UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Monday, 2 December 2013 at 3 p.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR BEN TONRA, UCD School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin on 2 December 2013, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on Terence A. McCarthy
Terry McCarthy has spent a professional lifetime asking "why" and then translating that answer to millions of viewers and readers around the world. His passion has been – in his own words – “to break down received stereotypes and preconceptions about foreign cultures and ways of life.” It is evident that his genius has been to do so in such a way as to engage, fascinate and to inform.
That passion is in part a function of his own background: born in London of Irish and English parents and subsequently – at the age of eight – moving to Ireland. His education in classics and languages at Glenstal Abbey Limerick opened his world to thinking about culture, nationality and identity. He chose to undertake a Philosophy degree at UCD specifically because of the profile of the UCD Department of Philosophy in the 'continental' tradition of philosophical thinking, teaching and scholarship. In what was to become a life-long motif of mobility and exploration, Terry also secured a scholarship to study for one of his undergraduate years in Tuebingen in Germany, returning to UCD to complete his BA in 1982.
Following graduation, and inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, Terry moved on to Paris to pursue further studies in Philosophy. At this point however, he decided that the 'why's he wished to interrogate were perhaps better hunted through the jungles of journalism rather than the rolling fields of academia. That decision was undoubtedly the academy's loss.
After freelancing in Dublin for the Irish Press and a variety other newspapers, Terry decided to up sticks and travel to Latin America - in pursuit of the 'why's as to what was happening in the mid 1980s in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. He quickly developed a journalistic reputation for incisive and yet accessible analysis which was applied over the next decade in a dizzying number of contexts first with the London Independent and later with TIME magazine: he covered London’s Big Bang financial deregulation; the civil war in Cambodia, the tragedy of the Burmese military junta, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Japan’s economic bubble, the death of Kim Il Sung, China, and the death of Pol Pot.
Becoming TIME Magazine’s West Coast bureau chief in 2000 Terry's insightful powers of analysis of the strange, the foreign and the exceptionally alien was properly directed towards Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Arguably, however, it was in his move to Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 that Terry found his true calling to addressing the biggest of the 'why' questions: why war, why terror, why fear? He set up TIME’s bureau in Kabul in November 2001, covered the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and subsequently established TIME’s bureau in Baghdad. His phenomenal work in those contexts contributed to two Emmy Awards for work on Iraq and Afghanistan – and a further seven Emmy Award nominations. Terry made the full transition from print to broadcast media in 2006, becoming ABC News' Baghdad correspondent and then in 2009 moving to CBS News. For many Americans he became the face of authoritative, on the ground reporting. An illustrative example of this was a period of several months which he spent embedded with the US Marine Corps for a series within the CBS Evening News which was recognized with an Edward R Murrow award in 2011 – one of the top journalism prizes in the United States.
For the last 18 months – since the summer of 2012 - Terry has been President and CEO of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. His role here is much the same as it was in full time journalism – to bring the world home to Americans, to promote mutual understanding, to temper mistrusts, to explain and better to understand both allies and adversaries. In his lecturing across the US he is also a powerful advocate for news organizations to maintain their overseas bureau and foreign correspondents – seeing these as essential to providing meaningful synthesis and analysis of international news in an era of fragmenting and niche-oriented media.
In sum, Terry McCarthy has spent a career in pursuit of ‘why’; from wrestling with Foucault to travelling out into the streets of Baghdad. Terry’s exploration of the ‘whys’ in life will undoubtedly continue and UCD, his Alma Mater, proudly honours him today for the work he has done in communicating, translating and sharing our common humanity.
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Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.