Don’t expect academic to get too hyped up about partnerships that have been decided by the higher-ups. It’s better to give them all the freedom they want, says columnist Dirk-Jan Scheffers.
‘[Some of] Those who cut courses, are the same that send forces.’ Academic action group Zero Point Seven (0.7, named for the part-time contracts many temporary staff members receive) is completely done with university boards. During recent protests at the universities of Nijmegen and Leiden, the boards invited the police, including dogs and truncheons, on campus.
It’s a smart, well-chosen paraphrase – it immediately got the lyric ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell’ stuck in my head. If you didn’t recognise the phrase – it’s paraphrase of Rage against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the name of’, a song which many of you may have screamed along to at a party, with or without knowing that the song is a condemnation of racist police violence.
It’s also an academically sound condemnation; RATM guitarist Tom Morello studied political science at Harvard, where he was briefly in a band with a fellow student who later won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (the identity of whom would make a nice pub quiz fact).
WOinActie, which I’m a member of, would never use the F word. As WOinActie founder Remco Breuker puts, we’re just a bunch of sympathetic nerds. However, we are nerd with an opinion, including on the democratisation of the university and academic freedom.
Research themes are increasingly determined by the government and the business world
Last month, another club of sympathetic nerds, the KNAW, issued a warning that academic freedom in the Netherlands is under severe pressure. Specifically, there is very little room for unfettered research inspired by academics’ own curiosity.
Research themes are increasingly determined by the government and the business world, which quickly leads to the suspicion that whoever pays for it also decides on the results of research. That’s problematic in part because universities are uniquely suited to be places where today’s curiosities lead to tomorrow’s research themes.
That’s why the capability to establish an original and interesting line of research is one of the most important selection and promotion criteria for our academic staff. It also forms the basis of each personal grant awarded. We might not say it out loud, but when it comes to our academic work, most researchers think: ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.’
It would be good to realise that we’re not an academic factory
That is something these managers who are working on strategic plans should keep in mind. It’s obviously important to respond to societal developments and find money to keep the university going in these trying times.
At the same time, it would be good to realise – and propagate – that we are not an academic factory. So don’t expect academics who were specifically selected for their stubbornness to be all that enthusiastic about partnerships on unimaginative themes decided on by higher-ups.
It would be better to follow the KNAW’s advice and offer academics all the freedom they want, and hand them the tools to forge alliances when they need it.
The downside of years of hiring people for their stubbornness is that sympathetic nerds aren’t the only ones coming out of the woodwork. That’s probably something to keep in mind when devising strategies for the future.
DIRK-JAN SCHEFFERS