Column Jan Bransen - Endangered, yes, but...

With the new 'You have a part to play' campaign, Radboud University is reinforcing the image of the university as an institution that is explicitly on earth to contribute to improving the ecosystems in which we as humans have our habitat. This campaign – like the first campaign in autumn 2019 – is bound to provoke approval, amazement, criticism and discussion, and for that reason alone it will be considered a success. Radboud University's ambiguous positioning in the imaging will certainly contribute to this, because it is undoubtedly true that our university, as a representative of science, has also contributed to the threat to our food sources, our ecosystems, our habitat and our chances of survival. At the same time, it is to be hoped that the other side will also come into its own and that our university will indeed take action and can transform in such a way that this knowledge it will help to develop will no longer be marketed as a commodity in our economy. But we are not there yet! 

The university will have to fight two untenable prejudices. Firstly, we must do away with the outdated, modernist distinction between neutral, objectively knowledge-based science on the one hand, and political governance and policy aimed at fair advocacy on the other. Science and policy are deeply intertwined, and that includes a commitment in which head and heart are not pulled apart but are understood as being unseparable. It is precisely this awareness that will have to play a role in the sustainability education that is currently being implemented in every study programme at the Radboud University. 

And secondly, we must defend a reinterpretation of our social significance as a university, which is not a matter of economic valorisation. The knowledge that is developed at the university and of which our society can benefit exists only in the form of intellectually virtuous academics. Knowledge does not exist in anonymous, neutral, objective theories, but ultimately exists only in the form of people who can do something because they know something: our well-educated students and our well-functioning scientists. The word 'well' is fundamentally important, because it resonates with that virtue – a virtue that makes our intellect not a weapon for rational egoists, but a tool for caring fellow human beings. 

Hence, the university is first and foremost an educational institution. That is what our social significance consists in, in the fact that we produce well-developed academics. They must be people who realise from the bottom of their hearts and minds that they themselves are nature, that their intellect has a biological function and that they are part of the circle of life. That's why it's time to stop this self-destructive tendency of ours to think of the earth – in the words of Noam Chomsky – as 'a bottomless resource and a never-ending garbage can'.