After a productive trip back to my beloved native land to sort out some business items and shoot some new content for Skin is Skin, I headed to Las Palmas of the Canary Islands, Spain to celebrate the birth of a new university: Universidad de las Hespérides.
There, I was given the immense privilege and honor to give the very first speech ever of this new university.
When I was a young entrepreneur, I thought that intellectuals were boring. Too slow for someone who moves 1,000 miles an hour, like I do.
But when I began trying to understand why Africa is poor and I looked deeper into the history of the Continent and African politics, I saw that so many of the African countries had implemented these devastating policies because of socialist ideas. Where did they get these ideas? From their universities.
Suddenly I saw that academia is not as boring as I thought it was. Academia matters. Intellectuals have a profound impact on the world and the policies that shape it.
So now the question is – How can we come up with better ideas?
This university is dedicated to this mission and is built on the values of truth and knowledge-seeking, with an emphasis on exploring ideas in a free environment.
This is something that is sorely needed in a time where we see that higher education is going under because of woke-ism… where we see people afraid to think differently and where intellectual teachings are increasingly not about facts, but about how people feel about something.
While I could go on and on about the problems with higher education today, nothing is solved by just complaining about it. “Criticize by Creating” is my mantra. And that’s what I love so much about Universidad de las Hespérides… they are dissenting by creating a solution.
Ci kaw! Ci kanam! (Onward and upward!)
Magatte
