As an alternative to the cancelled demonstration in Utrecht, there were several actions on the Radboud University campus this afternoon. A current affairs lecture by Radboud Reflects and Vox on the right to demonstrate was followed by a walk-out, where students and staff walked to the Linnaeus building for an action organised by WOinAction. There, speeches by unions, members of WOinAction and president of the executive board Daniël Wigboldus followed. On the square, a red square was collectively formed of employees and students who made their voices heard against the cuts to higher education.
Recap: alternative protest on campus against cabinet cuts
An alternative protest against the higher education cuts took place this afternoon at 13:30, organised by WOinActie.
'Appeal 1.
This government plans to cut over one billion a year from higher education and science. That is not a good idea.
Knowledge development, education and innovation are essential in a country like ours that is facing great challenges. Take climate issues, energy transitions, an ageing population, affordable healthcare, migration, geopolitics, to name a few.
Our universities are helping the Netherlands move forward. It is therefore incomprehensible that education and science are being subjected to such sweeping funding cuts. The best investment in the future is investment in education, in young people, in tomorrow's solutions. Investing in education and research also makes sense in purely economic terms. Every euro invested in education and research yields 2.5 times as much. The Draghi report also highlights the importance of investing in research and innovation for Europe's future. The current cuts may provide short-term budgetary relief, but you are ultimately shooting yourself in the foot economically. Penny wise, pound foolish.
A review of university funding was commissioned by the House of Representatives in 2021. This revealed that universities were already down by 1.1 billion in 2018. The previous government supplemented some but not all of the funding, briefly providing some relief in the workplace. However, the current government is now removing this supplement, and even more.
The consequences are massive. Huge. It takes years, sometimes decades, to build education and research programmes of the quality we have at Dutch universities. We can be rightly proud of Dutch universities, their achievements and their appeal to young people from all over the world. The opportunities it presents for the Netherlands!
With the stack of drastic cuts facing us, what has been so carefully built up by generations of students, lecturers, researchers and staff, mostly with more passion and love than money, is being rapidly demolished. It will take many years to return this to its current level.
Universities are obviously willing to discuss how to keep our higher education system as healthy as possible. How to provide future-oriented education and research, with a fair workload at a fair price. But let us do so with policy and not with a blunt axe or scythe where the short-term financial objective seems to be more important than long-term substantive arguments and choices.'
'Appeal 2.
This Saturday, 16 November, is the International Day for Tolerance, an annual observance day declared by the United Nations in 1996. Let me briefly reflect on the importance of tolerance in an open society like ours.
Tolerance allows everyone to express themselves and be themselves without feeling threatened. Tolerance focuses on the other person. Whereas the freedom of speech, which we are exercising here, and the right to demonstrate are aimed at making yourself heard and expressing what you think, tolerance focuses on the other person. On what and who the other person is and thinks. Considering other people is what makes it possible to live together. Allowing you as well as the other person to be yourselves without feeling threatened.
Tolerance has three main roots:
- listening to the other person
- empathy with the other person
- education, learning from and about the other person.
Universities should not just be bastions of multiperspectivity, of freedom to develop, share, critically assess and hone your own ideas. If that was the only basis for a university, everyone would shout, but no one would listen. No, universities must also be bastions of tolerance. Where people listen to each other, empathise with the other person and learn from and about each other, especially when you disagree. Only then can we learn from and with each other.
As the education sector, let us continue to lead by example. Not just as bastions of multiperspectivity but as bastions of tolerance.
Every euro invested in education and research will then be a euro invested in each other.'
