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PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides expressed the government's full support for the
Cyprus Institute at its inaugural meeting yesterday, announcing through the
immediate grant of state land upon which the education and research
facilities would be built, thereby moving the project one step closer to
reality.
During the meeting, attended by Education Minister Ouranios Ioannides,
Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides and Chief EU Negotiator George
Vassiliou, a sense of speed was added to the momentum gathering behind this
project.
Referring to Cyprus' imminent accession to the European Union, Jeffrey
Sachs, Harvard Professor and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-general,
spoke of the proposed institute as, "the right project at the right
time". Many in attendance nodded in agreement with his assertion, and
his description that the meeting represented the moment the Cyprus Institute
passed from concept to reality.
A plethora of the world's finest and most distinguished scholars convened at
what was described at the address as the historical crossroad between
Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The significance of the meeting
being staged at Famagusta Gate, one of the four gateways into the old city
of Nicosia, was not lost on the assembled delegates.
Nobel prize winners, professors from Harvard, MIT and distinguished
universities around Europe have been encouraged by the speed at which the
project is moving and drawn to the idea that this institution will break the
mould of traditional education centres by being built around specific
intellectual problems, rather than the established disciplines of Science,
Mathematics and the Humanities.
Andreas Mouskos, Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Cyprus
Development Bank, said the Cyprus Institute would be "concerned with
problem-orientated research of global relevance, with particular importance
for Cyprus and the surrounding region."
Following Mouskos' declaration that the institute would be economically
independent and self-supporting, Ioannides said the cost of establishing the
Institute would be about half a million euros that would be obtained from
the Cyprus Development Bank. Operational expenses are believed to be in
excess of 60 million euros a year that will be met through fees and gifts,
an idea further expanded by Ernest Moniz, a Professor at MIT and former
Under-secretary of the US Department of Energy, who suggested the institute
would follow the model of US private elite colleges.
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