Lorenzo Ornaghi, ASERI Honorary President

Thirty years after its founding, ASERI remains exactly what it sets out to be: a place where students learn to interpret the world, without falling into the traps of simplification or disciplinary isolation. A place where they are prepared to take responsibility, and to do so with seriousness and depth. 

Over the past three decades, the global context has undergone multiple transformations. The post–Cold War order - with its promises of stability, interdependence, and democratic expansion - has gradually unraveled. The optimism of the 1990s has given way to a more unsettled awareness: international dynamics are less predictable, democratic institutions more fragile than once believed, and the relationship between politics and economics increasingly volatile, exposed to asymmetries, disruptions, and systemic shocks. Yet it is precisely within this evolving landscape that ASERI’s founding vision has found renewed relevance. 

The value of a school lies, above all, in the integrity of its method. From the beginning, ASERI made a deliberate choice: to equip its students not just with technical knowledge, but with an approach to understanding that could grasp the underlying connections between economic processes, political choices, and social transformation. A method that avoids rigidity and fosters critical flexibility. One that connects rather than isolates. One that does not claim to explain everything but teaches how to ask the right questions. This approach has enabled the School to train over 1,800 graduates, now working across a wide range of professional fields: public administration, international organizations, business, and civil society. What unites them is not a single career path, but a shared intellectual posture: a readiness to engage complexity, to work across disciplinary boundaries, and to recognize that even the most technical decisions are never neutral - they are ethically charged. Beyond method, ASERI has always upheld a high conception of education. Preparing for leadership is not to identify a predetermined elite, but to provide each student with the tools to assume responsibility in an informed and thoughtful way. From the start, the School pursued a model of formation grounded in rigor, attentiveness, and example - not in self-reference or abstraction. 

This thirtieth anniversary also offers a timely occasion for gratitude. To the faculty and visiting professors, to the master’s coordinators, to the tutors and staff, and above all to the students - those who have shaped the life of this School and carried its spirit into the world. A special word of thanks goes to Roberto Brambilla, who accompanied ASERI’s founding and growth with dedication and care. To all of them, the rare merit not only of commitment, but of coherence. 

Looking ahead, there is reassurance in knowing that the leadership of ASERI has now passed to Professor Damiano Palano, whose intellectual rigor and cultural insight are a promise of both continuity and renewal. The coming years will demand imagination, courage, and the ability to forge new alliances and vocabularies. But the groundwork has already been laid. 

What remains, then, thirty years on? What remains is the idea of a School that takes the world seriously. That does not offer easy answers but teaches how to recognize real problems. And for that very reason, it continues to matter.