Academic Honors Convocation Address 

Prof. Elizabeth DePoy

2007 Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award Winner

May 11, 2007

It is my great privilege to be here tonight for several reasons. First, I am humbled and honored to have been selected by my esteemed colleagues at the University of Maine for this award.  And second, it is a gift for me to be able to address and celebrate the students being honored here tonight (in five minutes as promised to Dean Sandweiss). 

We are not the sole owners of our accomplishments and I therefore begin with expressing my deep gratitude to those who are with me whether or not they know it:

First, my students have learned, struggled, laughed and grown with me and through our discussions and their insights I have learned much.

Second, many scholars from so many different fields have unbeknownst to them personally lectured to me in the privacy of my own home. Through reading their writings, I have traveled through time, across the globe and through the thinking of individuals who have devoted their lives to scholarship and teaching. And I am sure that Amazon.com and I have reciprocal admiration, as I am the one-click queen.

I owe much to my teachers, colleagues, friends and family, whose discussions and perspectives, no matter how different from mine have contributed to my thinking.

I want to give special thanks to Lu Zeph and Sandy Butler, who had the confidence in me to nominate me.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge my beloved husband, Stephen Gilson. He brings his intellect, creativity, dignity, love, support, spirituality and humor to our lives and thus to my scholarship. He stimulates and criticizes my thinking. And because he and I collaborate on so much of our scholarship, his work is being honored by this award as well.

Now let me get to my second reason, to address and celebrate the men and women who have completed their graduate degrees and certifications.

It is no secret that the world that we inhabit is complex. Our neighborhoods and environments are no longer limited to physical space. We can be at home and abroad simultaneously, we participate in tragic as well as joyous world events from our armchairs, and engage in communication with people who we only know through their ideas transmitted through virtual spaces. In the academy, we are urged to respect diversity at the same time that we are bemoaning McDonaldization, themeing, having our identities homogenized, marketed and designed in the name of profit.

Reconciling this conceptual dilemma has been a major theme in my collaborative work with Stephen Gilson. Traditional views of diversity have been located in our bodies and backgrounds, and while this perspective remains important, by itself it is limited for thinking about the complexity of the 21^st century. Informed by others, we have redefined diversity as pluralism of ideas. As stated by Molan, a sociolinguist, who in her recent book creatively analyzed the intersection of discourse, diversity and geographic location, “We all organize the world in different ways; we break it up into different categories and decide what goes into which category based on backgrounds, and the experience that we bring to any interpretation of the world. This is true for scholars as well as inhabitants of a neighborhood”

So how do we reach the destination of making sense of this pluralism and rich yet sometimes confounding diversity? How do we reach the destination of finding what is true or feasible for each of us, for following our passions and making our contributions to improve such a complex world which no longer holds a single view as truth?

From your graduate education at the University of Maine, you have acquired the ruby slippers to reach these destinations of understanding and contribution to what Kukathas refers to as the archipelago or “a free society which is prepared to tolerate in its midst, associations which differ or dissent.”

In my scholarship and I trust that in your graduate education at the University of Maine, difference and dissent of ideas, or diversity, are not only to be tolerated but form the basis of higher education, scholarship, learning, intellectual development, and democracy, within the context of respectful dialog and negotiation of ideas in an open, uncensored, and ongoing fashion.

Let’s return to Oz now to identify how you use your ruby slippers to reach these destinations. First, when you hear or generate your own ideas, click your heels together and ask, “how do you know?” While this question may not make you the life of the party,  the answers that you receive from yourself and others  will give you a rich tapestry of the values, knowledge and beliefs that support diverse ideas and claims and on which you can evaluate those claims, accept them, reject them or hold them in abeyance for future consideration.

Next, click your heels together and ask yourself “ so what?” Why is knowing ideas and their foundations important (or not) and how do I use what I know? Do I teach others, do I counter the ideas presented? Do I synthesize ideas to develop new perspectives? Do I keep ideas to myself for a day when I can put them to innovative use in my field whether it be aquafarming, equality of access to resources, expression, performance, architecture, journalism, technology, recreation and sports, social change?

Through your graduate education at the University of Maine you have become the scholars of today and tomorrow. The destination of creation and nurturance of the archipelago is in the diversity, discussion and negotiation of your ideas and informed action.

Congratulations to you all and to those who stand with you as you receive the acknowledgements of your accomplishments.

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