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‘A university strike is not counterproductive, rather a refusal to give up the fight’

27 Jan 2025

OPINION - Are strikes in higher education useful? Anyone who read Adriaan Duiveman's latest column might think not. Nan Lont, president of student union AKKU, disagrees with him. “It's about taking action or accepting your loss. University staff in their thousands have opted for the former”

Hanging out on the sofa, a particularly strong quote hits me. Don’t be defeatist, dear, it’s very middle class’, said the aristocratic mater familias in the Downton Abbey series. Despite being on the other side of the class divide from my perspective as a student, she does have a point.

I was reminded of this quote while reading the latest column by Adriaan Duiveman. He says he understands academics’ despair about the government cuts, but expresses scepticism about the usefulness of strikes in higher education.

But striking is not an expression of desperation. It’s a refusal to give in to defeatism, a refusal to give up the fight.

Strikes do have a broad effect. They make it clear that a certain production process, in this case education and research, is necessary for the functioning of our society. Accessible education is crucial for an egalitarian society. With rising tuition fees, interest on student debt and (room) rent, the opportunities for less wealthy people to get into higher education have already overly compromised.

‘Students will show solidarity with a strike’

Furthermore, even employers’ organisation VNO-NCW stated in a letter that the impact of the cuts on the economy will be significant. Without education and research, no innovation. But a letter is just a letter, and it must be clear that the process depends on those working in this sector. What happens if lecturers don’t give lectures or researchers don’t do research? Then ‘all the cogs’ will stop turning.

Students

Fears that students might not show solidarity with a strike because they are the only group that will directly experience the negative impact are unfounded. Students understand that a strike is one of the last (and most effective) ways to protest against the austerity policy announced by education minister Eppo Bruins. In fact, students not only understand it, they will also show solidarity with a strike.

If you haven’t been paying attention, it may surprise you to know that students aren’t crazy. Students know that disastrous cuts have disastrous consequences for education. Since the first announcement of the ‘slow student fine’ and the cuts, students have made their voices heard.

Akku president Nan Lont during an earlier protest against the cuts. Photo: Johannes Fiebig

At every protest, the students’ message was clear: we are not just against the ‘slow student fine’, we are against any cuts and will continue to fight until they are all off the table. They not only made this heard at protests initiated by the FNV and the AoB. At protests organised by the students themselves in Utrecht on 22 June and 14 November, they proclaimed their position loud and clear. To imagine that students will suddenly turn 180 degrees in that viewpoint is downright hallucinatory.

The bottom line is that while the word strike may “roar with red working-class romanticism”, as Duiveman puts it, the scepticism surrounding collective action (and thus strikes) equally roars with unsavoury middle-class defeatism. The university community faces a choice: take action or accept the loss. University staff in their thousands have opted for the former.

Misplaced working-class heroism

It may be unimaginable to some, but strikers are not looking to fulfil some kind of inflated or misplaced working-class heroism. Strikers are looking for an answer to incompetent and toxic austerity policies. Doing nothing and hoping that the cuts won’t affect you is not an answer.

“Should an underpaid, overworked PhD candidate just accept their position?”

In his column, Duiveman seems to be calling on everyone to do the latter anyway. But in doing so, he also calls for us to forget all the hard work that has gone into taking action since last year and to put the fate of our education in the hands of a policy of “anti-intellectual vindictiveness”. A policy that he himself criticises for that very reason.

It is strange how criticism of politics is united with the aforementioned defeatist attitude in the conclusion that university staff should just accept being white-collar. Should an underpaid, overworked PhD candidate just accept their position? Should the lecturer whose lectures are at risk just accept that their area of knowledge is dead from now on? Should we all just accept that accessible and good quality education and research in the Netherlands is being radically cut back?

I don’t think so. So I urge everyone not to succumb to defeatism. Strikes are the way forward to protest against insane policies. Because this affects us all. White collar or blue collar, lecturer or student, there is no shelter from this storm. And just shrugging our (workers) shoulders won’t help.

 

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