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ADDRESS TO THE 150TH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY ROBINSON, TO THE 150TH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, 19 MAY 1995

I am honoured to be here today at Fordham University's Rose Hill Campus and for your kind invitation to be the Commencement Speaker at the one hundred and fiftieth Annual Commencement of this great Institution.

A century and a half has passed since students and faculty gathered here for that first commencement. The United States was then still a new nation striving, as it has in all the years that have followed, to form "a more perfect union".

In Ireland, the Great Famine began in 1845 and Irish people experienced one of the darkest chapters of our history. From that time of pain and grief, Ireland and the United States were to forge unbreakable bonds that have continued to this day.

In the years that followed, millions of Irish people made a lonely journey across the Atlantic in search of a new life. They remained in America to work in its factories, to build its towns and railways, and to play their full part in its local communities. They found here a home away from home.

"Ireland" wrote a leading European statesman of that time, "is passing forth. It is wending its way to the North American States .... to ask for an empty space of ground". From that space of ground was to grow much that is America.

The United States in that year of your first commencement was still discovering and re-defining itself; expanding across the continent; seeking to develop and enlarge political institutions established on ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

For Irish people, America from the beginning represented a land formed from the belief that men and women could progress by reason and personal commitment and by continually moving forward in search of new beginnings.

Over the years since its foundation, Fordham University has come to reflect the events and forces that have shaped American history. It has symbolised an America proud of its beliefs and its place in the world but also proud of its diversity and always marked by a quality of ingrained and deep optimism in the future.

This great University was founded by a distinguished Irishman, Tyrone-born Archbishop John Hughes. John McCluskey, your first President and later America's first Cardinal, built on this work and forged close links between Fordham and Ireland. Those links have endured to this day. They remain a source of great pride and satisfaction to us in Ireland.

In recent days and weeks, the world has paused to remember and reflect on the events of fifty years ago when a great evil was vanquished. We have remembered with sadness that this evil was allowed to happen in our time and the terrible price that was paid by millions of innocent people. As we enter the closing years of this century, the international community must dedicate itself with renewed commitment and determination to making certain that such events can never happen again.

The challenge of giving free institutions continuous expression and definition remains our best agenda for the future. Abraham Lincoln put this well when he urged his fellow Americans to "think anew and to act anew". We can do no less today.

It has been an abiding strength of American democracy that your vision of democratic Government and freedom under law has always remained vibrant and dynamic. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson in their time sought to extend and enlarge the practice of political participation and political pluralism in this country. At a time of great peril, Abraham Lincoln guarded and preserved the free institutions handed down by the Founding Fathers. Franklin Roosevelt in the difficult years of the Depression told Americans that all they had to fear was fear itself. John Kennedy urged his fellow citizens to embrace a new frontier and committed his Administration to extending to all Americans those civil rights that are your birth right.

This American vision of faith in progress and of strengthening democratic institutions through a cherishing and honouring of diversity has been a signal theme in your history and of your relationship with the world.

For America and for the world, this is now a time of hope and great challenge. With the ending of the Cold War, the forces of change are at work almost everywhere. Our task in the international community must be to shape change in ways that foster and expand freedom and to do all in our power to strengthen international co-operation and international institutions so that they truly reflect both the diversity of our world but also our inter-dependence.

For us in Ireland, this is also a time of special promise and opportunity. The achievement of peace after a quarter a century of violence has brought a real hope that we can now, working together, achieve a new beginning and a new partnership in the relationship between both traditions on our island. The foundation of this new relationship will be respect and honour for the identity, aspirations and cherished convictions of all.

It is important to say here how much Irish people of both traditions value and appreciate the support and friendship of the United States. You have shown the concern and support of a true friend. In a signal gesture of goodwill, President Clinton will later this month host in Washington a White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland. This support by the United States for the achievement of lasting peace and reconciliation on our island counts for a great deal with us in Ireland.

I have spoken of the close and enduring bonds between Ireland and the United States. Today, that relationship remains as strong as ever but it is also taking new shape and form as part of the wider relationship between Europe and the United States.

Ireland's membership of the European Union has enlarged and expanded our political horizons and offered us a new appreciation of the challenges and opportunities facing the international community. Ireland's support for the process of European integration has not in any sense altered the great importance we attach to our relationship with the United States. Rather, our membership of the Union has helped to reinforce and give new strength to this relationship, not least in the economic area.

Free access to European markets has significantly added to the attractions of Ireland as a location for inward US investment. This has been to our mutual economic benefit. The United States is today the largest source of international investment in Ireland, accounting for a significant proportion of foreign companies operating in our country.

I believe that Ireland can make its own distinctive and important contribution to further enhancing understanding between the United States and the European Union. Successive Irish Governments have been in the forefront of efforts to promote this process. It is a matter of pride for us in Ireland that the present structure of dialogue and partnership between the European Union and the United States, the 1990 Transatlantic Declaration, originated in an initiative taken by Ireland during our last Presidency of the European Union in 1990.

In 1880, the Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell addressed the United States Congress and said he had witnessed "so many tokens of the good wishes of the American people towards Ireland".To stand here today, is to feel an enormous pride in the role played by millions of Irishmen and women in the building of America over the years. This University is an enduring part of that legacy.

I am delighted to be present at this ceremony today and I am honoured to have been asked to deliver the Commencement address. I wish this great University well and all of its students every success in the future. We in Ireland are deeply proud of all that you have achieved over the years and we are proud of our own close relationship with Fordham. To be here today is to truly feel at home and for that I am most grateful.