Session V

I think it would be impossible to try to sum up a meeting like this, where there has been such disparate and often fascinating discussion, especially since a lot of the summation has been done very ably already this morning. I would just like to focus on a couple of the key themes that have emerged, dealing mainly with the discussions on media and business links between universities. Dr Jochum noted yesterday morning that there were no question marks at the end ofNew Times and New Responsibilities, and I wonder, are we really so sure that these are entirely new times, or indeed that they bring such new responsibilities?

Two very brief remarks on behalf of the sponsor. One on substance, and one as a word of thanks. The more I have listened to the discussion yesterday and today, the more conservative I have become about the proliferation of responsibilities of universities. I felt that as soon as you start to think about new responsibilities, the more you realise that anything goes: you can ask for the promotion of values, you can ask for refraining from promoting values and just concentrate on pushing back the limits of knowledge, you can go ask for accelerating change, but you can ask for preserving good traditions, and there are many other things that have been hinted at but haven’t really been spelt out which would be just as plausible.

Four underlying themes emerged from the two days of discussion in Paris:

i) Underlying role of universities