The Göttingen University Speech 2011 took place on Wednesday, 23 November

The Göttingen University Speech 2011 – Science and Responsibility

»In Search of Excellence – How much evaluation can the science system cope with?«
Prof. Helga Nowotny, President of the European Research Council

All members of the university, alumni, friends and interested citizens were invited to the lecture and the reception afterwards

The University Speech
The search for excellence is happening in the midst of structural upheavals in a global research landscape. In international competition, research productivity is considered to be the dominant measurable unit. Universities, research institutions, support organizations and researchers are faced with new challenges. The isolation of national education systems is being broken up by transnational competition. The evaluation of scientific performance is increasingly developing its own multidimensional momentum. How much – and which forms of – evaluation the science system will be able to cope with will depend on the balance between the “no evidence-free zone” called for by politicians and the ability to preserve that power of judgement that is exclusively bound to scientific excellence.

On the occasion of the Göttingen University Speech 2011, the study awards of the Foundation Council University of Göttingen Public Law Foundation were presented by the chairman Dr. Wilhelm Krull.