The UNESCO Oration
Founded in 2013, the UNESCO Chair Oration is an annual lecture delivered by a preeminent thinker in social justice, cultural diversity and human rights.
Ms Daniela Gavshon
2025
Ms Daniela Gavshon, the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch, delivered a speech entitled ‘Making the Most of Middle Power Status: Australia, Human Rights, and a Changing World’, on 29 September 2025
Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman
2024
Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner, Mr Giridharan Sivaraman, delivered a speech entitled ‘The Racism of Benign Assimilation’, on Wednesday 21 August 2024.
▶ Watch a recording of the 2024 UNESCO Chair Oration
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Professor Marcia Langton AM
2019
Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies, Professor Marcia Langton AM, delivered a speech entitled ‘Empowering Indigenous Australians’, on Wednesday 13 November 2019.
Professor Raimond Gaita
2018
Award-winning author and moral philosopher Professor Raimond Gaita delivered the Oration titled ‘Different Ways of Saying “We”’ on Wednesday 28 November 2018.
▶ Watch a recording of the 2018 UNESCO Oration
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“It’s in conversation … that we discover, never alone but always together, what it means really to listen and what tone may properly be taken … No one can say what would happen when, through such conversations, we understood better how Aboriginal people experience the crimes committed against them and therefore how that understanding should inform the ways Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people will be able to say ‘we’, truthfully and justly.”
Professor Tim Soutphommasane
2017
Race Discrimination Commissioner, Professor Tim Soutphommasane, delivered a speech entitled ‘Middle Class Racism’.
▶ Watch a recording of the 2017 UNESCO oration
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“As a general principle we must be guided by the idea that it’s not enough to be non-racist, we’ve also got to be anti-racist … we must also be prepared to listen to the lived experience of those who experience racism. Too often those who have the courage to respond to prejudice are made to feel that they are the ones who have done wrong. We must not indulge the idea that responding to racism creates more division than the perpetration of racism.”
Arnold Zable
2016
Acclaimed writer and human rights activist, Arnold Zable, delivered a speech entitled, “Here is Where We Meet”.
▶ Watch a recording of the 2016 UNESCO oration
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▶ Read an article about the 2016 Oration in Disruptr
“We are a nation of immigrants and Indigenous people – a new world with an ancient past. These are our two grand narratives. The inclusive tale of who we are. First Nations peoples and the people of many nations bearing stories from many worlds”.
Nobel Laureate Dr Rigoberta Menchú
2015
Renowned social activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr Rigoberta Menchú, delivered her speech ”Social Justice and the Global Perspective”.
▶ Watch a recording of the 2015 UNESCO oration
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“Complimentarity means nobody can solve problems by themselves … and this gives birth to a code, the code of respect … And little by little it teaches us that we are not the only children of the planet. There are many creatures that are with us permanently. We don’t hear them, why? Because we don’t know how to listen. If we start to build a practice of listening, we’ll be able to find that the solution is very close to us. We will listen and we will start to make decisions with our ears. We won’t only make decisions with our eyes.”
Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs
2014
President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs delivered a speech on ‘The ethical dimensions of public policy making‘ on Tuesday 21 October 2014.
Deakin Distinguished Professor Fethi Mansouri
Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University and Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair for Comparative Research on Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, Professor Fethi Mansouri delivered the inaugural UNESCO Oration.