Robbert Dijkgraaf is President-Elect of the International Science Council and a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam. He is a mathematical physicist and academic leader who recently served as Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands. Before that he was for ten years Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is an experienced public policy adviser having served as President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the InterAcademy Partnership. For his contributions to science, he has received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands.
Science is one of the few converging forces in our fragmenting world. To strengthen resilience and independence, research must do what it has always done best — build collaborative spaces that transcend political boundaries. The values we defend — academic freedom, openness, integrity — are not ideological luxuries. They are operational requirements for science to deliver on its promises. In a time when major powers treat knowledge as a zero-sum game, Europe’s greatest strategic asset would be its commitment to science as a global public good.