You’ve read the headlines in De Telegraaf, or you’ve heard the politicians in The Hague shouting it with hysterical voices: Dutch universities are woke! I may hope so, perhaps you thought. After all, woke means being aware of the structural disadvantage that certain population groups have and the urgent need to do something about it. Which begs the question: how woke is my VU Amsterdam, really? “Too woke,” some say. “Not nearly woke enough,” others retort. Let Ad Valvas guide you around campus to a few woke landmarks.
1| Progress-flag
A real provocation, this flag, symbolizing VU Amsterdam’s inclusivity. VU Amsterdam stresses that everyone should feel at home here: LGBTQ+ people, people of color, those with a migration background, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and so on. Straight and gay, binary and non-binary. Not everyone is happy about this. The Progress-flag was stolen and replaced by a VOC flag last year, apparently out of nostalgia for the days when the Netherlands was a colonial power that simply threw LGBTQ+ people into the drink with a stone attached to their necks.
2| SDG-tiles
SDGs are Sustainable Development Goals. Think of combating poverty and hunger, fighting for gender equality, and providing good and accessible education for everyone. VU Amsterdam wants to be a university that contributes to achieving these goals. A laudable goal, right? Well, not according to some. There’s been a heated argument about it in the participation council, where some believe that, for example, combating poverty is a left-wing hobby and pointless at that, because the world is simply “broken.” That’s what it says in the Bible book of Ecclesiastes, and so it must be true.
3| Chief diversity officer
VU Amsterdam has the best diversity officer in the Netherlands: Sharda Nandram, who also holds a professorship in Hindu Spirituality and Society and also holds a chair in Business and Spirituality at Nyenrode Business University. She focuses for what we all have in common. Diversity, she told Ad Valvas, “encompasses a lot, more than just increasing the number of female professors or appointing lecturers and researchers of non-Western descent.” It also involves, for example, a broader perspective on the qualifications someone needs for a particular position. Diplomas are important, but “people who, for example, have provided informal care at home have also developed skills that are useful to an organization.” Nandram believes that an organization benefits from welcoming the whole person into the workplace, rather than forcing them to leave a certain part of their personality at home, as in the television series Severance. Good series, Severance.
4| Pride Library
LGBTQ+ people at VU Amsterdam have united in the organization VU Pride, and their Pride Library is located on the eleventh floor of the main building. There, you’ll find a collection of academic books on LGBTQ+ topics where you can learn about the history of LGBTQ+ culture and its social context. A whole new world will open up for you, and for example, the founder of the conservative student party VSP can regularly be found there delving into topics such as homosexuality, Islam, and queerness in the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately, Pride Library also sometimes attracts less pleasant people, who come to vandalize the place or intimidate other visitors. Perhaps certain politicians should realize that their inflammatory words about wokeness and “gender issues” can have dire consequences.
5| Decolonization Lab
Decolonization is, so to speak, the liberation of our colonial mindset. Yes, the era of colonization is long gone. At least, the Netherlands no longer has a say in Indonesia and Suriname. But that doesn’t mean the Dutch East Indies isn’t entrenched in our mentality, that we’ve completely left the plantations behind. The white person, especially the white man, is still the measure of all things, and we measure everything by a Western yardstick. The leading philosophers are all white, and our worldview is still stubbornly Eurocentric. Consider, for example, a frequently used term like the discovery of America. As if that continent hadn’t already been discovered tens of thousands of years earlier by the Native Americans! Decolonization is a long and difficult process, during which the predisposition is broadened to include non-Western philosophers of color and schools of thought like Ubuntu and Confucianism. The Decolonization Lab houses a collection of books on decolonization and some artifacts, such as an old world map. It must be said that the lab could use some additions. I’m thinking of an audiovisual collection and photo exhibitions and such. But it’s a start.
6| Genderneutral restrooms
This is another thing people get worked up about. It’s a bit corny to say — as many proponents of gender-neutral restrooms do — that everyone has a gender-neutral restroom at home, but it’s true. Besides, you’re not obligated to wash your hands next to someone of a different gender after doing your business at the water closet. It’s an option. There are separate men’s and women’s restrooms all over campus. So, stop whining.
7| VU Art Science Gallery
Science and art meet in this gallery in the New University Building, next to Bar Boele. Many consider science to be woke, and art is obviously woke too, so you can’t get woker than this. Curator Wende Wallert and her team manage to address all sorts of pressing social issues with their exhibitions, so it’s also very intersectional. Sustainability, migration — this gallery has it all covered, and always engaging in an engaging way. An oasis for the mind. Artists and scientists often collaborate on the artworks, and the gallery organizes lectures and events that offer a scientific perspective on the art on display, and vice versa. The latest exhibition is about water: water and industrialization, water and the environment, the color of water, a water clock — it’s always worth a visit. You only see a few works, so you won’t be overwhelmed and can take your time getting involved with every single piece of art.
8| Green Office
On your way to the restaurant in the main building, you’ll pass Green Office, which looks like a common room in a student house, but with lots of houseplants. Green Office is a sustainability platform and think tank where students provide VU Amsterdam with ideas for making the campus more sustainable. Think of banning or recycling disposable cups, planting more trees and plants on campus, encouraging students to be sustainable and eat veggie burgers, and so on.
9| Gebedsruimte
I’m not sure whether an Islamic prayer room is woke or not. A Muslim will perhaps say that everything about Islam is woke, because everyone is equal in the Ummah and all that. What I do know is that more than half of the Netherlands was up in arms when VU Amsterdam opened the first prayer room on campus. It fits the character of the originally Dutch Reformed VU, which has always had room for religion and other worldviews to be integrated with an academic mindset. To be fair, it’s only very recently that atheists and agnostics too were given the respect they deserve, by offering them the opportunity to recite a non-religious text at the beginning and end of academic rituals.
10| Global Room
Few things infuriate certain politicians and their supporters as much as foreign taints. That’s why little effort is spared in The Hague to make universities truly and purely Dutch again, where people speak Dutch to each other and focus entirely on the greatness of our glorius Dutch Nation. International students and staff are in the way of that dream. The VU apparently does see the added value of an international perspective and an international academic community. That’s why students from all over the world are welcome, and Dutch students are encouraged to study abroad for a while. For a broad, international perspective. Thus the Global Room. International students and staff can meet there and organize workshops, for example. This way, they too feel welcome at De Boelelaan. International students are, incidentally, among the most engaged VU students. While many Dutch students visit campus primarily to attend lectures and take exams, many international students are active in student participation organisations and the various woke clubs on campus.
11| Vegans
Yes, okay, they can be a bit annoying, vegans, but thanks to them, the selection in the restaurants and other food and snack establishments on campus has expanded considerably, and you can now also eat delicious things that animals haven’t suffered unbearably for. Incidentally, vegetarian tuna is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever had in my mouth.
12| WO&MEN@VU
“A network of and for VU employees who want to improve gender equality between men and women. WO&MEN@VU consists of people of all gender identities.” Eat that, Telegraaf readers! VU women celebrating International Women’s Day, learning to say no in a workshop, and giving lectures on female leadership. It’s enough to make any true conservative eat his cigar.
13| 3D-debating center
Personal development, dialogue, and community building. It sounds like the standard equipment of a left-wing vampire hunter, but it’s simply 3D, where people come together to, well, develop themselves personally, engage in dialogue, and form a community. I’ve been ritually cleansed there with the smoke of burning sage at the beginning of a debate on decolonization, and there are discussions about numerous social issues, about being male, being female, being LGBTQ+, and so on. You can play games, do crafts, and watch films followed by discussions. 3D recently received the Education Award in The Hague for these efforts, and only in the news about it did I learn that 3D does all this in collaboration with NewConnective, an organization that also works on personal development, dialogue, and community building. But that often happens at VU Amsterdam: you’re not paying attention for a moment and then one club has merged with another, disappeared, or changed its name. Someone must have decided that there was too much overlap between 3D and NewConnective to justify them existing separately.
Lekker wakker worden zo als start van het nieuwe academische jaar! Erg gelachen bij het lezen ook. En bedankt Peter dat je dit in de schijnwerpers zet.