Privileged

How many different opinions do you think have we on campus with over 13.000 students and 2.000 scholars and staff? Imagine the debates, the arguments and the discussions happening every hour or every day. Most of those will be long forgotten the next day, some will be discussed in the next class and some will be an inspiration for a paper or an essay or even for an in depth scholarly article in a hopefully triple A journal. We take these debates and discussions for granted. We can voice our opinion and we do not fear personal consequences. We need not obey to government policies or seek approval from the Minister of education before we state what comes to our mind.

We have long forgotten that we live in a privileged country; in the higher education sector we foster academic freedom. Freedom of expression and freedom of thought are taken for granted. In many countries around the world academics and students are imprisoned without any charges but on the basis of their ideas, their opinions, their research or scholarly work. The list of countries is endless. This poses several questions. Can we turn are back as an institution to this situation? Should we still seek cooperation with these countries and institutions? These and many other related questions are not easy to answer. But since we are an academic institution we should at least be open to debate these questions and be open to different opinions. I invite you to join the debate on Forbidden Science on September 24 at 14:30 in the Black Box.

Hans-Georg van Liempd is program manager at TiU and president of EAIE. He blogs for Univers.

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