On Monday 2 September, Harro van Lente, Valentina Mazzucato and Lies Wesseling attended the True Opening of the Academic Year in Leiden, in the outdoors, right next to the building where the official opening was taking place with minister van Engelshoven present, to protest against the transfer of 100 million euros from the social and medical sciences and the humanities to the natural sciences.
The event – organised by WOinActie – was well attended, and colleagues from the social sciences, the humanities and mathematics delivered speeches, as did the president of the national students’ union (LSVB) and the driving forces behind WOinActie, Rens de Bod and Ingrid Robeyns. They all made the point that it is outdated to whip up antagonisms between various disciplines, as the issues facing us today are typically addressed through interdisciplinary cooperation, which sounded like music to our Maastricht ears. Mathematician Arne Smeets stated that the natural and technical sciences do not want to be financed through ‘blood money’ as he called it, as the initiator of a petition against this latest expenditure cut. Rens de Bod demanded that minister van Engelshoven steps down.
Please support WOinActie as much as you can in the months to come. Maastricht University is, after all, financed by Dutch public money and hence governed by Dutch politicians, just like all other Dutch universities.
The True Openining of the Academic Year was covered by the national news, NOS Journaal, on Monday as well as an article in the national newspaper Volkskrant.
