At the New Year’s Drinks, our colleague René Gabriëls from the Philosophy department was awarded the university’s Employee Award. The jury praised René for his unflinching commitment to excellent teaching, including extra curricular courses open for anyone interested, and his famous lectures on philosophy for Studium Generale.
In his acceptance speech, René indicated that the ‘love relation’ between him and the university had turned somewhat sour. However, accepting the award provided him with a platform for sharing his diagnosis of the four main wrongs of modern ‘academic capitalism’: the abolition of improfitable disciplines; the undermining of methodical and theoretical pluralism; a deprofessionalization of the academic staff; and a decreasing accessibility of academia for students lacking financial resources. Don’t praise me, he finished, but let’s open the debate on these issues.
