It is a great pleasure to welcome you all - students from 90 countries around the world - to Oslo and to Norway. We are truly proud to have you here.
I have had the privilege now for 20 years to be active in politics and to be meeting with leaders from different countries. Not all of them have known Norway from visits in their capacity as political leaders. But quite a number of them said that they knew Norway, from attending the International Summer School.
Luckily, most of these leaders said that they had pleasant memories from our country, from meeting people from different countries and from different cultures, some even have smiled wryly, indicating memories they would not further specify.
Mark Twain said:"Don't let schooling interfere with your education." Attending a program like the one offered by the International Summer School is the best way to avoid this kind of interference. Goethe went even further, as he in Faust says "gray, my friend, is all theory, and green is the golden tree of life." I personally believe in both, as practiced at the Summer School.
This is not just schooling. It is a total educational experience. Studying abroad gives you a lot more than bookly knowledge. It also makes for the kind of cross-cultural fertilization, which is so valuable in an increasingly internationalized world.
A great many of you are going to become leaders in your own countries. You are going to find out that many of your daily decisions and duties will have international aspects, as we all become increasingly internationalized.
And you will experience that no matter how many documents you read, no matter how well you are connected electronically to the outside world - no matter how well you are advised by experts in international affairs - there is nothing that can replace the personal experience of a personal international network based on one or several stays abroad.
So while I hope that the curriculum this year, the lectures and the discussion groups will all be of the highest quality - take great care to get acquainted with each other.
This is not only an opening, but a celebration. The Summer School is 50. The Summer School is turning fifty in a period where so many important international institutions turn fifty, and numerous national institutions in numerous countries do so too.
Which reminds us of the period of rebuilding and reconstruction after the Second World War.
When free countries came together in San Francisco to hew out the UN Charter.
When we came together in the determination to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
When associations of international friendship were created all around the world.
In this institution building period was the seeds of the Summer School sown.
And like in the case of the birth of so many other institutions of its kind, - America, and the desire to nurture the ties across the Atlantic, was a midwife. Thousands of Norwegians have benefited from similar opportunities - the American Field Service, the Fulbright Foundation.
From the outset, it was Norway's policy to take advantage of these tremendous opportunities. Sending our own young people abroad to study, means increasing Norway's potential both as a business partner and a conciliator in world affairs.
After the war, the main reason for this student exodus was a lack of capacity in Norway. But that has changed. Today, it is a trademark of its own that so many Norwegian students spend at least part of their studies abroad. Few countries have more students at foreign universities than Norway. At present, some 8.500 Norwegian students are attending colleges and universities abroad.
And remember we are a small country - in numbers at least.
Securing the same access of foreign students to Norwegian colleges and universities is quite another challenge. Although the Norse code prevailed in parts of Northern Europe at the time of the Vikings a thousand years ago, few students outside the Nordic region can be expected to excel in Norwegian. Gradually Norwegian universities respond to that challenge by presenting entire curricula in English.
And then we have the Summer School - entirely at the disposal of foreign friends. The American ambassador, who is speaking after me today, is likely to guide you through those roots of the Summer School. We are celebrating a part of an outreach program which has helped make Norway better connected on the international arena. It has made us more knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and the world better informed about Norway.
Today, the International Summer School is deserving its name when people from 90 countries, developed and developing, come together. Your different backgrounds reflect the real world quite well for such a gathering.
All of you have already obtained a solid knowledge base, and by that, you have cut the key to the future. Knowledge will be the currency of the 21st century
Investment in knowledge and education is the best economic policy there is. And education does not stop at the school gates. We must all learn throughout our whole lifetime.
But our knowledge would be incomplete, if confined to what can be accumulated in the ivory towers of libraries and laboratories.
Multicultural understanding is equally essential.
I remember, as a post-graduate student in America, how it shaped me for life to work as a group with fellow students from a score of different countries, - each one bringing in perspectives which were new to many of us. By sharing our own outlooks, we all returned home wiser, also knowing more about what we did not know. Knowledge is also knowing what we don't know and knowing how or where to find out more about it.
We shall never be able to escape from the ultimate dilemma that all our knowledge is about the past - and all our decisions are about the future.
The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote an interesting article in the Washington Post a year ago, called "A few things it is important to know that we don't know".
Among his points were: We know more than people ever have known, but we do not know how we learn, think, remember or communicate. We can predict climate change, but the weather forecast for next week is uncertain at best.
Access to knowledge expands exponentially. If subscriptions to Internet increases at present rates, there will be more subscribers than there are people on earth by the year 2005. We know how to access almost all the information there is, but not how to sort the important from the unimportant and focus collectively on the former.
We don't know how we are going to feed a doubled world population, only that we will have to. We don't know how provide the energy needed to meet the needs of such a population, without upsetting the climate and polluting our lands. But we know that these are among the issues that will need to be solved in the first half of the 21st century. And your generation will have to do it.
I believe that there is more respect and mutual understanding of the value of other cultures now than ever before. We increasingly have access to the same information, by television, wire services, and new sophisticated means of communications. This is a basis that we must build on.
But we need to find out what we mean by developing greater understanding and creating more mutual respect. I don't think we always mean the same things when we use these basic concepts.
People in the West have opinions, and will express opinions about other countries and cultures as they do about their own countries.
It is not expected today that every country should be governed by the Westminster system of democracy. But the human rights situations, racial interactions, gender equality - this all will be monitored closely all over the world, and will influence general political debates.
We all represent our country in one way or another. We are all shaped in a culture, and we see other countries with eyes such shaded. It is dangerous if being subjective means letting bigotry and xenophobia to grow.
This world must become a refuge of enlightened diversity, governed by people who have been taught the virtue of mutual respect. This is a breeding ground for mutual respect and understanding.
You are a highly privileged group. You have received already a solid education. You are rich in opportunity. You have hopes and perhaps also doubts about the future.
My appeal to you today is to be involved and to become involved in public life. You should serve your country and your community and maintain a social conscience so that you do not become indifferent to the plight of your fellow citizens around the world. In an increasingly interdependent world, we are all neighbours. Our solidarity must be extended also beyond national borders and even beyond generations.
I congratulate the Summer School, its director and faculty with the first fifty years. I wish each and every one of you, the foreign students a rewarding stay in Norway, and hope that you will have memories for life, and that you will become lasting friends.