Time to Make Choices. Think Responsibly, Act with Vision
The start of an academic year is more than just a date on the calendar. It is a new beginning, a collective opportunity to reaffirm who we are and where we want to go. It is the moment when we as a community renew our choice to be here.
We live in accelerated and complex times, marked by the continuous overlap of multiple emergencies — health, environmental, geopolitical, technological — that make it difficult to look ahead. Yet, it is precisely in these moments that choices matter most. Because by not choosing and postponing, we give in to indecision which is already a form of choice, and often the riskiest. For this reason, as we open the 2025–2026 academic year, we want to reaffirm the value of well-considered decisions, of time invested in knowledge and care. And we do so while working on the new 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, which will put this kind of awareness at its core, the fact that every educational and scientific choice is an act of faith in the future.
To those who are joining our university this year — the 5,000 new students and the 15 new faculty members who have enriched our faculty— I extend my warmest welcome. You are joining a community that puts at its center the idea of the university as a public good: a place of freedom, openness and responsibility. Here the diversity of disciplines, cultures and visions is not a given to be managed, but an asset to be cultivated: it is what we call "superdiversity", the condition that allows us to address the complexity of the present and imagine solutions for the future.
This vision translates into concrete actions every day. In teaching, where learning becomes experience: from the legal labs of the Bocconi School of Law to the immersive learning promoted by BUILT and our Schools; from the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence, which opens a new track in Turin, to the upgraded program in Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, which strengthens our entrepreneurial vocation, thanks also to initiatives such as B4i and the TEF Ignition program.
The same applies to research, which we consider as a civic as well as an academic engagement. The 72 projects funded by the European Research Council, 36 of which are currently active, testify to the quality of our commitment to empirical investigation, as do new partnerships with global players like OpenAI, which pave the way for a conscious and critical use of artificial intelligence in the social sciences.
But a community is also measured in terms of how it chooses to put knowledge at the service of others. We do this with third-mission projects such as the UNICORE program for young refugees. We do it with the fledgling Health Emergencies Analytics Lab (HEAL), which addresses public health challenges by taking a systemic approach. And we do this with tools like the Democracy Monitoring project, which helps us rigorously and continuously assess the state of health of our democracies.
In an era marked by widespread social anxiety, especially among young people, giving back time to thought and reflection is not a luxury, but a democratic necessity. And the university can be, today more than ever, the space where such possibility is cultivated. A place where we learn to choose, to ponder and build together.
Choosing to be present today means recognizing the value of shared time. It means not letting ourselves be overwhelmed by haste, but giving meaning to every decision we make. This is what we do at Bocconi, every day. Together.
