Speaking Wednesday, August 15 on the main campus of the University of Liberia at the launch of the University’s administration organized the platform for intellectual discourses dubbed “LUX TALK, Min. Tweah bemoaned the current intellectual status of the state-run highest institute of learning.
“The University today is far from the zenith of its intellectual power; far from its capacity to hold the imagination of young men and women and mold thinking and forge their path toward a productive participation in their society”, lamented Min. Tweah.
The country’s Finance Minister and revered intellectual who gained stardom during his days as a student leader at the University reflected that his and earlier generations of students remember the University “as a place of remarkable intellectual depth, distinguished by the quality of teaching, by the longing for intellectual excellence and by the stamina and endurance for long hours of study”.
He then attributed the collapse of the cherished intellectual and academic reputation of the University to the degeneration of both administrative and instructional standards. According to him, this has now manifested itself into forms of destructive students violence which regrettably has become the official language of dissent and intellectual exchange.
Minister Tweah then advised the students that protracted and intermittent violence does not convey a message but rather it undermines any message no matter how meaningful that message is and portrays University’s students as “barren and bereft of ideas and susceptible to manipulations by others”.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance and Development Planning has termed as a fundamental challenge facing the University the need to reverse the evident decline of standards and value that manifest into ungainly forms. He expressed the belief that Government and the UL’s Administration working together can commence the reversal of the decline.
He considered “Lux Talk’’ as a program that will not only look at larger national issues but will see the question of transformation at the University as being critical.
Moreover, Minister Tweah also expressed the hope that “Lux Talk” will entrench itself as pre-eminent purveyor and conveyor of intellectual, business, technological, cultural and political ideas essential in the transformation of the country.
“The program should inspire students toward a rediscovery of the meaning of university learning and also inspire young students who want to enter the University”, said Finance Minister, Samuel D. Tweah, Jr.
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