April 3rd, 2020

Dear colleagues throughout UPF, students, administration and service staff, teaching staff, dear friends scattered all around and dear friends all over the world,

First of all, many thanks for your kind words and your priceless affection. I try to kindle it so that it may belch smoke, to share it, and, as it should by rights, be fairly shared around.

Also first, absolute first, solely, if you like: a hug to all those who are not feeling well and to all the experts, to different extents, who have offered yourselves to fight by their side for them to heal well and quickly. I have just called you, the sick “those”, but just for a linguistic moment, to think of you back again among us, forthwith. You, patients and caregivers of all kinds, are receiving great support from the public, a presence I experience daily in the flat where I am shut in with some of my family and that I see for myself wherever I manage to communicate.

Next, I must say that at the meeting of the University Board of Management, we reviewed in detail the problems now involving pending exams and the start of classes in the third term, along with the foreseeable difficulties caused to doctorates, research projects and other ordinary University activities. I would like to insist, and I do so with great pride, on the fact that almost all of them would appear to be surmountable. And not because there are no grave problems, but because of the enthusiasm, the courage and the expertise of those responsible and, ultimately, of all of us together. We are sure to end this academic year well.

Finally, I would like to outline briefly a concern of colossal size, which is hard to express without feeling sidelined and too little involved in the solutions. This ending weighs on me somewhat. When I was young and was studying philosophy at the UAB, my special treat was to buy books. Books of all kinds, but especially those then considered study books, many published in Paris, in Oxford, in Frankfurt. They cost a fortune, about 2,000 pesetas, easily, that’s between 10 and 20 of today’s euros. It was hard to afford them at the price of the few Catalan classes I used to give in the various districts of Barcelona (it was that great cause of Òmnium Cultural) and it was hard even to get hold of them. These days I don’t like to distinguish between types of books. Let’s say that I have mixed up all the genres, literature, music, painting and cinema, all together. Moreover, the price has brought almost all of them together, books, to a very affordable amount, similar in absolute figures to that of the gems of Vrin, or the Oxford classics, or the Dutch facsimiles, forty years ago. I simply mean that there are enough books at home, three or four computers, tablets, phones, and also UPF provides those of us who are linked to it, with the Digital Library of Catalonia, the cream of the old CBUC of LluísAnglada, Mercè Cabo, Montserrat Espinós, Ernest Abadal, Loli Manciñeiras, Joan Ramon Gómez Escofet, and all my friends at the Catalan universities. Now, that shopping consortium thing is called CSUC, always so well directed by Miquel Puig and our highly expert librarians at each university library and at the Biblioteca de Catalunya. Good memories from long ago but from closer by. But, these days I have been thinking, it’s been really bugging me, what happens to people who have no books, no computer and no WiFi? What happens to such a being who to the well-accustomed since time immemorial, we can come to consider as being non-existent?

We know you university students, in Catalonia, first by your so-called admission grade and the famous cut-off mark of your studies. It is not the best method, but for many years it has been reasonably agreed to as being an equitable method of awarding places. I will not now ignore all of the shortcomings of the Catalan education system regarding social equality. But we could say that, once at university, we do not need to know anything about what our students have at home or where abouts in the world they come from. With graduate and PhD students it’s the same. To date we have only been interested in their talent and their results. The University, universities, make everything they need available to them. I repeat, forgive me a minute while I ignore the underlying inequalities and the titanic effort of those responsible for primary and secondary education. What happens now, these days, in which “what I have at home” and “where is my home?” have become particularly significant, among those who may have nothing at home that is useful for study? At what price? I am not speaking of any case in particular. I have abandoned examples to refer to a general problem of multiple and varied, and now suddenly deglobalized humanity. Where are we preparing seriously enough to answer this question in Catalonia, in Europe and the world? I am sure at UPF we feel compelled to talk about it at least, as much as negotiating with the unions.

I leave you here with the serious commitment to endeavour to make UPF a university that is attentive to this problem.

Best wishes,

Jaume Casals
Rector
Catedràtic de Filosofia