Since the launch of Ralston’s first MA cohort in 2022, the College has benefited enormously from the support, encouragement, and inspiration of our Chancellor, Dr Jordan Peterson.
Over the last three years Dr Peterson has engaged with Ralstonians in many settings and guises – in lectures, seminars, group conversations, and informal dialogues, as well as conferring their degrees ex officio at our Convocation and Graduation Ceremony.
When Ralston College first admitted students, the world was full of noise and uncertainty. It was essential to have a Chancellor who could provide clear guidance and instil confidence in a younger generation. Dr Peterson has been an eloquent advocate for and a fearless champion of the ideals that have, for centuries, been central to university education. As a tireless defender of free thought and speech, and as a mentor to students who seek more from contemporary life, Dr Peterson was able to cut through the confusion and sound a clarion call to young minds who aspired to something more – but did not know where or how to find it.
We share with Dr Peterson his faith in the transformative power of human civilization and the profound nourishment that its cultural treasures afford. As a Visitor of Ralston College, he continues to be part of our community of supporters, dedicated to the revival and reinvention of the university and its highest ideals.
Meanwhile, the College’s mission continues – of modelling a humanities education worthy of that name, set within a scholarly community that aspires to truth, beauty, freedom, and fellowship. We are therefore delighted to announce our new Chancellor who will take up the torch: the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Dr Iain McGilchrist.
Ralston College has hosted Dr McGilchrist several times in recent years, including for his 2024 Sophia Lectures on Wholeness, Imagination, and the Cosmos. As a result, faculty, students, and staff have come to regard him not just as an inspirational intellect but as a colleague and friend.
Dr McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine, and psychiatry.
He is also the author of a number of books, including The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva, 2021), and The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale, 2009). Dr McGilchrist maintains an online platform at Channel McGilchrist. He lives on the Isle of Skye and has two daughters and a son.
The President of Ralston College, Dr Stephen Blackwood, expressed his gratitude to both Dr Peterson and Dr McGilchrist:
“We are profoundly grateful for Dr Peterson’s indelible and invaluable role in helping to launch the College, and for serving as its Chancellor these past three years, and we are delighted to have his long-term friendship as a continued support for our future.
“It is a great honor now to welcome our new Chancellor, Dr Iain McGilchrist. As admired within academe as he is beloved outside of it, Dr McGilchrist is a humanist of astonishing depth and breadth, a renowned scientist and physician, and a shining symbol of the harmony and wholeness his work so brilliantly illuminates. The Board, faculty, students, and staff of the College are grateful beyond measure now to have him as our Chancellor.”
