{"id":479,"date":"2025-04-13T18:15:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T16:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/?p=479"},"modified":"2025-04-13T18:17:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T16:17:59","slug":"why-lux-mundi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/2025\/04\/13\/why-lux-mundi\/","title":{"rendered":"WHY LUX MUNDI?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYou burn money!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once had a casual conversation with a colleague at Malm\u00f6 University in Sweden. Or, in fact, not so casual. She was a Danish lady, elegant and intellectual, and loved by the students. Calmly, she told me she\u00b4d been called in for a private meeting with her Head of Dept. Before my colleague barely had closed the door, she\u00b4d been attacked: \u201cYou burn money\u201d! Confused at first, she realized what it was about. She had failed some poor students and at a Swedish university \u2013 where they are paid by the state only once each and every student exit through the front gates – degree in hand – a \u201cFail\u201d meant Malm\u00f6 University would not get the money. Not now, at least, and perhaps never. Ah, the cynicism!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut what was I supposed to do?\u201d my colleague asked me, shaking her head. I said something along the lines of: \u201cWell, you could give them all a \u201cPass\u201d. The students would have wasted their time and money and once they were hired, our organizations would stumble and bureaucracy crumble. But at least your Head of Dept. would walk about with her nose in the air.\u201d \u201cYes\u201d, my colleague said, \u201cI know.\u201d \u201cWell, I was only joking. You can\u00b4t do that, can you?\u201d \u201cNo\u201d, she continued. \u201cYou can\u00b4t let your students and your country down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli – Portrait by Santi di Tito, c.\u20091550\u20131600<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An ideological eczema is spreading across our institutions of higher learning, and as a result of it, the role of the university is no longer to ensure that our students will learn a whole lot, be as intellectually independent as they possibly can, drawing any conclusion they want based on the knowledge they are taught. Instead, other, murky objectives have taken over, such as \u2013 for instance \u2013 the cynical greed among Deans, Heads, Vice-Chancellors, and, I fear, certain Professors also. No matter if we teach them nothing, they seem to say, as long as we can get our hands on the cash. Pondering about suitable parallels, my thoughts wandered aimlessly towards Bertrand Russell\u00b4s acid review of Machiavelli\u00b4s The Prince<\/em>: \u201cA morality for bandits\u201d. Not a morality for Lux Mundi<\/em>, though. Here, our goal is classic: the intellectual growth of our students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G\u00f6ran Adamson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou burn money!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Portrait_of_Niccolo_Machiavelli_by_Santi_di_Tito.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luxmundi.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}