Reply to the Rector of the University ****************************************************************************************** * ****************************************************************************************** Charles University, 18 November 2002 Reply to the Rector of the University Dame Fiona Caldicott, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Thank you for the very great honour that you have besto commemorating the events of the Second World War. It is Colin Lucas has asked that I give his sincere apologies regret to him that he is prevented from doing so by bus Kingdom. T Most, if not all of us, will have spent our entire adult lives in the provision of educati of International Students Day, which is itself a commemoration of the dreadful events of 1 presents an appropriate opportunity to reflect on what it is that Universities are for, an when we talk about scholarship. Universities have an essential function in our societies. in them its ambition to fuse the inheritance of the past with the invention of the future. our collective desire not simply to continue but to improve, to take our inheritance and m world from it just as each generation before us has sought to do. On the whole, the genera society are not very aware that universities have this function. Insofar as they come in c they see universities predominantly in terms of individual enhancement. Now, this is not a way to look at universities. On the one hand, they do indeed focus very much on growing th on liberating the potential of the individual student. On the other hand, societies need m endowing bright young people with the skills to lead the society forward. In our tradition each individuals' pursuit of personal gain is seen to benefit the collective interest, sub mechanisms are needed to regulate or moderate the interplay between individuals' self-inte In fact, however, universities' principal social function is actually of a significantly d Individuals attending universities and pursuing a course of personal enhancement are also in a wider enterprise, even though they are rarely aware of it in these terms. This enterp one that I referred to earlier: fusing the inheritance of the past with the invention of t Universities are stewards of the past in this sense that they constitute the reservoir of knowledge and experience in all domains. Universities are moreover, as their name implies, two ways. They are universal in that they seek to embrace the whole range of knowledge and the purely spiritual through to the purely material or physical. They are universal also i to embrace knowledge and experience from the many world cultures that lie beyond that mix distinctively constitutes their own. If universities were only storehouses, they would be neither interesting nor useful. The d that, beyond some basic building blocks, there is nothing as uncertain as knowledge. What or generation believes to be incontrovertibly true, another will see as flawed, if not act Universities are, thus, constantly engaged in an interrogative dialogue with this knowledg from the past, including from the very recent past. Our business is to try to distinguish apparently true from what is true, as best we may determine that at any given moment. Our constantly to question what we think we know, and constantly to test it against problems w it. I do not think that new ideas are ever generated out of thin air. They are always root of accumulated knowledge, they always sprout within borders defined by procedures and tech previously. This is true even when ideas, forms and so on are explicitly formulated in rep in opposition to, inherited knowledge: in a real sense, one can always trace how what is r itself condition what can be newly thought. It is the questions that we put to our existin lead us forward. What our questions and tests do above all is to generate new knowledge as a response. In p discovery, in the sense of revealing the previously hidden or uncovering the mechanism of unexplained. More often, it is a matter of making new sense of what is going on, a matter more powerful meaning. This is not just any meaning arbitrarily decided by ourselves; it i tests which produce rational meaning that holds true in as diverse and complex situations seek an understanding that is as universal as we can achieve. This process is the inventio because the new knowledge gained from solving the present problem liberates our potential do next. When applied to issues of contemporary society, what is liberated is our collecti It is an essential function for the survival of societies, for the future of our societies future of our civilization. Civilization is constituted out of memory and knowledge, which acquired and easy to lose. It is the function of universities to hold that knowledge, to m values of society, and indeed to maintain the values of civilization. That brings me to the point and the purpose of your invitation to the University of Oxford commemorative events surrounding International Students Day. The closure of Czech Universi the Charles University, during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, illustrates why we purpose of universities at our peril. The struggle against oppression undertaken by our pe solidarity between our countries at that terrible time in the history of Europe and of the reminder of the ties which bind the academic community, wherever its members may be locate of Oxford is extremely proud of the links that it forged with the Charles University of Pr itself one of the oldest such institutions in Europe. It was indeed a very great privilege Czechoslovak students to continue their studies and to be able to host the degree ceremoni students from Charles University, as well as for students from the Masaryk University of B Comenius University of Bratislava. It was a privilege to be able to make arrangements for Charles University and from other Czechoslovakian institutions to study in Oxford during t War. It was also a great privilege to be able to award the honorary degree of DCL to the P Czechoslovak Republic, Eduard Beneš, on 7 March 1940. I hope you will allow me to quote from a letter from President Beneš to the then Vice-Chan Ross, written on 21 February 1945. It seems to me to represent the uncertainties of that t the uncertainties of the years after the war, and also to encapsulate the essence of what the community of scholars. In a few days' time, I shall have left London for Czechoslovakia. I regret very much that another visit to Oxford before my long stay in this country came to an end....None of us c Czechoslovak Universities will be reopened. Prague, Brno and Bratislava are still in enemy countrymen will, I am sure, lose no time in restoring the educational facilities of Czecho know well enough that it will take time to assemble the teaching staffs again, to restock libraries and to secure the necessary equipment and scientific apparatus. The task before the teachers of our young people is very formidable. But I know, Mr Vice-C we go back to Czechoslovakia with the good wishes of the University of Oxford. We shall no encouragement which Oxford gave to all Czechoslovak citizens who reached this country duri example showed that, however many Universities might be closed on the Continent, the Germa authority could not successfully assail the Commonwealth of Learning. The intellectual ties between Oxford and Prague will, I know, be far closer than in the pa face special difficulties throughout the European Continent. Transport facilities will be will be severely restricted. I believe, however, that this difficult phase will be tempora the scholars of Europe will travel freely from one University town to another in Europe. O know, will always be welcomed in Prague. Rector, you have shown by your hospitality and generosity during our visit to Prague that case, and on behalf of the Vice-Chancellor, and on behalf of the University of Oxford, I t warmly for that.