The universities of Leuven and Louvain are about to celebrate their 600th anniversary. It is only in 1835, however, that the adjective “Catholic” appeared in their name. Fifteen years ago, whether the adjective should be kept was hotly debated. What were the reasons for dropping it? And what is the situation now?
Philosopher Philippe Van Parijs reflects on current debates in Brussels, Belgium and Europe
Just before reaching the university town of Louvain-la-Neuve along the E411 motorway, you will see on the right-hand side a large sign that says “Université de Louvain”. When I first saw it a few months ago, I was pleasantly surprised. To understand why, a flashback is necessary.
The Universitas Lovaniensis was founded by Pope Martin V in 1425 in Leuven (commonly called “Louvain” in both English and French), a town in what was then the Duchy of Brabant, a part of the low countries that remained Catholic after the secession of the Calvinist Northern provinces. In 1798, its activity was interrupted following the invasion of the French revolutionary army. Its rector was shipped, along with other priests who refused to make the revolutionary oath, to a forced labour camp in French Guiana, where he died.
In 1816, after the absorption of the Belgian provinces into the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the university was resurrected as a state university, alongside the newly created state universities in Ghent and Liège — but not for long. Independent Belgium emerged in 1830 out of a fragile compromise between the Catholic and liberal elites. Four years later, the Catholic Church reappropriated the university and called it “Université catholique de Louvain” while a group of Brussels-based liberals founded the Université libre de Bruxelles.
From the 1930s onwards, the university started using Dutch in addition to French as a medium of instruction. The Dutch name “Katholieke Universiteit Leuven” was then used in combination with its French equivalent. It was also chosen in the 1960s as the name of the the Dutch-language section when it became a separate institution, while the name “Université catholique de Louvain” was retained by the francophone section when it moved to Wallonia (Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve) and to Brussels (Louvain-en-Woluwe) in the 1970s.
The names had not changed, but the institutions they designated had undergone a deep transformation. The funding of the Catholic university by annual collections in all the churches of the kingdom was long over. Both Leuven and Louvain are now publicly funded in the same way as the public universities of Ghent and Liège. True, they still have the archbishop of Belgium as their Grand Chancellor and they start the academic year with a mass attended by the university authorities, but these are sheer formalities. Above all, as a result of secularization and internationalization, the religious affiliation has entirely vanished as an explicit criterion for staff recruitment and nearly completely as a determinant of students’ university choice.
About fifteen years ago, this led in both institutions to a (sometimes emotional) debate about whether the adjective “Catholic” should be dropped. For the francophone institution, in particular, there seemed to be a good opportunity to get rid of it. In March 2007, the four francophone Belgian universities with a Catholic tradition - the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), the Facultés universitaires catholiques de Mons (FUCAM), the Namur-based Facultés universitaires Notre Dame de la Paix (FUNDP) and the Brussels-based Facultés universitaires Saint Louis (FUSL) - decided to start negotiations intended to lead to their merger into a single university.
In October 2008, along with four other professors of the prospective new university, I launched an appeal calling for the latter to be named "Université de Louvain" instead of "Université catholique de Louvain". In a few days, the appeal gathered the support of a thousand members of the staff of the four institutions. It used three arguments:
1. It is desirable that the new institution be given a name different from that of each of its components, while preserving the "Louvain" label as a key asset.
2. In an increasingly globalised university landscape, it is important not to give our university the sectarian image that the label "Catholic" still evokes in many countries, not least the United States, an image that does not correspond to the reality of our institution. (A few months earlier, a promising “Study abroad” agreement between Harvard, Leuven and Louvain had failed for this very reason.)
3. It is essential that students from families belonging to Belgium’s fast-growing second religious community should feel not only tolerated or welcomed, but fully at home in our university. (With the prospect of the University’s further expansion into Brussels, where the relative majority of school pupils is Muslim, this consideration could only gain in importance.)
Despite the strong support shown for the appeal, the rectors of the four institutions did not yield and stuck to the name "Université catholique de Louvain". But it turned out not to matter that much, as the big merger never happened. It did not obtain the 80% majority support it needed at the FUNDP, which therefore remained a distinct institution and became in 2012 the "Université de Namur" (not the "Université catholique de Namur"). Nonetheless, the absorption of the FUCAM into the UCL did go through in 2011.
Moreover, in May 2017 the UCL announced that it had started a process of merging with the FUSL (in the meanwhile renamed “Université Saint Louis Bruxelles), which will be completed in September 2023. The public name of the merged institution, however, will not be “Université catholique de Louvain” but “UCLouvain”. And at the same time as it made this announcement, the university registered “University of Louvain” with the European Union Intellectual Property Office as the English version of its name.
In so doing, the francophone university followed a path quite similar to the one treaded more swiftly by its Flemish counterpart. One year or so after the appeal for “Université de Louvain”, the academic authorities of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven launched a reflection on the appropriateness of keeping the “K”. There too, the debate was sometimes emotional. It ended in December 2011 with the adoption of a compromise.
Since then, the public name of the university is no longer “Katholieke Universiteit Leuven” but “KU Leuven”. “And interpret the K however you wish”, said a former rector, “it can be the K of kwaliteit (quality).” Moreover, members of the University are allowed to use the expressions “University of Leuven” and “Universiteit Leuven” to clarify the acronym.
Discretely, gradually, imperfectly, things have clearly been moving in the direction advocated by the 2008 appeal. Nevertheless, I was surprised when I saw the sign “Université de Louvain” along the E411 motorway. Pleasantly surprised. Now you understand why.
