A healthcare leader who helped overthrow apartheid in South Africa has been awarded with his honorary graduate from the University of Suffolk.
Nursing students graduating were praised by Professor David Croisdale-Appleby OBE at their ceremony on Monday morning.
Professor Croisdale-Appleby joined mental health nursing and adult nursing students on Ipswich Waterfront.
His current roles include chair positions at the Royal College of Physicians, Dementia UK, Healthwatch England and the Durham University Business School, and has spent the last 25 years working to improve the lives of disabled, disadvantaged and vulnerable people.
Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Croisdale-Appleby, who has five masters degrees and a PhD, said: "The most important value you must hold is kindness.
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"The impact of being kind will support the care that you are delivering to patients.
"In my association with the students at this university. I have found pronounced character traits which are more strongly evident than in many other universities, because here I found the students are encouraged to challenge the status quo, to question authority, to seek and discover truths for themselves."
Professor Croisdale-Appleby has chaired some 20 organisations in a diverse range of fields, including forensic science, health policy and practice, law, medical education, business schools and regulators.
He has also held 14 ministerial appointments in the UK and internationally.
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During the 1970s, he also played a big part during apartheid South Africa, developing the election strategy of the then-newly formed Progressive Federal Party, which became the formal opposition party, delivering communications campaigns around the injustice and savagery of apartheid.
His public attacks on government leaders led to his arrest, interrogation and detention. His contribution to the overthrow of apartheid was formally recognised in 2009 at a government reception in Cape Town.
On being awarded the honorary graduate, he said: "It's a huge and valued privilege for me to be so honoured by this university.
"I believe that this university offers an education that inculcates this ability about how to think, rather than merely what to think."
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