Judy Chen Hsieh awarded Honorary Doctorate at UWTSD Graduation ceremony
Judy Chen Hsieh had been awarded an Honorary Doctorate at UWTSD in recognition of her international leadership to support intercultural and interfaith dialogue and the promotion of Buddhism.
Judy was born and grew up in Taiwan, where she trained in the sciences, gaining a degree in Chemical Engineering from Taipai’s National Technology University. From here she moved into teaching, taking up her first post as a Chemistry lecturer at the Li Ming Institute of Technology in Taiwan, a college devoted to industrial cooperation, vocational courses and skills for future employment.
Over the next 30 years, her commercial activities flourished as well, ranging from international furniture imports to community wholesale operations and from local journalist to executive officer of a regional media company and from Real Estate Investments to being a yoga instructor at Richland College in Dallas – thus never losing that link with education.
Presenting Judy Chen Hsieh to the congregation was Dr Jeremy Smith, Assistant Dean of the Institute of Education and Humanities at UWTSD. He said:
“It gives me great pleasure to present to you Mrs Judy Chen Hsieh for the award of Honorary Doctorate of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
For all Judy’s commercial and business success, it was not to be the tides of international business and media that helped shape who she was or define what she did. Rather it was two seminal events, some seventeen years apart that were the drives for carving out her work in the field of peace making.
The first was in 1984, not long after she had arrived in the US, where she met for the first time the Venerable Master Chin Kung, founder of Western Pureland Buddhism. The second key date in Judy’s life was September 11th 2001, the day that hijacked passenger airplanes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. This event had a profound impact on Judy owing to the fact that whilst she was in Dallas, one of her daughters lived in New York and the other in Washington.
It represented for Judy the very antithesis of everything she believed in and had worked for and left her determined to redouble her efforts for the cause of peace. Judy now chose to use the means and methods that were at her disposal to these ends, and of course at her disposal were the media services she had developed and her business and political connections to leaders across the world, as well as her enduring passion for the transformative power of education.
Her TV stations now began to broadcast on a 24/7 basis, messages of hope, peace and compassion, through the workshops and lectures of the venerable master. Millions now came to view a vision of hope, peace and love instead of a diet of violence, hate and division. She helped organise a network of regular Inter-faith, Intercultural conferences, across the world, which brought together leaders and community spokespeople from different backgrounds, religions and ethnicities, to explore through dialogue our basic human commonalities, whatever our faith, culture or background – commonalities so often lost or ignored but actually so obviously reached through discussion.
Judy’s work in the area of interfaith, intercultural dialogue, and for the wider cause of global peace has been immense and impactful. She has worked tirelessly and with a profound sense of service, in a quiet, unassuming way and for this work we honour her today.”
On receiving her award, Judy Chen Hsieh, added: “May I thank you all for the great honour that you have given to me today.
Thank you to University of Wales Trinity Saint David for its support of the work of the Venerable Master Chin Kung. God bless everyone. Peace and harmony begins with each one of us”.
Further Information
Arwel Lloyd
Principal PR and Communications Officer
Corporate Communications and PR
Email: arwel.lloyd@uwtsd.ac.uk
Phone: 07384 467076