Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Wageningen University: Speeches

This is the second blog post in the series about the 100^th anniversary of Wageningen University. In this post we highlight the collection of speeches from Wageningen University. The collection consists of inaugural speeches, farewell addresses and Foundation Day speeches. The majority of the speeches is in Dutch.

First speech

The first speech in the collection is an inaugural speech given by Prof. Mr. J.C. Kielstra on October 7^th, 1918. It was entitled “Recht en werkelijkheid” (“Law and reality”).

First Foundation Day speech

The first anniversary of the university (at that time called “de Landbouwhoogeschool”) was celebrated in 1919 with a speech by Prof. J.H. Aberson. He started his speech as follows: “Mijne heeren Curatoren, Hoogleraren, Lectoren, Dames en Heeren Assistenten en Studenten der Landbouwhoogeschool. Zeer geachte Toehoorderessen en Toehoorders. Ik roep U allen, die hier gekomen zijt, om met ons den dag te herdenken, waarop de Landbouwhoogeschool gesticht is, een hartelijk welkom toe.”

926 speeches

So far, a total of 926 speeches have been published. The number of speeches has grown substantially over the century.

The first speeches were mostly related to social, plant and crop, and environmental sciences. After about 25 years, speeches in agrotechnology and food sciences appeared. They have become a substantial part of the Wageningen academic speech output.

Speeches by Arthur Mol and Louise Fresco

Our Rector, Prof. Arthur Mol, gave his inaugural speech on May 31^th 2001, as a new professor of Environmental Policy: “Koppelen en ontkoppelen: milieupolitieke modernisering in een tijdperk van globalisering” (“Connect and disconnect: Environmental political modernisation in the era of globalisation”).

Louise Fresco, President of the Executive Board, gave her inaugural speech on May 21^th 1992, when she accepted the position as professor in Tropical Crop Science. The title of her speech was “Zo niet nu, wanneer dan?” (“If not now, when?”). Louise Fresco also gave a speech celebrating the 78th anniversary of the university in 1996: “De bananenrepubliek” (“The banana republic”).

YouTube

Nowadays, new professors also pitch their research in a short video. You can find these on the YouTube channel of Wageningen University & Research.

Topics

The topics of the speeches are summarized by this word cloud. This clearly shows the main research topics of Wageningen University.

Most downloaded

WUR Library digitized all published speeches; these are stored in the WUR e-depot.

The most downloaded speeches are:

1. Downloaded 1905 times. Prof. W. van Staveren (2004). Voeding, levensloop en loopbaan (farewell address)
2. Downloaded 1876 times. Prof. E. Frankema (2013). Africa and the green revolution : a global historical perspective (inaugural speech)
3. Downloaded 1866 times. Prof. E. Kampman (2008) Voeding & kanker : wat leeft (inaugural speech)
4. Downloaded 1851 times. Prof. G.J. Hiddink (2000). Voedingsvoorlichting in beweging : op zoek naar effectiviteit perspective (inaugural speech)
5. Downloaded 1657 times. Prof. A.E.J. Wals (2010) Message in a bottle: learning our way out of unsustainability perspective (inaugural speech)

Pages

The average speech has 26 pages, but the number of pages varies between 8 and 79. The longest speech was given by Prof. M. Korthals in 1994 and was entitled “Duurzaamheid en democratie” (“Sustainability and democracy”). The shortest one was the farewell speech of Prof. H.M. Quanjer (1949) with the title “Plantenziektenkundig onderzoek in Amsterdam en Wageningen 1904-1949”.

Ik heb gezegd.