THE END OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Among the perverse effects of the new university structures in the Netherlands is the
disappearance of academic freedom, an extremely serious matter. Traditionally any threat
to such freedom was expected to come from ideological interests – the freedom of liberal
professors might be interfered with by a reactionary government, or of liberal-minded
researchers by the church authorities etc. So we were all looking in the wrong direction
when academic freedom was in fact abolished, which it has been, whether or not this is
generally known. (“Academic freedom is as dead as the Tasmanian tiger-wolf ”, comments
the history professor Chris Lorenz in Trouw, November 5, 1999.)
Yet in essence the situation is simple. It flows from the new legislation and the various
institutional reorganizations. To take the Dutch example: the university, in accordance with
the latest law, is now organized in a hierarchical manner, top-down (the argument for doing
this was of course “efficiency”). So for instance faculty deans are no longer chosen by their
peers as primus inter pares. They are appointed by the university boards: are we too
suspicious in thinking that this is with an eye to their willingness to carry out the board’s
policy? The deans are then “assisted” by bureaucrats whose task is to ensure the “efficient”
implementation of that policy. Similarly, the deans are the official “bosses” of the
professors, who “report” to them; while the professors are the “bosses” – the toxic term
“leidinggevende” is used in Dutch institutions – of the junior staff. More: the deans have
the right and duty, obligatory in law, of setting each year the teaching curriculum and the
research programme for the whole faculty. For their part, the task of the professors – this
definition of their function is contained for instance in their official job description, as
formalized in the sociopathic Hay system, which has been imposed across the board (as the
“UFO”) at all Dutch universities – now lies in their responsibility for the development and
provision of relevant elements of the teaching programme within the framework of the
curriculum as approved by the dean. That is to say: the dean, of course under the authority
of the university board (also unelected by the academics) – so not the professors, let alone
other, more junior teachers – has the last word on the form and content of teaching.
Exactly the same is true of research, where the officially defined task of the professor is
merely to develop and carry out scientific research within the research programme of the
institute – again as approved by the dean. And in practice this “authority” of the dean with
regard to teaching and research becomes a blind power of the bureaucracy, which makes
use of numerical evaluations and other instruments known to be noxious to true education
and to the progress of true learning.
So the academic staff members have lost their academic autonomy. Thus academic
freedom was abolished in the Dutch universities. It is an astounding state of affairs.