Stockholm university

French university presidents on Stockholm visit

President’s blog 20 November, 2022

Last week, around twenty French university presidents and vice-presidents visited Sweden for three days, partly to meet colleagues in SUHF (the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions) – a return visit following the trip we Swedish presidents made to Paris last spring – and partly to participate in a trilateral meeting on European university alliances. The meeting was jointly organized by the French and German embassies, and was targeted at various alliances, including those between French, German and Swedish universities. The first part of the meeting, the French-Swedish one, was held at Stockholm University, in Albano.

The French delegation had wanted, among other things, innovation as a theme, given Sweden’s role as a top-ranked innovation country – and here we had a series of excellent presentations both on the general issue of success factors and on individual examples. We also had the opportunity to exchange information about Sweden’s upcoming presidency of the EU, in relation to the French experience from holding the presidency last spring. This brought to light differences between our countries – but it also showed opportunities for continued dialogue between the universities about questions that are particularly important to us. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we had academic freedom as a key theme, an absolutely core issue for both French and Swedish universities. We are completely agreed on – among many other things – the need to protect academic freedom constitutionally.

I am convinced that dialogues of this kind are absolutely necessary in a world where the threats to democracy, freedom of expression and academic freedom are only increasing. Exchanging experiences and promoting cooperation between universities in different countries is a way to jointly and actively develop these threatened values instead.

Astrid Söderbergh Widding
President

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Astrid Söderbergh Widding
Photo: Eva Dalin