In 1983, the second American National AIDS Conference in Denver, USA, marked the birth of AIDS activism. HIV-positive people burst onto the scene. They refused to be assimilated to “victims”, a term that implied defeat. They are “people living with HIV” (People With Aids). They demand to be involved at all levels of medical decision-making and refuse to bear the moral responsibility for the epidemic. In 2009, Professor Catherine Tourette-Turgis created the University of Patients, following her experiences in the response to HIV/AIDS and mobilizations to have the experiential expertise of people living with HIV recognized. The University of Patients is an academic innovation aimed at designing degree courses for people living with a disease who wish to transform their lived experience of the disease into expertise for the benefit of the community.