From EUCOR to EPIKUR

In May 2016, Red Baron wrote about the foundation of a European campus composed of five universities on the Upper Rhine: Basel, Freiburg, Strasbourg, Haute-Alsace (Mulhouse and Colmar), and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. So when in the fall of 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of 20 European universities by 2024, he had at least kicked at one open door already.

©Steve Przybilla/BZ

EUCOR's acting president Hans-Jochen Schiewer called the network of those five universities - the European Confederation of the Upper-Rhine* Universities - a center of gravity of humanities, arts, and science.
*the “O” stands for Oberrheinisch

This center became somewhat crippled in 2018 when the four universities within the European Union asked for money in Brussels.

One year later, EUCOR got 5 million euros from the European Union over the next three years but must share the money with four other universities as varied as the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland), the Aristoteles University in Thessaloniki (Greece), and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna (Austria). This network of now eight universities is called EPIKUR, standing for European Partnership for an Innovative Campus Unifying Regions.

While the EU bent the notion of a European region now extending from Amsterdam to Thessaloniki, the authors of the acronym in German went ad fontes in changing the Latin letter C to the correct Greek letter K.

 And what about the reputation of hedonist philosopher Epicures pursuing "a happy, tranquil life, characterized by ἀταραξία -peace and freedom from fear - and απονιά - the absence of pain - and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends," as Wikipedia writes. Forget it; all that counts is the money and the call to the 270.000 students in those eight universities, "Study without borders."

EUCOR, in fact, had hoped for more than just a little bit more than 200 keuro per university and year, too low to finance joint professorships but enough to develop a standard language policy (English; what else) and to advance digital forms of teaching, i.e., lectures and seminars simultaneously at all locations. Professor Schiewer commented, "We want to educate young people crossing borders, disciplines, cultures, and languages and tackling the great challenges facing Europe. Teaching on a European level means strengthening the European identity."

*