How the woke discussion derails at the university: ‘You are a morbid psychopath!!!’ | Interior

Laurens Buijs, assistant professor of social sciences and specialized in gender studies, has a sob in his voice when he says to the judge: ,,The University of Amsterdam has largely destroyed my life. It is a derailed institution where academic freedom is under pressure due to woke ideology and a cancel culture. There is ideological extremism, hidden behind politically correct stories.”

Buijs is in court in Amsterdam because he wants his job back. He has filed a lawsuit against the university, which suspended him for inappropriate behavior. It would have been Buijs who went far beyond academic freedom by violating the privacy of students and threatening and insulting colleagues and managers. For example, he sent a message to his dean at the university calling her a “morbid psychopath” and a “thoroughly evil person who is destroying the university through your boundless incompetence.”

The summary proceedings symbolize the overheated discussion about gender identity in society. On the one hand, there is a strongly emerging trend in favor of gender-neutral toilets, in which it is not a problem if someone presents themselves as non-binary (a person who does not see themselves or not exclusively as male or female) and in which that person can is addressed with ‘them’ instead of with he or she. Many (left-wing) young people feel attracted to it, which means that the trend has caught on at many universities, meeting place of the young, intellectual vanguard.

On the other hand, there is the inevitable counter-movement that dismisses the increased space for gender doubt as overly woke, overly politically correct and obstructive to social and scientific discussion. Anyone who opposes the progressive vanguard will be adamantly cancelled, they say.

In January, assistant professor Buijs catapulted himself to the forefront of that counter-movement. He wrote a flaming opinion piece in the Amsterdam university magazine Folia. ‘I see the phenomenon of ‘non-binary’ and the accompanying obsession with ‘pronouns’ (personal pronouns) as an empty hype in high modern society, a phenomenon without a scientific basis,’ he writes in it. ‘However, the debate on this can hardly be held without me being accused of discrimination. Students and colleagues say that my views violate their ‘safe space’ and see that as a ‘micro-aggression’.’

With that last sentence he elaborates on the popular point of view ‘that nowadays you are not allowed to say anything’. The scientist reported to the university board as a whistleblower about what he believed to be a suffocating culture. He appealed to the protected status that the university board must grant to whistleblowers.

Buijs, who has been working at the UvA for years, says he sees himself as ‘left-wing and progressive’, but after his opinion piece he was the hero of the conservative, radical right in no time. He moved over to the table Unheard of News of the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland, which has been fined several times, and bij Forum Inside, Forum for Democracy’s YouTube program. The anti-government camp is also behind him. Buijs was supported in court by, among others, Max van den Berg, convicted last year for threatening minister Sigrid Kaag with a burning torch. Buijs’ lawyer is Bart Maes, who previously assisted Willem Engel in his numerous proceedings against the government’s corona policy.

The Amsterdam scientist is thus part of the movement that is rioting against, in particular, the broader thinking about gender identity. He appeals to the same supporters as the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson who drew a full house in Ahoy last month. The poster boy of the radical right raged against the ‘gone gender ideology’. According to him, it leads to ‘crimes against humanity’, because doctors who perform gender reassignment operations participate in ‘Auschwitz practices’. It earned him a big round of applause from the thousands of spectators in the packed room.

After Buijs’ opinion piece, exactly what the two camps accuse each other of took place in the Netherlands in recent months: a fierce (word) battle that soon had little scientific left. At the UvA, students stood up under #not my teacher and demanded that Buijs be suspended immediately ‘because he takes away some students’ right to exist’. University colleagues also vehemently opposed Buijs. Professor Duijvendak called Buijs’ argument ‘politically motivated’. Buijs, himself a homosexual, was accused of homophobia.

The whistleblower himself was also not unaffected by this and called his critics on social media, including monsters, extremists, corrupt and dangerous. The university suspended him in April because he allegedly also sent colleagues messages by e-mail and telephone with ‘threatening, demanding and accusatory content’.

In court, Buijs expressed regret for those messages on Monday, sobbing. “I was lonely, felt isolated. But I have not been a role model for students and I understand that colleagues felt threatened.” Yet he still feels like a victim of ‘a witch hunt’.

Meanwhile, the university has taken action following the whistleblower report. A committee led by lawyer Carel Stolker, former Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, is investigating whether academic freedom is indeed at stake and will reflect on the ‘wokeness’ at the faculty. The report is expected before the summer.

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