Like other universities my campus has been confronted with student protests. On Monday an encampment was set up in a clever place: a little island on campus, that was both quite visible to the social sciences faculty (where I work in the political science department) and simultaneously shielded from the outside world. It was easily by-passable for other students and faculty. In fact, the student-activists set up a symbolic check-point at one of the bridges onto the island. It’s a hundred yards of the entrance of my building and in eight years I have never had to use that bridge on the way to and from classes.
I don't have an answer to the specific question. But the conduct of the uni managerial class has been such as to throw into question the justification for their existence. All who have called in police to remove non-violent protests, or winked at violent counterprotest, should be made to resign.
I should say that Australian uni managers have mostly got this right. They have allowed protests, making it clear that violence won't be tolerated.
I was expecting Dutch university administrators to learn from the American mistakes, also because they don't have to deal with donors, trustees and alumni.
I understand the trickyness of your answer and situation because it deels to have two different layers. In The Diest place you have to hold the ground in order for the student to be able to express and choose protest. This is your role as an educator, to give the countering that the students can build their strength against. This part you formulate beautifully in your mail. On the other hand there is a situation of wounded friends, and the accomodation for that. This is a whole different question that might ask for a different stance. As these two are mingled, also in the e-mail and probably perception of the student, it is such a complicated thing. As the student, in a way, needs both: your accomodation ánd your holding ground.
Yes, I think you are right. And some of that is going to depend on the details of the friend's situation that I would not share on this blog (and in our university would be the job of a study-advisor to establish).
There is a third line, i realise, that asks for accomodation. Not personal accomodation but pedagogical. The student protests are not protesta against the universities such, otherwise they would not be worlswide. Also the breaking of bonds with Israeli partners is not what seems really at stake. Students are at a loss in a world full of serious threats (judicial, political, ecological, economical, intercultural, intergender) and it seems the universities fail to accommodate the anxiety that is connected with those threats. They provide all kinds of psychological en personal accomodation, but what is at stake is not personal or psychological, it is not about individual problems of individual students. It is a collective, social, global anxiety. It should be accomodated for not by psychology but by academic pedagogy (is that a word?). The studente should be not cared for on an individuals scale, but they should be educated to deal with these questions. There are certainly many professors that do or at least try, but my interpretation of the protests would be that the collective praxis of the universities as pedagogical institutions is not equal to the task at this moment. And I would think this to be at the heart of the protest.
I don't have an answer to the specific question. But the conduct of the uni managerial class has been such as to throw into question the justification for their existence. All who have called in police to remove non-violent protests, or winked at violent counterprotest, should be made to resign.
I should say that Australian uni managers have mostly got this right. They have allowed protests, making it clear that violence won't be tolerated.
I was expecting Dutch university administrators to learn from the American mistakes, also because they don't have to deal with donors, trustees and alumni.
I understand the trickyness of your answer and situation because it deels to have two different layers. In The Diest place you have to hold the ground in order for the student to be able to express and choose protest. This is your role as an educator, to give the countering that the students can build their strength against. This part you formulate beautifully in your mail. On the other hand there is a situation of wounded friends, and the accomodation for that. This is a whole different question that might ask for a different stance. As these two are mingled, also in the e-mail and probably perception of the student, it is such a complicated thing. As the student, in a way, needs both: your accomodation ánd your holding ground.
Yes, I think you are right. And some of that is going to depend on the details of the friend's situation that I would not share on this blog (and in our university would be the job of a study-advisor to establish).
There is a third line, i realise, that asks for accomodation. Not personal accomodation but pedagogical. The student protests are not protesta against the universities such, otherwise they would not be worlswide. Also the breaking of bonds with Israeli partners is not what seems really at stake. Students are at a loss in a world full of serious threats (judicial, political, ecological, economical, intercultural, intergender) and it seems the universities fail to accommodate the anxiety that is connected with those threats. They provide all kinds of psychological en personal accomodation, but what is at stake is not personal or psychological, it is not about individual problems of individual students. It is a collective, social, global anxiety. It should be accomodated for not by psychology but by academic pedagogy (is that a word?). The studente should be not cared for on an individuals scale, but they should be educated to deal with these questions. There are certainly many professors that do or at least try, but my interpretation of the protests would be that the collective praxis of the universities as pedagogical institutions is not equal to the task at this moment. And I would think this to be at the heart of the protest.