The University of Groningen (RUG) may fire a lecturer who allegedly spread conspiracy theories during his lectures. The subdistrict court judge ruled that on Thursday, the RUG confirmed by telephone NRC. Tjeerd Andringa spoke during a first-year course about alternative theories about the September 11 attacks, side effects of vaccinations and ‘the dominant positions of the Jews’.
As a result of the ruling, Andringa’s contract will be terminated as of March 1, a spokesman said. According to the subdistrict court judge, because there is such a big difference of opinion between the lecturer and the faculty board that Andringa’s work cannot be continued. In response to that decision, Andringa posted a nearly 43-minute video online, in which he claims to have been “cancelled” because he does not want to conform to the ideas of the “education bureaucrats”.
External investigation
The court hearing was preceded by an external investigation into the functioning of Andringa, which the UKrant and de Volkskrant have in hand. This would show that his lectures do not meet the required academic standards. There would also have been “insufficient” of a safe learning environment.
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Andringa taught the course ‘System Views of Life’ at the RUG, in which he wanted students to ‘learn how to think like a scientist’. Participants complained that there was little room to challenge the teacher’s controversial views. After the faculty board supervised the lectures, it was decided at the beginning of last year that Andringa was no longer allowed to teach the course. The lecturer is not originally a philosopher of science, but a naturalist and mathematician.
Andringa himself does not agree with the criticism of his working method. He said he only wanted to teach students to listen and reason well and denied that he was forcing certain opinions. Outside his work at the university, Andringa spoke several times with media outlets that spread conspiracy theories. For example, in 2015 he said in a podcast that power elites are systematically involved in child abuse, without providing evidence for this.