Introduction
Good afternoon,
Thank you for the opportunity to address this distinguished group. I am delighted to be with you today.
This presentation is about human beings, about human transformation, about the new prospective of our social time. This is also about that elusive substance which helps human beings transform themselves: the concept of difference. It can be the key to the unfolding of human potential and collaboration. Equally, it can become its own worst enemy; an agent of exclusion and division.
This conference gives us an opportunity to further our understanding of the cultural nuances that make all great cultures what they are today. And critically, it helps us learn how different cultures influence the shape, and focus, and mechanics of higher education in various places in the world.
Perhaps even more profoundly, our dialogue will help us grow in our appreciation for the universality of fundamental research, and the universality of the pursuit of discovery.
That process of understanding the other, and even breaking down the cultural barriers between self and other by building on common ground: that is a process I know we are all energized to take up.
And that is a process that contributes to making intercultural dialogue richer, and more creative.
Universities and Universality
In our rapidly evolving, and so often turbulent world, the importance of this conversation or dialogue is so critical and timely.
Never before have so many been engaged with university education and research around the world. Never before have universities been so prolific. We must seize the opportunities for intercultural dialogue and social progress that our modern knowledge-society yields.
Just the same, never before has the need for intercultural dialogue been so great. In the face of global economic, environmental, and social challenges and conflicts, education is more critical today than ever. Today’s students should be able to meet these challenges and help build better communities of cultural diversity.
In the next few minutes, I will try to explain specifically what role universities can and should play and, more importantly, how we need to adapt so that we can be better aligned with the needs and demands of our broader society.
Universities Then and Now
Since the first university was founded – al Azhar University in Cairo in 969 AD – the role of universities has been debated. That debate has continued with the establishment of the first European universities, beginning with the University of Bologna in 1088.
It continues today.
I will return to Bologna shortly, but first let’s talk about the common elements of a university.
In the broadest sense, they exist for:
- education, that is, teaching and learning,
- for research and scholarship to discover new knowledge and disseminate it, and
- for service to our communities.
However, the cornerstone of all institutions seized of these objectives is academic freedom.
Now, back to Bologna.
The first documentary evidence of academic freedom comes from early in the life of the University of Bologna. It adopted an academic charter which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education.
The University arose around clusters of foreign students called "nations" (as they were grouped by nationality) for protection against collective punishment on foreigners because of their “differences”.
The Empire undertook to protect scholars travelling for the purpose of study from the intrusion of all political authorities.
This was a hinge event in the history of Universities.
The University was legally declared a place where research could develop independently from any other power ("Universita di Bologna-Our History").
Amazingly, almost one thousand years later, this very same fundamental pillar distinguishes universities from many other organizations. Today, we sustain that sort of open inquiry that is the initial and boundary conditions for its existence because it provides absolute protection to unhindered dialogue and freedom of expression.
This dialogue is essential as scholars work together on the transformation of the world, based on fundamental research. This itself is an activity directed by “objective universals”.
Researchers’ inter-culture cognition is fuelled by the dynamic concept of “difference” and its sister-notion of “diversity”. These fertile concepts enable the notion and awareness of “complexity”, so necessary to contemporary thought.
This, far away from the reductive ideologies that discourage complexity and divide communities.
This is what inter-culture feeds to the contemporary university. This is what a contemporary university should offer its students.
Today, after many centuries of evolution, our main audience —the students at our universities — is no longer uniform. Our universities have become one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse societies we can think of, far more than at any other time.
This, owing to our new age of information and technology. Access to information and, consequently, to education, is growing at an unprecedented pace. Growth in the middle class in many countries is enabling large masses of youth to afford higher education. Either virtually or physically, universities are bringing much larger number of students from many parts of the world together.
Not only will this provide students with an opportunity to learn from each other and expose them to different languages, cultures, beliefs, and so forth, but this also provides universities with an opportunity to articulate the importance of common values and societal principles.
Intercultural Dialogue
As we search for inspiration in discussing the role of universities in intercultural dialogue, we can turn to rich sources.
Through ongoing work on intercultural understanding and dialogue at the highest levels of international politics and culture — such as the United Nations —the global community embarks upon an essential task. The stakes — impacting the welfare and opportunities of all — could not be higher.
To begin with, we must remain steadfast in our opposition to the tired idea that civilizations must, to use Huntington’s word, “clash”. More than that, we must set our work in positive terms.
More than ever we know that the world is one – our ecology, our humanity, our spirit… and I would add, our pursuit of fundamental research and discovery.
We must build on this common ground — build on these shared values.
Our commitment to building an intercultural world rooted in pluralism, diversity, and openness through dialogue is a higher calling even than understanding, and perpetuating, the civilizational divides.
Universities in the Inter-Cultural Dialogue
This is exactly the approach that my own University of Waterloo has taken. Not only does this approach reflect Waterloo’s progressive, inclusive position on promoting an intercultural campus community; it also reflects our approach to how we educate; how we research; how we teach; and how we stake our claim to being one of the world’s most innovative universities.
In fact, the interplay of Waterloo’s three key features – our research, our co-operative education program, and our entrepreneurship strategy – represent an academic interculture.
Intercultural Research
Perhaps the most pure or fundamental example of interculturalism at modern research universities is research collaboration.
Think for a moment, as I know you all have done on many occasions, about the texture of the intercultural dialogue at work.
- Researchers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds;
- Multiple languages and ways of thinking and communicating coalescing upon the language of arts and science;
- Disciplines bringing varied systems, nomenclature, models, and metrics to bear;
- Multiple institutions joining together in the pursuit of discovery, reflecting the research priorities and aspirations of their home universities.
By joining together in the pursuit of scientific discovery, universities take advantage of our best opportunity to model interculturalism for the world. They reflect the fundamental unity, and the spirit of exploration, native to all the world’s people.
Conclusion
Dialogue is a fundamental universal moral value, which has its point of departure not at what separates human beings but what unites them.
And what unites them is reason as dialogue in action. Which becomes “intercultural dialogue”. It necessarily presupposes the equality of all human beings as reasonable beings. That is what is implied in the word dialogue.
Women and men of all walks of life who dialogue freely say to each other, implicitly: you are my equal. It is a basic ingredient of human rights.
While this is expected at every corner of our society, universities, given hundreds of years of history, tradition and culture of “free inquiry” are best positioned to provide fertile grounds for such dialogue.
Indeed, universities share a common legacy and vocation. We challenge not only the status quo of scientific knowledge and reshape it with new discovery, but we challenge society to move forward culturally, with openness.
That is the fundamental role and challenge for universities as it pertains to cultural and intercultural progress and dialogue.
It is the challenge we so boldly take up today.
And it is the journey upon which I know so many universities have courageously embarked — with the world watching.
I wish you much success.
Thank you.