With the presence of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, the XIII International Congress of Higher Education, University 2022 concluded this Friday, after five days of intense debates on the role and the challenges of universities in the midst of the current international context.
The invitation was to meet again in Havana, in February 2024, to continue forging quality Higher Education together, because as the First Vice Minister of Higher Education, Walter Baluja García, also president of the Organizing Committee of the Congress, said when delivering the Closing words of the meeting, we need to work to consolidate a “more inclusive, more of the future” University.
This is an event, he said, that reflects the life of our university communities and has allowed us to look at our projections after two years clouded by the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic.
After thanking the many people who made it possible to bring University 2022 to a successful conclusion, Baluja García recalled Fidel’s imprint on Cuban Higher Education and his successful vision of bringing to fruition the idea that there was nothing better we could do for the triumph of the Cuban revolution to develop universities.
Previously, also during the closing ceremony, Ondina León Díaz, president of the Scientific Committee, highlighted that the work sessions of these five days became a unique opportunity for the scientific and academic exchange of directors, researchers, teachers and students, who met in Havana and other parts of the world (virtually) to participate in debate workshops, forums, panels and other valuable exchanges on transcendental issues for Higher Education institutions in Cuba and the world.
Among the various topics included in the agenda of the event, León Díaz highlighted the challenges in the comprehensive training of professionals; the need to promote educational and innovative transformations; the university-society relationship; and the role of universities in local development. Likewise, he pointed out the priority given to topics related to energy problems and the development of the teaching process of Medical Sciences careers.
At the closing of the great event, which turned Havana into the world capital of Higher Education in the last five days, the Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo Di-Lella was also present; Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo, member of the Secretariat and head of the Department of Attention to the Social Sector of the Central Committee of the Party; José Ramón Saborido Loidi, Minister of Higher Education; leaders of the Cuban Party and Government; as well as rectors of national and foreign universities.
THE UNIVERSITY HAS TO BE CONNECTED TO LIFE
The University has to be a research center to be sustainable, that includes and does not exclude, it has to be an alert center, asserted the renowned Brazilian theologian Frei Betto, during the keynote address given this Friday, on the last day of the International Congress University 2022.
With the presence of the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, the prominent Latin American intellectual spoke about the challenges of Higher Education in times of transition to a post-pandemic world and the strategies to face COVID-19 from the centers education on a global scale.
At this time of transformation, the University faces two great challenges: the phenomenon of disease and that of digital networks, said the good friend of Cuba from the podium of the plenary hall of the Palace of Conventions in Havana, to later shake the plenary ensuring that “the University has to be connected to life”.
Frei Betto, one of the greatest exponents of liberation theology, insisted on the need to rethink the University and education in the current scenario.
Referring to Cuba, he reviewed the history of its emancipatory struggles and asserted that this is a country deeply marked by a university committed to social struggles. The Cuban University gave the architects of liberation and sovereignty, Frei Betto recalled, to later evoke the National Hero José Martí, and his close friend Fidel Castro.
The Brazilian theologian underscored the universities’ commitment to scientific objectivity, but emphasized that their primary role cannot be just that of training qualified labor for the market.
Higher education, he emphasized, must also have a commitment to human subjectivity, to values, morals and ethics.
In his master conference “Challenges of the University in times of transition from the pandemic to the post-pandemic world”, the intellectual insisted on the need to find ways to mobilize students and professors of Higher Education to face the challenges imposed by the pandemic. of COVID-19, and how to think today’s University in digital networks, an issue -he meant- that cannot be left to mere improvisation.
In his accurate words, he referred, in a particular way, to how much the Revolution has promoted in the broad access of Cubans to education and culture, in an effort to strengthen “the only path for a justice of freedom and social justice, which It is Socialism”.
