Interdependence Celebration and Forum
Dublin Castle
20 September 2013
Minister Cannon, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon.
It’s a very great pleasure to be here this afternoon, in these beautiful surroundings of Dublin Castle, at the opening of the Dublin Interdependence Celebration and Forum. I thank Jacqueline Davis and Benjamin Barber for inviting me.
Interdependence is a truly exciting global movement. The themes which will be debated over the next two days - Culture, Education, Religion and Migration – are ones that must resonate with people all over the world. The principals of interdependence and global governance are at the heart of the interdependence movement and when I first met Jackie, I knew that many of their priorities were similar to those of Trinity. The University of Dublin.
A university is by its nature borderless; this was the case when the concept of universities was established, – ever since in the twelfth century when, in Paris and Bologna, nomadic scholars – students and professors from round Europe - converged on these cities of learning. Such student and staff mobility is increasingly the case again now in universities around the world, after a period of, generally speaking, mobility mainly within national borders: half of Trinity’s academic staff are from outside Ireland, and many students – one in five – are from abroad.
Of course a university takes its character from its region, and has loyalty to its region, but intellect is like Dawkins’ selfish gene – in order to grow it refuses to be confined, it seeks knowledge where it can get it, from every corner of the world.
Academics understand all about interdependence. And increasingly other forms of organisation – corporations and public bodies – see virtue in the kind of openness universities offer; think of the open innovation concept, or open source software … … …
We are all interdependent on the learning that comes out of archives and labs around the world. And ideally we seek to be generous and to share our learning. When academics start being overly-protective of their learning – for political or for commercial reasons – then we know we have a problem…
So I want to talk a bit about interdependence in Trinity.
First, our nineteen thematic research areas: these are gratifyingly interdependent – they are deliberately areas of global concern etc.. Interdisciplinarity – that word ‘inter’ is important.They are cross-disciplinary and a great university is one that can nourish interdisciplinarity; eventually such fields become disciplines in their own right, neuroscience for example.
Second, our international identity and global connectivity.
We’re proud of our international heritage; for example Trinity founded the first professorships of French and German in the English speaking world in 1776. In 2012 we decided to formalise our approach to internationalization and we launched our global relations strategy, which aims to strengthen the many links we have around the world, too numerous to go into in detail. But to give an example, on Tuesday of this week we launched an academic collaboration, co-delivering a programme with Goldsmith’s University of London – a Masters in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship – again a perfect illustration of interdependence.
Third, changing role of universities: online education and the emergence of higher education as a globally traded and borderless activity - staff, students, and research projects are increasingly switching countries and institutions, going to where the money and expertise is. All this has created wonderful energy and dynamism in the sector. But these are big, radical changes, requiring big, radical responses.
I look forward to rigorous debate and challenging discussions over the coming days.
One of our graduates, whose bronze statue stands outside the College, arms aloft, was one of the most challenging debaters the world has ever seen. I speak of course of Edmund Burke. And Edmund Burke said:
“Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
This beautiful quote could be adopted by the interdependence movement – because when he talks about our partnership with “those who are dead”, he is talking about respecting our heritage, safeguarding what is precious, not wantonly destroying or disrespecting it in the pursuit of profit or short-term gain. That is interdependence with our past. And when he talks about partnership with “those who are to be born”, he is talking about preservation, about environmentalism, about humanism, about respect for this planet. That is interdependence with our children and our children’s children.
Thank you.
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