The 100th birthday is typically a memorable one.

And for Syracuse University’s School of Education, 100 candles were not going to be enough for its centennial celebration. The event called for more. So with a little luck and an inside connection, the SOE secured President of Ireland Mary McAleese.

McAleese’s visit today will mark the first time in the university’s history that a sitting foreign head of state will visit the Hill.

‘She’s a spokesperson for values that are important to this school of education,’ said SOE Dean Douglas Biklen. ‘She’s very, very progressive on disability issues.’ He added, ‘She’s also a feminist. So she brings a commitment to equality that is very important and certainly a part of the history of this school of education.’

The string of events that landed the Irish president on the SU Hill has been well documented in the past weeks in anticipation of her visit.

Michael Schwartz, an assistant professor at the SU College of Law, became a personal acquaintance of the president because he – like McAleese’s brother – is deaf. Together, he and McAleese worked for disability rights.

It was recently that Schwartz went to visit Biklen.

‘He came to me and he said, ‘Look, I think we can get her,” Biklen said. ‘So he and I strategized around it and enlisted Nancy’s (Cantor) help to invite her.’

McAleese’s visit has been planned down to the last detail. She will meet with 250 members of the SU community, including local Irish American leaders and Congressman Jim Walsh, at the Regency Ballroom in the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center.

At 2 p.m. McAleese will speak at Hendricks Chapel on the theme that is characterizing her visit: the social inclusion of individuals with handicaps. Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Biklen will speak before the president, and there will be a 15-minute question and answer session for those in attendance. The speech will be open to the community with seating on a first-come, first-serve basis and will be Web cast on the SOE Web site.

Prior to the speech, the president will also be visiting the Wall of Remembrance in front of the Hall of Languages to lay a bouquet in memory of the SU students who died in the 1988 terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103. After her address at Hendricks, the president will be meeting with law school students at the Disability Rights Clinic in MacNaughton Hall.

McAleese is Ireland’s eighth president, and while the position is primarily ceremonial, in many respects similar to the role of the Queen of England, there are some constitutional powers, including the president’s role as commander in chief of the Irish armed forces.

She is serving her second seven-year term as president and was formerly pro-vice chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast. She is the first president to be from Northern Ireland, a separate country from Ireland, and the president of a country she is not from.

‘When you say ceremonial, that masks the true nature of her work,’ Schwartz said. ‘Even though her position is ceremonial, she has done a lot of work, and still is doing a lot of work regarding the Troubles in the North. She and her husband are involved in that conversation.’ The Troubles in the North refers to religious-rooted conflicts within Northern Ireland.

Figurehead or not, McAleese will be the most lasting memory of the SOE Centennial celebration. And while the school started in 1906, Biklen said it was decided to extend the celebration for the entire academic year.

‘It’s a chance to celebrate the institution,’ he said. ‘So we’re going to take the whole year and have events.’

Centennial events have included a series of lecturers addressing the latest issues in education. American journalist and Emmy Award winner John Hockenberry was the keynote speaker at a major conference earlier this school year. The purpose of the celebration is to look at the history of the school to determine how SU’s SOE became the place it is today, he said.

Despite all the experience the SOE has been gaining in bringing lecturers and distinguished guests to campus, the president of a foreign country calls for a unique set of obstacles and new lessons to be learned.

‘A lot of planning goes into it,’ Biklen said. ‘There’s just a lot more detail that goes into it – probably more than any other visit.’

He explained that the first step in the planning was an advance visit from the Irish security forces. That was followed by a visit from more security specialists and the secret service. The last step was arranging the president’s transportation from the airport to campus.

‘For an event like this, you have everything timed down to every moment that she will be on campus, we know what’s happening,’ Biklen said. ‘We know who she’s going to be meeting with, who’s invited into which room she’ll be meeting. Literally, you’re scheduled down to the moment. That’s a level of planning you just don’t do with most other people.’

And logistics will not be enough for a visit of this magnitude.

‘Then you learn something about protocol,’ he said. ‘What’s the order of flags? How do you refer to the president? In what order does the president enter a room or leave a room?’

Schwartz, the SU professor who is a personal acquaintance of McAleese, knows all about spending time with the president.

‘Mary McAleese is absolutely marvelous,’ he said. ‘She’s a marvelous human being – larger than life. And very interested in the work we are doing here on campus. She’s Ireland’s greatest asset.’

Schwartz recalled a time he visited McAleese in Ireland for a conference. As she was walking to the conference room, he joined her. The media, Irish citizens and other onlookers were surrounding the president. ‘We were mobbed,’ as Schwartz described it.

In that moment of hectic busyness, McAleese turned to Schwartz to show sympathy for the recent passing of his mother.

‘She said to me, ‘I’m so sorry about your mother. What an ordeal that must have for you,” Schwartz said.

He reflected and seemed to have a firm grasp on the nature of Mary McAleese, as more than an accomplished politician and leader, but as a person.

‘I thought to myself: look where we are, we’re mobbed with people, and she took that moment to touch me, to let me know she was thinking of me and about my family, expressing her sentiment,’ Schwartz said. ‘That’s the kind of person she is.’

‘Whether you’re the president of the United States or the janitor who cleans the halls of the university, or a student or whom ever, there is no vertical hierarchy in Mary’s eyes we’re all equal,’ he said. ‘She treats us with kindness and love.’

It was this outlook which helped McAleese rise from a broadcaster and academic to the elected-equivalent of the English Queen in Ireland. But despite the range of issues she addresses as president, education has played an important role in tenure and will be at the heart of her SU visit.

Yet the education system in Ireland does not entirely line up with its American equivalent.

‘The education system is so different,’ said Dale A. Tussing, an SU economics professor who wrote a book on Irish education, ‘Educational Expenditure in Ireland: Past Present, and Future.’

‘In general, the government doesn’t run the schools,’ he said.

The system is based on local parishes running schools with government money. The majority of these schools are Catholic, as 94 percent of Ireland is Catholic. But there are some schools that are becoming more progressive and secular.

Tussing recently spent some time in Ireland, preparing a more recent book on the Irish healthcare system, and summarized the current political scene as a time of excitement, because elections will be held in May. McAleese is not up for election, as the president is on a different cycle than the parliament.

Despite what many Americans may perceive of Ireland, the Troubles with Northern Ireland are not the primary political issue in the Republic of Ireland.

‘You might think that that issue is bigger than it is. It’s not the main issue in Ireland,’ Tussing said. ‘It’s important to them. But just the kind of bread and butter issues that are important to us, jobs, the economy, healthcare and so forth. They tend to dominate elections.’

Tussing added that the major parties have similar views on the country’s policy toward its northern brethren. While the parties had been split in the past, it is really not as big of an election issue any more.

‘It’s not going to be a big political issue. It’s the Irish issue that is most covered in the U.S.,’ Tussing said. ‘But that doesn’t make it the biggest issue in Ireland.’

No matter what the U.S. misconceptions are of Ireland, Tussing finds it appropriate that the first foreign head of state to visit SU is from the Emerald Isle.

‘The U.S. has traditionally had such a strong affiliation with Ireland. There are many more people of Irish ancestry living in this country than there are in the entire population of Ireland,’ he said.

‘I personally couldn’t be more pleased, I’m excited by it. I’m going to try and present her with a copy of my book,’ Tussing said.

While faculty attending today’s Sheraton luncheon were told there would be no opportunities to meet with her, Tussing didn’t complain about security policies.

‘I regret it. To me it would be a big deal. I met the previous president,’ he said. ‘I had no problem meeting her in Ireland, but maybe the security is different.’

The implications of this visit could have significant value for future speakers brought to SU.

‘Certainly something like this is very good for the visibility of the university, and I think it has to be inspiring to our current students as well as to our alumni that we would have a head of state and particularly someone who is this progressive,’ SOE Dean Biklen said.

Biklen compares her visit to winning an award and rolling with the momentum.

‘It’s like anything,’ he said. ‘When somebody wins an award, they probably win more future awards, because you know they are seen as having been anointed in some way.’

Published on May 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm