Student Council speech at annual celebration: »Dear UCPH, when will you be worthy?«

Dear minister, dear board, dear rector, dear fellow students, dear staff, dear guests,

Dear University of Copenhagen, I ask you this only out of love: What happened to your courage?

This year marks an anniversary that is worth celebrating. It is 150 years since Nielsine Nielsen, as the first female student, walked through the doors of the University of Copenhagen.

It was more than a victory for gender equality.

It was proof that, at UCPH, we can go far if we dare to challenge what we take for granted.

If we choose what is right over what is comfortable. If we dare to be brave.

And, not least, if we make space for brave people.

Like Nielsine Nielsen, I am from the Danish island of Funen. But it’s hard for me to imagine what it was like to be in her head. Partly because I’ll probably never be particularly good at medical terminology, partly because I’d eventually tire of hearing people say that my presence at the university — unlike prostitution — was an unnecessary evil.

But Nielsine stood her ground. She was a living example of the university’s highest value: the courage to seek knowledge.

She defied not just resistance. She defied a culture that believed knowledge was gendered. She did it not just to claim a place for herself, but to open a door through which thousands have since walked through.

That kind of courage always comes at a cost. And it places an obligation on those of us who stand here today.

That’s why I ask this question today:

Would Nielsine Nielsen consider us brave, if she saw the university that is celebrating her today?

We are in a time when the university is being pulled in all directions. A time when we eagerly listen more to foundations, politicians and the media than to the courageous.

The last few years have made this painfully clear.

When a brave female researcher like the psychoanalyst Kathrine Zeuthen resigns and describes an institutional setting where certain approaches are being marginalised, and where critical students and staff feel forced to comply or disappear, it is not just a staffing issue.

No, it is a university that allows itself to be governed by a narrow economic logic. A logic that seeps into the academic core and has an influence what topics are being researched, what is taught, and what is accepted as legitimate knowledge.

When we students lose courageous lecturers who do research that challenges the status quo, we don’t just end up with a university that has narrowed down its academic scope. We end up with a university that diminishes itself in terms of relevance — not only as a research institution, but as a democratic force.

When everything that is complex is forced down into something easily digestible, and critical perspectives are pushed out of the syllabus.

When strategic research considerations weigh more than academic courage.

Then we as students are not being educated for a democratic society. We are being schooled. We are not learning how to navigate disagreement, but to avoid it.

When a university loses its courage for academic disagreement, it usually also loses its resolve in defending democracy.

We saw this when brave students set up tents, painted banners and sang songs across UCPH to protest the genocide in Palestine — and the university’s convenient silence.

As pressure mounted on UCPH, the response was no longer dialogue. The response was police and threats of disciplinary action.

The students did not act to disrupt the operations of the university, but to remind everyone that the university is also part of the world beyond its walls.

A university that only tolerates quiet dissent becomes a university without critical thinking.

Because academic freedom is not measured by how many seminars we host about it, but by how we respond when it is exercised.

When UCPH meets students with discipline rather than dialogue, it is not the students that are letting the university down – it is the university that is letting the students down.

It is the university that betraying its own principles.

The same lack of courage was evident in the university’s handling of political pressure on the spaces that many of my fellow students use to find peace, unwind — and yes, pray.

Danish universities did not react based on principle, but out of fear of a political backlash.

That is unworthy of a university that once had the courage to challenge things. To let its knowledge and its democracy lead the way.

How we handle this case will say a lot about what kind of university we are. What stands stronger? The courage for diversity, which this university demonstrated in 1875, or the fear of opinion pieces in the media?

I still hope and believe in the former.

The 150th anniversary is therefore not just a celebration.

It is a compass.

It points to what UCPH can be: diverse, open, brave.

And to what it must not become: an education factory, a production machine, a uniform organisation.

Courage is never free.

It brings no medals, no honours, no glory.

But dear UCPH, it is your essence.

If the next 150 years are to be as groundbreaking as the last, it requires courage from you.

Courage to believe in the dignity of knowledge.

Courage to defend diversity, even when it is inconvenient.

Courage to stand firm, even when media and politicians apply pressure.

Dear UCPH, I ask you this only out of love.

Dear UCPH, when will we once again be able to celebrate your courage?

Dear UCPH, when will you be worthy of your activists, your blockades, and your appeals from researchers?

Dear UCPH, when will you be worthy of people like Nielsine Nielsen?

Thank you.

This article was first written in Danish and published on 18 November 2025. It has been translated into English and post-edited by Mike Young.