Unis to be free even in dissent from power - Mattarella

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 12 - Universities must be free even in their dissent from power, President Sergio Mattarella said Friday amid a wave of student anti-Israel protests in Italian seats of higher education.
    "Universities have always been places of free debate, criticism and even dissent from power," Mattarella said at the University of Trieste where he was awarded an Honorary Degree in Law.
    "Debate, criticism and dissent linked between universities in all countries, above borders and above contrasts between states.
    "If you sever this connection, this valuable exchange of thought, of collaboration, of experience, you do not help rights, you do not help freedom nor peace, but you weaken the power of debate, criticism and dissent.
    "You help the power, the worst power, which has always tried to keep the universities in its own country isolated, to prevent them from connecting with those beyond its borders".
    Mattarella went on to urge the European Union to give "concrete answers" to the world's need for peace.
    "The world needs peace, stability, progress, and the European Union is called to give concrete answers to the aspirations of those peoples who look to the most impressive cooperation project conceived on the rubble of the Second World War", he said.
    The president also said that the project to forge closer ties between EU countries so as the build a stronger Union was "ever more urgent and unavoidable." He said "the European project is more imperative and urgent than ever, also in light of the Russian Federation's brutal and unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine.
    "This applies not only to Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, but above all to the countries of the Western Balkans that over twenty years ago began this demanding path of integration".
    (ANSA).