Brisbane, 02 May 2023: The latest cohort of University of Queensland (UQ) Ramsay Scholars have been officially welcomed at a special reception celebrating the UQ/Ramsay Centre partnership at Brisbane’s Custom House.
The annual UQ Ramsay Scholars’ Dinner was attended by the University’s Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, approximately 100 UQ Ramsay Scholars from all cohorts, and representatives of the Ramsay Centre’s Executive and Board.
This is the fourth intake of Ramsay Scholars into UQ’s extended major in Western Civilisation, which is the single most competitive humanities course for entry in Australia. Several of the 2020 UQ Ramsay Scholars will graduate later this year.
Thanks to a partnership agreement between the Ramsay Centre and UQ, Ramsay Scholars are supported to study Western Civilisation in either UQ’s Bachelor of Advanced Humanities (Honours) degree, or in its Bachelor of Humanities/Bachelor of Laws (Honours) dual degree, through scholarships worth up to $32,000 p.a. for up to five years. The scholars are taught in small class groups and receive academic mentoring.
Approximately thirty scholarships are awarded each year to academic high achievers who desire to make a difference. Each year the program also accepts increasing numbers of students without a scholarship into the major, reflecting the course’s growing popularity.
The program is led by internationally-acclaimed classicist, Professor Alastair Blanshard, and promises to immerse students in ‘…a creative and diverse curriculum with a strong focus on key intellectual works – artistic, musical, literary – that have shaped Western Civilisation from antiquity to the current day.’
UQ Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Deborah Terry AO, praised the program, which she said had made its mark in the life of the university, the city of Brisbane, and the wider community. She pressed the need for the course, saying that while automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing our lives, the study of humanities, including Western civilisation, is essential.
“We need to heed the lessons of history as we navigate the social consequences of an unprecedented rate of technological change,” Professor Terry said.
“We need leaders who understand the intellectual foundations of our laws and the origins of democracy, and who deeply embrace the importance of freedom of speech, diversity, and intellectual curiosity. We need leaders who appreciate the roles art, music and great literature play as windows into both the history and the core nature of humanity, what it means, what is stands for and what we need to protect.”
UQ Chancellor Mr Peter Varghese AO said while he always looked forward to graduation ceremonies, he particularly looked forward to them this year, given the opportunity to confer the first batch of graduates from the Western Civilisation course, which he described as a “milestone within the history of the university.”
Mr Varghese said at a time when identity politics at the individual level is becoming more and more a feature of our social and political conversations, it is hugely important to understand the identity of the society we live in.
“Australia is a country, a nation and society which has been shaped by very many things,” Mr Varghese said. “It’s been shaped at the most primordial level by our geography and where we are, it’s been shaped by the oldest continuous civilisation in our Aboriginal Australians, it’s been shaped by an extraordinary multicultural contribution and experience. And it has been shaped by the Western tradition and Western civilisation and it is not possible to understand ourselves, to understand this country without understanding that – by no means the only influence on Australia but a very, very important influence.”
Ramsay Centre Director Dr Amanda Bell AM acknowledged the extraordinary generosity of the late Paul Ramsay AO, who left a large part of his endowment to foster the study of the great formative works and institutions of our civilisation, making the special partnership with UQ possible. Dr Bell described Paul Ramsay as one of Australia’s greatest philanthropists and appealed to the scholars to value their opportunity “as much as Paul Ramsay valued the young people of the future when he imagined his philanthropic vision for you and others like you.”
Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines also appealed to the scholars to make the most of their studies, saying that reading Great Books expands our brain capacity, making us more able to absorb detailed, meaningful information and contextualise the present, in a way that social media never enables us to do.
2021 Ramsay Scholar Jamie Robbins who is studying a double degree in Law and Humanities spoke on behalf of the scholars at the event. Alongside his studies, Jamie has consulted to the Indonesian government on the environment, worked on a recent Royal Commission, and is the 28th Youth Governor of Queensland, delivering the state’s premier non-partisan youth program.
Jamie said the Ramsay Scholarships and degrees were life-changing, enabling some scholars to relocate to study at UQ, others to immerse themselves in their studies with less financial strain, and others to work alongside their degrees in areas that align with their future aspirations.
But he said the real gift received by the scholars was the “glimpse of the broad church that is the Western canon” which enhanced the students’ ability to engage in critical thinking and objective reason, see shades of grey, and engage meaningfully in the middle ground; all needed he said, to ensure the survival of great Western liberal democracies.
The Ramsay Centre and UQ entered a partnership in 2019. Worth approximately $50 million over eight years, the partnership enables UQ to offer at least 150 undergraduate scholarships over that period and to hire world-class educators to teach its Western civilisation program.
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098/ sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org
For more information on the centre please visit our website: www.ramsaycentre.org