 Llywodraeth, Llywodraeth Cymru. Profesor Samartin Harris is an alumnus of the School, who's made outstanding contributions in a number of areas. I could use up all of my allotted time today reading out the long list of offices he's held and the many honours he's received. But you, and he too I guess, will be relieved to know I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to focus on three areas and I'm going to be brief. First of all, Samartin is a distinguished linguist. The SOAS Department of Linguistics was the very first ever linguistics department in the United Kingdom, founded in 1932 as a centre for research and study in Asian and African languages. So it's perhaps not surprising that after making the mistake of taking his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, Samartin came to SOAS to do his PhD. He subsequently made a major contribution to our understanding of syntax, for example, so his research on the evolution of French syntax and he's had a big impact on the field through his general ownership of the highly influential Longwood Linguistics Library. He was a member of the International Committee of Historical Linguistics from 79 to 86, a member of the National Working Group for Modern Foreign Languages and Chairman of the Governors Centre for Informational Language Teaching. The key point about this is that in all of these roles he encouraged and stimulated interest in languages and language linguistics, something that is so important to us here at SOAS. The second thing just to say is that Samartin is one of our most highest profile alumni in the higher education world. He's been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex for five years and then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester for a further 12 years. Just to put that in perspective, for you the average Vice-Chancellor these days lasts about five to six years. He was the architect of the remarkably successful merger between the University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He was telling me incidentally earlier when I was saying about the number of degree ceremonies. He said, well at Manchester we had 40 degree ceremonies a year so he wouldn't be saying he'd been to dozens. He's been to hundreds of degree ceremonies. His contribution to the higher education sector more generally has been extensive. He served as Chairman of the Committee of the Vice-Chancellers and Principals for a couple of years. He's chaired a number of important reviews in higher education. In particular, and here this emphasis that is important to Sirus again in the fields of modern languages and postgraduate education. In his spare time he served on many other bodies including crucially being a member of the Sirus Governing Body and Deputy Chairman of the Northwest Regional Development Agency. He's currently President of Clare Hall, Cambridge a position from which he's retiring at the end of this summer. The third thing I just want to mention is that Sir Martin was the first Director of the Office of Fair Access, Offer, sometimes known colloquially as OFTOF, from 2004 to 2012. Offer has had a mixed press but there's been no doubting its director's commitment as the first member of his family to be educated beyond the age of 14 to the goal of creating a quality of opportunity in the university system. In a valedictory address he gave a few years ago he said, when I was appointed to the Northwest Development Agency the senior civil servant responsible said to me laughingly that it was a very, very long time since he'd appointed anyone so resolutely old labour to such a position and indeed when he was appointed to be Director of Offer there were similar comments. I'm not so sure the description of old labour is quite right but it gives an idea where Martin's sentiments and approach lie and he's striven hard over the last decade to deal with the inequalities and inequities in the higher education system and for that all of us should be grateful. So Martin is a scholar who's dedicated his life to public service. He's a good example of what Dr Miller was talking about earlier of leaders that go on from SAAAS but we shouldn't forget the personal side. When I mentioned to colleagues here at SAAAS and in other institutions that were giving him an honorary degree the standard reaction was that's a very good choice, Martin, such a nice man. Mr Chairman. It's my privilege now to present Sir Martin Harris for the award of Doctor of Literature to invite him to accept the degree and then to address the assembly. Chairman, Director, graduands, ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues but first of all can I say how genuinely delighted I am to be here how grateful I am for the director's very kind words and how specially privileged I feel to be honoured in this way by one of the two universities from which I graduated. On those two occasions I graduated properly after hard work like all of you today has been rather easier. As Paul has said SAAAS was a natural choice for me to do a PhD in Linguistics in the 60s the only other choice was Edinburgh I was a Plymouth boy and I already had a fiancé in Plymouth and Edinburgh seemed an awful long way away to two Plymouth youngsters so I was absolutely delighted when the opportunity came to come and study here. I'm very very proud of my connection with SAAAS my doctorate here started my academic career and provided a degree of intellectual and pastoral support that I think was a special then as I know you've all found it now. Just coming into the building this morning after about, it's probably about a decade since I've been in I felt at once that warmth and that collegiality which has always been such a mark of SAAAS. I was as Paul said briefly a governor but what he didn't mention was that on two occasions I was a member of working groups to look at how SAAAS should be funded. You know how these things go around in circles and on both occasions we unsurprisingly discovered that if you fund an institution by a formula that is based entirely or very largely on undergraduate student numbers then you cannot possibly protect the expertise in less frequently studied languages and cultures which is so absolutely central to the mission of SAAAS as it was then and as it is now and that some form of special funding outside a formula is necessary. One thing I've never understood is why something so self-evident needs to be rediscovered every 10 years or so. This week is a bittersweet one for me because at the end of the week I'm finally retiring after more than 51 years of direct involvement in UK higher education and if you'll excuse me the indulgence I would love to say that I wouldn't have achieved a fraction of what I've achieved without the support of that same Barbara that I talked about earlier who has been my wife now for 46 years and I would like to say that. I am however continuing as chairman of the university superannuation scheme Britain's second largest pension scheme and one that has a lot of interest to most of the people on this platform. What I would say is it's obvious isn't it that an undergraduate degree in romance philology and a graduate degree in linguistics equips you perfectly for being chairman of a vast pension funding difficult target. One last thing that Paul mentioned that I just wanted to say a word about I'm absolutely proud of having kept aloft all of my career the flag of equality of opportunity. Despite what Paul rightly said about a mixed breast it seems to me that the concept that young people of proven ability should have an equal chance to go to a selective university to engage in postgraduate work to have fair access to the labour market all of those things seem to me to be absolutely self-evident. They're not really much of a discussion at all and yet elements of the media have found them controversial and the people who held my role as director of offer have experienced that. It seems to me that a young person of ability who attends an excellent school who has supportive parents and a peer group will do well. But someone of equal ability at a poor school and with parents with no experience or knowledge of higher education isn't it reasonable that they should be considered with special care and given the opportunities that their abilities merit. I had that chance the first of my family 50-odd years ago and I think others in the position I was in then should have that chance too. It seems to me astonishing that some elements of the media take exception to that self-evident proposition. And so I was taught me as a young man from a supportive but monocultural background of the diversity of talent from other countries, from other cultures and from other ethnicities across the world. That was a revelation and an understanding that I didn't get either in my home city of Plymouth or in the monocultural undergraduate college I attended. But which I got really strongly here at SOAS and again coming in again this morning on sensed how strong that still is. That was part of diversity and equality of opportunity that seems to me that SOAS has always been particularly successful in maintaining. Mr Chairman, I'm very proud that an alma mater which gave me so much when I was so much younger has given me so much more today in awarding me this honour. And I'd like finally to say to all of you graduating today your SOAS experience will serve you well. This is a moment of opportunity for you all. Seize it and use it as you move on to the next stage of your lives. Graduans, I salute you.