I’m writing this post in what I think is the fifth week of my research leave. I’d originally intended, like the last time I had a research sabbatical, to blog my way through it. Instead, you find me here catching up on something I meant to write back in the summer of 2022.

Maybe the second research leave of a person’s academic career (masive privilege as it is) is about catching up? Finding my feet again? – but this is another post.

In the summer of 2023 I gave three speeches as the public orator of Newcastle University. The first two consisted of a pair of commendations to mark the award of honorary doctorates to Frances (Fran) Bradshaw and Anne Thorne. The third was a single commendation for Lonnie Bunch III. All the speeches took a long time to prepare, and I ended up being quite proud of them. Each speech had many things that needed working out: how to incorporate the language architecture into the praise of Fran and Anne, for example, or how to make clear that Lonnie succeeded in the face of horrendous racial prejudice.

It was, however, the experience of delivering these speeches that really struck me. For all my planning, and rewriting of the material, there were two things I hadn’t really thought about. The first was the layout of the room. The orator addresses the graduands at a podium. The honorary graduate is on that podium, and thus slightly behind and to the right of me. On top of that, they are joined on the podium by members of the faculty whose undergraduates are receiving their degrees that day. All this to say that I had to deliver my praise of eminenent architects and a historian without being able to see the response of those eminences or that of the subject specialists. All I could feel, it seemed, was their eyes boring into the back of my skull as I spoke.

Of course, everyone was nice to me afterwards and complimented me on the quality of the speeches. But that brings me to the second thing. Of course everyone was nice afterwards: why on earth would anyone come up to me and say that I had ruined the day? To say that would be to admit fault on the university’s part (be it for appointing me to this role, or for letting me exercise it), and somehow to make official that the ceremony – a kind of transaction between the honorary graduate and the institution – had not achieved its aim. I suppose this could be a comforting thought: my speeches are too important to fail. On the other hand, though, I try and make those speeches as good as I can because I have no way of establishing their quality other than my own judgment.

I think this is a peculiar feature of what we might call official oratory, speaking – as I do – in the voice of an institution. Other kinds of oratory – summing things up for the jury, addressing a congregation, delivering a soliloquy, making a best man speech, and so on – these all allow you both the chance to read the responses of your primary audience and, in the wake of the event, some kind of feedback on your performance.

I’m currently down to write a speech for someone else to deliver in the next round of awards. That adds a whole other layer to this.