For Whom the Bell Tolls?

Dear colleagues,

At the beginning of every October for the past ten years, I have entered the lecture hall and said: Good morning, I am Srbijanka Turajlic, this is lecture hall 59, if you are third year students who are taking electronics, telecommunication and automatics, then this is a lecture on automatic control systems. It is October, I am still Srbijanka Turajlic, this is not lecture hall 59, because some strange people stopped me from entering it, some of you are not third year students of ETF, and this most certainly will not be a lesson in automatic control systems: this is not a lecture because it is not the right time for giving lectures, and this is no longer a faculty where I want to teach. The electro-technical faculty in Belgrade, where I have been working for the past 30 years, cannot have a dean who introduces security guards and orders them to physically maltreat lecturers. The faculty where I have been working for 30 years has vice-deans and advisors who would refuse to work if someone brought in security guards. The faculty where I have been working for 30 years has lecturers and associates who would not hold a single lecture if the faculty’s corridors were full of security guards. Finally, the students would refuse to attend lectures in such conditions. Where is this faculty, I hear you ask? It was here until recently, but then it was covered with silence and the unbearable lightness of our assent... The fact that we know that those who think that they will survive if they are ‘obedient’ and silent are under an illusion is no consolation. Today they are persecuting those who refused to sign the contract, tomorrow it will be those who signed it illegibly, then those who put their surname first...

Were this a lesson in automatics, I would have started it with my favorite 18th Century definition of control provided by De Champs: ‘To control means to chose’. Then I would have told you that the problem we are facing, and which we will deal throughout the year is the choice of the preferred end, and then the choice of the best strategy for reaching it...

I thought that we are living and working in an environment in which it is taken for granted that there is a unique system, where the end and the means can be easily determined. That system is man, and the end is perfectly clear: to stand straight and live honorably, to think and speak freely, without fear, to act according to our conscience. And believe me, no matter how difficult it is to chose the control strategy in systems without a clearly defined end, in this case the situation is unambiguous. Chose to control your life so that you can look in the mirror in the morning without feeling disgusted and go to bed at night without fearing about what the future generations will think of you. That is probably the most important lesson in control which I can teach you and a message which I hope I passed implicitly onto previous generations of students. If anyone tells you tomorrow that this was a lecture in politics, then tell them they are lying. This was a lecture in life... These days bells neither mark the end of a lesson, nor do they toll for us the unsuitable. They toll for the electro-technical faculty, and everyone must hear that noise...