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W. Krull • Philanthropy in Support of Research and Innovation
7. Networking and Joint Funding: We not only have to
support networks on the part of research communities
but also on the level of foundations. Small to medium-sized
foundations in particular can make a difference
by joining forces with other foundations and
setting up common funding initiatives, as we are currently
doing primarily in Europe but also in Sub-Saharan
Africa.
Let me give you just one European example of such a
joint effort: a joint funding initiative of the Italian foundation
Compagnia di San Paolo, the Swedish Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond, and the VolkswagenStiftung on
“European Foreign and Security Policy Studies”. The participating
foundations were convinced that the national
views which dominate academic and practical approaches
towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy
(CFSP) of the European Union should recede in favour of
a transnational perspective. The research and training
programme they set up together aimed at developing
such a perspective by young researchers and practitioners
in their further qualification. The programme also
aimed at mobility across borders and between the academic
and practical spheres. The candidates could work
at academic institutions of their own choice and appropriate
European organisations engaged in CFSP. Each
participant in the programme has been funded for one
or two years. At least half of the time was to be spent
abroad in an academic or practice organization. Individual
activities could be combined with the active participation
in conferences and summer schools involving
the other researchers funded in this initiative.
Candidates for funding were young researchers and
practitioners who aimed at postgraduate or postdoctoral
research in the field of CFSP. They were selected according
to personal qualification and the expected quality
of the proposed piece of research. Disciplines, nationality,
or belonging to an EU member state were not essential.
The about 100 candidates who have passed, or are
currently engaged in the research and training programme
should be able to work as university teachers, analysts
for institutes or “think tanks”, in the media, civil
service, or in political NGOs.
It is a crucial task not only for the universities, institutes,
and research funding institutions to open up these career
perspectives to young researchers. Above all, innovation
is created by brilliant minds and their ideas. A
well set-up innovation process, on the other hand, will
also result in the creation of ideas and, subsequently, of
bright minds who pursue these ideas. Foundations
should be striving to be part of such a “self-sustaining”
innovation process – because we need these ideas in
order to further develop our common cause.
4. Conclusions
Today, in our rapidly changing, increasingly globalised
world, and confronted with problems ranging from local
conflicts, migration, and terrorist attacks all the way
through to climate change, pandemics, and financial instabilities,
it is of crucial importance that we become
more knowledgeable about our own cultural, political,
and social heritage and its impact on our daily lives as
well as to raise our awareness of historical, social, and
political differences among and between regions, countries,
and continents. In this respect the humanities and
social sciences have a pivotal role to play. They ought to
be not just guardians of the past, or observers of the
present, but more and more they will have to reconfigure
themselves as proactive analysts and thinkers of our
common future.
Living up to the many challenges involved in this process
is not at all straightforward. European foundations are
prepared to encourage and to support transnational and
transdisciplinary research activities addressing relevant
issues. They do not have to wait for political consensus.
For them the objectives to be achieved are always more
important than bureaucratic rules and regulations. They
can help their partners in universities and other research
institutions to act, not only to react, when it comes to
tackling the challenges of change.
However, in addition to our efforts to foster and strengthen
higher education and research in Europe we have to
take a wider perspective and acknowledge that there
can be no such thing as national, or European research
in the regional sense of the term. Research is international
by definition. For one thing, scholarly concerns do
not end at national borders. In fact, rather the opposite
is the case: many research areas deal with topics that
have emerged in a global context. If we take a closer
look at the role of European higher education and research
in the world of learning, we quickly realise that we
have not only lost a lot of ground over the past decades,
but that we have also not been taking our responsibilities
seriously. In the case of the developing world we
have strong reasons to be ashamed of our inability to
find appropriate solutions. Of course, foundations alone
cannot and indeed should not pretend to be able to
solve the problems of the developing world. The grand
challenges involved must be addressed at the G8-, and
UN level. But again foundations can help to encourage
those who are willing to bring about change and embrace
Heraclitus’ dictum that “Nothing is permanent except
change”.
• Dr. Wilhelm Krull, Generalsekretär der
VolkswagenStiftung, Hannover,
E-Mail: krull@volkswagenstiftung.de
Fo 2+3/2010
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