The intervention of the President of the Republic

The words of the highest office of the State at the inauguration of the 2019-2020 academic year

8th November 2019 - I would like to address a very cordial greeting to all present, to the Mayor and to all the Authorities.

Greetings and thanks to the President and the Rector and thanks to the student representatives for their contribution to this reflection, to Professor Inguscio with whom I could not speak on the merits, because I would be without the scientific equipment, but I will take up one consideration that you have made intelligible to all. Thank you, Professor.

I would like to extend a cordial greeting to all those who work here on the Campus, to the teachers, doctors, nursing staff, managers, administrative and technical staff. To all those who contribute to this – now twenty-five years old – extraordinary scientific teaching and training adventure.

A little while ago I had the opportunity to visit a laboratory, registering with admiration the results and objectives achieved with the research, a laboratory which is not exhaustive but is representative of the research activity that takes place here and which highlights one of the reasons for appreciation that I would like express on campus. Reasons that are also expressed in numbers, from the exposition that the Rector has just made of the University's activity.

It is the confirmation - and I greet the Rectors of other universities present - of the great contribution that our universities and the network of our universities make to our country every day.

What I have just seen, and what we have heard, prompt me to make a few very brief considerations.

I seemed to find a common thread in the speech of the President of the Campus, the Rector, the students and undergraduates who have just entertained us.

The President spoke of the common good as an objective, as a framework for training, study and research activities. And I saw it just now: the research in progress, those that have already had results, those that are about to achieve them, are all aimed at the quality of life, at improving the conditions of life for all of us.

The Rector spoke of the education of global formation, made that punctual quotation from John Henry Newman and also made an exhortation, a work program, which highlighted taking care of the many fronts which he then enumerated: the many fronts, the many aspects, the many areas with which we come into contact, constantly. In this, as in other universities, but also by everyone in daily life.

Taking care means having responsibility. As the Rector said, sense of responsibility.

Even the graduate student Augusto Ferrini he spoke of the common good. He spoke about the need for the training of aware and transparent people, equipped with a critical spirit, an increasingly indispensable element, especially listening to Professor Inguscio. As we approach the various forms of artificial intelligence, we need people who are aware, capable of governing them and endowed with a critical spirit.

Silvia Rossi spoke to us about responsibility towards the community. And what he underlined - as the Rector and the President have already done - about the activities carried out in places in Peru and Tanzania demonstrates that this community is not understood in the narrow sense of one's own environment in which one physically lives, but in a world that is always smaller, collected and interconnected, the community is global and we must take charge of this.

All of this is particularly important and I would like to thank you for this approach and for this sensitivity.

It is a condition that is summarized, in reality, in the questions that each University asks students and together with students and which Professor Inguscio he proposed to us with that quote. Who can imagine, who can understand what the world of the future will be like? The answer is enlightening: ask your children.

I believe that the response of children - for those who know how to listen and interpret them - is there for all to see: try to have a peaceful life and therefore a peaceful coexistence, a peaceful way of being together against selfish closure and selfish entrenchment . So having a sense of responsibility, precisely, against indifference.

Children perceive when there is a sense of responsibility and not indifference in adults. They still ask – for those who know how to understand them (and it is easy for children to understand) – solidarity, mutual help, in fact, against intolerance, hatred, confrontation.

They are not rhetorical alternatives; these are not abstract alternatives, but extremely concrete ones.

If someone arrives on a bus to say to a seven-year-old girl 'you can't sit next to me because your skin is of a different color' or if to an elderly lady like Liliana Segre, who has never hurt anyone but the evil she suffered as a child in a cruel way, it is necessary to ensure an escort, it means that these questions are neither abstract nor rhetorical. But they are concrete.

Because the children provide an answer that is also comprehensive to the question posed by the Professor Inguscio, because in reality they demonstrate, with these emphases, with these demands, with these guidelines that they provide, that they are not dreams.

You talked about dreams earlier, Professor Inguscio. But I allowed myself to say, in my last New Year's speech, that dreams should not be confined to childhood.

Those that can be drawn from children are not dreams, they are indications of behavior.

And this shows that the world is actually changing as it has always changed profoundly. It demonstrates that through the changes, which appear shocking every time (in our age the rhythms are accelerated, faster, but humanity has always gone through changes that appeared shocking at the time they arose), in all these rapid changes, c 'is something that remains constant, which is the human condition, the values ​​of humanity, precisely those of coexistence, solidarity, sense of responsibility.

And this is what the Academies, Universities and Athenaeums transmit; this is what is transmitted in this University. For this reason, with appreciation for what has been done, I wish the students a good academic year.

(Source: Quirinale.it)