Citation for Professor Mary McAleese
Wednesday, 3 September, 2014
Officiator:
Award recipient:
Dr Ian Gould AM
Professor Mary McAleese
Award being conferred: Honorary Doctor of the University (DUniv)
Citation delivered by: Professor David Lloyd
Vice Chancellor and President, the University of South
Australia
The University of South Australia awards the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University to a person of eminence who has made a distinguished contribution to public service, or a field of academic endeavour or artistic pursuit.
It is my pleasure to present Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland, for the honorary degree of Doctor of the University, in recognition of her distinguished service to the global community.
Mary McAleese was the President of Ireland from 1997 to 2011. She was Ireland’s eighth president, its second female president and its first president from Northern Ireland.
In her tenure as President of the Republic of Ireland she was a key partner in the peace building discussions that led to the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Of that she said that ‘peace really began to be constructed and to emerge with the best educated and most accomplished generation in our history. It came to us as a feature of our education, of being able to critique ourselves and also construct more imaginative outcomes’.
In many of her speeches Mary talks about education releasing marginalised groups from the prison of under-achievement. The peace process itself, she says, is imperfect, but at at its core is the concept of parity of esteem, the acknowledgement that what underpins true peace is justice, equality, respect for difference and an infrastructure which reassures all citizens that they matter.

Citation for Professor Mary McAleese
Wednesday, 3 September, 2014
As you may have picked up tonight, she is genuinely interested in people and the extent to which people in our society are made to count, and believe that they count. It is not just a measure of decency, she says, it makes sound economic sense.
Addressing the Literary and Historical Society at University College Dublin she once said that the great gift that education conveys is personal empowerment, ‘the confidence and capacity to choose your own pathway through life, not a route preordained by family, not a route preordained by society, family or circumstances. To choose, also, how to use those talents and abilities which education has honed, whether to use them for purely personal advancement or to take a wider and more generous view of how they might be applied.’
Mary McAleese has published several books including: Quo Vadis?: Collegiality in the Code
of Canon Law (2013); President Mary McAleese: Building Bridges - Selected Speeches and
Statements (2011); and Love in Chaos: Spiritual Growth and the Search for Peace in Northern
Ireland (1999).
She has been recognised internationally with numerous awards, including a membership of the Royal Irish Academy, six honorary fellowships and, up to today, a total of 13 honorary degrees for the superstitious among you.
‘Building Bridges’ was the theme of her presidency and she advocated for peace and reconciliation through regular trips to Northern Ireland and by hosting visitors from the
North at her official residence.
In 2009 Forbes named Ms McAleese among the hundred most powerful women in the world.
In 2011 the words "A Uachtaráin, agus a chairde" publicly spoken by the Queen as the guest of President McAleese changed the landscape of Anglo Irish history forever.

Citation for Professor Mary McAleese
Wednesday, 3 September, 2014
In 2013, a ceremony was held to rename a very attractive bridge on the M1 motorway near
Drogheda as the Mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge to honour the former president’s contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process.
Ms McAleese has made an outstanding contribution to Irish society and to the Irish diaspora around the world. Not only is she an outstanding academic, a successful lawyer, an accomplished communicator but she is a relentless campaigner for justice and reconciliation.
Chancellor: On behalf of the University of South Australia, I am pleased to present Mary
McAleese for the honorary degree of Doctor of the University, in recognition of her distinguished service to the global community.