The Value of International Collaborations
President Sunil Kumar delivered the following speech at the 1200th Anniversary at the University of Pavia on January 20, 2025:
Buongiorno!
That’s the limit of my Italian. [LAUGHTER]
It is my privilege to be here today in this spectacular theater. I am honored and humbled to be invited as a speaker at this opening ceremony of the 24-25 academic year. I would like to thank Rettore Francesco Svelto for inviting me to this historic event marking the 1200th year since the edict of Emperor Lothair the First established a higher education center in Pavia. Welcome to all the faculty, students, and friends of the university who are joining us today. Thank you for being here. It is an honor for me.
Days, such as today, of high ceremony are not merely meant to celebrate past accomplishments or simple longevity. Rather, they are meant to reaffirm commitment, with renewed vigor, to uphold the values that have sustained this university over the past centuries, to be steadfast in the search for knowledge, to educate future generations to be productive and responsible citizens and leaders in society, and to make a positive and material difference in addressing some of the most pressing problems facing humanity today.
As we contemplate this commitment, we must reflect on how we got here. I must admit that I am not as conversant with the 1200-year history of the University of Pavia as I am with the 175-year history of Tufts University. But it would be very strange indeed if certain parallels did not exist between the two universities. Both universities, I believe, got here for several key necessary reasons: The foundation by a few forward-thinking individuals, the brilliance and accomplishments of the faculty, students, and alumni and the careful stewardship, not only of finances and infrastructure, but of values and culture. But the list above suggests a deterministic process that simply followed a plan. This cannot possibly be true. Not many institutions from the Middle Ages, or even the early 19th century, have survived. So, this list must be necessary, but is not sufficient. There must have been “accidents of history” that led to this particular evolution of the university.
Which brings me to my first main point: such accidents of history would not have occurred without the members of the university taking risks and being open to, and inclusive of, ideas, programs and people well beyond the university’s campus, province, or country. I can point to many examples of this at Tufts, starting with its very founding. It was founded under Universalist unitarian principles, at a time when the founding members were often excluded from other colleges precisely because of these beliefs. Giorgio Blandrata, one of the founders of unitarianism, taught medicine in Pavia until 1556. When the inquisition chased him away to Switzerland. His intellectual and religious descendants founded Tufts in 1852.
Despite its Universalist roots, Tufts was progressive in its approach to education, encouraging applications from all qualified students regardless of race or religion. Today, we are a non-sectarian institution with an inclusive student body. Further, our founders had the audacity to demand that the university (at that time a small liberal arts college) be the “light on the hill for all its neighbors,” creating a sense of civic engagement and societal obligation that is strong even today at the university. No doubt, a much longer list of such risk-taking and audaciously extending the university beyond the usual exists at Pavia.
As the university evolved, Tufts took risks and allowed the fortuitous accidents of history to occur, resulting in a constellation of schools, ranging from Veterinary Medicine to Law and Diplomacy, from Nutrition to Engineering, from Fine Arts to Medicine. But it never lost sight of being a liberal arts college. This seeming contradiction is the driver of our excellence at Tufts – we are strong precisely because our constituent parts are so different from one another. These disparate schools are part of the same university for obvious, pragmatic reasons: no one school has all the resources it needs to deliver on its mission, and the world’s pressing problems don’t neatly compartmentalize along our organizational divisions. Collaborations to share resources and to divide and conquer are good, but they are not ideal.
Which brings me to my second main point: being different is good among partners, as long as they share values and goals. Afterall, the best partner for a left shoe is a right shoe. For example, Tufts has a very impactful research program in Infectious diseases because it has both a school of Human Medicine and a school of Veterinary Medicine. It allows us to study diseases from a One Health perspective, across many species. An often-misquoted phrase in English is “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” This quote is from Aristotle, and in its entirety reads “For the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts, there must be something in the substance.” That “something” in collaborations and partnerships is the combination of a commonality in values and goals on the one hand, and a wide variety in capabilities and approaches on the other. This to me is the key to collaboration. In particular, it urges us to consider international collaboration between diverse partners.
Tufts has always felt that international collaboration between widely disparate partners makes it deliver better on its chosen mission: educate responsible future leaders and to do more than its fair share to address some of the world’s most pressing problems. It believes that it must be creative and inclusive in its choice of international partners. 30 years ago, it helped create the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities, named after our small European campus at Talloires in the Haute Savoie in France. Today, the Talloires Network is a coalition of a few hundred, very different, institutions across nearly 80 countries, focusing on how universities can foster civic engagement in their faculty and students, and driving universities to be forces of good in their communities.
On many dimensions, Tufts and the University of Pavia are very different. One is public, the other is private. One is large, the other medium sized. One has had a law school since the early 800s. The other didn’t have a professional school until the 20th century. And its school of Law and Diplomacy doesn’t actually offer a law degree. Good heretics in the 16th century were our founders. And you will be shocked by what passes for risotto in our student cafeterias. I could go on and on, but you get the point. We are different, very different. Superficially, this would suggest that we should not be partners – we are too different. But, as I have argued before, this is a strength, not a weakness. It is not a defect, but a feature.
Our collaboration started 11 years ago, and most appropriately, in the arts. It was an exchange program between our respective Departments of Music that ran for 5 years. The partnership included short-term teaching residencies in Cremona, teaching courses in music history and ethnomusicology. Such partnerships have continued, and I won’t bore you with listing all of them. And of course, such academic partnerships are best when they are program to program, researcher to researcher. A wonderful example of this is the collaboration between Tufts’ own Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto and your Professor Francesco Svelto, not in his role as Rettore of course, but in his role as Professor of Engineering.
There are a variety of programs across which we can, and intend to, collaborate even more closely. From Engineering to International Relations to the Arts. I am looking forward to meeting with university leaders later today to discuss the potential for students to earn double degrees, one from each university. As an American, I can’t help but ask, why settle for one degree when you can get two? And if we can get our collaborations right, you will have something unique. A combination that goes beyond mere doubling that would be particularly impactful in students’ lives.
This is, undoubtedly, a time when scholarship and expertise is under assault in many parts of the globe. The value of the university itself is doubted in many powerful quarters. But this is not the time for universities like Pavia or Tufts to huddle back into our shells. As I said at the beginning, today is a day to reaffirm commitment to uphold the values that have sustained our universities over the past centuries, to be steadfast in the search for knowledge, to educate future generations to be productive and responsible citizens and leaders in society, and to make a positive and material difference in addressing some of the most pressing problems.
Make no mistake— this is not as easy as it sounds. Needless to say, it will require the brilliance and accomplishments of the faculty, students, and alumni and careful stewardship, not only of finances and infrastructure, but of values and culture. But that will not suffice. The university will need to take risks and be open to, and inclusive of, ideas, people and programs well beyond the campus.
Every year, I advise students who are matriculating to Tufts to get comfortable with discomfort, and to try anything that interests them. Stretching ourselves, even to the point of discomfort, helps us build experience, learning about ourselves, identify our purpose, and make a difference. Institutions too, however old and venerable, have the same responsibility: to stretch our boundaries, even to the point of discomfort, and collaborate broadly, even across obvious barriers. I believe that is the best way to ensure that centuries from now, there is another, similar, celebration on this very campus.
Every morning, I wake up feeling privileged to be an academic, to be a professor living on a university campus. If I may be allowed to butcher Dante, our campuses are cities of joy. Anyone who passes through our campus gates is filled with hope for the future.
May the University of Pavia, this city of joy, fill anyone who passes through its gates with hope for another 1200 years! And may Tufts University stand by your side as your partner and celebrate your success!
Grazie mille.