President of Ireland Mary McAleese will give a speech at Hendricks Chapel as part of the School of Education’s 100th anniversary May 1. She will be the first foreign president to speak at Syracuse University while still in office, according to an SU News release.

McAleese, of Belfast, is the country’s first president from Northern Ireland. Despite recent progress in ending the country’s ongoing religious violence, the circumstances surrounding her visit relate more to her family life and positions on education for the impaired.

‘I love how progressive she is. A lot of people look at disability in pitying, patronizing terms,’ said Douglas Biklen, dean of the SOE. ‘She realizes the issue is having equal access and being free from discrimination.’

McAleese’s positions on inclusive education, which involves incorporating impaired students in mainstream classes, are in line with the SOE’s focus on the same issues, Biklen said.

The idea to invite McAleese to speak came when Michael Schwartz, a professor at SU’s College of Law approached Chancellor Nancy Cantor in early fall, saying he was personal friends with McAleese.

‘She gave a big yes to that,’ Schwartz, who is deaf, said through an interpreter about Cantor’s reaction.

Schwartz, a recent graduate of the School of Education, met the president through a mutual friend in 1995, and one of the reasons their friendship developed was because he and McAleese’s brother are both deaf, he said.

When they met, McAleese, a Catholic, was pro-vice chancellor of Queen’s University in Belfast, a primarily Protestant school, Schwartz said. She was ‘sensitive to the needs of the deaf community in Ireland,’ he said.

Schwartz hand delivered a letter from Chancellor Nancy Cantor to McAleese in November, asking her to speak at SU.

In addition to her positions on inclusive education, McAleese is also outspoken on many of the issues facing schools in the urban United States, Biklen said. ‘She’s taken on the issue of school-leaving,’ he said. ‘In urban youth particularly, there’s a low rate of completion.’

McAleese experienced the height of The Troubles, Northern Ireland’s violence fought primarily between Catholics and Protestants. ‘Her father owned a pub and it was smashed up,’ Biklen said, ‘and one of her brothers was brutally beat up.’

The president, however, has been a voice for peace and reconciliation since taking office in 1997. She is currently serving her second seven-year term in the position, which has no executive or policy role, but is elected by the Irish people to represent them at official functions. A prime minister, called the Taoiseach, holds executive power.

Published on April 2, 2007 at 12:00 pm