Radboud University Nijmegen

Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, Dutch: Radboud Universiteit, formerly Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen) is a public research university located in Nijmegen, Netherlands. RU has seven faculties and more than 24,000 students.

Established in 1923, Radboud University has consistently been included in the top 150 of universities in the world by four major university ranking tables. As of 2020, it ranks 105th in the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities. Internationally, RU is known for its strong research output. In 2020, 391 PhD degrees were awarded, and 8,396 scientific articles were published. To bolster the international exchange of academic knowledge, Radboud University joined the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities in 2016.

Among its alumni Radboud University counts 14 Spinoza Prize laureates, 2 Stevin Prize laureates, 1 Nobel Prize laureate, Sir Konstantin Novoselov, and 5 prime ministers of the Netherlands, including the current prime minister Dick Schoof. Other notable alumni include former chairman of Unilever Marijn Emmanuel Dekkers, influential priest and theologian Henri Nouwen, biologist Frans de Waal and First Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans. Former students have also won 3 Olympic medals since 2000, all in rowing.

Radboud University's coat of arms was designed at the time of the founding of the university by the goldsmith workshop of the Brom family in Utrecht. The lower part represents the coat of arms of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The dove in the upper part of the coat of arms is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The entire shield is surmounted by the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire because Nijmegen was once home to Frankish King Charlemagne. Underneath the coat of arms one finds the university's motto "In Dei Nomine Feliciter", meaning "happily in the name of God". The coat of arms is used on most of the university's official documents, including the university's bachelor, master and PhD certificates. For 2023 a special version of the coat of arms was designed to celebrate Radboud University's 100 year anniversary.

The establishment of a university in the city of Nijmegen goes far back. The first University of Nijmegen was founded in 1655 as the Kwartierlijke Academie van Nijmegen. Students developed their skills in the traditional fields of theology, medicine and law. Although the university had its successes, the Kwartierlijke Academie terminated around 1680. The university was unable to recover from successive outbreaks of the plague and the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672.

After several attempts to establish a new university in Nijmegen, the current Radboud University Nijmegen was established in 1923 under the name Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (Catholic University of Nijmegen). It was founded by the Saint Radboud Foundation, a network of bishops that wished to emancipate Catholic intellectuals in the Netherlands. At the time, Dutch Roman Catholics were disadvantaged and occupied almost no higher posts in governmental and scientific institutions. The establishment of a university was seen as a possible stepping stone for these individuals.

When the Catholic University of Nijmegen was founded, every student automatically became part of student corporation N.S.V. Carolus Magnus [nl], named after the Frankish king, Charlemagne, who used to reside in Nijmegen in the Middle Ages. This organization was set up to speak for student needs and to organize an annual induction ceremony. It also aimed at attaining the same status as other corporations in the well-known Dutch student cities of Leiden, Delft and Groningen. To the horror of the Catholic University's management, Carolus Magnus also pursued the same liberal elitist character as these other corporations. Still, it continued developing and students eagerly participated. In the 1920s it produced its own sociëteiten: male students became part of Gentleman's Roland Society (1928) and female students joined the Ladies Society Lumen Ducet (1929). Some students of these sociëteiten banded together in smaller communities called disputen.

The first years after the establishment of 1923 were quite successful for the Catholic University of Nijmegen, but during the Second World War the young university encountered serious difficulties. Many prominent members were lost, among them the anti-Nazi professors Robert Regout and Titus Brandsma who were deported to Dachau concentration camp and died there. As the war progressed, the university was more severely curtailed in its freedoms. The German Sicherheitsdienst (security service) removed so-called "anti-German works" from the university library. In addition, professors could only be appointed after approval by the Nazi Department of Education, Science and Cultural Protection. Such measures aimed at eventually eliminating religious institutions of higher education. There would be no place for a Catholic university in a nazified Netherlands.