Cuba's first deputy minister of Higher Education, Martha del Carmen Mesa, called for more inclusive, universal higher education, and committed to sustainable development, at the closing session of the 11th International Congress University 2018......

The event was held for four days at Havana's Conference Center and was attended by more than 2,000 participants from 60 countries.

Mesa recalled that this is an exchange "thought since its beginnings to facilitate the meeting of the best ideas, the truth we build in our classrooms, the symbolic construction in which we put our hands every day."

That is the way to preserve the validity of the Cordoba Reformation on its centenary, which, among other ideas, noted that "the real teachers in the future university republic would be the teachers of souls, the creators of truth, beauty and the good," she said.

She insisted on the role of universities and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), taking into account that they are "an indispensable element for social progress, because they are integrating and state the ways for actions that we should internalize from each of our academic and research programs."

Higher education and knowledge and innovation capacities that it treasures are vital to work in favor of that vision of the future formulated by the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which is identified by the vision of a sustainable and prosperous nation, she said.

Mesa also denounced "the injustices committed against the Palestinian people and the continuous imperial aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

She called the 12th International Congress on Higher Education, Universidad 2020, which "will be enriched by the experience of researchers who debate the SDGs, based on issues derived from this Agenda, which will continue to be the axis for reflection."

Prior to the closing ceremony of the Congress, at which Olga Lidia Tapia, a member of the Secretariat of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee, was present, the panel 'Fidel Castro's Thinking and University for Sustainable Development' was held. (PL)