Onorevoli Ministru Dr Clifton Grima, onorevoli sur Justin Schembri, shadow minister għall-edukazzjoni, uffiċjali tal-KSU, kollegi letturi u professuri, studenti u speċjalment intom il-freshers tal-2024, merħba. Erġajna ġejna f’din is-sala biex nibdew formalment sena akkademika oħra. Sena minn kors ta’ tlieta, erba’ jew ħames snin li matulhom intom il-freshers tikbru mhux biss fl-eta’ imma anke fl-għerf u fil-maturita’ personali tagħkom. Dan huwa żmien kruċjali fil-ħajja ta’ kull student u aħna l-għalliema u l-uffiċjali li jgħinuna f’dan ix-xogħol għandna l-privileġġ u r-responsabbilta’ tremenda li ninfluwenzaw din it-trasformazzjoni fil-ħajja ta’ persuna.
Se naqleb għall-Ingliż biex il-ħafna studenti internazzjonali li għandna magħna, ċjoe, li ġew minn ‘il fuq minn 90 pajjiż, jifhmuni huma wkoll.
A warm welcome, dear international students: I always start my Opening Speech by saying a few words in Maltese because you need to remember or be made aware that this smallest country in the European Union has its own language, distinct from any other and one spoken widely here. I encourage you to learn some Maltese while you study with us and, that way, derive more value from your experience here.
This year, over 5000 new students will join the ranks of L-Universita’ ta’ Malta (UM); the student body now numbers 12 700+.
I encourage you to interact socially with fellow students as much as you can: the friendships made on campus often last a lifetime.
This year I want to put emphasis on that aspect of higher education which pertains not to the acquisition of specialist knowledge and domain-related competences but to the formation of the character of the person. I am of the view that the ability and confidence to express yourself in an intelligent, coherent and methodical manner is a clear mark of education and character. In addition, I believe that the confidence in yourself to tell, in speech or writing, what needs to be said has to be sufficient for you to perform the function unflinchingly and without fear. Indeed, I adopt as motto for this year a line borrowed from two popes, John Paul II and Pope Francis, itself taken from the Bible where it’s mentioned numerous times, namely “Do not be afraid”. Do not be afraid to state your mind.
If you are confronted with a situation somewhere, especially a space dedicated to learning and teaching, that strikes you as wrong or unfair or improper, have the courage to question it or show your disapproval or disagreement. Use language that avoids insult or rudeness but is calm and clear and above all truthful. Because, what purpose is served by educating a person and helping them acquire higher level skills but then muffling them and stifling their opinion?
Oftentimes, the gag order is not overt and explicit but takes other forms which students comprehend and interpret as signals to stay quiet, meek and submissive. Sometimes, I suspect that students are afraid to speak out against perceived or real unjust practices in classrooms, e.g. cancellation of lectures without notice, refusal to offer reasonable assistance to aid understanding, or disorganized and repetitive lecture material; is this for fear of possible retribution? If so, this fear is silly and totally baseless.
The University reaches out to you, our students, to address shortcomings in the teaching and learning processes through the mechanism of anonymous feedback. And yet 9 out of 10 students avoid giving any feedback and this is extremely preoccupying. I am convinced that the majority of our tutors are committed to their mission of teaching and learning and anxious to know how they may improve their service to students. But this depends on students providing them with honest and truthful feedback in whatever way and not even necessarily using the standard online form provided. Do not let your tutors down. Do not be afraid to give honest feedback that can help you and fellow students. Be generous and do give feedback in order that we, who guide you in your journey, can react and correct and adjust what needs fixing.
Apart from feedback on lectures and the learning process, our students but also our academics are rather loathe to speak their minds publicly to comment about the goings on in society locally and elsewhere. They leave most of the talk to the political class and local pundits. I realize, of course, that what I’m saying might cause offence to those among us who are indeed quite outspoken and vociferous on several issues. So, let me quickly add that I salute these individuals for sharing with civil society their ideas, suggestions, concerns and criticisms. But the truth is that only a minority of academics are visible in the local print media to make their ideas known and provide intelligent insights. More individuals are active in blogs and other communications in cyberspace which reflects what academics, worldwide, are nowadays doing. Given that universities are generally respected social institutions, what academics and students say should be worthy of note and contribute more significantly to the public discourse. Indeed freedom of speech is fundamental for a meaningful higher education experience. I quote from a recent document of the Office for Students (UK) “All staff and students are entitled to teach, learn and research in a culture that values vigorous debate, including – or perhaps particularly – in relation to difficult or contentious or discomforting topics… Students will not have a high quality education if that education is not grounded in freedom of speech. That includes freedom of speech for themselves, for fellow students, for those who teach or supervise them and for visiting speakers.”[1]
I routinely get complaints, as Rector, mostly from sources outside the University, demanding that I censure some academic or other for remarks or opinions made in the media. Needless to say, I routinely ignore these fatuous complaints: I may personally not even agree with the opinion being publicly expressed by a colleague but provided the polemical speech is within the limits of the law, then I defend the freedom of the speaker to express their thoughts. Our University currently does not have a policy on freedom of expression and I intend to correct this matter in the next few weeks. I hope the Senate and Council will agree to a policy that is inspired by the so-called “Chicago principles” namely that universities should commit to the principles of free speech and academic freedom as a basis for rigorous and open scholarly inquiry.[2]
Should the University as a body form and publicly express an opinion about the big global events of today? For example, the horrors in the Middle East; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the forgotten and cruel war in Sudan; the pathetic response of governments to curb runaway global heating? Or even more sensitively, should L-Universita’ ta’ Malta speak and opine about more local, often divisive, issues? The gender corrective mechanism in Parliament; some dodgy decision of the Planning Authority; the replacement, for political correctness, on government forms of “mother/father” by “parent 1/parent 2”? The answer is most emphatically NO. The University cannot possibly have a single opinion about anything given the importance of free expression. One shouldn’t expect the thousand or so academics at UM to converge on a unique position which can then be expressed as UM’s own on this, that and the other. The University is not a political party or a church. Its strength lies in its protection of the free expression of its members, including of course the students. This function is critical for creating an environment where development of new ideas and solutions isn’t hampered by some canon or dogma or institutional preference for an idea or a principle. An extreme example of what happens when the freedom to disagree is taken away from academics is provided by the sorry history of Soviet genetics during the Communist era. In the 1940’s, the agronomist Trofim D Lysenko asserted that characteristics acquired during life could be passed on to the offspring, an idea that had been proposed over a century earlier (in 1809) by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and since debunked by Western science. However, Lysenko’s idea seemed to fit well with Communist thinking at the time and appeared capable of offering a solution to a major problem of the regime, namely, increasing wheat production to feed the people. Adherents of conventional genetics who opposed this discredited idea were weeded out of universities and the academies, even arrested and sent to concentration camps, a situation that was still extant in 1970’s when nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize Winner Andrei Sakharov had the courage to denounce what he called the “tragedy of Soviet genetics and its martyrs”. In response to this, a furious Premier Nikita Khrushchev exiled Sakharov to the city of Gorky (in 1980) where he remained until Mr Gorbachev came to power and rehabilitated him.[3]
Let this story from fairly recent history serve as a reminder for society and people working in universities and research to not try to muzzle academics and let them do the job they know best. Incidentally, allowing the unfettered “doing of the job” on campus is referred to as academic freedom which includes freedom of expression but goes well beyond it.
Academic freedom means allowing staff to teach and explore their subject in search of truth in whatever ethical manner fit for purpose they deem to be useful. The search may take them to unpleasant or unpopular truths but the freedom to execute any path needs to be protected if the work is to have value and be productive. Writing in a recent blog[4], Reed emphasises the total liberty lecturers must have to discuss the subject matter they teach provided it is relevant to their mission. “In a Civil Liberties class, for instance, there are times when profanity is at the heart of the dispute. You couldn’t really cover the issue without it. … Some primary source material will include, say, racial slurs that would be unacceptable out of context but unavoidable in context.” On the other hand, he argues that a lecturer would be abusing their academic freedom when wasting class time discussing football matches or personal problems that are not relevant to the learning outcomes of the study unit. “A few minutes spent on a seemingly irrelevant story can be a sort of icebreaker, or can lead the discussion in unanticipated, but productive, directions. The acid test… is whether the students get what they need. If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, I have no problem with it. But I’ve seen classes that were nothing but sugar, and that’s not the same thing… it’s not a free speech issue. It’s a job-performance issue and should be treated accordingly.” Dear students, do not be afraid to call out such behaviour because only you can detect such abuse. Lecture room time is short and precious and should not be squandered.
Besides teaching, academic freedom also involves research. Here, the question is whether an academic has access to suitable resources to do the research they are competent doing and doing well. The liberty of staff to perform any research related to their area of expertise is a celebration of academic freedom of the highest order. Few individuals in other jobs can choose what to do as work: but academics can and this is one important reason which make universities great, if costly to run, institutions. Of course, to support research requires funding and research in the science, engineering and technology subjects tends to be quite demanding. Funding agencies, including Governments and supra government agencies in Europe and elsewhere, sometimes regard research in the same way as they do commercial enterprise: an investment that is expected to yield guaranteed returns in the short term. This type of research is typically applied research intended to improve a product making it more readily transferable to the market place. Or research geared to solve a particular problem. It is the kind of research that is often preferred for funding.
On the other hand, there is more difficulty with regards to acquiring support for so-called “blue sky” or curiosity-driven research. When the answer to the question from a funder “why do you want to do this research?” is “because it’s so interesting to know”, the response may not be sufficient to attract money to feed the curiosity of the researcher. However, in truth, nobody knows what serious problems for society and the economy tomorrow or the near future will bring and without knowledge generated by research, including and especially blue sky research, we risk suffering disastrous consequences because of ignorance.
Let me quote a few examples of blue sky research that helped change the quality of our life. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, nineteenth century German physicist, is quoted as saying: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application”. Of course, he was so wrong: these waves form the basis of wireless telegraphy, radio and TV. The MRI machine was a product of blue-sky research in physics and chemistry. Imagine cancer treatment today without this technology which wasn’t planned for this purpose. The COVID-19 pandemic was quickly curbed only because blue sky research had been ongoing over several years prior to 2019 which then led medical science to safe vaccine solutions extremely quickly when the need arose.
The numerous examples from the history of science similar to the few cited here should convince our local funding agency to explicitely declare its support for Maltese blue sky research and to reflect this clearly and unequivocally in the legislation currently being prepared for Science Malta.
Finally, let me turn again to our freshers to wish them an exciting and fruitful stay at L-Universita’ ta’ Malta. May you experience the satisfaction of growing up in personal knowledge, intellectually and in character, and please do not be afraid to tell us what we as tutors, administrators and leaders of this institution can do to improve your satisfaction with UM. Thank you.
[1] Office for Students, UK https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-providers/quality-and-standards/freedom-of-speech (Retrieved 14 Sept 2024)
[2] University of Chicago, https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/history. Retrieved 14 Sept 2024
[3] For a fuller short account, see Scientific Blunders by R Youngson, 1998, Robinson Publishing Ltd, pp 185 et seq.
[4] Reed, M. Inside Higher Ed (IHE) Opinion Blog 2024, https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/academic-freedom-and-freedom-speech Retrieved 17 Sept 2024