A week and a half ago, my colleague Pieter Slaman, the university historian, sent out a plea for dialogue on campus around the political attacks on universities in the United States, and more locally, the dilemmas these threats to academic freedom and personal freedom (i.e. student visas) that these developments pose for European researchers.
As chair of the North American Studies program here, I thought it time for me to step out and speak up, and many others answered this call. We also had representatives from international relations, the medical school and hospital, and LURIS, the “knowledge exchange office” (the folks who manage data, grants, and patents). The university rector (our president), Hester Bijl opened the remarks. And there was a large and diverse crowd of students, faculty, and journalists — so many in fact that the location had to be moved to a larger room (landing in a gorgeous 19th century lecture hall where Einstein has lectured OMFG).
When the remarks began Pieter explained that the press would not record after the four panelists, and during the debate, he recommended that students refrain from providing their names. Students were right to be concerned about finding themselves on the record. On March 25, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a cable stating that some student visa applications would be sent to the “fraud prevention unit” for a “mandatory social media check.” It was unclear whom this would affect — only students whose profile suggested pro-Palestinian activism? Was this racial profiling? That same day, the Netherlands updated its travel advisory to the United States, issuing a new warning to Dutch citizens who are gay, lesbian, transsexual, or another gender or sexual minority, and recommending that a binary birth gender be used at the border. Many students and colleagues who would be traveling to the United States to begin their PhDs, to co-host conferences, or to do research, came to voice their concerns in the hour long debate that followed our panel.
In the NOS article after event, they ask:
How do you maintain your academic freedom as a scientist when one of your key research partners on the other side of the ocean now questions your motives, suddenly terminates your grant, or stops you at the border? Since President Trump took office, there have been great concerns about the state of science in the U.S., and academics in the Netherlands are also increasingly noticing his impact on their profession. People are concerned, but dare not speak out loud, for fear of the consequences.
In Leiden, dozens of researchers, the first known in the Netherlands, came together to share their concerns and to learn from one other how to arm yourself and your work against it. (Translated with help from DeepL.com (free version))
To prepare my talk, I got on the phone with a dozen friends and spoke with around 50 students, indulging me in a little doom and gloom before offering insights and news from their positions. Several readers of this newsletter helped me to formalise my thoughts about the tsunami of bad news and to understand how we, as concerned colleagues and friends in Europe, might play a positive role.
Of everything I read in preparation for this talk, it was an essay in the Nation published by Kaveh Akbar that I just kept coming back to entitled, “What Will You Do?” In it he writes:
“This is, more than anything, a plea for principled leftists to rise en masse and not just decry but disrupt a nation helmed by gleeful genocideers. I’m writing frantically, aware my prose is ugly, overearnest, unvetted against worst-faith readers. It’s graceless, unlovely. So am I.
Tonight I want to be understood, not appreciated.”
Akbar reminds us of the Shirley Jackson Story, “The Lottery” which I teach every spring. It was written in 1948. It offers us a critique of democracy: what if what the majority does what is unjust or inhumane? how should we respond? Rumeysa Ozturk gets kidnapped on the sidewalk, the video evidence of it gets pushed out to social media, and a generation of future activists takes note — just like that kid in Jackson’s story who is handed a stone to kill his own mother. We may never recover. Akbar again:
I want to tell you powerlessness is an alibi. Hopelessness too. I want to ask, what specifically are you going to do? Tomorrow, the next day? What’s your “I am Spartacus” move to protect the more vulnerable, the targeted, the invisbled, the next-on-the-list?
I was very cognisant of the rare chance to address a wide group of both powerful and connected persons at my university. I thought of little else this past week. You see, Leiden University is a very big, very old (450 years old) university — and the way that power works here, with its many layers of boards and functions, is not yet legible to me. I enrolled last fall in an 8-week specialised course to learn the Dutch terms and phrases and idioms for university governance, when I was promoted to chair and found myself in their midst, and so far the Quizlet deck has 350 entries. My friend Laura teased me that I was obtaining a C1 certification in eavesdropping.
What is my move, Kaveh? I feel so far away! I am teaching Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her powerful pamphets this week. What’s my move, Ida? What can I possibly say that could make any fucking difference? Everything is happening so fast! Between when we signed up to convene this panel, and when it occurred, ICE disappearing more people from campuses, Columbia capitulating, and Tulane quietly closed various offices of student life in an effort to comply with anti-DEI regulations. The news didn’t get better and it never slowed down. I wanted to bring my A-game. I wanted to take a breather and reflect. I wanted to scream. All I had to offer was this little talk.
I was greeted by an army of friends and former students in the audience. The talk ended. My phone blew up. I got a one-on-one chat with the rector. And I was surrounded with so much powerful, positive energy.
I agree with Masha Gessen, who wrote this reminder during the last Trump presidency: “Institutions will not save you.” I was so grateful to speak with and to power at my university last week. But, tbh, I hope that by sharing these remarks, I will find my horizontal community, one that can wrap us up — and insulate us — with the positive energy that was with us in the lecture hall last Friday. I hope we can start figuring out how to meet this moment. They only win when we don’t speak up.
Please find the transcript of my talk below:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak, as your colleague here at Leiden, as a representative from the faculty of the Humanities, and somewhat alarmingly, as an American emigre on a non-permanent visa. And thank you Pieter for organising this important conversation, and thank you to members of our university administration for taking the time to be here as witnesses and thought partners and supporters. thank you to this crowd who have chosen to spend their Friday afternoon not out on the terraces, jullie zouden nu op een terrasje kunnen zitten, MAAR JULLIE ZIJN HIER to take part in this crucial debate. I have done work in community organising, so I want to begin by underlining for you the extraordinary opportunity before us this afternoon. So let me hear you if you agree with me by snapping me up.
I have been thinking a lot about how to use these precious 10 minutes to address you
and in preparation for my remarks today, I interviewed a dozen colleagues across the US and Europe, and I spoke with around 50 students here at Leiden. My question was not, what is happening? or how did we get here? — but this one: How should we meet this moment? How should our institutions and communities meet this moment? What can I do?
Some of the responses I received from students included:
“what scares me most is the loss of the right to protest on US campuses, and I wish Leiden University would look seriously at this to make sure it doesn’t happen here, while also protecting us against discrimination and hate speech.”
“As dutch universities are rolling back or denying Chinese student entry, it feels scary and honestly infuriating. It’s already happening here, and I want assurance that I can also feel safe at Leiden in spite of that.”
“Leiden univ. is an entity with a commitment to truth and the betterment of humanity, defending equality, justice, and brotherhood — we should not do things such as cut out DEI-informed courses, but have more focus on teaching history so that we can critically view and understand the present. What is needed is awareness of how this tendency seeps into our politics , so that we can react informed by critical thinking. This stance is the starting point for any positive direction we could turn to.”
“ I hope that Leiden University takes a stance against a growing anti-DEI mentality on our campus. I hope it keeps a critical approach to race, gender and sexuality in our courses. I hope we do not scrap JEDI funds or similar. Higher education was built on critical thinking, which is impossible without diversity, inclusion, and equity.”
In these conversations, you can probably already hear how our thinking is evolving from panic and overwhelm to strategic response. Of course the news is bleak: students detained by ICE for engaging in political speech. Speakers and scientists turned around at the border for anti-governmental speech in their slide decks and personal messaging. To avoid censure, universities have shuttered offices of multicultural affairs, Black student unions, and LGBTQ+ centers. Faculty are scrubbing course titles , and cancelling their summer diversity workshops. Grant applications have been blocked from review. research has been frozen for ideological reasons. In total, about $17bn in grants have been revoked or frozen. I wish I was exaggerating.
As an American Studies scholar, I wish that I could stop time and carefully analyse these developments. But that will not be our opportunity right now, that is for future scholarship to do. We need to stop looking for the warning signs, the singularity of a turning point — because it might already be behind us - We can’t wait to see how things will unfold. What the US situation demonstrates is that we are all entering into a new phase in the relationship between democracy and our educational institutions. We need to begin now building local immunity, against erosion of rights here in Leiden.
To do this we must do the following: Inform, Protect, and Connect.
To inform:
North American studies and International Studies students have requested of me up-to-date information on how to navigate the new restrictions on student visas to study in the United States. There is self-censorship already beginning, as students and colleagues scrub their own social media feeds and publications, and even their thesis abstracts, for key words that might draw the attention of the authorities in the US. We are concerned about being photographed at rallies, doxxed, or targeted for being too woke in our comments online or in class. Thus the detainments and deportations in the United States have begun to have a chilling effect on discourse here. We’re spooked.
What can we do? It would be useful to set up a hotline & email address where students can request support with their individual questions. I have been asked about this by the press and it is clearly needed. We cannot all stay up-to-date with the latest policies but a handful of strategic partners could provide this level of informed support.
MA Student Julia de Klerk has put together an ad hoc Notion page to get us started right away on crucial information sharing.
To protect:
Our university is also facing budget cuts, and government officials will be taking a page from the US, they might find that it is politically acceptable and legally permissible, to limit free speech on campus by starving it out. Because if we’re looking at the bottom line, DEI initiatives and student wellness support might seem like “nice to haves, and not need to haves.”
Let this serve as a reminder that past equity activism and efforts to be more inclusive helped most of us on this stage get to where we are today — let’s not pull up the ladder behind us. Commit now in every arena to widening our perspective and lifting up voices through diversity initiatives — the ones we already have are doing good work.
The right to protest must continue to be supported on this campus and all campuses in the Netherlands. This country is famously free in this regard. We need to be able to safely move our research into unstructured environments, from the streets to the museums to the hospitals, and to speak freely both within and outside the university. We are protecting the right to express opposite views, to break consensus, because that is at the core of academic freedom and democracy — and this part might be obvious but — there can be no democracy without free universities.
One last point I would like to make on this issue of protection: while I understand the compelling desire to pre-comply, and to shift research projects to less controversial topics or erase social media posts to pass through security, I want to remind you that some of us will never be able to pass muster. Please remember your Maya Angelou, “no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
To connect:
In the past two weeks we have seen powerful universities sell off their international standing, student trust, and academic credibility over night. The spectacle at Columbia demonstrates that our university which has stood for academic liberty through four and a half centuries of ideological upheavals and shifts, may have a role to play. standing shoulder to shoulder with a partner institution that shares our values, and could provide meaningful networks to support research, refuge, and other initiatives.
Three models are emerging. First, there is the open society university network of “Frontliner” universities, or 50 universities that have pledged to center civic engagement and free speech. I will forward information from this important group to our colleagues here.
Second, we have the exchange partnerships — partnering with another university, such as Princeton, that has resisted capitulation and finding ways to be mutually supportive. Third, we can turn to our disciplinary networks, to create faculty specific modes of support.
Now, in closing, a short bit of history: Since ww2, the University system in the United States has — for the most part — benefited from being the research arm of the government. But the real story here is its diversity: first, the doors were opened to Jewish men, then working class men, then women and Black students. With the civil rights act and Title 9 the world came to study and do research at the American research university, J-1 visas, pell grants, affirmative action and Fulbright fellows and the disabilities act came next. In less than a 100 years, the American research university became one of humanity’s staggering achievements, whose diversity and creativity generated wealth and endowments that would make your eyes water and put a US patent in every pocket in this room.
But cracks were already deep in this foundation when Trump and company came to town. Persistent gender inequality, over reliance on contigent labor, top-heavy trustee boards, unclear regulations around dissent and protest on campus — many were calling for radical change.
I closing I hope we make the most of this moment
The American universities are diverse but not equitable, whereas the universities here are equitable but not diverse. Now is the time to invite internationalisation and to support as many departments and spaces for innovation as we can afford.
Building community is the only reliable mode of resistance. Everyone in this room took time out of their busy day to express concern for the future of academic freedom, against a rising tide of fascism, against limits to our freedom to share political opinions in public or online. Please take a moment before you leave to connect with one another or with me. Shake a hand, introduce yourselves, make eye contact — you can start something today.
Thank you for your time
Helpful links on protecting your devices and your rights entering the US.
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