‘The transience of things and people, I think that’s a good idea’, said former rector of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and professor of communication sciences Caroline Pauwels on Flemish television in 2020, with the weight of her own cancer diagnosis on her shoulders. “Finality is a reason to love life.”
It characterizes Pauwels, who was able to see the positive in everything. Unlike most of her colleagues, Pauwels was fully involved in the public debate. Despite, or actually thanks to her illness, Pauwels was a well-known voice in the Flemish media, on television, radio and in her columns in the newspaper even in the last years of her life. The time.
Pauwels based her philosophy of life on the ‘possibilism’ of the Swedish statistician Hans Rosling. That line of thinking is somewhere between optimism and pessimism, and is focused on actually tackling challenges and setbacks. ‘That the world will not necessarily get better, but that we can make it better’, is how Pauwels described her life philosophy.
Her academic career started with a philosophy study in Antwerp. After a switch, she obtained her PhD in communication sciences at the VUB in 1995, where she became a professor three years later. According to her predecessor, Paul de Knop, her expertise as a communicator was an essential ingredient of her appointment.
Pride and self-esteem
As rector, she put the VUB nationally and internationally on the map: ‘Caroline has succeeded in giving the VUB a face’, said Patrick Stouthuysen, academic policy advisor at the VUB. The standard. ‘The VUB had a calimero complex for a long time. We were always the little brother (compared to the larger Flemish universities, red.). underserved. She has brought pride and self-esteem here.’ She was able to start her second mandate with 90 percent of the votes, and was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Flemish Community ‘for her commitment and fighting spirit, both in her public and private life.’
The opportunity to change the world was a calling for Pauwels. ‘We humans are, as has been shown (from the corona crisis, red.), more sociable and resilient than we think. People are capable of the greatest things when it comes down to it,” she said in the opening speech of the 2021-2022 academic year.
Yet Pauwels also spoke emphatically about the limits of innovation: ‘Not everything that is technologically possible is socially desirable, economically feasible, legally permissible and ethically justified.’ Even though she cherished science, she vehemently advocated debate between science and society. “You shouldn’t be guided only by curiosity.” She cited the development of smart algorithms as an example: an interesting puzzle for scientists, but tools for commercial gain for large companies.
Swim laps
Besides possibilism, Pauwels was also driven by wonder: ‘There are only two ways to live your life. Pretend nothing is a miracle, or pretend everything is a miracle, Einstein said. Like Einstein, I resolutely opt for the second, as a human being, as a scientist,” she wrote in her 2019 book Ode to wonder.
The first message she therefore discusses in the extensive VRT interview The Insights of Caroline Pauwels is therefore ‘The special is in the everyday’. The first breath in the open air, a father or mother preparing breakfast for the children in the morning, swimming a few laps, as Pauwels himself did every morning. She invariably called her mother, who would ask if she had gone swimming. “Yeah, sure,” she kept replying. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ her mother would say, after which the day could begin.
Pauwels’ boundless positivist view of life seemed, at least to the outside world, totally unshakable. As guest curator of the Schönfeld Gallery in the south of Brussels, she curated a summer exhibition entitled ‘Summertime, and the living is easy’, which closed less than a week before Pauwels’ death. It was a collection of summer artworks that reflected Pauwels’ everyday wonder-based life philosophy: a pair of smart shoes on sand, taken off for an unexpected dip in the sea; a bottle of rose in the sun; a young couple in a close embrace, sleeping on a picnic blanket.
In her latest book, Downright. Notes from a possibilist, writes Pauwels about her work: ‘I walk around in Wonderland. Every day a new scientific adventure, because I now also come into contact with disciplines that I used to be very far from. You experience art in the same way: listening deeply and looking deeply.’
Her zest for life was on the front line in her fight against stomach and esophagus cancer: ‘I assume that I can be cured’, she said in 2021. When the disease forced her to stop as rector of the VUB in February of this year, she imagined later still a candidate for the position, ‘out of that same eagerness for life. I want to live, as long and as cheerfully as possible.’
Three actions by Caroline Pauwels
She founded the ‘Hannah Arendt Institute’, where scientific knowledge about diversity, inclusiveness and citizenship is connected with policymakers, organizations and citizens.
She initiated the annual ‘Difference Day’ on May 3, the International Day of Press Freedom. This event celebrates that freedom with awards, speakers and debates.
She set up the ‘Caroline Pauwels Emergency Fund for Students’ within the VUB for students with financial, material, social or psychological burdens.