Jaime Garcia del Barrio, director general of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), participated in the V International meeting of Humanities at the Universidad de Los Andes (Chile). Also present from the University were Álvaro Sánchez-Ostiz, member of the Office of the Executive Council commission for the development of Core Curriculum, and Rafael García Pérez, Associate Professor at Office of the Executive Council.

The international meeting , which took place October 22-24, was attended by authorities and academics from 11 universities from 9 countries: Universidad Austral (Argentina), Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia), Universidad de los Hemisferios (Ecuador), Universidad de Navarra and Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Spain), Pontificia Università della Santa Croce (Italy), Strathmore University (Kenya), Universidad Panamericana (Mexico), Universidad de Piura (Peru) and Universidad de Montevideo (Uruguay).

"To be a university student is to be a humanist."

The meeting had as goal to reflect on the presence and necessity of the Humanities in the university institution, in its titles and in the role of the professor, in order to generate a space for conversation and exchange of ideas and experiences around the difficulties and upcoming challenges.

The President of the Universidad de Los Andes, José Antonio Guzmán, analyzed the importance of the Humanities in the training of the students, the relationship between teaching and research and the objectives of the university Education . In this regard, he stated that the university is the vehicle in which knowledge and culture navigate through time and from generation to generation, so that if this task is not fulfilled, future generations may be impoverished.

For his part, the ICS general director stressed that "to be a university student is to be a humanist: otherwise, one cannot have a complete vision of the world. We have to present this reality to the leaders and make the students discover it on a daily basis".