The degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, was conferred on Zainub Verjee by Tamara Vrooman, Chancellor of Simon Fraser University at the June 6, 2023 convocation. Zainub Verjee delivered the Commencement Address.
“As a trailblazer, Zainub Verjee has built a formidable reputation as an artist, writer, critic, arts administrator and public intellectual in Canada and abroad. Through her work and scholarship, she has raised the level of cultural policy debate and discussion on arts in Canada and beyond. Verjee’s firm belief that art is a public good is rooted in the transformational power of arts and culture”, the university said.
In her commencement address Zainub highlighted three points. One, the urgent need to pay attention and conserve languages as every fortnight a language dies. She underlined that in the death of language the loss is profound as a community loses not only its ability for communicating its cultural repositories but its capacity to imagine. Beyond the rudimentary notion of communication, a language conveys its community’s mode of thinking.
The second point she made was about the idea of care. She made it clear that she was not talking about health care rather the political idea of Care. She said ” our culture is a system of care, and the imperative of care to repair our world is becoming increasingly realized. But we make a false assumption that caring and politics are two separate domains and not connected. There is a way to think about the link between care and politics.”
Elaborating the third point, she added, “One of the ways that she spoke about was to activate one’s agency which calls for moral courage. “It takes moral courage to act and to speak for the public good; to speak for the oppressed; to speak for a civil society; to speak for pluralism; to speak for making this world a better place”.
Dr Verjee is a recipient of honorary doctorates from OCAD University, NSCAD University and University of Victoria. She was also awarded the Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Award for outstanding contribution to the arts in 2020.
A Senior Fellow of Massey College and McLaughlin College Fellow, she is also a director on the Board of Aga Khan Museum.
Ismailimail 