The crowdfunding set up to pay for Susanne Täuber’s appeal has nearly reached its goal: so far, people have donated 30,000 euros of the intended 33,000 euro goal.
The people who set it up want to support the social safety expert who was fired: supposedly, fighting the UG in court has already cost her 33,000 euros.
In March, Täuber was told the UG is allowed to fire her because of a ‘long-term damaged working relationship’. The university says this is because Täuber is difficult to work with and violated agreements multiple times. However, she maintains she was blackballed after she’d published an article in the Journal of Management Studies (JMS) about career opportunities for women at the university.
‘Strength and bravery’
Susanne Täuber is ‘incredibly happily surprised by the enormous amount’ that has been raised so far. In addition to financial support, she’s also receiving help and advice from lawyers and law professors who have their doubts about the whole thing, she says.
‘The thing colleagues and students are doing for me shows so much strength and bravery. But there’s a long road ahead. The appeal, a potential annulment, the European Court; I don’t know where this will end’, she says.
Petition
A petition demanding the UG to reinstate her was signed by more than 3,500 people from the Netherlands and abroad. The board of directors hasn’t responded to the petition yet, says Täuber.
That’s incorrect, a UG spokesperson says. Board president Jouke de Vries responded to the organisation behind the petition, AmINext, in an email. She wouldn’t say what the response entailed.
Academic freedom
The International Studies Association (ISA), the largest academic association in the field of international studies with eight thousand members in more than a hundred countries, is concerned about the incident involving Täuber and the UG, it said in a statement. According to the ISA, her firing could violate international principles of academic freedom.