The controversy that has arisen in recent weeks regarding the use of names in English for the organic units of my university, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), is already known. No need for a recap.
I have little to add to what several of my colleagues, from other colleges and universities, have already been defending regarding the advantages, from the point of view of international affirmation, of the option for UNL’s organic units to use the English version of their name.
What I have to add are two points, from a legal perspective. This perspective has tended to remain less represented on the side of those, like me, who defend the legitimacy and merit of using denominations in English.
The first point is constitutional. The flexibility of UNL’s organizational units being able to use both a designation in Portuguese and a designation in English – which is something provided for in the UNL Statutes – has unequivocally contributed to consolidating its position nationally and internationally. There is no university with two separable existences, one Portuguese and one international. There is a single New University of Lisbon, which assumes these two worlds as interconnected and in which, realistically, it is not always possible to distinguish whether the potential recipients of your external communication will be exclusively national or international.
The use of designations in English can be an effective instrument for making strategic choices by faculties in research and teaching. Your freedom to make these choices is protected by the constitutional guarantee of university autonomy (article 76/2). I do not believe that it is possible to have a serious discussion about the constitutional admissibility of the use of names of organic units in English in light of the status of Portuguese as an official language (article 11/3 of the Constitution) without at least recognizing that preventing this use makes it difficult to exercise an autonomy that the Constitution also protects.
The second point is of a legal nature and perhaps more technical. But it boils down to something simple: the Legal Regime of Higher Education Institutions (RJIES) does not imposes the use of no specific language in the designations of organic units of universities.
This is because, simply, it does not regulate the matter.
This is what results directly from the text of the law. Not from an especially sophisticated or imaginative legal interpretation.
Universities are defined in the law as “high-level institutions aimed at the creation, transmission and dissemination of culture, knowledge and science and technology, through the articulation of study, teaching, research and experimental development” (article 6/1 RJIES). In its article 10/1, RJIES regulates the name of universities, explaining that “[as] higher education institutions must have their own and characteristic name, in Portuguese, that identifies them unequivocally, without prejudice to the joint use of versions of the name in foreign languages”.
Organizational units are autonomous subdivisions within universities. Unlike article 10/1, which only deals with higher education institutions, these provisions do not require a name in Portuguese for the organic units integrated therein. The only provision is that, depending on what each university decides, organizational units can assume different names (articles 13/3 and 14/1 RJIES), such as “faculties”, “institutes” or other names that, despite not being typified in the law, are “appropriate”.
Here is the essential point. There are rules in RJIES about universities and rules about organic units, and these rules are entirely based on the watertight distinction between the two realities.
There are rules in RJIES about university bodies and there are rules about the bodies of organic units. There are rules on the asset management of universities and there are rules on the asset management of organic units. There are other specific rules regarding universities and organic units. The designation of the two categories of establishments is just another area where the rules are different.
It is perplexing that, apparently, it has become so consensual that the RJIES prohibits the predominant use of names of organic units in its English version.
The only rule in RJIES that requires designations in Portuguese explicitly and specifically concerns universities, as such, and not their organic units. It is wrong, from a legal point of view, to apply this rule to organic units – in the same way that it would be wrong to apply specific rules on organic units to universities.
In any case: in the case of UNL, this question is hypothetical. Strictly speaking, it should be irrelevant.
All UNL’s organizational units have a bilingual formal and statutory name, which includes Portuguese and English versions side by side.
As stated in the UNL Statutes, approved in 2017, the “Faculty of Law/Nova School of Law” and the “Faculty of Medical Sciences/Nova Medical School” are part of UNL.
How to interpret the joint name, in English and Portuguese, side by side, of all organizational units, when the Statutes say nothing about when priority should be given to the use of one or the other?
It would be absurd to assume that organizational units would be obliged either to choose the exclusive use of one of the two versions, or to always use both exactly as they appear in the Statutes, separated only by the oblique slash “/”.
Given the degree of national and international integration of UNL, it is impossible to distinguish whether the potential recipients of its activities will be an international audience or an exclusively national audience for the purpose of choosing one linguistic version or the other.
What remains, it seems, is the common sense solution: trust in the organizational units and their judgment, recognizing that only they are in a position to know when one version or another will prove to be the best instrument to fulfill the teaching and research missions they received from the Statutes. After all, according to article 2 of its Statutes, UNL is obliged to “serve society at a local, regional and global level”, guarantee “teaching with an international profile” and develop “internationally relevant research”.
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