The re-foundation of the University of Porto

We have followed the news: the University of Porto has agreed to change its institutional model in order to benefit from the statute of Foundation that the Law provides.

We cannot ignore in this decision the sense of transcending importance.

This is the early sign of an earthquake that will shake the University: earthquake or tsunami, according to the most conservative. Or, according to the reformers, it is a trumpet announcing, in a Nietzschean way, the arrival of the new man. Yet, we must not doubt that, with this decision, the battle between the forces of resistance and change is not at its end.

The University is now free from the ship ropes that hinder it, those ropes hardened by the decades and centuries of a tradition that had lost its time and purpose - but the hardest ordeal still remains, which is to sail. But it is also the most interesting challenge.

Such is life, dissimilar to navigation: the galleon always heads out to sea incomplete and it is during the journey that the deck is built, the mast is raised, the sails are woven. And once the foundational model is adopted, once the legal statute of the University of Porto is changed, it is necessary to actively intervene in its structures. Otherwise, they will prevail and perpetuate in their vices, the most assured way to preserve the selfish old petty powers.

In the new framework, which is more fragile, bearing, therefore, more risky – and yet enabling glorious dreams, instead of mediocre – the interface institutes will play an unmatched role in the history of the Portuguese University. It is as if the University is willing to stand as the response to the challenge that society poses: more effectiveness, a decisive contribute to make the Portuguese people wealthier and happier, with dynamic structures based on excellence, and yet with a sense of the usefulness of knowledge.

The institutes, one way or another, will finally be acknowledged as full right bodies of the University of Porto: this is a structural transformation that cannot be neglected - the culture that evolved within these institutes is ripe, and at just the right time it must contaminate the entire University.

We must pay tribute to the men and acknowledge the heroes. America celebrates the pilot who ditched the Boeing on the waters of the Hudson River in a risky manoeuvre that met in competence its most dreadful opponent. Our pilot is the Rector of the University of Porto.