened by the devastating power of the stereotype against certain persons, communities…”
She stressed: “Diversity is not to be perceived as a threat but as a source of enrichment”.
Françoise Tulkens concluded by saying that poverty was today’s most crucial issue and outlined her view by quoting philosopher Francis Bacon: “Money is like muck, not good except it be spread”.