This was the speech delivered at the start of the meeting held on Thursday the 5th at the Rectorate of NOVA University Lisbon
“Today we live in demanding, volatile and complex times. Times marked by profound uncertainty about the present and the future, by increasingly visible social fractures, and by the unsettling normalisation of what, a few years ago, would have seemed unacceptable to us. Democracy, in many contexts, is treated as something simply taken for granted, while trust in institutions is eroding, replaced by political polarisation and media noise.
These are also times of disinformation and anti-intellectualism, in which the value of science and the place of knowledge in the public sphere are questioned in a manner unprecedented in recent times. Opinions are increasingly occupying the space once reserved for facts. And in the face of the deadlocks we find ourselves living with, a collective resignation sets in, as if nothing could really be different.
It is precisely in this context that the university has a heightened responsibility. Not only as a place where knowledge is produced, but as a space for critical thinking, democratic mediation and public responsibility.
The university cannot limit itself to observing the world. It must engage with it. It must question, problematise, push back against inertia and create the conditions for informed debate. It must be a space where thinking has time, where complexity is not reduced to slogans and where doubt is the engine of knowledge.
But the university is more than a place for producing specialised knowledge. It is, or should be, a qualified public sphere. A place for the confrontation of ideas, for informed deliberation and for building what is held in common. An institution that trains not only competent professionals, but free citizens, capable of thinking critically, disagreeing with respect and revising their positions in the light of facts.
We live in paradoxical times. Never have we spoken so much, and never have we engaged in so little dialogue. Never has there been so much information and never has it been so difficult to distinguish what is true from what is false. We communicate a great deal, but listen very little. There are instant opinions to suit every taste, but critical and in-depth thinking is in short supply. Media attention carries more weight than reflection, and public debate often closes in on fixed identities and personalised confrontations that impoverish discussion and alienate citizens.
In a world marked by climate crises, armed conflicts, persistent inequalities and accelerated technological change, the public sphere becomes simultaneously more necessary and more vulnerable.
The university must assert itself as a qualified public sphere. A place where thought takes root, where divergence is welcomed and where plurality is neither blind relativism nor a battlefield, but informed debate. A place where knowledge does not turn in on itself, but is put at the service of society.
In times of noise and oversimplification, the university should be a space for listening, for the long view and for rigorous thinking. In this context, it is essential to create our own rhythms within the public sphere — moments of pause, listening and shared reflection. Spaces that make thought PULSE, that restore momentum to critical reason and that reactivate the link between knowledge, debate and civic participation.
Democracy is a scarce good that cannot be taken for granted. It is a process permanently under construction, one that demands vigilance, critical thinking and civic participation. And the university, as an institution of critical reason, has an irreplaceable role in that process.
If we want a living democracy, we need universities that do not resign themselves. Universities that question, that engage in dialogue and that assert themselves as spaces of citizenship and intellectual freedom. Because democracy depends, to a great extent, on the quality of the public sphere we are able to build.”