Doe iets

I recently returned from two workshops in France and the Netherlands where, among other things, I learned more about the challenges faced by public universities in Europe. Like in the United States, they increasingly rely on temporary faculty contracts, quantitative productivity rankings, and dubious efficiency measures.

Such issues were part of the agenda at a November 2013 conference in Amsterdam, “Science in Transition,” where I gave a talk on science communication. Ever since that event, a Dutch friend told me, the conference organizers have given dozens of lectures and interviews on fraud and corruption in the peer review system, commercial influences on science, and the politicization of expertise. Government officials have referred publicly to “Science in Transition,” and there seem to be at least a few possibilities for serious reforms.

Also last fall my long-time colleagues Hans Radder and Willem Halffman published a manifesto, “Het academisch manifest. Van een bezette naar een publieke universiteit,” calling for faculty engagement to defend public universities against corporate management techniques. They also helped establish an online Platform for the Reform of Dutch Universities (H.NU) with articles, news items, and useful links. The English-language statement of goals emphasizes the psychological effects of creeping managerialism:

Over the last decades, a process of individualisation has occurred at universities, with a corresponding decrease of solidarity. Some of the common consequences are: survival behaviour, servility, loss of motivation and also fear. Qualified staff burn out under the workload and bad perspectives. This is especially the case for young staff members, who can ill defend themselves because of their precarious job contracts. Many of the older staff members are numb after years of top-down measures. The high publication pressure and sharp competition not only lead to excesses such as fraud and plagiarism, but also to various forms of sloppy science. Recent figures also show an increase of depression and drop-out among students.

Fortunately, this discontent has recently resulted in a growing number of initiatives that aim to change this situation. The Platform aims to stimulate and connect local and international debates and initiatives aimed at a better future university.

The site includes a tongue-in-cheek competition for the university instructor with the longest record of temporary employment at a Dutch university. Candidates are expected to excel in flexibility, mobility, and passion. In the event of a tie, victory goes to the candidate with the most legally problematic contracts. The current leader has 303 months (over 25 years) of temporary contracts, which is impressive, but if my father were Dutch he would win. Submissions are due by August 15 of this year.

Also worth checking out are the slides of a presentation by Willem Halffman, “No Merit in Precariat,” which includes a graph showing that in the Netherlands the percentage of faculty who have PhDs but only temporary contracts nearly doubled since 1995, now reaching about 40 percent. Halffman also notes the vicious dynamics of a system that rewards professors for bringing in grants that relieve them from teaching, thus generating temporary positions for contingent faculty. “And we all continue to collaborate.”

Hans Radder recently retired after many years of distinguished work as a professor in the philosophy department at the Free University of Amsterdam. He might not be especially sad to go, it seems, since last year faculty in his department were moved into shared offices open offices, ostensibly to save money and space, and professors were told they would each have 3.8 meters of shelf space for books. On Professor Radder’s university webpage under “Office hours” it says, “We don’t have offices anymore. For an appointment, please send an email.”

In the published text of his retirement lecture, Radder included a photo of a public art installation by Serge Verheugen in Amsterdam. “DOE IETS,” it says simply. Do something.

This call to action made me think of Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” where he writes, “A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.”

In theory we might have general ideas about how to do everything, and academics are especially prone to that affliction, but in practice we can only do some particular things. It’s easy to appeal to general ideals of public education and research, more difficult to actively promote them, and perhaps most difficult to avoid violating them on a regular basis as we go about our everyday academic work.