Stolker committee: ’No institutional abuse, but academic freedom must be guarded’

There is no question of a culture of fear or 'serious institutional abuses' that threaten academic freedom and the quality of education and research at the UvA's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. This is the conclusion of the external Stolker committee in its report Powerful and Vulnerable, drawn up following a whistleblower report. The committee did express concerns, since academic freedom is, in practice, not always a given, and actively monitoring and promoting it is an important task for a university. Whistleblower report. The committee was set up following a report by social sciences lecturer Laurens Buijs and has conducted its research over the past few months within the faculty and specifically within the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (ISS) programme. 'In its interviews, the committee paid attention to signs of a culture in which people do not feel free to speak out, suggest ideas, share information and knowledge, and learn; in other words, a culture in which, as the whistleblower puts it, colleagues and students with academic and political views that diverge from UvA norms are attacked, dismissed and/or fired. The committee did not find such a culture of fear at ISS; the interviews revealed a more open culture than the whistleblower describes.