UTRECHT – Utrecht University is celebrating its birthday this afternoon in the Dom Church in Utrecht, also known as the Dies Natalis. The educational institution is 386 years old and for the first time since the outbreak of corona, the party can continue in full regalia.
“We are allowed again and the sun is shining, so it is fantastic to be able to celebrate this again,” says rector Henk Kummeling of Utrecht University. “We are going to award honorary doctorates and teacher awards and we are going to listen to a wonderful Dies speech by Jim van Os who has very important things to say about things that go wrong in psychiatry and how we can help people better and how we can help more people to to get better.”
The celebration starts at 4 p.m. and can be seen live via this livestream:
Theme is psychological suffering
The theme of the birthday party is psychological suffering. “That is currently a big issue. We see that waiting lists in mental health care are increasing enormously. There is a lot of psychological distress and corona has certainly contributed to this. We see this among our students, but also among our employees and broadly in society.”
During the celebration, the situation in Ukraine is also discussed. Kummeling: “The psychological suffering caused by the war is unimaginably great. I will also say a lot about this in my welcome speech. We do everything for our students from Ukraine, but also for the Russian and Belarusian staff and students. who are suffering from this war, especially the people who have risen up against Putin’s regime. So instead of the university flag, today we will raise the international peace flag.”