By Linda Johnson
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By Lize Swartz
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By Willem Schinkel
Posted on 
The response to the OccupyEUR protest and an invitation to a survey on the university as a ‘brand’ are provocations, writes professor of Social Theory; Willem Schinkel. They flatten what a university actually is.
Two recent events afford a clear view of what the administrative leadership of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) thinks a university really is. More precisely, these were two provocations. They made me think of Edwin Abbott’s novella Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), that tells the story of A. Square, who lives in Flatland, a world in 2D in which he can only experience a 3D-shape like a sphere as circle. Analogously, at this university the capacity to see in more dimensions seems missing, and everything that does not fit in the ‘strategy’ of administrators and their bureaucratic squares is rendered flat.
First provocation: protest versus ‘academic community’
First there was the response of the university board to the occupation of the space in front of the university’s auditorium by students of OccupyEUR on February 7 and 8. They demanded an end to the university’s ties with the fossil fuel industry, to precarious labour, to student debt, and to the lack of campus accessibility. During a previous occupation in November 2022 the board immediately called the police. This time they did so after one day. This response testifies to an utter incomprehension of campus protest, and to a kind of housekeeping reflex, a neurosis of security and hygiene. When students were unwilling to, on day one, dilute their protest to a ‘dialogue’ on the administrators’ terms, the administrators’ response was, entirely in keeping with the corporate identity of the university: get the fuck out of hEUR with your attempts to make of this place something more than a factory for credentialization and a lobby lounge for suits and ties intent on doing what their daddies did before them: cashing on the planetary plunder called capitalism.
This response testifies to an utter incomprehension of campus protest, and to a kind of housekeeping reflex, a neurosis of security and hygiene
Whoever seeks to return to normal this quickly, rests on shaky foundations. In a decretal dripping with childish frustration, the occupation was dubbed ‘illegal’, and not a protest. What is more, it was declared not befitting an ‘academic community’, which, after all, cannot be disturbed ‘just because a small group has a certain opinion’. As the board said: “In no way have you shown an openness to dialogue. This attitude does not suit an academic community and Erasmian values, nor does it contribute to real solutions.” What a spoiled habituation to being found important. And what a pathetic impatience when, for once, you don’t immediately get your way. Apparently, administrators fail to recognize protest unless it is flattened to ‘having a certain opinion’ and expressing it in a format they determine (a ‘dialogue’). And with a historical and political-theoretical amateurism that is almost touching, they believe a protest is something that doesn’t disturb anything. Finally, and this is an important yield, it turns out they cannot conceive of the climate catastrophe in anything but technocratic terms, as if it were a ‘problem’ requiring a ‘solution’. Of course, that solution could never be anything that changes existing relations of power. Anything else would be ‘a certain opinion’. ‘Leadership’ is a generous concept if all roads automatically lead to the same order-hugging technocracy.
Second provocation: the university as ‘brand’
And then came the question, by email, to partake in a ‘reputation survey’. That went as follows:
Give your opinion on Erasmus University Rotterdam
What is already going well? What could be better? We are curious about your vision. This will help us further develop our brand and better meet the wishes and needs of future and current students and staff.”
Right. So this is the kind of opinion about the university we are encouraged to express: what do we think of the university as ‘brand’? There’s a flattening going on here as well. As a brand the university is reduced to an image of the university, a marketing image, flat like a 2D-picture. Despite the anti-intellectual stink such invitations give off, here too there is a housekeeping neurosis at work. In replacing the university by a branding image, the university in all its complexity, multiplicity and beautiful messiness is ironed out, whitewashed like so often. And nobody seems to have figured out that such a message – the university as brand – is a provocation and an insult to anyone with some inkling of the history of universities.
These two provocations – the reduction to ‘opinion’ and to ‘brand’ – deserve an answer. Actually, they really don’t, but there is a certain need to answer them for whoever advocates another idea of the university. Or rather for whoever has an idea of the university at all. How to understand the buzz about ‘Erasmian values’ and ‘positive societal impact’ in light of these two provocations? If administrators feel free to unload their anti-intellectual bullshit on students and staff, then it is time to face the flatness of their favorite kind of newspeak.
‘Erasmian values’ and the academic community
Let’s first note that the history of academic communities is not written by vice-deans coordinating a new procedure for exam evaluation with program directors and exam administration. That history is written by precisely the thing administrators think is incompatible with it: protest. Feel free to mail me if you want reading tips (but not for a ‘dialogue’!).
The history of academic communities is written by precisely the thing administrators think is incompatible with it: protest.
The values a university has are better uncovered by looking at its actions than at what it decides to print in glossy magazines and flyers. And it would seem that Erasmus University’s actions bespeak the following ‘Erasmian value’: whatever isn’t recognized as ‘academic community’ in the anti-intellectual and ahistorical narrow-mindedness of the administrative frames is repressed by police violence.
In terms of its intellectual contribution to the history of campus protest and the conceptual development of the concept of ‘academic community’, this administrative Flatland reflex has the quality of a fart. The scattered whining that the students did something illegal because university buildings are ‘private property’ is part of one and the same genre of anti-intellectual ghastliness. But that is saying too little. For this anti-intellectualism has a reason, and it produces something. In We Demand. The University and Student Protests (2017), the American scholar Roderick Ferguson illustrates that universities have been a crucial site for social struggle and change throughout the 20th century, and that university administrators have simultaneously worked hard to trivialize and securitize student protests, and to surround them with suspicion rather than to see them as chances for change. As he says:
“(…) anti-intellectualism, not an accident but the intention of certain social projects, is the mature and defensive expression of dominant institutions, one that retaliates against past and present political and intellectual uprisings.” (p. 87)
Historian Howard Zinn already spoke of the ‘danger’ of students for university administrators: students disturb things and make connections that cannot be registered as valuable in bureaucratic academic accounting logics. This, in the case of Erasmus University, despite the Erasmian value ‘connecting’ (marketing icon in the Strategy 2024 document: four puzzle pieces).
What happens in Rotterdam is thus not at all unique, and its predictability makes it exhausting, but also makes it possible to differentiate between person and position, between the administrator and the academic that can be more than administrative executive of a script elaborately recorded in research on campus protest.
Meanwhile, there appear to be suggestions of making it mandatory to announce campus protest, and to then allocate a designated room for it, rendering it part of the logistics of the academic business corporation rather than a disruption and an actual protest. Protest then becomes flattened to every other lecture on ‘fiscal economics’, ‘law and finance’ or ‘art and market’. I suggest the Erasmian value of ‘no protest’ here (icon: muzzle).
Erasmian values appear to be the latest form of flattening the university. Last year I and many others were asked to participate in the process of drafting a new ‘educational strategy’. The idea was that the previous one was not yet informed by ‘Erasmian values’, as it was five years old and the world has changed, according to Creating the Education vision 2023. Working together on world-class education. Makes sense to then takes one’s cue from the ‘values’ of someone who lived five hundred years ago. By the way, in what relevant respects had the world changed in the last five years? Well, the document makes clear that that change mainly lies in the normalization of ‘online education’ (posh name for bullshit on a screen that is conveniently cheap, flexible and – not unimportant – hygienic). Teaching on a screen, nicely flat. Let’s no longer talk about ‘online’ and ‘on campus’ education, but about 2D and 3D. To miss an entire dimension and call it teaching; you don’t survive in the university without a heavy dose of resistance to the absurd.
Talk of ‘values’ is, in fact, always a poor substitute for something substantial, at most it’s the pinning of marketing labels after the fact. The real question is what happens in the case of value conflict. Erasmian value ‘engaged with society’ (icon: three people with their heads in the clouds) doesn’t necessarily go well with ‘entrepreneurial’ (icon: light bulb). Read: OccupyEUR doesn’t go together with Shell. And that was precisely the point. And don’t be fooled by the board’s claim that its ideas aren’t that far apart from those of OccupyEUR. The strategy documents for the ‘convergence’ with the Technical University Delft mention as first future corporate connection (icon: four puzzle pieces): Shell.
Thankfully, the values of the antisemite Desiderius Erasmus were never the reason this university got ‘Erasmus’ as semiofficial name. How that did go about is recounted in the book Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam 1973-1993 [Erasmus University Rotterdam 1973-1993] (1993) by the historians Davids and van Herwaarden. If you open it, you will see in the colophon on page IV a brand logo at least as strong as that of the university, namely a shell, with the caption: “This publication is made possible in part by the financial support of Shell Netherlands Ltd.” Two years later financial support by Shell helped make the hanging of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa possible. He led the nonviolent ‘Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People’ (MOSOP), but his protest disrupted the Erasmian value ‘entrepreneurial’ (icon: light bulb).
‘Positive societal impact’
It is clear that university administrators want the university to be an integral part of the contemporary order, the order of the planetary plunder euphemistically called ‘climate change’ – indeed, that euphemism, which comes out of the climate skeptical lobby, issues from the infrastructure of that plunder. ‘Positive societal impact’ is a name for the compulsive desire to do whatever the established order expects and deems proper. The yardstick for ‘positive’ lies with that order. The possibility that this established order itself – including the university – is a case of catastrophic impact cannot be registered in the repertoire of ‘positive societal impact’. But whoever sends the police to students connecting their engagement with the earth with their bodies, makes clear that ‘positive societal impact’ is an all-too fluffy name for nihilism.
The possibility that the established order itself – including the university – is a case of catastrophic impact cannot be registered in the repertoire of ‘positive societal impact’.
Strategies such as Creating Positive Societal Impact: The Erasmian Way assume consensus about the state of the world – there are ‘complex challenges’ – but they forego the fact that ideally, as Julia Schleck writes in Dirty Knowledge. Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism (2022), universities themselves are arenas of struggle. Struggle over what the world looks like, and struggle about change and about the language we use to position ourselves. That struggle is hygienically removed in flattened notions of ‘positive societal impact, the Erasmian way’. The fancy flyer of that strategy can sell this with a picture of – oh, the irony – a climate protest, but the entire thing is an exercise in anti-intellectualism exemplary for the structure of complicity that the university is for its administrators.
Someone taking a critical look at EUR might just surmise that it is an institution in which young people are mostly taught to manage, pathologize, and exploit other people. A production machine with minds as raw material, graduates as semi-finished products and as end product their participation in a thanatological order. Thank god for activist students falsifying such a horrendous image of the university!
The hollow phrase ‘impact’ appears by now to have replaced the tautologous ‘excellence’. Last year an invitation came to take part in ‘A dialogue on a vision of impact learning’. Another dialogue. This time, significantly, at the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (icon: light bulb). Those who wanted to go there from campus could take the ‘Impact Tour Bus’. You would have to go to the ‘Student Wellbeing Tent’ to assemble under the banner ‘World Class Education’. I heard afterwards that you could have speed date conversations with an ‘impact coach’ on board the bus (they wore vests saying so). But if it looks like satire, sounds like satire, and behaves like satire, it’s got to be satire, right? Yet as the Strategy 2024 document mentions: “Dialogue at all levels will be a vital part of measuring our success.” Vertical measurement dialogues is one I’m throwing in for free for the consideration of the strategic strategy strategists.
Hierarchy
In at least one respect the university cannot be reproached for its flatness: it is indeed a vertically oriented organization. An extremely hierarchical bureaucracy, based largely on autocratic government, delegated or not, in which self-government by students and staff is a joke no one finds funny. The Dutch university is archaically hierarchical, were it not for the fact that the differentiation in assistant professors, associate professors and professors in the Netherlands dates back to the early 1960s. What was then a temporary measure to deal with rising student numbers became permanent, and is taken seriously down to the most ridiculous details by means of what is fittingly called ‘UFO profiles’: detailed descriptions (in fact mostly lists) of what professors can do more than assistant and associate professors. Of course it is clear to anyone that’s been in a room with a professor for more than a few minutes that this is a fiction (UFO’s: these professors fly so high it cannot be identified what makes them so brilliant). This was the reason for a recent plea to abolish this hierarchy by the dean of law in Maastricht.
Once more, rising student numbers have been the reason for creating a new category of laborer at the bottom of the hierarchy: tutors and other flexible staff in precarious positions
But what happened in the sixties is being repeated. Once more, rising student numbers have been the reason for creating a new category of laborer at the bottom of the hierarchy: tutors and other flexible staff in precarious positions. A reserve army of academic laborers has been created to lower the production costs of teaching even further by way of exploitation and an even more uneven distribution of protections and privileges. As serious scholars in the field of academic freedom show (mail for references, not for dialogue), this Uberfication of teaching is the greatest threat to academic freedom.
Guess who are the only ones in this university, apart from tutors themselves, to have recently spoken up for this cause? The activists of OccupyEUR, who demanded abolishment of precarious positions. The fact that their protest was thus also a fundamental defense of academic freedom is entirely lost on the bureaucratic squares who believe the university is first and foremost a ‘brand’. Yet that protest can be of peripheral interest to no one who thinks academic freedom matters. Next time, look up from your tenth paper this year, walk out on your meeting.
Walking tall
On the second day of the occupation by OccupyEUR I read an article by Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux in Le Monde diplomatique, titled ‘Walking tall again’. She describes how the French 1995 strikes and protests against neoliberalization ignited her enthusiasm and made her proud, despite her working-class background, to walk tall again. I envisage the administrators of Erasmus University Rotterdam writing her a letter to teach her that such protest is illegal because it disrupts things, and that she’d be better off engaging in a ‘dialogue’. Walking tall? Flatten it down, madame Ernaux!
Thankfully the university still provides space for much more than the square suits and ties on its boards would have us believe. Space for activist students, for instance, despite everything. If you weren’t there: you should have seen the books they brought with them. Inspiration is what you get from students that refuse to waste time in chatter sessions with university power a brand. I am thankful to these students for the reminder that the knowledge we produce and the relations we engage in are inseparable from the struggle for our lives. They may be, in the words of the university board, ‘a small group’, but they are walking tall. And they lead the way in the experimentation with what an ‘academic community’ can be beyond the brand of an anti-intellectual impact rental shack.
This article was first published in Erasmus Magazine.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the author:
Willem Schinkel is Professor of Social Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
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By Marina Cadaval Narezo
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By Aminata Cairo
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By C. Sathyamala and Peter A.G. van Bergeijk
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The chasm that separates the different scientific disciplines remains deep as ever despite the evident need to address pressing global problems through transdisciplinary collaboration. C. Sathyamala and Peter A.G. van Bergeijk in this article show how close and intensive cooperation across the artificial borders between the sciences can be made possible and argue for a methodology acknowledging that only a combination of qualitative and quantitative research can create the type of knowledge that’s required to move forward together.
We start with a proposition: that both social and natural sciences are good at boxing, but not as good at wrestling. They ‘box’ by telling themselves stories about where they and researchers in the respective fields ‘fit’ into the scaffolding erected around the supposedly chiasmic divide of natural and social sciences. We all seem to know what side of this divide we want to be on, and a lot of time is invested in delineation, often drawing distinctions without differences. For too long, specialisation and deeper knowledge, both applied and theoretical, have been seen as the royal road to academic success.
But there are limits to what any science can do on its own. We’ve seen this during the current pandemic. As in any context, COVID-19-related health problems cannot be tackled from a purely medical angle; the exploitative social and economic structures that make people sick must also be challenged. Indeed, the validity of medical solutions to a large extent depends on social and economic conditions of time and place. The pandemic does not provide a new insight – it simply makes it clearer.
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that by boxing in the disciplines and keeping them apart, we fail in a monumental way to ‘wrestle’ with multi-faceted problems, like global pandemics. We avoid the intellectual battle inherent in engaging with what the other side thinks. To deal with COVID-19 or to understand what is happening, we need less boxing and more wrestling! A mono-disciplinary perspective, however sophisticated, cannot help us design and evaluate policy interventions, or grasp the wider meaning and significance of COVID-19 in specific contexts. A lot of time is now being invested in delineation with other strands and lines of thought based on high principles of epistemology and ontology. Our point is that that energy would be better spend on truly working together.
A physician and an economist…
We write from different sides of a supposedly chiasmic divide, a divide we each try to bridge and straddle in our own ways. C. Sathyamala is a public health physician with a Master’s degree in Epidemiology who opted to do her PhD in development studies at the ISS. In the process, she developed a strong interest in class and state power and in the history of the biopolitics of food and hunger. As a medical doctor concerned with action for social justice, the Bhopal gas leak disaster proved a crucial turning point in her life as corporate interests in collusion with the state effaced people’s lives. The COVID-19 pandemic created similar tendency, displacing the migrant working class across India and subjecting them to what Giorgio Agamben has called ‘bare life’.
As an agnostic Dutch economist, Peter van Bergeijk is the first academic in a family of South Holland-based bakers, carpenters, and farmers. As a policy maker at the OECD, he was frustrated by the impossibility to engage major developing countries in discussions on environment and health. This motivated his move to the ISS, where he is equally happy to employ a neo-Marxist or a ‘empiricist’ framework as a toolkit, depending on what analytical toolbox is most suitable for the problem at hand.
…together critically examining the COVID-19 pandemic
Each of us has written on COVID-19 – on the urgency of communicating our concerns – in the form of books or a range of Working Papers. Writing from different social and professional positions, we now also write…together. A common interest around COVID-19 has bridged our science-social science divide.
Primarily, we agree that if at all a silver lining is to be found in the COVID-19 situation, it is that we can learn a great deal, especially with mixed disciplinary backgrounds, with science, social sciences, and the arts (we have also worked together artistically: you will find Sathya’s poetry and Peter’s lithography alongside at the exhibition Broken Links).
And we both agree that we will only truly understand pandemics and their consequences, and what to do about protecting human societies from their fallout once social scientists and natural scientists stop practicing social and intellectual distancing by boxing themselves into their own disciplines.
This is more urgent than often recognised: the next pandemic is a certainty, only its timing is uncertain.
The WHO hopes to forge solidarity and encourage the sharing of knowledge across disciplinary and global divides. The purpose is to generate greater consensus around COVID-19.
But while lip service is paid to medical opinion, it is powerful political and economic elites that continue to call the shots. State interventions provide selective care in the matter of making live and letting die, and even in making die in the Foucauldian biopolitical sense. Academics find themselves struggling to keep up in real time with the pace of the pandemic, with its spread, recurrence, changing pattern, and often its gross mismanagement.
Huge as the problem is, we are pleased to have started our own dialogue, right here at the ISS, and based on our own published and ongoing research on the subject. How COVID-19 affects us now, and what kinds of ‘pandemic futures’ we face, are questions all of us can contribute to answering once we learn to wrestle across our disciplinary divides.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors:
C. Sathyamala is a public health physician and epidemiologist with a PhD in Development Studies. She is currently a postdoc academic researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of interest include food security and politics of food, political economy of health, medical ethics, reproductive rights, and environmental justice. She has been active in both the health and women’s movement in India for some decades. She has authored and co-authored books and published in journals, peer-reviewed and otherwise, and in newspapers on wide-ranging topics.
Peter van Bergeijk is professor of international economics and macroeconomics at the ISS.
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By Ton Dietz
Posted on When Linda Johnson and I shared responsibilities for the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity, we had many discussions that were close to the leading topic of the ongoing ...
By Melissa Leach
Posted on Inequality is growing in most countries and deep-seated injustices continue to pervade our world—from the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority ethnic groups and the tragic death of George Floyd in the ...
By Amrita Chhachhi and Wendy Harcourt
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While most academics can conduct research freely, a number of scholars around the world have been threatened due to the nature of their critical, yet crucial work in the field of development studies. Over the past decade, the ISS has provided institutional support for the Scholars at Risk (SAR) network, helping create a safe haven for five scholars whose lives were in danger. We share here our experience of the value of this programme on the occasion of the retirement of Linda Johnson, who along with her work for the Prince Claus Chair coordinated ISS support for visiting scholars, infusing the link with a special quality.
Through this series we are celebrating the legacy of Linda Johnson, former Executive Secretary of the ISS who retired in December last year. Having served the ISS in various capacities, Linda was also one of the founding editors of Bliss. She spearheaded many institutional partnerships, promoted collaboration, and organised numerous events, always unified in the theme of bringing people in conversation with each other across divides. This blog series about academics in the big world of politics, policy, and practice recognises and appreciates Linda’s contribution to the vitality of the ISS.
Both of us first got to know Linda through her support for Sunila Abeysekera from Sri Lanka, a brilliant feminist scholar and internationally known women’s rights defender who was supported by the SAR programme between 2011 and 2013. She had been forced to flee following death threats and found refuge in her alma mater, the ISS. Since Sunila stayed with Amrita through the three years, it was possible to see at close quarters what Wendy immediately perceived when she visited Sunila: a feminist ally. As we sat down for tea, Linda appeared, bearing a large bouquet of flowers for Sunila. It was clear Linda was no ordinary administrator of a programme—Linda was there as a friend and as someone who was providing a rich connection to Dutch life for a woman in exile.
Providing sanctuary for an exiled person involved much more than the necessary organising of the visas, permits, and dealing with bureaucracy. As Edward Said so eloquently wrote, exile “… is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted” (Said, 2002:173). For these scholars who found their lives in limbo, Linda wove together a solidarity network among strangers based on respect, empathy, compassion, and care to create a sense of belonging and a home in another land. Most importantly, she became a friend and a confidant, engaging with their personal and professional lives. Rather than what could be a hierarchical relationship of charitable benevolence, Linda was able to forge deeper horizontal bonds of solidarity and shared responsibility for the wellbeing of others.
Reflecting on her work with SAR, Linda said, “ISS would not have been able to provide a haven for these scholars without the huge efforts of ISS colleagues and of Dutch politicians, diplomatic staff, and human rights lawyers. All of these scholars have become ‘honorary members’ of my own family, spending time at my home and becoming an integral part of the fabric of my life. My family is the richer for these friendships.” (personal communication, 2021)
It is through her generous giving of time and caring attention that it was possible to build a sanctuary at the ISS where, despite trauma and loss, the scholars could feel at home. Their overall wellbeing was paramount to her. She would not only meet them in The Hague for coffee or a glass of white wine, but also invited them to her home in Amsterdam for a quick supper or lunch before she would take them to an art gallery or a theatre. Her own travels and skills in languages made her an important conduit for the cultural and social differences the SAR scholars would encounter. Her ready ear and wide networks enabled her to connect them to services and institutions they required, an intellectual community, and Dutch cultural life.
The exceptional way Linda has built and sustained the SAR program at the ISS shows what working as a ‘professional’ requires: going beyond technical competencies, developing new practices which incorporate empathy, care, kindness, and an ability to connect with others.
As Linda observed:
“One can only stand back in awe at the resilience these individuals continue to show in spite of being cut off from contact with their friends and families at home. Working with scholars at risk is messy, it is tough, it does not fit neatly into protocols and procedures. Yet, it is vital that ISS continues to support such individuals as part of its mission to pursue greater social justice.” (personal communication, 2021)
This same dedication, care for people, and respect for the role scholars from the Global South can play in the Netherlands is equally evident in her work for the Prince Claus Chair (PCC). She has supported all 19 of the PCC holders and 12 postdocs to date, organised two PCC five-year-anniversary events, and from 2010 onwards worked with each awardee and postdoc intensively during his/her term. As Executive Secretary of the PCC, she facilitated the establishment of links between PCC holders’ work and wider networks. For instance, Stella Quimbo’s work on health insurance was connected with HM Queen Máxima of the Netherlands and UN special advocate for inclusive finance Saradindu Bhaduri’s work on ‘frugal innovation’ provided an input for the EU Horizon Europe programme. Besides all of this, she helped them navigate the Dutch milieu, got to know their families, and shared her own family with them, creating a sense of home for the PCC holders during their time in the Netherlands.
As Linda reminisced:
“I tried to create a family feeling among the PCC community members and to facilitate cooperation and collaboration among chairholders. I felt that it was important for the chairholders and postdocs to get to know something about the Netherlands during their time here and saw it as part of my role to make this possible. This led to many concerts, ballets and meals together, both at my home and in restaurants in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague.” (personal communication, 2021)
Linda’s work with the SAR scholars and Prince Claus Chair holders has contributed to bringing vibrant networks working toward social justice closer to Dutch academia. It is important that we uphold her legacy by ensuring that our university continues to participate in and cherish these small but far-reaching initiatives over the coming decades.
About the authors:
Amrita Chhachhi is Associate Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Netherlands. Her research, teaching and publications focus on gender, labour, poverty, inequality and social policy and the state, religious fundamentalisms and social movements. She is the author of Gender and Labour in Contemporary India: Eroding Citizenship and co-editor of Engendering Human Security: Feminist Perspectives and Confronting State, Capital and Patriarchy: Women Organising in the process of Industrialisation. She is on the editorial board of the journal Development and Change. She is linked with a number of South Asian feminist, labour and peace networks.
Professor Dr Wendy Harcourt was appointed full Professor and a Westerdijk Professor together with an endowed Chair of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague in October 2017. She is Coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender, and Community) awarded in May 2017. She has published widely in feminist theory with a focus on critical development, body politics, feminist political ecology. She is series editor of the Palgrave Gender, Development and Social Change and the ISS-Routledge Series on Gender, Development and Sexuality.
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By María Gabriela Palacio
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We hope this article leads to a larger discussion about sexual harassment in academia and the urgent work of creating a safe and inclusive environment for all of the members of the ISS community.
Initiated back in 2006 by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017 during the sexual misconduct scandal of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein when actress Alyssa Milano asked her Twitter followers from across the world to share their experiences of sexual harassment. As the hashtag went viral, a number of others also emerged, shedding light on sexual harassment in specific sectors. This included the #MeTooAcademia and #ScienceToo hashtags that highlighted the prevalence of sexual harassment in academic spaces and the need for change.
Gender discrimination and sexual harassment[1] exist in every sector, and academia is not unaffected by this. A report released by UN Women in 2018 titled ‘Towards an end to sexual harassment: the urgency and nature of change in the era of #MeToo’ shows that 55% of women in the European Union have experienced sexual harassment at least once since the age of 15. Amongst these women, 32% identified somebody from their employment context—a colleague, a supervisor, or a customer—as the perpetrator.
Inspired by the #MeToo movement, the Swedish Research Council in 2018 published an international report on sexual harassment in universities. The research analysed 800 publications on sexual harassment during the period 1966-2018. The study concluded that sexual harassment takes place in all disciplines of academia and is reported by students, doctoral candidates, and faculty members alike. Women, especially younger women, women with precarious employment conditions, and those belonging to ethnic and sexual minority groups, are more exposed to sexual harassment than others. Underreporting is also very common.
The study also stated that there was evidence of women who had experienced varied forms of harassment having to deal with physical, psychological and professional consequences such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome, physical pain, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, increased alcohol use, impaired career opportunities, reduced work motivation, etcetera. How this is affecting the overall work environment and organisational culture in academia remains under-researched.
Focusing on our local context in the Netherlands, a recent study commissioned by the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH) showed that unwanted behaviour is prevalent in Dutch academia, with cases ranging from sexual harassment to physical and verbal threats, denigration, and exclusion. Another report by the Dutch unions for the science sector FNV and VAWO pointed out that four in ten university staff members are affected by bullying, intimidation, gossip, and abuse of power. While gender plays an important role in cases of undesirable behaviour, this situation is often exacerbated when gender intersects with other axes of oppression such as race, age, sexuality, religion, and ability.
Fighting sexual harassment at the ISS
Critical academic spaces like ISS are not exempt from cases of harassment (sexual or otherwise), bullying and discrimination that continue to plague academic spaces in the Netherlands and worldwide. In addition, the ISS draws researchers and students from all walks of life. This year, as in many other years, ISS welcomed a batch of approximately 150 MA students from over 50 countries. In such a cross-cultural setting, interpersonal interactions are enriching and exciting; however, they can also run the risk of resulting in different types of undesirable behaviour.
So what are we doing at ISS to address such situations and prevent them from happening? At the institutional level, ISS has set up various organs to provide support and address issues of inequality, discrimination and safety for both students and staff, such as the Welfare Office, the ISS Counselling Team, the Institute Council, and the Diversity and Inclusion Team. Additionally, the student body’s Gender Committee and the Sexual Diversity Committee have been working towards creating a more inclusive and safe community.
It’s worth noting that for the past 25 years, the Welfare Office provides a workshop on cross-cultural communication as part of the orientation programme for MA students, establishing a precedent for what is acceptable—or not—for the ISS community. And ISS is also commissioning experts to help it break out of the cycle of harassment and abuse. During orientation week in September last year, the ISS Counselling Team collaborated with Know It, Name It, Love It, an organization that seeks to build safer, better and truly inclusive communities and organizations through workshops and trainings. They facilitated a workshop for the incoming students on how to build a safe and inclusive environment. By using concepts of positionality, intersectionality and empathy, they provided strategies on how to minimize the potential for unwanted behaviour.
The most concrete goal of the workshop was the creation of the ‘Pillars of Our Community’, a set of guidelines developed by the new batch of MA students that laid the foundation for how to engage and interact with each other in a caring, safe, and respectful way, as well as to create an understanding of a collective responsibility to hold each other accountable when necessary.
Most of our examples are targeted at MA students, and we recognise there is more to be done both at a ground and institutional level, including sensitising work with other members of the ISS community such as PhD researchers and academic and administrative staff. Some of the ways that higher education spaces can confront and improve their response to sexual harassment is the creation and implementation of sexual harassment training programs aimed at students and staff that be conducted over a longer period of time. Additionally, they can review current policies, protocols and reporting mechanisms, promote a culture that discourages all forms of sexual harassment, and hold perpetrators accountable.
About the authors:
Brenda Rodríguez Cortés is a PhD candidate at ISS working on gender and sexuality, ISS MA ‘14 alumna and a member of the ISS Counselling Team. Bruna Martinez and Vira Mistry are co-founders of Know It, Name It, Love It, and ISS MA ‘18 alumnae.
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A recent workshop on masculinities hosted by the ISS Counselling Team focused on ‘being a man in the #MeToo era’, drawing participants from the ISS and beyond. The workshop provided a space for reflection on lived experiences regarding masculinity, for the exploration of the ways in which masculinities have been constructed and performed, and for the examination of some of the ideals of masculinity across different cultures. This article briefly details some of the workshop’s highlights.
The #MeToo movement and its impact in academia
Previous to the workshop, some students at ISS felt the need to figure out how to navigate their masculinities in light of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement is a global movement against sexual harassment and sexual violence that was initiated in 2006 as part of a grassroots campaign led by the African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, with the initial purpose of helping young women of color that had previously experienced sexual abuse. In 2017, the hashtag gained widespread visibility and popularity when the Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano asked her followers on Twitter to use the hashtag #MeToo to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault, amidst the scandal of sexual abuse allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein.
Academia, as any other space in society and like any other industry, is not exempt from sexism, misogyny and sexual misconduct. This is why there’s a need for the ISS community to engage in conversations around the issue of sexual harassment and its connection with hegemonic ideals of masculinity and manhood and prevent this from happening.
Masculinity studies
Within the field of Gender Studies, there has been a steady growth in research on men and masculinities since the early 1980s. The leading proponent in theorizing masculinities is Raewyn Connell (also R.W. Connell in some publications), Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney, who has asserted the existence of plural masculinities, the social hierarchy that exists between them, and the theoretical idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. For Connell, masculinities are necessarily plural given the different shapes masculinity takes depending on the different sociocultural contexts where they are constructed. Nevertheless, there is also a modern western idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that prevails over women and other subordinated masculinities.
Recent critical reflections on masculinities have been brought even more into the fore since the advent of the #MeToo movement. The acknowledgement of concepts like ‘toxic masculinity’ have become popular to highlight the negative and harmful effects of certain norms of masculine behavior but also the unattainable expectations that men and boys face. It’s a term often associated with forms of masculinity that end up encouraging misogynistic, homophobic and violent behaviours, while at the same time pushing boys into intense emotional repression.
Coming into the workshop, participants had varying degrees of engagement with these concepts, some encountering the critical idea of “masculinitIES” (in plural) for the first time, while others preparing to dedicate their MA or PhD research around such issues. During the workshop, participants engaged in conversations on social expectations and stereotypes of men from around the world, and how attainable they really are in practice. Participants in the workshop also agreed that although men do benefit from unequal gender relations, these benefits are not without a cost. Similarly, there are unequal power relations amongst men given that masculinities are constructed in relation to existing social hierarchies such as class, race, age, disability, sexuality, nationality, among others. Finally, one of the conclusions of this workshop was that there are many ways to be a man and express one’s masculinity.
Way Forward… What’s Next?
As a follow up to the workshop we realize the need to bring these dialogues into our daily conversations and interactions. We must find ways to address everyday experiences of misogyny and violence from an intersectional perspective, both in and outside academia. Men require spaces to reflect on their privileges and the costs of unequal gender relations with its variations across class, race, sexuality, ability and other intersections of power. The struggle towards equality continues, and we believe that discussions around masculinity are also an important part of that struggle.
Picture credit: Wolfmann
About the authors:
Brenda Rodríguez Cortés (left) is a PhD candidate at ISS working on gender and sexuality. Ana Fabregas, Angélica Arámbulo and Ahmad Faraz are MA students at ISS. They are all Peer Counsellors and part of the ISS Counselling Team.
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Researchers face the challenge of engaging with the topic of epistemic diversity. We know that we should consider diverse knowledges in our research, but how can this be operationalised? This blog post engages with this question and shows us that it first of all means calling into question what we hold dear—the very ground on which we stand as researchers and the means by which we distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge.
I am not sure if I can claim with any certainty that I practice epistemic diversity in my research. At first glance, following from epistêmê, the Greek word for knowledge, one could assume epistemic diversity to mean a diversity of knowledge. Sounds straightforward, for who would not seek a diversity of knowledge? Yet following Michel Foucault, the brilliant innovator of method, an episteme is not literally knowledge (connaissance)—something that is out there waiting to be known—but a historical set of relations or founding assumptions that unite, formalise, and systematise what comes to be regarded as knowledge.
An episteme tends to consist of unspoken, tacit modes of sensemaking that allow us to recognise something as knowledge, i.e. scientific, and therefore distinguish it from what is not knowledge, and call this by other names, like belief, ritual, gossip, superstition, crime. Epistemic diversity, in this Foucauldian sense, implies a diversity of ways of recognising knowledge and distinguishing it from non-knowledge. This is anything but straightforward!
What if my system of knowledge formation has taught me that knowledge must have a name, a language? Then I will try to acquire knowledge by naming the things I encounter, by making them enter an episteme through nomenclature, typology, or categorisation. If it cannot be named or ordered, then it must not be knowledge, but belonging to another realm—that of dreams or fantasies, for instance. What if my system of knowledge conceives of knowledge as something to be acquired, possessed, or accumulated? Then knowledge to which no ownership is attached will not count as knowledge. It may come to be regarded as folklore or rumour. What if the episteme I have been inserted into by way of education gives great importance to empirical verifiability or to linear progression? Then something that defies the rules of empirical verifiability and does not move in a straight line from simple to complex may come to be regarded as superstition or ritual or magic, but not as knowledge.
One might argue that epistemic diversity tends to come to our notice primarily when certain forms of knowledge production are in danger. Foucault’s conception of the episteme in The Order of Things (English translation 1970) points to such moments of rupture, and theorisations following from his, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of “epistemic violence” in her essay ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ (1988), reveal how certain types of practices and ways of life are criminalised and destroyed, not necessarily through physical violence, but through modes of knowledge production. The extinction of a language or of an art form are instances of epistemic violence. The silencing of certain aspects of history in public memory, such as the history of colonialism and resistance to slavery, is another. To some extent it feels simpler to say that we have to strive to preserve subjugated knowledge forms, because that is a charitable task, undertaken elsewhere, as it were. It is far more difficult to know how we should practice epistemic diversity within the four walls of our own edifices of research and study. It means calling into question what we hold dear, the very ground on which we stand as researchers and the means by which we distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge.
Where Spivak emphasises the issue of epistemic violence done to subjugated knowledges, the challenge I face in my research is better described as epistemic poverty, the loss that accompanies my set of epistemic assumptions and privileges. As a researcher I realise that it is important to listen to articulations radically different from the frameworks that I may be trained in, but more than good listening is required in order for those articulations and insights to translate themselves into what we might call knowledge. Just by desiring epistemic diversity, or proclaiming it, doesn’t mean it will have been accomplished.
Placing ourselves in others’ shoes
The task of epistemic diversity could perhaps begin with persistently training ourselves to recognise how certain epistemic privileges are ingrained in our disciplinary histories, and train ourselves to challenge and revise them. It is about learning to imagine the conditions of knowledge formation differently. One must be able to first imagine that something might be valuable, even if it does not appear valuable to oneself at all. One must be able to break the habitual rejection of something because it appears distant and irrelevant at face value. The absent potential of what one does not yet know can only be recognised when its possible presence can be imagined.
There is a specifically gendered and sexual politics at play when epistemic diversity becomes a matter of accumulation and possession of difference. I regularly encounter public declarations of the idea that the intimate encounter with difference, especially with minoritised, primitivised others, is full of pleasure and has the capacity to transform and redeem the dominant self. Authoritative claims, for instance, of intimacy with a certain culture on the grounds of one’s spouse or sexual partner being from that culture, are indicative of this stance. Bell Hooks brilliantly reflects the underlying desire for pleasure and their erotic connotations in popular cultural expressions and fantasies in Black Looks (1992). Under which conditions is the longing for and affective appreciation of otherness a move of acknowledgement, when is it a form of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ or primitivism, or fantasy of possessing and claiming the other?
It is my strong belief that the quest for epistemic diversity must be accompanied and guided by what Rolando Vazquez and Rosalba Icaza, following Maria Lugones, call a ‘politics of coalition building’ (Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions, 2003). I am acutely aware that appropriation, theft, erasure, blind spots, equivocation and over-simplification are real problems in research in the humanities and social sciences. The relationships between researcher and researched or between disciplinary formations continue to remain painfully asymmetrical when it comes to the life worlds of the Global South or of those marked as minorities. Yet we cannot overcome these asymmetries without reaching out and learning from and with each other. Epistemic diversity calls upon us to engage critically with all kinds of bodies of knowledge, even and especially if we don’t (fully) agree with them.
About the author:
Dr Sruti Bala is Associate Professor at the Theatre Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam and Research Affiliate with the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies and Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Her research interests are at the crossroads of theatre and performance studies, cultural analysis, post- and decolonial thinking and feminist theory.
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U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2018 delivered his first State of the Union Address (SOTU). At first glance, he sounded more presidential than ever following his tumultuous first year in office. However, his careful words hid an agenda that is hostile to most of us, and to academics in particular. As scholars, we have a responsibility to take notice, and to speak out.
The SOTU Address – Trump’s doublespeak
During much of his SOTU address, Trump made an effort to reach Americans, beyond his more familiar, albeit dwindling ‘base’ of support, composed of evangelicals, the elderly and whites without a university degree. His presentation was peppered by American proverbs and even managed to come across as compassionate.
But gaps and contradictions blatantly revealed Trump’s doublespeak. While Trump refrained from referring to countries as “shitholes” as he had done a few weeks earlier, his contempt for foreign nations was evident. He praised the Iranian peoples’ “struggle for freedom”, while failing to mention the travel ban in place against all Iranians.
Trump also praised his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision condemned by most nations in the United Nations General Assembly. Trump said that “friends” of the US would receive support, while “enemies” would not. While these were not explicitly specified, there was a clear reference to how nations voted at the UN concerning Jerusalem.
Capping off a dizzying array of international law violations, Trump insisted that the notorious detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, associated with torture and indefinite detention without trial, would remain open. He affirmed that the US military would continue its operations in Afghanistan, ominously, under unspecified “new rules of engagement”.
So how is this all relevant for scholars?
The overall response from media commentators to Trump’s SOTU address was disappointing. Most focused on its tone rather than its content. In the Netherlands, some even referred to Trump’s address as “brilliant” and “politically, very clever”. The NRC Handelsblad offered perhaps the best commentary, emphasising its ‘polarising’ content, but this was an exception.
The fact remains that a significant majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of Trump’s job as president. There has been a public outcry in countries around the world, particularly after Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. So why have there been so few critical analysts, particularly in the mainstream media?
In my own observations at academic gatherings in the US and abroad, since Trump first came to office in January 2017, it appears that most academics tend to dismiss Trump, rolling their eyes, ignoring his statements, mocking him, or even suggesting that he doesn’t really have all that much power. A handful of academics have even openly supported him.
There are, of course, notable exceptions. Those in the immigration law field have written persistently on the Trump administration’s persecution of immigrants. Apart from the alternative media, such as Mondoweiss, Democracy Now and MSNBC, The Conversation has produced in-depth articles by scholars condemning the Trump administration’s policies. But even critical media outlets, such as De Correspondent in The Netherlands have acknowledged that, while news outlets have tended to reflect daily indignation, they have rarely produced sustained resistance to the policies of the Trump administration.
A position of ambivalence in these circumstances is not tenable. As Professor Harris Beider has poignantly observed: “we live in an age of volatility and scepticism … As academics we find ourselves in the dock of public opinion too … we as universities and academics can also be part of the problem”.
Accordingly, with the rise of ethno-nationalist administrations in the USA and the United Kingdom, Beider has issued an appeal to academics to be less self-absorbed and “to question received wisdom and follow the people rather than expect them to follow us”.
What Trump says publicly should matter a great deal to us, if only in view of the vast military and nuclear arsenal at his disposal and the message to other world leaders that Trump’s behavior should in any way be regarded as acceptable.
Trump’s specific threats to academics
Alongside general concerns around Trump’s policies, there are at least three specific examples that are pertinent to academics worldwide.
First, Trump’s travel ban on nationals from specific countries has made it impossible, and even dangerous for academics from these countries, some of whom are regarded as scholars at risk, to share their knowledge and in extreme cases obtain safe refuge in the United States. Several vice chancellors (rectors magnificus) of Australian universities have protested Trump’s travel ban, joining thousands of other scholars worldwide.
Second, while Congress has so far pushed back on Trump’s proposals to slash health research, Trump’s refusal to accept the scientific consensus concerning a link between carbon emissions and climate change is having a devastating global impact in restricting access to crucial research funding. Research funding cuts in other areas are also likely.
Third, the harassment of scholars by right-wing groups has been steadily rising against scholars, particularly following the election of Donald Trump. Such harassment is even described as “becoming normal” by the American Association of University Professors, which has set up an on-line platform for reporting incidents of harassment.
This would not be the first time scholars have stood up in protest against regimes whose policies have threatened society at large, and academics specifically. This includes South Africa’s persecution of non-whites and critical scholars in the 1980s, the persecution of scholars by the government in Turkey and Israel’s persecution of Palestinian scholars.
Whether as scholars of climate change, international law, race relations or many other related areas, we should all be shocked. Alarmed. Indeed, appalled at Trump’s SOTU speech. And we should speak out at every opportunity, particularly outside our close-knit community that largely holds the same views we do.
Also see: Scholars at risk: precarity in the academe by Rod Mena and Kees Biekart
Picture credit: DonkeyHotey
