Today is a special day for all of us.
Most of you completed your last exams, and this means being free of CEU – when professors turn your last grades in, you will have your diplomas. Congratulations!
10 months ago, in the Auditorium, I promised you a year full of challenges, of friendships and even of fun. Looking into your eyes now, I can tell that at least some of that came true – despite classes, assignments, exams and deadlines. In terms of sheer numbers, you spent 150 teaching days in school– and each and every one of you spent at least 16.800 minutes or 336 hours in the classroom, and the cohort as a whole passed 71 exams in 30 exam days. Even saying these numbers out loud is hard work. Very-well done!
Some of you did more than attend classes and pass exams. The Vienna Moot court team and the Hult Prize teams took the name of the University to new places. Others organized campaigns and events to share with the rest of us with what matters to them beyond readings, assignments and papers.
The student representatives made an excellent job in supporting the Department’s self-study efforts for this year’s regular review. I would like to thank them each for not only soliciting opinions and participation in these meetings, but also for encouraging students to provide insight which would have been impossible to gather otherwise.
The Department, and especially the IBL program, will see important personnel changes with the next academic year. Professor Varady is retiring after 23 years at CEU, while Professor Messmann in leaving after 17 years. They have been honored by colleagues earlier this week in a small ceremony. They sure leave large shoes to fill. So please give some encouragement to Professor Tajti who will take over as chair of the IBL program from the next academic year!
Colleagues and friends know that I really am not a person for group photos and long speeches. Today, however, is a very special day, and I would like to take a few more minutes to mark it. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court finally came to recognize marriage equality. So we did wake up to a better world today.
How does it sound like?
“A democratic, universalistic, caring and aspirationally egalitarian society embraces everyone and accepts people for who they are. To penalise people for being who and what they are is profoundly disrespectful of the human personality and violatory of equality. … Respect for human rights requires the affirmation of self, not the denial of self. Equality therefore does not imply a levelling or homogenisation of behaviour or extolling one form as supreme, and another as inferior, but an acknowledgement and acceptance of difference.”
This sounds good and very right -– but this is not what Justice Kennedy said for the US Supreme Court yesterday. This is what Justice Albie Sachs said for the South African Constitutional Court in their same sex marriage decision in 2005 –almost 10 years ago. [Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie, CCT 60/04, decision of December 1, 2005, para 60]
While the US Supreme Court’s coming around on same sex marriage is historic, it is not unprecedented – at best, it is timely.
It is of course momentous that Justice Kennedy got to write yesterday that “The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest. With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.” [Obergefell v Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015,) slip 17-18]
Getting the U.S. Supreme Court to this acknowledgement is a major victory for the human rights community. Yet, first and foremost it is a victory for those who worked to make this very case happen. Those of us who were watching from the sidelines should remind ourselves that such victories are possible, and that such victories are brought along as a the result of the efforts (successes and failures) of people just like us.
All this week’s victory took was decades of hard work, community building, awareness raising, research and lobbying, and of course, in the end, some lawyers to file these suits. It took commitment, perseverance, being able to stand up when knocked down, forging alliances across tribal divisions and across continents. Talking to friends was as important in getting here as was talking to foes – or at least trying to talk to them.
This momentous victory should remind us all that such changes do not just happen: they are made to happen, by people like us. Making such change happen takes more than tweets and posts, but it does not take more than what you and us (we) are very-well trained to do.
I would urge you all to take a moment and look around. There are many victims of human rights violations right around us who are still waiting for their day in court. You do not need to look too far to see refugees stumbling, persons with disabilities locked up in large institutions, children not getting access to proper education due to their gender or skin color. When you look at them you see victims, suffering, desperation. I would challenge you to see a client and a cause without the advocate who can make a difference.
So, to echo the Rector’s words from last week, it is time people: Go out, and change the world!
And trust me on this one: you can do it!
The full version of Professor Uitz's farewell address is available here:
