https://youtu.be/upLc2rJIuro?si=nvX8cGdTvQDmIUF6
Esteemed Deans, members of the academic body of our University, Friends of ORT, dear graduates, I welcome you to this postgraduate commencement ceremony. This is an occasion to acknowledge the great efforts you have made to achieve your education goals. You can be proud of yourselves, your presence here today is a testament to your determination, your skills and your resilience.
Today is a day of pride and gratitude. A day to thank your families who stood by you, your fellow students for their mutual support, and those inspirational teachers who encouraged you along the way. We, too, wish to thank you for the trust you placed in our university. We wish to thank you for all we have ourselves learnt from you. Education is a joint venture between teachers and students. We hope to have fulfilled your intellectual and professional development aims and expectations. We hope we were at your side when you needed us, we hope to have prepared you to think freely, to be wary of dogma and fixed ideas. Our goal is to teach you how to think, not what to think.
Today, I would like to pay tribute to my dear friend, admired colleague and co-founder of the modern ORT Uruguay, Vice-Rector Julio Fernandez. Julio is retiring in a few days, after decades of spearheading some of the university's most important projects. If there is a simple problem, I am usually the person to contact. If you have a difficult problem, you can turn to some of the bright and experienced Deans, but if a problem seems unsolvable, you would turn to Julio.
Throughout the many challenges we faced, Julio was always there with his keen intelligence and supernatural calm. You never feel alone with Julio. Julio is irreplaceable, but I am confident that the new vice-rectors, Eduardo Hipogrosso, Pablo Landoni and Daniel Oliveri, will allow us to continue our mission to provide quality education to our fellow Uruguayans.
This year we lost a great leader and better person, my dear mother, Charlotte de Grünberg. Her light has not been extinguished and continues to light our way. During her challenging life, she overcame barriers that seemed insurmountable. At a time when women leaders were few and far between, she built an institution which became a household name and a source of educational opportunities for thousands of young Uruguayans. She was an innovative entrepreneur before the word itself became well known, with a long-term vision and the stamina to pursue it against huge odds. She founded a new university in a country used to having only one. She recognised the importance of introducing technology into national education almost 50 years ago, when it was largely underrated as an educational option. She faced prejudice and challenges as a woman, as a Jew and as the head of a private educational institution, but she rose to them with resilience and determination.
As a refugee from war and persecution, her early life was marked by fear. For years she was denied access to school, friends and any normal way of life as a Jew during the Nazi occupation of her country, Belgium, but she refused to identify herself as a victim. She found the inner strength to complete her education, raise a family, build an institution and, in her later years, share her life story, which Ruperto Long told in a wonderful book with extraordinary talent and affection.
My mother was an immigrant who very soon became proud of her new country, and she always had the support of her lifelong companion, my dear father, Dr José Grünberg, who is with us today. She learned our language and our customs, recognising the many strengths of our culture and working to overcome its shortcomings. She did not just work with herself in mind. Through ORT, she wanted to provide to many, all that she missed in her childhood: education, opportunities and personal dignity.
She was able to create a culture and spirit that guides us today, building a team and a community of shared values that was and still is like her family. Many of us owe her much, and we feel committed to continue her mission. Continuing her mission is a huge responsibility, and we will do our best to live up to it.
Dear graduates. Some of you are probably thinking about your next moves. To seek the stability of a steady job or venture into entrepreneurship? Public service or personal development? These questions do not have a single right answer. Everyone must find their own way. Every choice carries risks, and there are always untravelled paths. Don't wait for the perfect moment to do what you think is important - that moment will never arrive. Trust yourselves. If you don't trust yourselves, others won't trust you.
Be prepared to risk what you value, and to value what you risk. Become leaders with integrity, empathy, and respect for those you lead. Always remember that intelligence is a gift, but empathy is an attitude.
Dear graduates. You are graduating into a world of upheaval and moral confusion. In the midst of this moral regression, racism has re-emerged in one of its most sinister forms, anti-Semitism. After years of claiming to be at the forefront of anti-racism, some of the world's leading universities have condoned the exclusion of Jewish students and professors.
How could anti-Semitism resurface after the horrifying lessons of the Holocaust, after decades of declarations and resolutions against racism and anti-Semitism? How did anti-Semitism manage to find its way back into certain societies? To borrow a phrase from the late English rabbi and philosopher Jonathan Sacks, anti-Semitism has managed to creep back into some of our societies because it is a virus and, like many viruses, it mutated, and our defences failed to detect it. The virus of antisemitism is no longer mainly spread by brown shirts so much as by green flags and red berets. It is being spread by feminist organisations who deny the rape and femicide of victims who do fit their ideological views. It is spread by media whose so-called journalists are in fact terrorists or accessories to terrorism. It is spread by international organisations that judge the State of Israel by different standards from all other countries. The hatred of the Jews is no longer based on an allegedly different God, but on their decision to have their own state.
All of us should be alarmed. Anti-Semitism has always been a symptom of a deep collective illness, which foreshadows the breakdown of peaceful coexistence. The reservoirs of anti-Jewish hatred that are being filled by some groups are highly inflammable. Societies infected by racism first invent enemies to hate and eventually devour themselves. Anti-Semitism inexorably leads to the end of democracy, human rights and freedom. We all have an ethical duty to fight and defeat racism and anti-Semitism. We must learn to live together without being afraid of those who think differently, of those who pray differently, and without being afraid of immigrants seeking opportunity in a new country, as most of our grandparents did.
Dear graduates. Your generation is facing the challenge of new forms of intelligence, which until now have been monopolised by humans. Artificial intelligence will not be just another technological shift. It will affect all human activities, raising concerns and fears that humans will be replaced by machines. However, the relationship between AI and human intelligence is not a zero-sum game; it is not necessarily true that the more jobs that AI can do, the fewer jobs that will be available to humans.
Humans and machines have the potential to complement each other and create synergistic value and prosperity, although this will require human adaptation, on the ways of working, learning and collaborating with other humans and with intelligent machines. People will not compete with intelligent machines. They will compete with other people who know how to use those machines better. Indeed, the ability to learn will become a critical human skill, and our education system will need to be transformed to promote learning at every level and for every learner. Humans will constantly need to relearn and adapt accordingly.
Life will be a constant race between learning and technological change. The challenge will be to ensure that our retraining keeps pace with technological change.
Unfortunately, this is the most important missing element in the great debate on social security that is looming over our country. There is an attempt to return to how Uruguay was in 1950, with low retirement ages and no individual savings plans. But we all know what happened then, and what will happen again if these ideas prevail. If we continue to dwell on arguments from the last century, we will find ourselves not only without sustainable pensions, but also without sustainable jobs. We need to aim for a system that is fit for 2050, not for 1950. A system that promotes employability throughout working life, not just income after employment. Education in the future will need to change from its current model where 80 per cent of learning takes place in the first 20 per cent of life We will need to work out how to finance a system that guarantees access to lifelong learning for all people. A system that allows them to stay one step ahead of technological change, otherwise they will be excluded and eventually replaced.
Dear graduates. There is a lot to be proud of in our country, but of course, there is still a lot of work to be done. This is your mission: to help our society take the next step in its development. Follow your own path, pursue your own ambitions, but always think about what you can contribute to the country we love so much. Make it more just, more prosperous, more innovative and more dynamic. Whatever you do, wherever you are, always remember that ORT will always be your home.
Thank you.