I would say there are three. The first, which especially affects the area of teaching, consists in increasing flexibility in order to afford students greater choice when it comes to designing their education. This change is consistent with others that had already been started and it entails allowing students to make more decisions, but also giving them more responsibilities. The second challenge is linked to the need to improve all areas of interaction with students, and it involves both taking fuller advantage of the possibilities afforded by technology and creating and fostering forums for dialogue and cooperation. These changes should also serve to shore up the role of associations, student representatives, sports teams, etc. The third challenge is perhaps the most ambitious. It involves rethinking the services we offer students and how we offer them, in order to better adapt ourselves to their needs as students and as future professionals and citizens. 

“The most ambitious challenge involves rethinking the services we offer students and how we offer them”

It is still early to talk about specific projects. Even though over the last year and a half I have been able to familiarize myself with the needs and demands of the student body as the rector’s delegate for students, the design and implementation of these projects should be the result of an open and participatory effort that does not leave out any university group. I wholeheartedly share the rector’s conviction regarding the need for and benefits of networking across fields and areas. We have already begun to work and by the start of the next academic year I am sure that, with everyone’s help, we will be able to undertake one or two projects to tackle the challenges I just described. 

“The design and implementation of these projects should be the result of an open and participatory effort”

I have a very positive opinion of it. I think the entire UPF community can and should be very proud of our association movement. I know I am, quite a bit! Over the last four years, the student associations and other groups in this movement have carried out more than a thousand highly diverse activities: from holding a ‘referendum’ to determine the students’ position on the introduction of three-year degrees to starting an urban garden on campus or holding talks and parties. They all add up, and I think it is important to stress the growing role of the Student Council as a unifier and driver of many initiatives. There is no denying that a strong association movement fosters a richer community, better able to channel students’ demands, making life on campus more dynamic, etc.

"The entire UPF community can and should be very proud of our association movement"

Yes, and increasingly more so. Certainly, unlike what you typically find in the English-speaking world, there is still room for improvement with regard to the social and professional value attached to these activities. However, it is also true that recent years have witnessed a transformation at many levels that is increasing the importance of extracurricular activities, such as participation in debate leagues, models and competitions, involvement in solidarity initiatives, playing sports or promoting entrepreneurial initiatives. UPF students are aware of this change, but so is the university, which undoubtedly has to devise new formulas to promote and better recognize our students’ many extracurricular activities. 

“Recent years have witnessed a transformation at many levels that is increasing the importance of extracurricular activities”

The bachelor’s degree in Global Studies does indeed embrace this spirit, to train the managers of tomorrow for a global world, but mainly to shape transformative actors, able to change this global world. It’s hard to name two or three key factors that, alone, help students understand a complex world, since that is precisely one of the features of this changing reality: yesterday’s solution may not work today and most likely won’t work tomorrow. However, if I had to choose a few, perhaps the need to understand the world from a cross-disciplinary perspective – not just an interdisciplinary one – and from a perspective that reflects its plurality: of approaches (local, regional, national, international, global), perceptions, capacities, etc. 

There is no doubt in my mind. We are already seeing this with the enormous interest generated by the new degree programme, not only amongst students, but also amongst institutions, organizations and companies. At the risk of sounding bombastic, the world urgently needs good managers and change agents. Graduates of UPF’s degree programme in Global Studies have to know how to meet this need, but they must also understand that, to be truly effective, they must not wait to be offered a job, but rather have to design their own.

"The world urgently needs good managers and change agents"

An easy question! I don’t think that any generation, today or in the past, have ever been able to predict everything they would witness or experience in their lifetime. No matter how much it seems like we are living in a rapidly changing world that may not be following an established pattern, I would argue that today’s generations’ inability to predict the future is no exception. Certainly, the current globalization and the huge technological, scientific and communications advances it has brought have sped things up, but that is exactly why we need people and professionals capable of managing and even promoting change.

“Today’s generations’ inability to predict the future is no exception”

Another softball question! The last few years have seen an uptick in armed conflicts and, at the same time, an explosion in the number of refugees and displaced persons. Inequality between the richest and poorest people on the planet has also increased. On the other hand, in global terms, the number of victims of terrorist attacks has not dramatically changed; what may have changed are the perceptions of people in Europe and other regions who are now more exposed to this type of attack. At the same time, we have made extraordinary advances in healthcare and science that save many lives and help us live longer and better. 

The sum of these factors makes it hard to categorically state that we live in a more dangerous world. Additionally, the tension between individual freedoms and collective security is, in part, a false dichotomy. If security is understood from a broad perspective, focused on individual well-being, the loss of individual freedoms necessarily entails a loss of collective security, and not the other way around. In any case, I think that the curtailing of individual freedoms we have seen in recent years is not due to the need to guarantee collective security, but rather that collective security is largely being used to legitimize it.

“The loss of individual freedoms necessarily entails a loss of collective security”

Despite the events of the last few months, I think we are still a bit far from the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between the two countries. Although President Trump has distanced himself from the ‘strategic patience’ doctrine advocated by his predecessor and the increasingly isolated North Korean regime may feel tempted to use its arsenal to gain international influence, both countries know that such a confrontation would be the worst-case scenario for both of them. North Korea’s neighbours, some of which are key US allies in East Asia, also know it. Still, the risk level is certainly the highest it has been in the last three decades. 

It’s not that they will be; they already are! More than for the new world order, which we don’t know whether or not it will arrive, China-US relations are decisive for the adaptation and survival of the current world order. People often think that China’s growing economic and political influence will eventually give rise to a different order from today’s. But shifts in the distribution of power in the international system need not necessarily lead to a change in order. 

As the American academic G. John Ikenberry has said, the current world order is very ‘sticky’ and flexible, so if the US and China can reach certain minimum agreements they can feel comfortable with, the most likely scenario may be not a change of order, but rather the adaptation or readjustment of the current one. 

“Shifts in the distribution of power in the international system need not necessarily lead to a change in order”

I see you want to make me travel! It depends. The UN in its current incarnation, so strongly conditioned by the will of the most powerful countries on the planet and their veto rights, maybe not. The recent case of Syria clearly illustrates why: despite the need to do something to help the people suffering from the insecurity in the country, the organization has proved incapable of organizing a rapid, effective and committed response due to the strong disagreements between the permanent members of the Security Council. 

In contrast, a well-funded UN in which the vote of one or two states would not be enough to block initiatives supported by the majority of the international community, perhaps yes. Again, the key may lie in the requirements of the complex, changing world we live in that we were talking about earlier: a UN that wants to and can be a change agent should have more power; a UN that limits itself to faithfully reproducing existing power disparities probably should not. 

“A UN that wants to and can be a change agent should have more power”