Speech by the Rector, Annick Castiaux, at the 2025-2026 Official opening of the academic year ceremony on September 25, 2025.

Ladies and gentlemen in your titles and capacities,

Dear colleagues,

Dear students,

Dear friends of UNamur,

Those who are used to coming to our academic reunions may be surprised to see me dressed in a toga. It's true that it's not my habit. However, I felt it was important to give this ceremony a little more solemnity. On the one hand, to celebrate the start of my second term as Rector, and on the other, because I feel that the message I wish to convey to you today is particularly solemn.

So here I am, back for another 4 years. First of all, I'd like to thank the members of the community for their renewed trust. And to emphasize how fortunate I am to be able to count on a high-quality team that has already embarked on this new mandate with enthusiasm, commitment and responsibility. I'd like to ask everyone to stand up when I call out their names. There are some newcomers:

  • Benoit Champagne, as the new Vice-Rector for Research and Libraries. He succeeds Carine Michiels, who has held this position (and many other responsibilities) for the past 8 years. Many thanks to Carine for her unstinting commitment to UNamur
  • Also new to the team: Stéphane Leyens, whom you may have discovered in one of the videos, and who is taking on the role of Vice-Rector for International Relations and Cooperation. It's Jeroen Darquennes who hands over to him after also 8 years of supporting the university's international development, one of our 4 strategic axes. A sincere thank you to Jeroen who was unable to join us this evening.

Some former team members are returning. Thanks to them for their trust and dedication:

May I ask you to applaud this magnificent incoming team as well as those who are leaving us to return to their research after 8 years of loyal service?

At the beginning of July, I was in Bogotá for the General Assembly of Jesuit Universities, which is held every 3 years and brings together representatives from over 200 universities from more than 50 countries. Together, these universities represent around one million students. In working groups, we discussed the major challenges facing our universities, both individually and collectively. For 10 years now, we have been following in the footsteps of the Laudato Si' encyclical, trying to contribute through our teaching and research to a more sustainable world. The challenge of environmental and social sustainability obviously remains a priority. Hence my desire to ask Amélie Lachapelle to support our sustainability strategy as "Transitions and sustainable development" special advisor. Amélie, would you please stand up?

In Bogotá, we've all noticed that other issues are grafted onto this sustainable development challenge. We have identified 3 of them:

  • Artificial intelligence, which, like any disruptive technology, is set to transform society, and singularly intellectual professions; it's fundamental that the university invests in teaching and research about this technology while also being the driving force behind inter-disciplinary reflections on its uses, including in our fundamental teaching and research missions ; This is what Benoit Frenay has agreed to undertake as "Artificial Intelligence" special advisor, with the support of a recently formed AI Council; Benoit, I suggest you stand up in turn;
  • The mental health of students and staff, in an increasingly complex and uncertain world; this is notably what led to François-Xavier Fievez's portfolio being extended to the cross-cutting issue of quality of life on campus;
  • The threats to democracy, whose direct impact on universities was being highlighted by American colleagues (and other countries for that matter).

In fact, when regimes waver towards authoritarianism, it's the voices of freedom that are directly muzzled: freedom of expression, notably through culture (I'm thinking of all the work on confluences that the Namur 2030 dossier carried), freedom of information, through the media, freedom to teach and research, within universities. Muzzling them takes many forms. We see the most caricatured expression of this across the Atlantic.

In Belgium, as in Europe in general, we benefit from a high-quality university model that we must both highlight and defend. The European alliances are a wonderful opportunity to reaffirm this European model. This is why I have asked Anne-Sophie Libert, as "UNIVERSEH" special advisor, to help us further develop the one we're lucky enough to have entered, which addresses a field crucial to Europe's autonomy: Space. Anne-Sophie, can you stand up too?

Yes, our university model in Europe, and in Belgium in particular, is a benchmark. However, I'd like to draw your attention to a series of signals that are less extravagant than Trump's outrages, but which should alert us to the drifts underway, here too, and the need to react before it's too late. In recent months, we have been confronted with a series of more or less frontal attacks that could be interpreted as an enterprise to destabilize the academic world.

First tactic: the questioning of the usefulness of universities, of certain disciplines in particular

  • "Okay to roll back the withholding tax for researchers in science and technology, but not for research in the humanities: they contribute nothing to the economy! "
  • "Universities vastly overestimate their impact on innovation."

Second tactic: the questioning of the quality of university teaching and research

  • "We should entrust training for professions in short supply to companies, it would be more effective."
  • "The ranking of Walloon universities in the rankings is still not terrible. "

Third tactic: the discredit cast on the expertise and relevance of university research

  • "These so-called scientific studies on climate are biased by ideology."
  • "You compare your salaries to those in the private sector, but they're still not the same profiles! "

Fourth tactic: the stigmatization of universities as ivory towers where a privileged clique indulges

  • "These academics who don't want to make an effort for their pension, even though it's scandalously high..."
  • "You're out of touch with the world: your training courses are obsolete, your research, without valorization. "

I've heard all these phrases myself, or they've been reported to me by colleagues who have tried to carry the voice of universities to various players, political decision-makers or companies. Our reflex: justification. We try to demonstrate, with scientific studies to back it up - you never change your mind - that the interlocutor's vision is false or biased. Of course Belgian universities are efficient: a Dutch study ranks them 2nd in Europe in terms of scientific productivity. Of course we have a major economic impact: several studies show that every euro invested in universities generates a direct or indirect return on investment of between 4 and 10 euros, depending on the context. But yes, our students are well trained, since their employability rate is close to 90% 3 months after graduation. At UNamur specifically, we're at 94%. And the human sciences, of course they have an economic interest. Companies and hospitals are hiring more and more profiles of this type because they see a definite added value. And no, we don't cost too much, since university funding in FWB is 18% lower than the European average. Teachers have a privileged pension? Nonsense, it's just compensation for a modest salary compared with the private sector or even academia in neighbouring countries... By adopting this posture of justification, we de facto endorse the arguments of our detractors. We endorse the demand for economic productivity, results-based obligations, evaluation through the prism of utility... And we participate in the slow but certain unravelling of a remarkable university model, a pillar of democracy.

For yes, the university is a pillar of democracy. I would even say a pillar of liberal democracy, the model of society in which we have been fortunate enough to live since the end of the 2nd World War. The one that Francis Fukuyama (in The End of History and the Last Man, 1992) saw as the apogee of forms of government, towards which, with the end of the Cold War, all societies would inevitably turn. This was not really the case... Liberal democracy, and here I take up Renaud Meltz's definition (The Conversation, 2024), "proposes an impossible marriage by linking the freedom of the ancients, a collective will to defend the autonomy of a city, to the freedom of the moderns, a collection of individual wills. " This fragile model is being challenged in many parts of the world. The libertarian approach promoted by the current American government has placed the cursor on individual freedoms to the detriment of collective governance. It is then the strongest individuals who impose their point of view on others under the pretext of defending their own freedom. Others seek to focus exclusively on the collective, questioning individual freedoms and reproaching liberal democracy for the slowness imposed by its deliberative dimension at a time when decisions are urgently needed on climate or socio-economic challenges. Finally, as Raoul Delcorde already mentioned in 2022 in his speech to the Académie, digital technology poses a major risk to the notion of responsibility in democracy, with the use of algorithmic decisions. I quote him: "European countries would be perceived as too weak to defend a common vision of "digital democracy" in the face of players like China."

Despite the fragility of the model, Renaud Meltz (2024) tells us that liberal democracy is powerful if the notion of sharing is added to it. As for Raoul Delcorde (2022), he explains that what will enable democracy to survive is a strengthening of solidarity, particularly on an international scale. These thoughts guided our own, and so we wanted to explicitly mention international cooperation in Stéphane Leyens's portfolio.

I would like to thank my colleagues, the Rector of ULiège and the Rector of UMons, as well as the representatives of the other Belgian universities, for their presence and call them upon as witnesses of what follows. I would like to add that a university model that is qualitatively strong, accessible to the greatest possible number and involved in public debate also contributes to strengthening liberal democracy. Because educated citizens, well-versed in the exercise of scientific controversy, endowed with a solid critical mind - including in the face of artificial intelligence and the populist excesses it can amplify - are essential to preserving the delicate balance between the city and the individual. Because the international nature of a university, in its public and its research, reinforces solidarity, mutual respect and the desire to build a world together. Because the knowledge created at a university, whatever the discipline, is destined to be shared as a common foundation contributing to the progress of humanity as a whole. I believe in this deeply, as I know all my colleagues do. It's what brings us to this university every day, despite the cuts in funding, despite the loss of confidence, despite the ever-increasing workload... Every morning, we come here to share our knowledge and experience with students, in the hope of giving them the best possible chance of becoming free, responsible, committed and, if possible, happy citizens. We come every morning to contribute our modest brick to the edifice of human knowledge and progress. We come every morning to make the fruits of our research available to public decision-makers, companies and citizens in all fields, and to try to enlighten everyone on a given technological issue, social phenomenon, ethical drift, legal danger, health problem or geopolitical situation. Every morning, we come to try to build a better world for future generations. Every morning, we come to support society through our public service missions. And we're proud of it!

We're proud of UNamur, its academic excellence, its focus on students, and its commitment to society. And it is in association with the rectoral team, the student collectives who have done us the honor of joining us this evening, the members of the academic and scientific corps and all the administrative, technical and management staff, who devote themselves to our university missions, that I declare the academic year 2025-2026 open.

As Élise announced a little early, it is now time for us to meet again for a glass of friendship.

References:

  • Delcorde, Raoul (2022). "Liberal democracy at the crossroads." Académie Royale de Belgique.
  • Fukuyama, Francis (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press.
  • Meltz, Renaud (2024). "Liberal democracy presupposes a shared world." The Conversation.