This week the academic year was opened with a petition from the universities. She is overwhelmed by the number of foreign students. Lecture halls are overflowing, there are no rooms and students from Lemmer or Purmerend are being outcompeted. University administrator Geert ten Dam of the UvA wants a quota for foreign students, Pieter Duisenberg of the VSNU umbrella says that he has been asking for a numerus fixus on English-language education since 2018. ‘Can not.’
Everyone could have seen this coming a long time ago, but five years ago many university administrators blew a completely different song, Pieter Duisenberg leading the way. He was a tireless advocate of internationalization. His VSNU calculated what the Netherlands did not earn from international students. He already had similar ideas as a VVD MP and spokesperson for higher education. In that role he spoke of the objectors to internationalization as ‘nationalist, protectionist forces who want education behind the dikes’. But look now, Jan and everyone agree: own students first. And as opinion-forming in the Netherlands always goes, everyone has forgotten what people thought of it a while ago.
There were real concerns about the official language English, the driving force behind internationalization. What it lacked was a pinch of bravery. Minister Van Engelshoven sometimes mumbled something about the advancing English. Unfortunately, procedures and rules stood in the way of doing something about it. Geert ten Dam, who was also a UvA board member five years ago, would do everything in his power to keep the program bilingual. The triumphal march of the English continued. Now Minister Dijkgraaf says that he is ‘very close’ to Dutch. On Thursday it was announced that he is working on ‘an instrument’ to keep a ‘grip’ on internationalization. That is promising.
To put it mildly, the lack of spirit is striking. At the minister, the university administrators, also at the inspectorate, since the law simply states that university education is provided in Dutch, subject to exceptions. Rianne Letschert, chair of Maastricht University, was the last person to say that she still got ‘a nasty aftertaste’ from a possible limitation of the number of foreign students.
That suggested a lofty objection, just like Duisenberg with its dykes at the time. In reality, Maastricht can close its doors without foreign students. Because that has long been the explanation of internationalism: universities do not so much produce knowledge as alumni, and are paid in proportion to the number of students. The idea of what a university used to be, one of our oldest institutions that passes on knowledge to future generations, with a special obligation to society, that idea has faded and it doesn’t look like it will come back when Dijkgraaf uses his ‘instrument’ has found.
The university is just one example. The instrumental way of thinking can easily be applied to the nitrogen debate or the asylum issue. Willem Witteveen would have watched, shaking his head. This week I read his book The law as a work of art, which was published posthumously in 2014 and which has been intimidatingly on my shelf for years. Witteveen (1952 – 2014), philosopher of law and Member of Parliament for the PvdA, was killed when the Russians shot MH17 out of the sky. After reading his beautiful book, you will understand better how political culture has declined in recent decades and why administrators are so often left blank.
Witteveen begins his book with a critique of ‘the law as an instrument’, precisely the word that Minister Dijkgraaf had chosen. Laws are considered a government tool. The minister wants something and makes a law, assuming he is going to solve a problem. In general, a problem cannot be solved with a law, so a new law is always needed. Most laws are a reaction to an earlier solution, which became a problem again a short time later.
For example, the rental law that PvdA/ChristenUnie announced this week, and which must guarantee tenants a long-term contract, follows a rental law that made it possible to rent a house for a shorter period of time. The shortness of breath of laws obscures the view of the perverse consequences; the nasty side effects of the internationalization of the universities were not seen or explained away.
Laws are far too ambitious, according to Witteveen. We saw that again this week, after the decision of the Council of State on manure legislation. The judge apologized to the farmers for the fact that the Netherlands has simply adopted very strict nature legislation. Thus a law does exactly what it should not do, which is to sow division. Laws don’t solve our problems. We have to do that ourselves. Witteveen recalls a very different legal tradition that has largely been lost and can best be typified with ‘the spirit of the laws’ of the French philosopher Montesquieu.
In that tradition, the purpose of a law is not to write down what you must and cannot do, but to create order in your collective thoughts and actions. A good law describes what the Dutch think is the right structure of the state. It derives its strength from its authority with the users, and for that reason cannot but be the outcome of open parliamentary debate. A good law is the result of practical wisdom, knowledge of society and legal expertise. ‘In that order,’ says Witteveen sternly. The opposite of ‘bare and unnormative instrumentalism’, which will not help the universities either. Read that book, Robbert Dijkgraaf.
