Ending Speech of the Year, the Rector of IPB University Elaborate the Importance of Academic Freedom

The Rector of IPB University, Prof. Dr. Arif Satria, delivered a year-end speech held by the National Movement Association (GPK), on Friday (12/27) at the Secretariat of the GPK Central Board, Jakarta. Taking the theme of Academic Freedom and Transition to Democracy, Prof. Arif emphasized the importance of academic freedom in fostering creativity, critical thinking so as to produce superior human resources (HR).

“Academic freedom is the main capital for a campus to grow and develop and produce superior human resources. Academic freedom and the freedom of academic platform will produce a crucial atmosphere for building creativity and critical thinking. Creativity and critical thinking are skills that are needed in this era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA), said Prof. Arif.

In this VUCA era, there are skills that according to Prof. Arif must be possessed if the country of Indonesia wants to have superior human resources. These skills are the ability of collaboration, leadership, communication, critical thinking and creativity.

Prof. Arif explained, superior human resources is not seen from how smart and high a person’s grade point average (GPA) is, but the ability of adapting to change shows the main skill of superior human resources.

As Charles Darwin once said that the species that can survive are not the strongest and smartest but are the ones who are responsive to change.

“Being responsive to change requires a number of soft skills such as fast learning ability, agility, flexibility and a futuristic mind-set. Change has always brought novelty.  Facing newness by the change requires fast learning as it takes the mentality of an agile learner, “said Prof. Arif.

Not only the soft skill, collaborating in an era of uncertainty today is a necessity. Collaboration enables the accumulation of potentials to become a new force.  Collaboration is built with integrity, which arises from honesty. That is what characterizes developed countries with their high trust society.

“Therefore, facing the future requires strong integrity. Thus superior human resources are characterized by strong integrity, good soft skills and tough hard skills,”he explained.

Creativity and critical thinking can be produced when academic freedom and the freedom of academic platforms are guaranteed. According to Prof. Arif, the measure of campus life is rationality.  As a barn for rationality, Prof. Arif assessed that the campus must open opportunities for anyone in it to think, to generate new thoughts or think to respond to other thoughts.

A campus strives because of rationality sprouts well and has a place of honour. The more advanced the campus is, the more time is allocated for the people inside to exchange their rational thoughts, “he said.

Prof. Arif hopes that with this academic freedom, each campus is able to prepare superior human resources that are adaptive to change as to create superior human resources for the advancement of Indonesia in the future. (IAAS/KSN)

Keywords: Rector of IPB, superior human resources, academic freedom