A BEACON OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF THE FREE, CRITICAL MIND
On the 80th Anniversary of the University of Ljubljana

Ljubljana, 11 December 1999



Honourable Rector, high academic assembly, distinguished rectors of friendly European universities, ladies and gentlemen,

I am greatly honoured by your invitation to speak at today's venerable jubilee celebration for the University of Ljubljana. Along with this honour, Rector, you have also charged me with a great responsibility. Our Ljubljana Alma Mater, for many years the only one in Slovenia, has produced tens of thousands of graduates, many bearing scientific titles, and it is now my task to remember it with words of gratitude, although among its former students there are internationally recognised giants of intellect, who have spread good thoughts about it around the world and who might use their own experience to give it a better send-off for the future than I am able to do. Nevertheless my experience of life tells me that my chosen path and understanding of the meaning of life, and my work itself, have been influenced decisively and aided by the knowledge that I acquired by studying and graduating from the law faculty of Ljubljana University. I am grateful to it for this, I am grateful to my professors for maintaining the worth of university study and research, indeed for raising the level of study and research and for enlarging the space for the critical and free searching mind. I believe that this is the common gratitude of all of us who are proud to hold diplomas from the University of Ljubljana.

If at all, it is precisely in the consideration of the future of humankind, a consideration that has become so fierce and polemical at the end of the century, that knowledge and the ability and possibility to produce it and use it in everyday life take precedence among the factors and components of this post-modern, interdependent and globalised human world. In today’s world, knowledge is the most sought after and prized asset. And however much it is important for the whole world, it is certainly all the more important for a country such as Slovenia. One of the rare competitive advantages which we have and which we can in our own way develop, is the excellence of our citizens’ knowledge, for this knowledge will open the way to them for successful personal fulfilment in life and for the confident forging of relations with others in spiritual and material creativity, as well as in the search for answers to the complex challenges facing the modern human person and the world. A good school and academic system is a fundamental condition for excellence in human endeavour. And it is primarily – or indeed only – through excellence that we Slovenes can measure ourselves alongside all the nations of the world. This is our opportunity as well as an answer to the questions regarding our future in the European integrations and to the frequently unfounded and merely politically tainted fears. We are perhaps in this regard, after nearly ten years as a state and nation, again at an important junction. For it is only now that we are faced with an entirely free choice over our future. For this decision we require great knowledge and wisdom based upon it, in order to safeguard against mistakes when we select the direction of our development. Our dilemma is whether with all our available energy, knowledge, courage, self-confidence and creativity to believe in the historical, spiritual, political and economic sense of European association and commit ourselves to it, or whether we should be concerned only with ourselves and shut ourselves up in our own circle of self-sufficiency and provincialism. My response is that a united Europe is a unique opportunity. For us and for all countries of this continent. I do not believe that such an opportunity could present itself again in the future.

In the great global race of civilisations and continents for knowledge, a race that is already at full speed, market shares are being restructured and redistributed, and the prospects for people’s prosperity and for the development of spiritual cultures in the coming century are being rearranged. In this world it is the innovative societies that will win: those with inventive and renovative abilities. These societies begin by winning over and creating new knowledge, through a positive relationship with new technology, particularly in communications, with new forms of work and education, and through a positive relationship with change in general. New growth, which is founded on knowledge, has in the technologically advanced societies become a source of new jobs and social stability in the function of the social justice that is so keenly desired, and is spurring the search for a path towards mutually supportive bonds in free economic competition.

Alongside the promising process of individuation of diverse entities, including political, ethnic, economic and others, globalisation does not create a world market merely for goods and capital, but also for ideas. At the beginning of the 21st century, societies in part already are, and they will become even more so, societies of knowledge. In these societies people study all their lives, they will have to acquire and at the same time create new knowledge, master new technologies, gain new skills and ultimately accommodate the fact that they will work at two, three or even more vocations. Education is becoming the one great issue of humankind, a testing ground for the will and ability to reduce the gulf between the developed and developing parts of the world, and to create the conditions for cooperation and common development.

The world is facing major new challenges. The responses to them demand a shift towards global thinking, where the pivot of decision-making is the individual, with all the dignity that the unique and irreplaceable nature of his life requires and which must be respected and protected. Such a globalised world will not be understood as a risk and threat, but as a challenge and opportunity for all, for new cooperation and a better life. From the long centuries of an established politics of merely national interests we are now progressing to global responsibility, founded on the awareness that in the increasingly interdependent world cooperation, and not confrontation, is in the interest of all countries and all humankind. Perhaps the first step in this direction is the responsibility that the ideological confrontations of the only recently ended Cold War will not be substituted by a global culture of war through fundamentalist aggression, which would be excused by culture, religion and even civilisation. Ultimately such clashes are against one’s own civilisation and also against the common civilisation of humankind. Proof of this can be seen in the aggression nearby in the Balkans. In place of the clash of civilisations, we would be advised in the name of global responsibility to commit ourselves to intensifying the dialogue between cultures; for the consequence of the forward leaps in science, technology and particularly information technology is that different cultures are more rapidly and intensively influencing each other than ever before in history. Entering into this dialogue demands national self-confidence based on the conviction that each nation, with its own culture, contributes to the mutual enrichment of cultures, to peace and prosperity of humankind, and that in this different, new world each nation is duty bound to do this for itself and for others.

Slovenia has been thrown into this competitive and linking world irrespective of its size, and just like other countries it has in this world its own unique opportunity. Knowledge and ability will enable us to cooperate actively in the dialogue on the future image of the world, and along with this, to have a decisive say in our own future. Otherwise this will be decided upon by others without us. For this reason, too, within the framework of initiatives for a clear articulation of Slovenia’s developmental vision it seems to me right to emphasise that it is essential for us to put among our highest priorities the developmental paradigm of Slovenia as a learning society. The present school system and within it the national university education programme are opening up the possibilities for such a future. The view that we do indeed have a good university at the same time calls us to give some critical thought about it, about its nature and how we would like it to be. In order to harmonise our desires and expectations as far as possible, the authorities must ensure that opportunities are open to all those who wish to cooperate in shaping the image of our university. Consideration should be given to the voices and arguments that will justify their participation in this search because they desire what is good for the Slovene people and the future of the Slovene identity. I am firmly convinced that we shall find good, common answers, if we open ourselves to the same values and awareness as the entire democratic and developed world, of which Slovenia is already a part and with every day in all the achievements of its life is becoming more so. The university is too serious a matter for anyone to be excluded from the debate about it, or indeed for the debate to be limited by ideological or political intolerance. Our experience also speaks of this, and could form a debate in itself on the spiritual and ethical dimensions of our university. No single institution can claim the right to exclusive possession of the human spirit. This would be counter to the libertarian values of academic freedom and within that environment the burgeoning critical spirit, which universities throughout their long history have defended through the principle of university autonomy. The university belongs first and foremost to young people, to their right to knowledge and the future and freedom of choice within it.

I believe that the academic assembly of our jubilee institution will be a match for all these challenges, and that the University of Ljubljana will in the future continue to occupy a position among those European universities that are successfully transferring the noble academic tradition to a new time and circumstances.

While alongside Ljubljana, new university-level centres of learning have been functioning or emerging during these early years of the independent Slovene state, which I regard as a necessity and a natural development in the relatively equal distribution of intellect throughout Slovenia, and although new ideas about private university institutions are now current, I believe that Ljubljana University will continue in the future to be the central national and public institution of this kind. The past eighty years of its existence and functioning signify for one thing an extraordinary concentration of pedagogical, research, scientific, conceptual and other experience, and more than anything, outstanding achievements. These make it possible for us to seek ever new solutions, to ensure new developmental leaps, which are not simply welcome, but essential to sustain in the long term and to modernise the Slovene national identity, as well as to constitute Slovenia as an open society that is entering with self-confidence into the competitive world of the next century.

The past life of our birthday institution, which people better qualified than me have spoken or will be speaking about, convinces me that such expectations are well founded. The university has successfully spread itself between the temptation, seemingly so cosy, to shut itself up in an ivory tower of academia, and the need to establish itself as a beacon of knowledge and of the free, critical mind needed by the human person if he wishes to exercise and safeguard his dignity, his freedom and his human integrity. Through their stance and their creativity, during times of diverse ideological uniformism, and particularly in the difficult clashes with the de-Slovenianising waves after 1848, Slovene intellectuals have been able to formulate and keep alive and indestructible the idea of a Slovene university. The first university-level lectures were given in Ljubljana 380 years ago, and prior to that, starting in 1563 a protestant “Latin” college operated in Ljubljana, and this college accommodated the use of Slovene in its junior classes. So the formal founding of Ljubljana University in 1919 was no accident or magnanimous act on the part of the Serbian king, but rather the fruit of a clear awareness of the significance of a national university and the fruit of the hard work and efforts by Slovene intellectuals to bring it to life. Although obstructed in its curriculum, even the “royal” university defended its credibility and national commitment in the period between the two world wars against pressure from the Belgrade bureaucracy and Yugoslavism. During this time it was also an intellectual centre of aspiration and hope of Slovene people for a socially just and nationally identifiable, autonomous Slovene society. And during the Second World War it did not succumb to the tantalising solicitations of the authorities, and did not yield to their aggression. After the war, in the new system it found itself in the grip of new developmental and curricular possibilities and expansion with new faculties on the one hand, and inadmissible interference by politicians in the work of the university on the other hand. Yet even in these years, which for the people of the university were the hardest of all, it preserved a solidly academic, worthy core of teachers and students at all faculties. Beginning in the sixties, later in the eighties and in particular after 1990, this core stimulated a new thinking about Slovenia’s developmental paradigms, and spurred a creativity in charting the new political future of Slovenia, concrete innovations in research and expert projects and modern solutions in settling relations between the university and the state, in forging European links and sharpening the focus on events in South Eastern Europe.

I would like to believe that the latest amendments and supplements to the University Education Act , both in terms of internal administration and in financing and the responsibility of the state for the material conditions for university education, as well as for student hostels, will enshrine even more clearly the autonomy of Ljubljana’s integral university and other university-level institutions. In such circumstances priority will be given to the race to achieve the highest quality and European comparability, not simply in terms of size, but also in terms of openness and creativity.

Honourable Rector, distinguished members of the senate,

May I congratulate you most sincerely on this high jubilee of our University, which you are administrating. I have faith in the excellence of your institutions and the academic assembly, as well as in your readiness to render the University of Ljubljana, through its achievements and clear identity as our main centre of intellectual creativity, yet more known and respected in Europe and elsewhere in the world.