Universities: 'enemies of the enemies of the open society'

It is a great privilege to open our fourth Truth Tellers Summit in honour of our great alumnus Harry Evans, especially while Durham University enjoying the accolade of Times and Sunday Times University of the Year from Harry’s own paper.

We are excited to greet our new Global Fellow in Investigative Journalism, chosen from an extraordinarily talented field.

'Incredulity must not distract us'

Universities like ours exist to provide guidance and hope to every new talented generation of students. Yet, each year I have stood before this Summit with a mounting sense of incredulity about the world we are preparing them to enter. Incredulity, however, must not distract us. Indeed, it is what some wish us to feel and to impart. To paraphrase President Obama: the strategy of the world’s bad political actors is simply to exhaust our capacity for astonishment.

In European universities in particular, we risk focusing on our own preoccupations and underplaying our value in open, civil societies.

Beyond the astonishment and the noise, we must remember what journalists know only too well: that we live in a global age of collusive, networked autocrats, for whom attacks on the press and the academy are inseparable parts of the same playbook.

We have all witnessed that playbook. I myself recall a summer teaching the History of the Enlightenment at the Central European University in Budapest, only to find myself a little later, in 2018, part of an unsuccessful campaign to prevent the shutdown of that University by Viktor Orban’s government, along with a crackdown on Hungarian press freedom, that lasted until last month’s election.

'Enemies of the enemies of the open society'

As enemies of the enemies of the open society, universities take inspiration from Reuters’ guiding trust principles, celebrated by Alessandra (Galloni, Editor in Chief, Reuters) on the occasion of their 175^th anniversary, and all like all great journalistic institutions, we also accept accountability for the accuracy of what we promulgate.

To our students, there resolve and courage of investigative journalists are an inspiration, and this will be strengthened by the generous endowment of a new Fellowship in Photojournalism. We look forward to being inspired today.

Find out more

- Find out more about the Truth Tellers Summit and watch recordings online. 

- Explore further the Sir Harry Evans Memorial Fund.

- Visit Professor Karen O'Brien's profile page.