OPENING OF THE 2020/21 ACADEMIC YEAR

speech

Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero
President of the University of Navarra

Your Excellency, Minister of University, Innovation and Digital Transformation of the Government of Navarre
Your Excellency, President of the Parliament of Navarra
Your Excellency, Mayor of Pamplona
Your Excellency, President of the UPNA
Your Excellency Archbishop of Pamplona-Tudela
Your Excellencies Authorities, faculty colleagues, students, ladies and gentlemen,

Gaur goizean, Nafarroako Unibertsitatearen kurtso irekieran, gurekin batera zaudeten, gure lagun maiteok.

Twelve months ago we started the academic year... and the political, business, judicial, sports... with the idea that, after the summer, a normal period would begin, with the familiar routines, the milestones that happen every year: the arrival of students, the resumption of parliamentary activity, companies launching their new plans, the ball starting to roll in El Sadar and other soccer fields...

But in January we received disturbing news of a disease spreading from the city of Wuhan. On the 3rd of that month the BBC called it a "mystery virus". Two days later, the WHO stated that "no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission has been reported". On the 11th, the first fatality occurred in China. On the 31st we had news of the first coronavirus patient in Spain: a German tourist in La Gomera.

In February, status got worse: on February 11, the WHO named the Wuhan coronavirus "covid-19". One day later, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was cancelled: it seemed increasingly clear that the pandemic was going to have profound health, social and economic consequences. On the 22nd, 18 cities in northern Italy were confined.

On March 3, the death of the first patient with coronavirus in Spain was confirmed in Valencia. On the 11th, Spain had more than 2,000 infections and 47 deaths. On the same date, the WHO declared that the coronavirus could already be defined as a "pandemic" and that "more aggressive and intense actions should be taken". On the 14th, the Government announces a state of alarm in Spain, which will last 98 days.

It seems reasonable that we should now consider how we have reacted to this dramatic and unexpected event and, above all, that we should think about how we should act in the future.

I read an enlightening account: at the beginning, "the doctors could do nothing because of their ignorance of the disease, which they were treating for the first time: on the contrary, they themselves were the most affected, since they were the ones who were closest to the sick: no other human science was of any use either. They also made supplications in the temples, consulted the oracles and resorted to other similar practices; everything proved useless and they ended up renouncing these resources, overcome by evil"[i]. This text, written by Thucydides, refers to the plague that devastated Athens in 430 BC, and from which he himself fell ill, but substantially coincides with the events that we have lived 2,500 years later.

Indeed, even now the pandemic has taken us by surprise, just when we thought we could control our destiny. Unexpectedly, the virus has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, has caused almost half of the Earth's inhabitants to spend several weeks confined to their homes, has paralyzed economic activity, and has generated fear and uncertainty throughout the world. The response of governments, companies, hospitals, academic centers, NGOs and families has varied widely: some institutions have acted swiftly and correctly, while others have been slower or more erratic.

At the University of Navarra we understood very early on that the crisis required us to clarify our priorities: first, we decided to protect the health of our employees and students and to maintain the jobs at work; then, we decided to continue to perform our work with the highest possible quality, under very complex conditions; and finally, we wanted to face the pandemic with a solidary approach, with the idea of helping the most vulnerable people.

With these principles in mind, we close campus very early, promote teleworking and transform - in one weekend - the face-to-face teaching into teaching online. During the confinement, we teach 24,000 online teaching hours and take 68,000 non-face-to-face exams.

La Clínica treated 1,600 patients with covid-19, of which more than 500 were hospitalized. In Madrid, where the pandemic was most severe, issue tripled the number of ICU beds available and achieved a 95% recovery rate for hospitalized patients.

As I mentioned before, the reaction to the crisis has also been supportive: the University made available to the health authorities all its assistance capacity, as well as the possibility of performing PCR tests in our laboratories. Medical and nursing students helped in residences and health centers; and many other professionals and students of the University were involved in various service initiatives.

Along with the principles, the second pillar of our covid-19 performance has been employee engagement. On Friday, March 13, we closed campus and on Monday, March 16, we were teleworking and teaching teaching online. That weekend, the collaborative work of the university community - teachers, IT Services and quality and innovation, managers... - made possible a rapid learning process.

In a meeting of Office of the Executive Council with the deans of the Schools we proposed an ambitious goal : "the goal -we told them- is that the students give us a ten". Although I already did so at the end of last year, I would like to thank all the professionals of the University of Navarra for this extraordinary commitment. This is how we have been able to carry out our task in the best possible way in such an adverse status .

The Clinic's professionals worked with the same attitude. For several weeks, many of them had to work long hours at conference to attend to covid-19 patients; 209 professionals were infected with the disease while attending to patients. Like all other health professionals, they have earned our applause and our permanent gratitude.

Communication has also been core topic during the health crisis. In times of uncertainty, concerns, fears and doubts often arise. At the University we have tried to anticipate: our idea has been to detect the concerns of each public goal -professionals, students, patients, families...- and to provide them with frequent, clear and precise information, so that they could make plans based on reliable data .

In addition, we set out to contribute to the public discussion : during the months of the state of alarm alone, our professors and researchers published more than 100 opinion articles in the national and international media and the University was cited as reference letter in more than 5,200 news items. As a curiosity, it should be noted that our media star of the pandemic has been Professor López Goñi, a regular voice on television and radio stations. His article "Ten good news about the coronavirus" exceeded 21 million readers in two months.

We now begin a new course with the conviction that we have prepared ourselves in the best possible way to face the unknown. "Prepare2." That is the slogan with which we have launched our plan for the coming months. We are prepared because we are going to offer teaching face-to-face with the quality we demand of all University programs. But, at the same time, we have designed several scenarios that allow us to act with flexibility: some weeks perhaps the teaching should be online for some or all students. If we aim to make the University of Navarra one of the best places in the world to study, we now add a coda: "particularly in times of uncertainty".

We should not react to the virus with fear, nor with frivolity. We cannot live in fear, confined to our homes, because such an attitude would have serious social, economic and educational consequences. But neither can we behave imprudently, without taking the most effective preventive measures. In this respect, we university students must be particularly exemplary. Prudence in complying rigorously with all the rules is the fundamental way to show solidarity in these times of pandemic.

We have recently developed a "healthguide " that includes several measures: free PCR tests for all professionals and students at the beginning of the course, permanent medical surveillance, random covid-19 scans and adaptation of spaces for safe academic activity, among others. But, I insist, none of these measures will be effective without the behavior staff manager .

Last month, Pope Francis appealed to this sense of responsibility: "from a crisis (...) - he said - we come out better or we come out worse. We must come out better, in order to improve social injustices and environmental degradation. Today we have an opportunity to build something different"[ii].

Covid-19 is causing severe economic hardship for many families. To alleviate this negative impact, we have increased our scholarship allocation. financial aid With the support of many benefactors - many of them alumni- the resources allocated to scholarships have increased from 4.5 million euros to 6.5 million euros. subject This increase has allowed us to increase the number of students who will receive financial support from the University this year from 2,000 to 3,000.

During the confinement many of us took the exercise bike out of the attic, which had been gathering dust for some time, selected some good books and watched perhaps more movies than usual. I enjoyed those days again with one of the movies I have seen most often in my life: Casablanca. As you may recall, the two main characters are Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). But there is a third unforgettable character: I am referring to Captain Louis Renault (played by Claude Reins). Renault is the highest military authority in Casablanca. He has been promoted because of his collaborationist attitude with the Nazis in the Vichy France era. His cynicism seems to know no bounds. At one point someone asks him: "But you, whose side are you on?". And Renault answers unequivocally: "I confess that I lack convictions".

I have paused in that scene to remind myself that - in the face of Captain Renault's attitude - only with well-determined principles can we ensure that our trajectory is coherent. These values must be inspiring, they must help us to make the right choices; they act as points of support, they remind us of our priorities.

These last weeks of the summer, with a little more time to look at the horizon, I have detected that, at the University, crises have never led us to park projects: if that had happened, we would probably continue solving problems and perhaps we would still be at the Chamber of Comptos waiting for better times. We have never acted in this way: we have always made defense and attack compatible: we put out fires and, at the same time, we launch new initiatives.

We also intend to ensure that the health and economic crisis does not paralyze the projects. For this reason I would like to announce that we are taking the necessary steps to build a new Sciences Building, as soon as possible, in the campus of Pamplona, with two different areas: the first will house the classrooms and laboratories that will allow the growth of the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Science and Pharmacy and Nutrition; the second area will house the new Science Museum, which will be dedicated to the research, Education and communication of nature and the environment. We are confident that in this adventure we will have significant public support and the financial aid of many institutions and companies committed to biodiversity and sustainable development .

We will also announce other initiatives when, in the coming months, we present our project Horizon 2025.

A year ago in this same classroom magna, when none of us suspected that masks were going to play a major role in our lives, I commented that in the University tradition and modernity go hand in hand, like complementary colors, which are opposites, but only they, when mixed, can produce certain contrasts and harmonies. Perhaps more poetically, Mahler expressed it when he indicated that "tradition is not to worship the ashes but to preserve the fire"[iii].

At the University of Navarra we are proud of our past, of the work we have done, of the science we have produced, of our well-trained students, of the principles and values that drive our way of working. At the same time, we seek innovative answers to contemporary problems, we try to detect and correct our mistakes and we intend not to pact with mediocrity. Only in this way can the students who come to the University have a memorable experience; only in this way can the patients who come to the Clinic perceive that they are being cared for in an extraordinary way; only in this way will we produce scientific knowledge that will change the world in a relevant way, for example, with therapies or vaccines against covid-19.

I'm done now. But first I would like to thank Juan Manuel Mora and Isidro Abad for their excellent work at Office of the Executive Council. Juanma returns to his beloved Rome after thirteen years as Vice President of Communication and development: in that time the University has managed to make its brand much better known and valued all over the world. Isidro is retiring after being our General Manager since 2008: with him we have faced crises with great serenity, we have gained in efficiency and we have strengthened the financial status of the University. I also thank Gonzalo Robles for his availability to replace Juanma Mora after seventeen years as University Secretary. Office of the Executive Council And I welcome Álvaro Balibrea, new General Manager, and Jesús Mari Ezponda who joins us as University Secretary. I confess that I am happy to work with this great team: for me, the best in the world.

I would also like to thank the association de Amigos and many generous people for their invaluable financial aid so that the University of Navarra is able to provide a better service to society every day. Thank you very much.