1) This document contains the opening address given at the 11th General Conference of the International Association of Universities held in Durban, South Africa from August 20-25, 2000. 2) The address highlights that over the past 50 years since the IAU's founding, universities have experienced unprecedented growth and dynamism, with student numbers increasing from 12 million to over 100 million. 3) However, the address notes that universities now face closer scrutiny as they are seen as key to the new knowledge economy, and will need to adapt to challenges of the future like globalization while maintaining constant values of open dialogue and universal access to education.

1. IAU Durban Conference, August 20-25, 2000
11th General Conference: Universities as Gateway to the Future
Opening Address
Opening Address
by
Wataru Mori, President, International Association of Universities.
Introduction.
Let me, first of all, say how happy we are to be here in South Africa and express our deep gratitude to
the South African Universities for having extended the invitation to the International Association of
Universities to hold this Jubilee Conference in this beautiful and remarkable country, and to the
University of Natal to have accepted to host our meeting in Durban. We know that the preparations
were an immense task, and if we are now so well received and find such excellent working conditions,
this is due to the unstinting efforts of the local organising team under the leadership of Vice-
Chancellor Brenda Gourley and Professor George and Mrs Deeann Trotter. Once more, please accept
our wholehearted thanks for making us feel so welcome in Durban!
Fifty Years of Service to the Universities of the World.
This is our Eleventh General Conference. It is an occasion, which also marks our Association’s Jubilee
and fifty years of service to the universities of the world. We count these years by their number. But
we also ought to pay a little attention to what they represent in the history of higher learning. To be
sure, set against the centuries of existence of our universities, the fifty years of our Association’s
activity may appear brief indeed. Yet, no one can deny that this half-century has seen the world of the
university, of academia and of scholarship take on an unprecedented dynamic. During this half-
century, the university has added to its historic responsibilities of handling down knowledge,
socialising society’s future leaders and upholding the Nation’s cohesion.
Close Scrutiny.
Today, the university stands as a key and indispensable element in what is now becoming known as
‘The New Economy’. It is the source of that basic raw material out of which a New World order seems
poised to emerge. This raw material is made up of Ideas, human enterprise and innovation. Precisely
because universities generate Ideas – be they research, technological application or philosophical –
and through training enable the creative and talented to cause the Economy of Ideas to fructify,
universities have over the past decade or so, come under closer and more unforgiving scrutiny than
before.
New Myths.
It is one of the grosser myths of our time that such scrutiny is the consequence of failure. We all know,
of course, that failure and disaster tend to grab far more attention than success. Yet, seeing how higher
learning has evolved over the past half century, it is just as easy to take the opposite view. Namely,
that closer scrutiny – be it public or private – over the universities is a direct result and an explicit
recognition, of their importance as « Gateways to the Future ». Once we take the view that closer
oversight and interest are positive developments, then other things fall into place. We should
remember that the university is not valuable only for the prosperity of humankind today, but for the
wisdom to be used for the whole earth in the future.
New Myths.
The university is also a workplace. And in a post-industrial economy, the forms, practices and human
relationships that evolved in specific ways in the university, which is the forge of ‘the knowledge
economy’, themselves take on new significance. The success of the university as an adaptive
organisation has implications for the way firms and authority in our ‘post-industrial’ society may
evolve in their turn. Collegiality as a workplace-relationship does not have to be confined to Faculty
Clubs, to Senates or to Senior Common Rooms. Nor is it. In some of the more innovative and
specialist firms engaged at the frontiers of high technology, collegiality is the pre-requisite of
sustained creativity. None of us here would, I suspect, contest this truism.
Since it is fashionable today to put the affairs of the university in a business-like package, let me

2. suggest to you that a growing enterprise is basically a very healthy one.
Growth.
Growth has been the lodestar in our institutional firmament these past fifty years. When the
International Association of Universities published its first World List of Universities, in 1950, 620
establishments were included. Fifty years later, the International Handbook of Universities contains
some seven thousand. The same period saw student numbers multiple from twelve million to over one
hundred million. In short, as a global enterprise, higher learning has grown about ten times over the
past half century. Our average growth rate in terms of student numbers over the past fifty years is then
in the region of 15 percent per annum. This is very far indeed from a dismal performance. Agreed, this
is not uniform growth over time or place. But it should, even so, give us good reason to be proud of
the way our establishments have met demand over the years.
The International Association of Universities.
In this world of change, IAU has a special place. The Association was set up under the UNESCO
auspices in Nice, in 1950. Its objective was to re-open the intellectual dialogue between universities,
which the Second World War had sundered. The Association stood as a re-assertion of those values,
consensual and historic that sustained what an earlier age would have called the ‘Republic of Science’
and the ‘Republic of Letters’.
As the numbers of universities worldwide expanded in the course of the late Fifties and Sixties, so the
geographic outreach of the Association followed the same path. It was a significant development. It
introduced a further diversity of cultures – institutional, academic, regional and their attendant
experience – into the Association. It was a powerful lever for upholding international dialogue at a
time when regional consolidation was an equally powerful force in the university world.
The Association’s Evolving Task.
Having been created to re-knit the dialogue between the leadership of the world’s established
universities, our Association’s task evolved. On the one hand, it embraced wholeheartedly the
campaign for broadened access to higher education. IAU contributed substantively to this debate. On
the other, it provided a venue where debate over the future of the university both in the North and in
the South could take place independently from the pressures of governments and from the agendas of
international agencies.
Over fifty years our debates have ranged widely. They reflect the natural pluralism of opinion one
expects from the world’s community of learning engaged in clarifying and negotiating its own future
and in learning from one another. But, a record of achievement is no record at all unless it is passed
on. And mindful of this and of our Jubilee Year, the Association has brought out a commemorative
selection from the speeches of our predecessors and colleagues. Entitled Abiding Issues, Changing
Perspectives, it is our gift to you. It marks the path we have hewn at the moment when we are called
upon to choose the path our Association will follow in the future.
Globalisation and the Upkeep of Dialogue.
The upkeep of this dialogue remains an essential task, especially when ‘globalisation’ looms on the
horizon and makes its way into the agenda of university presidents everywhere. There is a most
special need to ensure that the channels which enable the world’s universities and their leaders to talk
between themselves are not overwhelmed and thrust aside by the weight of interests which are less
sensitive to the social, national and international responsibilities of higher learning. At a time when
precisely those ‘other interests’ view learning as something to be sold for gain, the conservation of
learning as a Human right – not as a payable privilege, not only for the individual but also for
humankind as a whole – is a matter of the utmost concern to us all.
The Challenges of the Future.
Our challenge now is to give a new focus to that exchange. What is at stake in the ‘Knowledge
Economy’? Who are likely to be the ‘new stakeholders’? Will their hopes and expectations fit in with
the constant values of the university? These are critical issues. They will tax our ingenuity, our insight
and our resolution. Such qualities must also extend to our own affairs. The General Conference is the
supreme organ of our Association. It too has decisions of weight and moment before it. Depending on
the answers we give, so our institutions – and our Association no less – will be able to better respond
to society’s demands with the efficiency and clarity expected of us.
A Memory.
I would not want to close my speech without mentioning three people. We have just learned that Dr.

3. Constantine Zurayk, who was one of IAU’s founders fifty years ago, and was then the Association’s
President from 1965 to 1970, has just passed away. Please let us observe a moment of silence in his
memory. Thank you.
Fifty years are a long span of time, and we are particularly happy to have still today two persons here
with us who – at a very young age – participated in the IAU Founding Conference in Nice. These are
Dr. Helena Benitez and Dr. William Allaway, whom I would like to recognise with all the gratitude of
the Association for a half-century of unstinting support.
I look forward eagerly to the outcome of our Conference.