 Distinguished faculty, dear graduands, I'm deeply humbled and grateful to be awarded an honorary fellowship by this extraordinary school, renowned throughout the world for its scholarship, unique expertise, and activist student body. I've been happily married to a Suas alumna for 21 years, 21 years of living with counsel for the opposition, lovingly formidable as you all are. On the theme of activism, I very much believe the secret of a life well spent rests in the art of making small but critical adjustments at the right moment in everything we do. Serving others too, yes, certainly that is a proven course to a meaningful life, whatever our careers may be, but doing so will always be neater when we calibrate our actions well and maintain within ourselves a healthy dose of humility. It is a break we all need. The opposite is also true. Can there be anything more corrosive and dispiriting than human arrogance and conceit? I saw the consequences of this 27 years ago as a 30 year old peacekeeper in Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina when what began as half truths or half lies uttered by academics and politicians in the 1970s and 1980s became outright lies in the 1990s, lies and the annihilation of people. A lie alone is meaningless, just a shabby accessory of the lie or nothing more. To become something dangerous, wicked even, gullibility is required. So how could it be that so many people around the world are so suggestible or deceivable? It is as if the delicate sensory and cerebral mechanisms allowing us to distinguish the real from the unreal have been so eviscerated by a sense of boredom and a desire for fantasy we are left to wonder if these mechanisms ever existed in the first place. Cross-referencing facts would for many today be almost considered a complete novelty. Without practicing common sense and placing events within their appropriate historical frames, the poison of all societies is too easily disgorged. The poison that drove the former Yugoslavia into war in the 1990s or drove Spain into war in the 1930s, the poison of overreaction. Overreaction and its inseparable partner, stupidity. Cecil Lewis made reference in 1936 to the invincibility of human stupidity, and this before he experienced World War II. Should you ever visit the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park here in the US, you will see Eleanor Roosevelt's copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's the second draft and it begins with these words, considering that ignorance and contempt for human rights have been the principal causes for the sufferings of humanity. Ignorance and contempt. It took over a hundred million deaths in two world wars in the Holocaust before our predecessors could agree on these words contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In advocating the rights enumerated in it today and how relevant they still are, we do need to avoid overreacting and be self-aware. Half as of Shiraz puts it thus, 10,000 idiots. It is always a danger to aspirants on the path when they begin to believe and act as if the 10,000 idiots who so long ruled and lived inside have all packed their bags and skipped town or died. Apply common sense. Remember Hafiz. Strong advocacy, yes, but with humility and humor. Infuse your advocacy with those qualities and you give your voice extraordinary power. One only needs the courage to try it. The fine, so as faculty has done its work. Your instructors and professors should be very proud. Indeed, we all are. Keep the friendships you've created with your fellow students. Never lose that energy or self-confidence that brought you here and carried you through this remarkable school. Dispense with fear. You're about to graduate from SOAS. You can do anything. Let's rejoice.