The President’s Speech at the Inauguration and Conferment Ceremony 2024

A warm welcome to Stockholm University’s Inauguration and Conferment Ceremony 2024. The opportunity to gather here in the City Hall on such a solemn and festive occasion to celebrate our new professors and doctors, honorary doctors and doctors jubilaris, our medallists and pedagogical prize winners – you whose joint efforts shape and develop Stockholm University – is always a highpoint of the academic year.

But what is a university really? In recent times, the question of what it is and should be has – like the meaning of academic freedom and autonomy – permeated the public discourse in Sweden to a greater extent than for many years.

In his new book, Lund historian Johan Östling calls the university “The Great House of Knowledge” – a beautiful image. The term universitas itself – the whole – suggests that a university is a universe in itself, or perhaps better still, that in its universality
it reflects the universe, the exploration of which is far from concluded. In the Middle Ages, the phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium was coined:
a community of teachers and scholars. While the modern university differs from the medieval in significant respects, it represents our most important form of continuity; making the university one of our oldest and most stable societal institutions.

Since its inception, the university has been a place of knowledge, enlightenment and the pursuit of truth – Stockholm University’s three core values. It is, and must be, a place where everyone – teachers and students alike – participate in a common endeavour
to pursue knowledge in the shared belief that, while knowledge is universal, it is also criss-crossed by interrelated, often unexpected connections; the prerequisite for what we now call interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.

Our mission as higher education institutions emanates from a spirit of inquiry, a thirst for knowledge, a willingness to listen, from critical thinking and dialogue. It stands in stark contrast to the unshakeable conviction that the only valid viewpoint is one’s own. It also stands in opposition to the idea that universities should pursue specific agendas of various kinds. Drafted in 1967 and adhered to by Stockholm University, the Chicago Principles state that: “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”

My own tenure as president, which is now drawing to a close, has been based on my conviction that this mission is uniquely important to the expansion of knowledge and development of society. Education and research of the highest quality presupposes the free exchange of knowledge and continuous questioning of one’s own and others’ findings, where different perspectives can be tested against one another. In his report Science: The Endless Frontier, published in 1945, Vannevar Bush memorably describes
universities as the “open pool of knowledge” from which all can drink freely, and that this is the route to success for both industry and society. I see efforts to ensure open access as an extension of this vision, and ultimately as a matter of democracy and freedom. I am proud that Stockholm University is leading the way in this work. Working with open and transparent recruitment and a qualification assessment system that prioritises quality over quantity is also in line with the same fundamental view, and is also a key issue for our university. Working according to core academic values is also more important than ever at a time when universities are at risk of being commandeered to solve urgent societal problems. As legitimate a use of our time as this may be, it is often impossible to solve these problems to order; something that neither the logic of the pursuit of knowledge nor the conditions of research lend themselves to.

At the same time, the world – and therefore academia, which is at its centre – is facing many great challenges. The decline of democracy worldwide is a fact. Geopolitical tensions are increasing. The climate crisis is accelerating. Finding solutions to so-called wicked problems – complex challenges that lack clear solutions – demands a multidisciplinary approach. It is therefore particularly gratifying that many of Stockholm University’s greatest successes over the past year have been achieved by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. The Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry and Department of Physics have been awarded significant grants to fund four infrastructure platforms as part of the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability, WISE, the largest investment in materials science in Sweden. I would specifically like to mention the two centres of excellence for which the university has been granted funding by the Swedish Research Council: The Excellence Dark Universe Centre and Technology Enabler, hosted by the Oskar Klein Centre, is being run by Stockholm University and KTH with the participation of several research environments and strong support from industry; and the Stockholm Centre on Global Governance, an interdisciplinary centre of excellence with participation from all three faculties in the Human Science Academic Area, which is Northern Europe’s first centre for the study of global governance. Stockholm University is also participating in the Center for the Human Past at Uppsala University. The centre brings together the three research areas of archaeology, genetics and linguistics to study prehistory, culture and language over the past 10,000 years. Earlier this week, Stockholm University inaugurated the LinguaLitForum, a new forum for linguistics and literature. This is a strategic investment to create new interdepartmental collaborations and synergies and thus bring into focus one of our strongest areas within the humanities. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for the second generous donation to Stockholm University by the late Sverker Lerheden, who left us far too soon. His major investments in Swedish research are a testament to Sverker Lerheden’s farsightedness – and his greatest wish was to inspire future donors. 

This donation will strengthen Stockholm University’s strategic research area Climate, Seas and Environment, and more specifically our work on the Baltic Sea, and increase our presence at SciLifeLab in Solna regarding climate and biodiversity in the coastal zone, with the long-term goal of building competence that can also assist a broader research field in environmental science. Stockholm University’s Faculty of Science will be making a significant investment
in building up a broader research environment for biodiversity at SciLifeLab.

It has been a privilege to lead Stockholm University, an organisation that despite its size has short decision-making paths and good internal processes for the prioritisation and quality of research – important reasons for our success in general and our
success in attracting external funding in particular. 

Installandi and promovendi, you have all played your part in these successes. This evening, above all it is you that we celebrate, and through you scientific progress by virtue of your successful efforts within the research environments in which you are or have
been active. I offer heartfelt congratulations and best wishes to each and every one of you, both from myself and on behalf of Stockholm University. May the results of your research benefit the University, Sweden, and the world. 

Dixi.