THE POET Thomas Kinsella was presented with the Ulysses Medal in UCD yesterday at a ceremony where honorary degrees were conferred on seven people, including Irish Timeseditor Geraldine Kennedy.
The Ulysses Medal was inaugurated in 2005 as part of UCD's sesquicentennial celebrations, to highlight the "creative brilliance" of UCD alumnus James Joyce.
Presenting the medal to Kinsella, Prof Maurice Harmon said: "Although burdened with a keen awareness of impermanence and mutability, he has engaged creatively with the forces that threaten human relationships, achievement and existence itself.
"His sense of a menacing evil was born out of Irish conditions, the circumstances of his birth and upbringing in the Kilmainham-Inchicore area west of Dublin city, the savage destruction of the second World War and the menace of the atomic age."
Conferring on Ms Kennedy the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, Prof Mary Daly said the journalist "has been responsible - whether wittingly or unwittingly - for a number of landmark legal judgments".
"The High Court case that she took, with fellow journalist Bruce Arnold, on foot of the phone-tapping affair, affirmed the privacy of telephone conversations," said Prof Daly.
"The October 2007 High Court judgment, relating to her decision, as editor of The Irish Times, to publish, and then destroy, material from the Mahon tribunal has been described as a significant breakthrough for press freedom in Irish law. It vindicated the protection of journalists' right to freedom of expression, and the public interest in the cultivation and protection of journalists' sources of information as an essential feature of a free and effective press."
Honorary doctorates in laws were also conferred on former chairwoman of the Rape Crisis Centre and chairwoman of the Arts Council, Olive Braiden; trade union leader, author and broadcaster Des Geraghty; and leading Chinese academics Ji Boacheng and Xu Zhihong.
Doctorates in Science were conferred on German botanist Jurgen Huss and diabetes research specialist Stephen O'Rahilly.
Prof Rodney Thom said Ji Boacheng was a professor in the Business School of Renmin University of China and had been the president of the university since 2000, having previously held the post of registrar.
Dr Maurice Manning praised the long contribution to public life of Olive Braiden."When the Government had a difficult issue to deal with, the word went out, 'Send for Olive Braiden'," he said.
Prof Bill Roche said the words of Seán O'Casey about Jim Larkin were appropriate to Des Geraghty, who had been one of the architects of the social partnership model which had been credited with so much of Ireland's economic success.
Prof Maurice Boland said that Jurgen Huss was a leading expert in forestry, who had helped formulate Irish policy on forestry and had close links with UCD's own forestry programme.
Prof Catherine Godson said that Stephen O'Rahilly, a UCD graduate now chair of Metabolic Medicine in Cambridge, had developed research into the causes of Type 2diabetes and obesity at a molecular level.
Prof Godson said that Xu Zhihong is now president of Peking University, the outstanding university in Asia.
He has written over 200 papers on plant development and plant biotechnology.