The contribution of the University to culture

 

General culture helps us precisely not to be lost in a world that is full of references, symbols, history and stories; to place ourselves in that forest that is the world and to know – metaphorically speaking – the trees and the bushes and the animals and also the paths, to understand the looks of complicity that there are in it, of those like us who are walking through that forest.

With your permission.
academic authorities,
Dear colleagues from the university faculty,
graduates and graduates,
Ladies and Gentlemen.

The contribution of the University to culture.

This is the theme of the inaugural lesson. And perhaps they are fearing that it will begin with long discussions on the definition of culture. In fact, it is enough to remember that in 1952, two professors from the United States - Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn - published a book titled “Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions”. In its 448 pages they presented 164 definitions of culture. And possibly now they are afraid that I am going to read and explain all these definitions and see in what sense the University can contribute to each of them; But I am not going to go down that path: I am going to focus on three meanings of culture – which are also meanings that we use in everyday life – and ask what role the University can play in these three meanings of culture.

First of all, when we say: “he is a person of great culture”, we are referring to a person who has extensive knowledge, perhaps what was previously called “general culture” (this would be the first meaning). Secondly, when we talk about the Ministry of Culture, we know that – in addition to protecting and enhancing heritage – it is responsible for promoting the arts. And, indeed, very often we identify culture with “the arts.” Thirdly, when we talk, for example, about “Peruvian culture” or “Latin American culture” or whatever, we are referring precisely to that heritage, to a style, to some values, to a way of seeing life that possibly allows us – and I am going to focus on it – also talk about a university culture, or even a specific culture of the University of Piura.

The first sense would be, therefore, that of culture as a set of knowledge, as “general culture”, as it used to be called. Before asking ourselves what the University can contribute to this “culture”, it is worth asking what the meaning of that culture is. Indeed, it may seem obsolete, outdated, more typical of a time in which the bourgeoisie adorned itself with that knowledge than of a time in which all knowledge is accessible via the Internet. Why “have culture” if I can access knowledge at all times?

It is not, obviously, about knowing how many obelisks there are in Rome or other anecdotal details; But what's the point of knowing names and centuries and concepts? What are the effects of that knowledge, of that general culture? Why is it necessary? I will stop only at two arguments.

I like to cite a movie, from a few years ago, in which at a given moment there are two characters lost in a forest in Alaska, one older, the other younger. The older man asks the younger man why people who get lost in the forest die. The youngest comes up with the obvious answers: “Out of hunger, out of thirst, a bear devours them.” But the older character, full of wisdom, tells him: “No, that's not the reason. “People who get lost in the forest die… from the shame of being lost.” And really, the human being, when he is lost, is ashamed.

General culture helps us precisely not to be lost in a world that is full of references, symbols, history and stories; to place ourselves in that forest that is the world and to know – metaphorically speaking – the trees and the bushes and the animals and also the paths, to understand the looks of complicity that there are in it, of those like us who are walking through that forest.

I remember very well a conversation in Mendoza, Argentina, after a long trip. I was going to a conference, but through a mutual friend in Buenos Aires I was contacted by some people who were hoping to create a cultural center and they invited me to lunch. One of them was an older architect, a retired university professor, who was very indignant with the mayor of the city. His argument was: “This man does not know how to read the city” – I do not have time to explain the very interesting reasons he gave for this statement – and the consequence was that his actions as mayor were harming the city. It really is a phrase full of wisdom: “Read the city”, read the world around us, read the faces we meet, read the history that is reflected in every corner and discover in those faces the story that is in each person. . Whoever does not know how to read causes harm in that world, in that city, also in those people.

(…) Appreciating culture in these two senses, growing in it, requires rest, stillness, serenity, contemplation. Whoever runs through life or through the city, through the world, neither looks nor reads nor appreciates nor communicates nor contemplates.

Culture helps us precisely to read that world, the faces of the people around us. And this is not just a thing for humanists. It seems that talking about culture was a privilege of humanists. We consider ourselves, of course, privileged because we can talk about culture, but in all professions you can read the world, always finding new meanings in it.

I remember one occasion when I was accompanying engineers specializing in railway issues as an interpreter, specifically engineers from the Spanish railways who were studying the layout of the high-speed train in Germany; At a certain point they took us to see a route that was already finished but was not yet in use. One of the Spanish engineers ran out of the van, towards the railway track. I went behind – I really don't know why, because there was nothing to translate: he was alone –; He looked down and said, “What a beauty!” I saw; I was looking for something that we humanists usually describe as beautiful: a plant, a flower, a little animal. I did not see anything. Somewhat embarrassed, I asked her: “Beauty, what about?” He told me: “About the suspension of the rails. How beautiful the suspension of the rails!” He explained to me what the technical problem had to be solved (I don't have time to develop it here), but the way the German engineers had done it seemed absolutely beautiful to him. That is culture, that is “knowing how to read.

On the other hand – and I move on to a second argument in favor of “general culture” – the great art historian Ernst Gombrich, in a small – and excellent – article on the subject – said that general culture is a meeting place. When we are people of culture, we are able to maintain dialogues with those with whom we share an aspect of that culture (and I mean all culture, without false distinctions between popular and so-called “high culture”). The ability to dialogue is so important for human beings. If we do not have culture, the 'elevator syndrome' can happen to us – I come from a country where people live vertically, in multi-story houses. That is, you are in the elevator with a neighbor and what do you talk about? The weather: “This year it is hotter than last year.” “Yes, I don't remember the same heat.” But this leads up to the second floor, and from there, silence.

If there is no culture, we live in a continuous 'elevator syndrome'. The topics of conversation are reduced to one's own daily experience, to superficial topics, to banal matters, to the immediate..., and we cannot go further. Culture gives us meeting places with people who may physically be close or very far away. Nowadays distances no longer count, as we well know. I can enter into dialogue with someone in Australia who shares some aspect of the culture with me.

Secondly, we said, we identify culture with the arts. Appreciate art. Does the University have to teach art appreciation? Because? What do you gain by knowing how to appreciate art? We continue in the line of “knowing how to read”. Knowing how to read specific languages, the languages of art: words, movements, sounds, volumes, shapes, colors. Appreciating art is opening yourself to other worlds. Because art expresses other worlds, or expresses other reactions to the same world: the external world and the internal world, full of questions, mysteries, enigmas that artists have been able to capture in a way that is not always convincing in their content but always with a mastery in the management of the language they are using.

Therefore, appreciating art means developing a great human capacity. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that the human being is “capax universi”, capable of the universe (he does not say it in the sense in which I am using it, I am manipulating it a little; it is the privilege of speakers when they quote people who already they cannot defend themselves, as is the case); He is capable, therefore, of living in his world and in other worlds, in the worlds that artists have captured, I repeat, with mastery.

And this is a second aspect of appreciating art: learning to appreciate mastery, work well done, work at least formally well done. Learn, therefore, to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, develop a critical sense, distinguish the word from the echo, the fire from the smoke, what is worth taking into account and what is not worth taking into account.

Appreciating art is, therefore, opening oneself to other worlds and opening oneself with that sense that knows how to appreciate mastery and knows how to distinguish that which, even expressed in a masterful way, has human weaknesses or does not know how to give an adequate response. Because we also know that there are master ways of representing evil, of presenting that which, from the person as a whole, can be problematic and even dark. The critical sense, the ability to form criteria, develops when reading the world, when reading art.

Each teacher, each teacher, with their attitude towards culture, living it, growing in it, transmits it.

In what way does the University contribute, in what way can it contribute to growing in that culture? It is not a question of a Faculty, specialized in it. It is a matter of the entire University. Because University is not a profession, it is a lifestyle. And each teacher, each teacher, with their attitude towards culture, living it, growing in it, transmits it. He is teaching to read if at all times it is perceived that he, that she continues learning to read throughout her life, he is teaching to distinguish between the wheat and the chaff if at all times it is perceived that he is trying to form that human vision.

Now, appreciating culture in these two senses, growing in it, requires rest, stillness, serenity, contemplation. Whoever runs through life or through the city, through the world, neither looks nor reads nor appreciates nor communicates nor contemplates. It seems that we are increasingly moving towards a university that imitates professional life, a university full of internships, deliveries, and rush. Will that university know how to be a place of rest, of stillness? Will he know how to teach serenity, even contemplation, will he know how, in short, how to teach reading?

And I move on to the third point: If we accept that there is a Peruvian, European, Latin American, Spanish, Basque, Catalan, or whatever culture, even the culture of one soccer team or another, if we accept those terms, we will also accept that there exists a culture of the different corporations and, therefore, a university culture.

I am going to highlight only two elements that seem typical to me of that university culture. First of all, resistance against the false. Obviously, the University has not always known how to do it. If, for example, we study the history of the German University, how little resistance to Nazism we find. You can explain why, but at that time the German University failed.

But there are many examples of resistance. I remember perfectly, very shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, my first visit to the University of Krakow – a relevant university, with more than 600 years of existence, where Copernicus was a professor. We organized a seminar from Germany with Spanish and German students. There, a professor, after a lecture in absolutely excellent Spanish, showed us the University. And he took us to the Aula Magna, where the Nazis, with an excuse, had gathered many professors from the University. From there they were taken to Auschwitz, the extermination camp. Quite a few died, not directly murdered, but due to the hardships of hunger, diseases...

Well, under communism, the University of Krakow – a state university – began the academic year with the Mass of the Holy Spirit, celebrated by the archbishop, who for many years was Karol Woytila, later Pope John Paul II. And at the opening ceremony of the course, the authorities who were not presiding sat next to the cardinal and not next to the representative of the communist government. An example of a University in resistance, in resistance to the imposition of an ideology.

Now, the pressure is not there now, for something that the State wants to impose or prohibit, but there is pressure on the University, there always is. Perhaps right now - many people have described it - there is a pressure in the sense of wanting the University to be a company, in which every product has to be profitable; and, like in a supermarket, if it is not profitable, it is removed from the shelves.

I remember when I started my studies at my first alma mater, the University of Bonn, in Germany, I was fascinated to discover some departments and careers that I would call “exotic.” I discovered that the Germans have a term for them: “Orchidäenfächer”, that is, “orchid” degrees. “Orchid” because there are very few of them and because they are expensive. A few days ago, preparing this intervention, I entered the website of the University of Bonn, with curiosity: to see if these “orchids” were maintained, or if they had succumbed to market pressure. And I have come across a long list of majors and departments, including, but not limited to, Egyptology, Ancient Americanism, History of Asian and Islamic Art, Celtology. And I have come across Mongolistics and Tibetology, a department that has 11 doctoral students. I don't know how many students, but it's certainly not many. I repeat: this is not some isolated course, a conversation from time to time; no: they are degrees, departments, doctoral programs.

Surely none of them are profitable from an economic point of view. But maintaining these degrees are decisions that go beyond the economic, that have to do with a model of the University, with the idea that the University has to meet objectives related to knowledge, knowing; also knowing other worlds and transmitting the ability to dialogue with those worlds. Within this broad panorama, each university has to position itself on the map, set its priorities, define what is essential for it.

If highlighting reprints is the main university activity, we are killing the University. (…) University professors are searchers all our lives, and people who make people search, who sow concerns, who encourage them to go swimming.

At the University of Barcelona where I worked for six years – the International University of Catalonia, a private university – apart from directing a master's degree in Cultural Management, they had the strange idea of appointing me dean of the Faculty of Humanities, a transitional dean, I was told, and as such, I served for three years. That years of crisis coincided in Spain, that crisis that you have surely heard about. The Faculty of Humanities already did not have many students; and the crisis worsened this situation. We were in July, which in Spain corresponds to the end of the academic year; Those who will begin their studies the following academic year, in September, have already enrolled. Therefore, strategic decisions are already being made at the university.

At that time we had seven students enrolled to start the first cycle the following year. I remember it perfectly: one Monday, the rector called me to tell me that the degree would not be open the following year. We had seven students enrolled. I convened the Faculty Council, we convened the professors, we informed them and began to notify those who had enrolled so that they could look for another option. On Tuesday afternoon there was no one left in the Faculty. July, in Barcelona, is already a hot month, with the accumulated fatigue of the entire academic year. I was the only one from the Faculty who was there, working in my office, I remember it perfectly. At a quarter to seven in the afternoon, there is a knock on my office door; It was the rector, who came almost out of breath. He tells me: “Have they already started notifying those registered?” “Yes, rector, we have already started.” “Well, nothing from what I said yesterday.” “Rector, what happened?” It came from the meeting of the board of trustees – that is, the representatives of the foundation that holds the legal ownership of the University and is also responsible for its financing: businessmen, notary lawyers, etc. –. There, the rector had presented the report of the academic year and, among other things, had commented: “Next year the Humanities degree will not be opened. There are only seven students etc. etc.". At the end of the report, one of the members of the board asks: 'Rector, did you say that Humanities is not starting?' 'Yes, because there are very few registrations.'” Then, the president of the board, a businessman from the automobile sector who saw the crisis coming years before, and made two key decisions for his company: diversify and internationalize, a businessman, well, who knew about crisis management, said: “Rector, At this University there will always be a Humanities degree. It is foundational.” And the rector – he told it to me very simply – commented: “But we are going to lose money.” The president smiled and told him: “Rector, I am a businessman.”

At that moment I knew that I was in a university and not in an academy. These are decisions that go beyond economic pressure. Obviously, financial responsibility is an extraordinarily important responsibility, in any institution and any organization. Without it, nothing works. But at the University it cannot become the sole criterion.

I can illustrate the second element of university culture with a recent event. On one of the last trips coming from Europe, a young character was sitting next to me, very entertained with his tablet, where he had games, movies... But after about ten hours, he got tired of his tablet and considered it more interesting to talk to me. He turned out to be a computer scientist, Galician, who works in a company with important clients in America and, therefore, travels regularly. He asked me what I did. I told him I worked at the University. And we started talking about the University. He told me something that I immediately thought: “I'm going to quote this in the inaugural lecture.”

So I go on to quote Diego (who is going to marry Diana in September, according to what he told me): “At the University,” he told me, “apart from preparing for the profession, I learned one thing: to find a life for myself. That – he continued saying – is the essential difference with school. At university you learn to find a life.” At that moment I remembered my first research work, at the University of Bonn.

I think it was at the end of the third cycle, maybe the second. The teacher entered the last class with some strips of paper that he had cut from a typewritten sheet. He gave us one each, and said: “This is the topic of your research work. If you have any questions, you can come to my office; My opening hours are this.” We had a month to do the work, without classes. I was given the exciting topic: “Names and their function in the early stories of Thomas Mann.” Obviously, I ran to office hours. And I said to the professor: “Look, this topic corresponds to me, where can I find information?” He smiled at me very kindly and said: “In the library.” I went to the library and there was a very kind and attentive older lady, smiling. I told him my problem and asked him, “Where do I find information?” He stood up, pointed to the many shelves of books and said, “There. And anything, you know, he asks me.”

I understood at that moment that I had to find a life. I remember almost nothing from those classes. But even today I would be able, if you are interested, to explain the function of names in the early stories of Thomas Mann.

The University, in effect, teaches how to find a life, in a university way, in an academic way.

But today perhaps more than before a risk: to create a paternalistic university, to give everything done. Last year I was giving a course at a Faculty – I won't say which one – in Piura. And I told them: “You have to look for information on your own.” It was very normal information; WikiLeaks or contacts with the secret services were not needed to find it: What century was the Renaissance, who was Dante Alighieri, who wrote the Divine Comedy, etc. And when time was passing and the exam was getting closer, they began to get overwhelmed (we are short-term cultures) because they had not looked for the information. And then a student, very smiling, told me: “Teacher, don't be mean – that's the big argument: 'don't be mean' –. Why don't you put everything on a separate page, even if it's a big one, and we'll underline it?” If highlighting reprints is the main university activity, we are killing the University. Look, dear colleagues, and make a search. We university professors are searchers all our lives, and people who make people search, who sow concerns, who encourage them to go swimming.

University culture cannot be paternalistic.

Along with this university culture in general, I would dare to emphasize that there is also the University of Piura's own culture, some common values, and also its own style. And all this goes beyond the answer that a Cambridge professor, visiting the University of Navarra, once gave. At lunch, when there was a little more trust, they asked him what all the professors at the University of Cambridge agreed on, what was, therefore, “their culture.” He thought for a while and then, with typical British humor, said: “I think we can all agree that cheating on exams is not right.” That, according to him, was the common denominator. I think the specific culture of the University of Piura goes much further.

Furthermore, I am convinced – and I say this, like everything that follows, almost as an observer, because I have not been here for long – that the great contribution of the University of Piura to culture in this country, in the region, in the city and Also beyond borders is fidelity to its culture.

I am going to point out only two elements that seem nuclear to me.

On the one hand, probably when we hear that an organization bases its work on a Christian vision, on a Christian ideology, we probably think of the centrality of the person as an essential element. Possibly Christianity is the only vision of the world – not an ideology, because Christianity is not an ideology – that recognizes the person, each person, in themselves; Ideologies, from the right or the left – if we want to accept this simplification – do not recognize it. For ideologies, the person is only a representative of a group, a group that is always trying to get ahead in the fight with other groups for power, because that is the image of society that ideologies understand.

Possibly Christianity is the only vision of the world – not an ideology, because Christianity is not an ideology – that recognizes the person, each person, in themselves; ideologies, right or left, do not recognize it.

Allow me an example: a while ago an institution that has worked a lot in the field of culture invited me to a conference in which multiple speakers participated. I presented my presentation: everything was perfectly normal; Some people asked, there was dialogue, when we finished some people came up, we were talking, etc. But months later, talking with the person who had organized the conference, informally over a coffee, he told me that his colleagues had criticized him for inviting the University of Piura. And he said: “I have not invited the University of Piura, I have invited Enrique Banús.” And they answered: “Well, that, the University of Piura.” Obviously, I did not represent the University of Piura and I consulted with no one from the University of Piura what I was going to say there. But for ideologies, the person is a representative of a group and its ideology, and is in that struggle for power in which only friends and enemies are known.

That great poet and firm Marxist, César Vallejo, already said it in his famous poem “Hat, Coat, Gloves”: “It is important that autumn is grafted into autumns, it is important that autumn is made up of shoots.” Neither the autumns nor the shoots are of interest. Only that great autumn matters. On the other hand, putting the human person at the center – and I quote Pope Francis in his speech to the European Parliament – means “letting him freely show his own face and his own creativity.” What a beautiful motto for a University: that each person in the University freely show their own face and their own creativity. Only from that freedom can we realize what John Paul II called “the meaning of university studies”: “the creative relationship of truth,” since “all reality has been entrusted as a task to the understanding and cognitive capacity of man.” .

But in this centrality of the person we must descend to the concrete, if we do not want to fall into the contradiction of that American comic strip character, Charlie Brown, who says: “I love humanity but human beings bother me.” ”. And getting down to the concrete, revolving an entire organization around the person with a problem: it involves a lot of work. Organizing an entire institution from the person and for the person involves much more work than organizing it from the structures, from the supposed practical organizational reason.

Allow me an example here as well: a few days ago, a woman, already of a certain age, showed up at the Piura campus to enroll in one of the Cultural Center's courses: herself and her husband. He asked where the course was held and we showed him the classroom: A-43, that is, at the top. No, her husband was not going to be able to come: he has trouble climbing stairs.

It was the day before the start of the course or even the same day in the morning. We all know that finding classrooms is a complex issue. We decided to try it and we were lucky: we found a classroom on the first floor. It was more than an hour of work. It is what has the centrality of the person.

That is why we are fascinated by the technical, organizational reason. Because it simplifies and requires less work. And we think that there is the solution, in increasingly exhaustive and sophisticated procedures.

Quite a few years ago, a German theologian, in a much-discussed conference at the time, said that from Luther's “sola Scriptura” we had moved on to “sola structura,” to think that it is the structure that saves us.

Probably in the development of all organizations - this has certainly been studied a lot by the professors of the PAD and the Faculty of Business - there is a moment when it is necessary to systematize, institutionalize, create procedures. And then there will probably be a lifetime to reduce them, adapt them, simplify them.

Last year, at one point I thought it would be good to do things in a certain way in my course. It was a question of evaluation and scoring, nothing dramatic (well, for students the most dramatic thing there is at the university), but they told me: “It can't be done, it's not provided for in the system.” And it came out to me to say: “Well, we will have to change the system.” Because the one who knows about Universal Literature is the teacher, not the system. And if the system is above the teacher, something is wrong.

Furthermore, the centrality of the person means never instrumentalizing the person, taking them into account when we need them, for example, to do some work for us, and then forgetting about them.

It means living justice even in its smallest manifestations, which can be, for example, finishing classes on time. How much it costs us teachers! We always think that that phrase has to be said: it is the most important. But students have the right to a break, to rest.

It entails loyalty to commitments, keeping one's word, not changing the conditions of an exam at the last minute, for example, adding three or four more reprints that suddenly enter the exam.

All this and many more things are deduced from respect for the person.

But let's move on to a second element that I consider essential in a Christian university culture: the positive meaning. It has a very profound reason: it supposes – glossing the first Grand Chancellor of this University – to recognize that there is something divine in all things and it is up to each one to discover it.

This is not easy, because university culture tends to be critical: at the University, in fact, we dedicate ourselves to critical analysis, to finding faults, to developing theories and alternatives. Our automatic reaction when we are presented with a project, an initiative, is: “I would do it differently; “It has these and these weak points.” However, from a Christian perspective, it seems to me that within the University, in the face of initiatives and projects, we have to put aside that critical capacity and display a great positive sense: everything that someone from the University does is valuable and we will try to support them. . Obviously, if we think that there are errors or possibilities for improvement, we will transmit our reflections – yes: always directly, to your face, not through third parties, with comments here and there. And always with respect, even admiration. If we can apply the very clear distinction of that great philosopher who is Mafalda, it is about being not “problemologists” but “solutionologists.” There are people who seem to want to demonstrate their intelligence by pointing out problems and complications. That's very easy. Intelligence, in truth, is demonstrated by providing solutions.

If “university” means “universal” – we already know that it does not mean exactly that, but it is good at this time –, the first universality is within the University itself: everything that is done in the last corner of the University is something of mine.

Furthermore, we cannot live as my historian friends in Germany told me: when they went to the archives of the Chancellery to study a topic, they brought their documents and sat in the library, each one at their table; When a colleague approached, to say hello, to talk, the instinctive movement was to cover the documents they were working with, lest they copy something. That spirit of “this is my thing” is not university. If “university” means “universal” – we already know that it does not mean exactly that, but it is good at this time –, the first universality is within the University itself: everything that is done in the last corner of the University is something of mine.

Let me elaborate on the topic with an example. For many years I was first deputy executive director and then director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Navarra, and then director. We had very few resources; We were two people for the activities: the director and an administrator, and the others were students, interns who helped or “unhelped,” depending on the case. With this structure we organize advocacy activities in the city, in the region and others, internationally. I have often wondered how we did it. And I think that an essential factor was the encouragement that our colleagues gave us. It wasn't that many came to the activities but they always thought they were great. We lived surrounded by the encouragement of the entire University. With this, the scarcity of means was enhanced and wonders were done.

But let's return for a moment to the first point: when we talk about the centrality of the person, which people are we referring to? Lately, it is becoming increasingly important to create a University for students, also seen as clients. Some time ago, a taxi driver told me about a niece of his who worked at a public university and transferred to a private one. In the first course he taught he failed a student. They called her to order: “How can you think of failing a student? Why does he do this?". “Because he doesn't know anything.” “Yes, but he can't do it: don't forget, he is our client. “He is paying his salary.” He gave them the exams, said goodbye and returned to the public university. At some of the universities where I am regularly invited to teach, students fill out a “satisfaction survey” about each professor. Which ends up becoming – no matter how much it is claimed that this is not the case – into something very similar to an evaluation of teaching quality. That vision of the University is the death of the University.

No, when we talk about the centrality of the person we have to think above all about the people who work at the University, who almost live there. In the professors and all the staff who in the different services contribute to the University growing and maturing: they are the ones who are not passing through there, who are at the University many times and could be working somewhere else, even in better economic conditions. .

And above all, the professors: they are the ones who above all will realize that meaning of the university as it has been outlined before: “all reality has been entrusted as a task to the understanding and cognitive capacity of man in the perspective of truth, which must be sought and examined”; They are the ones who, above all, seek and examine reality from that perspective.

And they are the first interlocutor. The faculties, the departments, the areas are necessary administrative units, but they are not the core of the University nor the interlocutor: the interlocutor is the professor. A university professor is something very serious (and it is understood that “something” is used due to linguistic conditions). In some cases has it been exaggerated? Without a doubt, but that does not mean that he is the fundamental person in a university: interlocutor, not subject or employee.

And allow me a personal memory: when I started working at the University of Aachen in Germany – I was a nobody, a newly arrived Spanish reader – the distribution of the teaching load was carried out in the following way: the Language teachers met , Spanish Literature and Culture –the boss was not there: he was an expert in French Philology and did not intervene-, we had before us the courses that had to be taught and among us we distributed them according to each one's preferences. At the end came “the crown jewels”: the seminars. The oldest proposed: “Enrique, it seems to me that this semester, if you want, it is your responsibility to teach the literature seminar.” Everyone accepted: the seminars were the most beautiful courses, they could be with few students, very participatory because everyone read the texts they remembered. And with that the meeting ended. The topic of the seminar was decided by each professor, without any interference. The schedules were decided by each teacher. The corresponding sheet was then delivered to the person in charge of distributing the classrooms. And he searched in the schedule that everyone had arranged. Of course: sometimes you had to walk ten minutes to the classroom where they had found you, there at the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, surrounded by flight simulators.

And the boss? I didn't even see the result of all that. Surely the model is not replicable in all university systems, but it denotes important respect for the professor.

If the professor is an interlocutor, what is the most important place in the University? I have looked to see if the answer had been given by some important person, an Albert Einstein or Wilhelm von Humboldt, but I have not found it. I was told by a student at the University of Bonn, who on my second day as a university student offered to show me the central building, the former summer palace of the Prince Elector, the Archbishop of Cologne. The classrooms have Roman numerals. And he told me: “Now we are going to the most important classroom at the University: classroom C.” I thought if there would be so many, until there were a hundred. And he took me to the cafeteria: “Classroom C. The most important.”

In a sense, he was right: the cafeteria is a place of dialogue. And dialogue is essential at the University. In the cafeteria, in an office, walking around the campus... it doesn't matter: but there are things that are not communicated with an email (the teaching plan, for example: it is discussed beforehand, there is dialogue; then there may be a specific email). And now the “it is on the web” and it is found there is the dehumanization of the University.

The teachers, yes. Emulating the “If a were a rich man” from “Fiddler on the Roof”, I could say: If I were rector – Heaven is merciful and will free me and any university from it – I would take care of only one thing: I would take care of selecting the teachers very well, of training the teachers very well and that those well-selected and well-trained teachers are highly motivated. From there, I think the University would function without any problem. And that it would be a good university.

There are (not in this university, but in general) many discouraged professors, tired from the many hours of class, a little disappointed, needing for economic reasons to have various jobs. Unmotivated teachers and fantastic facilities do not make a good University.

Surely the professors of the PAD and the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences have published a lot about motivation. I have not read anything, but I dare say that motivation depends on four factors, something like the “Banús square” (just as there is the – by the way very false – “Maslow's pyramid”, and if this square reaches to ever be famous, something I highly doubt, they can say that they were there on the first occasion he appeared in public). I think that motivation depends on four factors:

D – dialogue
C – trust
A – thanks
D – Apologies

These four factors make up the square within which motivation and, consequently, good work grows.

We have talked about dialogue before. Gratitude and trust seem to me to be essential elements of every society: I think that when gratitude is greater than envy and the ability to recognize mistakes is greater than pride, we will live in a better world.

Because we are culturally proud. A test? Emails – it is a test that I am doing in several countries – that contain something that is not liked (a slightly critical comment, an unpleasant question) are simply not answered. And that is why it is so difficult for us to do what is the best social therapy, in any society: apologizing for mistakes, without excuses or explanations.

The fourth point, trust, I learned at the University of Navarra: I learned what it means to govern from trust. When I was appointed Executive Deputy Director of the Center for European Studies, the director, who was the dean of a fledgling Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, more or less told me: “Look, I'm going to do like the Queen Mother: I'm going to give speeches. , shake hands and deliver certificates. I do not have time for any more. So, you take care of everything else. You can always count on my help, you can always call me, but only in matters of life or death.” Understood. And soon a matter arose that was not one of life or death, but that I thought should be consulted: a diptych for some activities. We sent a formalized letter to the rectorate: “It is attached for your approval, etc. etc.…". This was a Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon the vice chancellor who was our immediate interlocutor called me and said: “Enrique, do you think we have time to approve brochures? You, do it and then don't forget to send two copies to the University archive. And if there is something, we will tell you.” And yes, once they said something: that the brochures were too simple, that we should invest a little more... And that's how we worked: they didn't approve of the activities or the diptychs or posters or flyers or the website. Only the budget at the beginning of the year. And while there was a budget, I checked the invoices and no one else and they went to Accounting.

Governing from trust obviously means assuming that there are going to be errors, mistakes – in some cases perhaps even some corruption – that will have to be resolved not by greater sophistication of the system but by better training of people. And in the case of corruption, obviously with the corresponding measures – and sanctions.

In the end, the question is: “How much freedom is possible? How much control, how much systems, how much procedure is necessary?” The question is instead: “How much control is possible?” How much freedom is necessary?” is not Christian.

Governing from trust is assuming that that trust will sometimes be disappointed. But if the mentality is maintained that “there was once a case…” and that is why it can no longer be trusted, I would like to gloss – modifying the context a little – an idea from the founder of Opus Dei, Saint Josemaría: If the apostles there In Jerusalem they would have said: 'there was once a case in which things went wrong', they would have stayed in the Cenacle and the Church would not exist. Because there were many cases: Peter's betrayal, the pretensions of the sons of Zebedee, Philip's foolish questions, that Thomas who does not want to believe... Insisting that there were cases, the only thing it does is erode trust. It is not a call to unconsciousness - the measures dictated by prudence must be taken - but it is a wake-up call not to fall into Lenin's trap, according to which trust is good, but control is better.

In the end, the question is: “How much freedom is possible? How much control, how much systems, how much procedure is necessary?” The question is instead: “How much control is possible?” How much freedom is necessary?” is not Christian.

Let me finish by addressing specifically the graduates and wishing them four characteristics that seem essential to me in a Christian university culture and that I hope they have learned at the University of Piura:

Greatness, which is not pride. He who is great does not believe it that way, others say it about him.

Wisdom, which is not erudition, but knowing how to read the world with an attentive and kind gaze.

Magnanimity, which is not foolishness but perhaps has something of it.

And the sense of humor. I think that a serious danger for the University is the lack of a sense of humor. I think that any professional without a sense of humor is a danger. I would include a sense of humor test in all personnel selection processes.

And perhaps I would add a fifth quality: patience, which you are having with me today and for which I thank you with all my heart.

Thank you so much.

Dr. Enrique Banús
Lima, April 22, 2015
Piura, April 25, 2015