• Mobile living room.

    Mattarella: "An opportunity for the relaunch and recovery of the country"

  • Forum Ambrosetti, Mattarella: "A timely and effective response to a pandemic from the EU"

Share

05 September 2021 "The network of our universities gathers old and recent universities, all of which are precious". "The ancient universities maintain the link with the scientific progress that has developed and continues to develop over the centuries". "The gap between the number of graduates in our country and the European average is unacceptable". 



The Lombard tour of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, today brought the Head of State also to Pavia, to the university headquarters, to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the 2021-2022 academic year. 



An appointment made even more solemn by the concomitant celebration of the 660th anniversary of the University of Pavia.



"There is a need to consolidate, strengthen, disseminate and broaden university teaching. An opposition between excellence and the spread of university education would be unacceptable. One of today's duties is to broaden the basis of education," he said. again President Mattarella who then turned to the no vax: "Freedom should not be invoked to escape vaccination" and harshly condemned the episodes of violence and intimidation against institutions, journalists and doctors: "The expressions of violence and threats that emerge in this period against doctors, scientists and journalists are alarming and serious phenomena. They must be firmly opposed and sanctioned with due rigor ". 



And then the President's reference to young people: "The rector reminded us of the reasons that led the Visconti to establish this university, the terrible plague, the dramatic suffering and the far-sighted investment in young people and their training. criterion, this same choice is the one made by the EU with the Next Generation. A great European project for the future of our young people ". 



Mass: "Embarrassing space for fake news at the university"


Also present at the meeting with President Mattarella was the Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa: "It would be really curious and embarrassing" that the resumption of the university road "would be slowed down or hindered" and that "precisely in the university communities they would find acceptance and fake news credit or denial theories on vaccines or on the management of emergency and post-emergency phases ", said the minister in her speech at the inauguration of the academic year of the University of Pavia.



"One thing is the critical dissent fruit of the scientific method - explained Messa - another is the provocation as an end in itself: the critical spirit, to remain such, must be free from prejudices and preconceptions. Knowledge escapes fears, it does not feed them. . Let us remember. Because it is what we teach and learn in these classrooms and it is the strongest message to transmit and share: knowledge, research, are the only tools we have to improve and progress. Tools with which to manage the epochal changes we are going to. encounter".



Duty to reopen the universities


Without "letting our guard down", but universities must reopen face-to-face lessons: "We cannot continue to give up". "From today we reopen the universities in presence with rules dictated by a principle of joint responsibility. The goal is to regain possession of sociality, proximity, a wider relational freedom drastically reduced during the months of the pandemic. Days that have left deep scars, and given the data of the last few weeks - they do not allow us to let our guard down. But at the same time we cannot continue to give up. We must take back the places, times and ways of our life and university life ".



The rector and the young people


Starting again with young people "who were largely forgotten even before Covid and regardless of the color of the governments". This is the exhortation of the Rector of Pavia, Francesco Svelto, in the speech that opens the academic year. "The program of European interventions, launched following the emergency, takes the name of 'Next Generation EU' - these are the words of the Rector - and urges to invest in the future and in the new generations". "It would seem obvious - he added - but it is not, given that for too long, young people have received little attention and little listening to the proof of the facts".