The Library is thrilled to congratulate our immediate past Chair of 17 years Jozefa Sobski AM on receiving an Honorary Doctor of Education from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) honouring her lifelong commitment to women’s human rights and empowering women through education.
Jozefa was advised by Chancellor Catherine Livingstone AC that UTS Council had decided to confer on her the honorary degree. She was also invited to give the Occasional Address at the graduation ceremony for the students of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Business.
Below is the Occasional Address given by Jozefa Sobski AM on 5 May 2025. She was introduced by Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Andrew Parfitt.
Occasional Address University of Technology Sydney
5 May 2025
Jozefa Sobski AM
Chancellor, Catherine Livingstone AC
Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Andrew Parfitt
Professor Mark Evans, Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Professor Carl Rhodes, Dean UTS School of Business
Ms Jacqui Wise, Pro-Vice Chancellor – Students
Representatives of UTS Council and Academic Board
Graduands, family, friends and members of the community
May I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders and descendants and all Aboriginal people present today. We are on Aboriginal land never ceded.
I am profoundly grateful to the University of Technology, Sydney for this opportunity to address you today and for the honour which it has bestowed on me. My surprise at the honour is equaled only by my gratitude for the recognition of my work in education and advocacy for women’s rights and equality.
I embrace recognition because for me it is another opportunity for promoting equity, diversity and inclusion. All of which, the university proudly asserts through its teaching, research and partnership and engagement with its communities and businesses. In particular, women’s organisations are grateful for its support of research and community education to end the scourge of domestic violence with the Paul Ramsay Foundation’s Fellowship program and Professor Anne Summers.
I want to begin by paying tribute to teachers here present and all those who labour daily in classrooms, lecture theatres and laboratories and workshops throughout our fortunate nation; all of them, dedicated, caring and committed, deserving of equal recognition. I acknowledge, in particular, my partner in life, Bronwyn Thorncraft, who has persevered as an educator for well over forty years; sewing seeds of knowledge; brightening young lives with a creative and inspiring pedagogy rooted in experience, matched with a deep and instinctive understanding and analysis of how her students best learn.
All of you today will be embarking or returning into a world of work. It is set in the larger context of a world riven by numerous conflicts, huge movements of peoples seeking a better life, plagued by uncertainty and divided by deep opinions on global directions and social values. The gauntlet has been thrown down to Universities in the nation that has performed as a leader of the so-called “free” world. Academic freedom of thought and inquiry is being threatened. This beacon of democracy, with its supposed separation of powers, has been plunged into disarray. Internationally, leaders are scrambling in quest of a response to this new world disorder.
Cherished and reliable institutional frameworks are being dismantled. International rules, observed for decades, sometimes imperfectly, are being undermined or simply ignored or trashed. Diplomatic courtesies are being dispensed with and replaced with vulgarities. Disarray, disorder and disruption underpinned by disrespect.
The cruel cuts to Aid programs have banished any chance of a basic education for millions of girls and those in marginalized communities.
You will fortunately enter, however, still intact, Australian democratic frameworks in your chosen areas of work and social activity. If you are returning to another country, strive to shape its future within a state that defines and protects human rights. This University has equipped you with skills and knowledge and the tools for thinking; for analysis; for gathering evidence; for developing solutions to problems and applying an ethical and moral compass to your endeavours.
Embrace these gifts. They are precious. They prepare you to negotiate through the difficulties and problems you will continue to encounter throughout your lives; as well as providing you with the ability to make a difference.
Think globally, act locally is not just a trite slogan. It points to a way of working that enables you to make your small difference in your lifetime. In a society and world where there is increasing concentration of wealth and increasing inequality, you all have a role to play in ensuring that wealth redistribution, through our social services and public institutions, is a goal in our democracy for all governments.
The weaponization of wealth by tyrannical tycoons to distort this goal and present it as robbing the society through taxation or the provision of social services by faceless, useless bureaucrats, needs to be thoroughly debunked and deconstructed. Wealth does not assure the wealthy of wisdom. Wealth can be an enabler for action that aims to achieve a better, fairer, more just world as well as that comfortable life. When it nourishes hubris and arrogance, it is destructive and ultimately costs all in our society.
Finally, leaving as graduates, you are more confident, resilient, knowledgeable and with the competencies to take on an ever-changing world. Technological innovation with the evolution of generative artificial intelligence will bring many benefits to all with its attendant risks. This will require vigilance and new ways of working. Hopefully, it will assist us to steer a path to a more sustainable future.
Our footprint on the planet must be lightened so that we can bequeath to the next generation a world where the negative effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity have been arrested and are being reversed. You all have a role to play.
As a young first-generation migrant living in the western suburbs of Sydney, I was encouraged by my beloved parents to view education as the key to opening many doors. It did for me open doors. It gave me an understanding and critique of the world and a belief that I could make a difference.
We live in a democratic, prosperous country. It is a great privilege, one that not all on the planet enjoy. We have achieved a tertiary level of education. We must become models of its merits. It has contributed, we hope, to the development of our humanity as well as our intelligence. It has imbued us with compassion, generosity and a sense of social justice. It is certainly in the mission of this fine higher education institution.
Educated and living in a democracy, we carry responsibilities and obligations beyond our immediate circle of family, friends and work colleagues. I believe we have a duty to become active, engaged and contributing citizens, not just on our devices, but visibly in our communities. This demands practical involvement in our community in small ways or on broader platforms. We are still free to choose!
As you graduate and celebrate today, reflecting on your aspirations for the future, reflect also globally. Continue your openness to ideas, to learning, to honing your skills and expanding your knowledge. Our community needs you. It wants you to grasp complex problems and offer solutions. It expects you to lead with imaginative energy towards a peaceful and just world.
Heartiest and warmest congratulations to you all! May you prosper in your work and flourish in friendship and family.
