Student protests escalate in Amsterdam

[Sasha]

so since a few weeks serious unrest is brewing in student circles in the netherlands, last week students occupied a univeristy buidling for 11 days to demand an end to cutbacks and for more democracy; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungehuis_Occupation
they got evicted yesterday morning so at the end of an pretty big demo this evening angry students kicked in the door and occupied the central leadership building of the university called the "maagdenhuis".
this is a extremely symbolic target as this building was the site of a very notorious 5 day occupation in the 60's that essentially kicked off the 2 decades of major ultra-left led unrest in the netherlands that cumulated in the heydays of the autonomous (squat) movement.

at this moment the mayor and the chief of police are at the occupation, since the central demand of the students, the stepping down of the whole board of the university, will not be met its expected the building will be evicted tonight or tomorrow morning.

here a libcom article a comrade wrote about whats going on;


Student protests escalate in Amsterdam


http://libcom.org/files/imagecache/article/images/blog/protestatbungehuis.jpg (http://libcom.org/files/images/blog/protestatbungehuis.jpg)


Students at the University of Amsterdam have launched a protest movement against authoritarian an neoliberal management. The movement has been escalating rapidly, at first the occupation got evicted, more police repression may be imminent.



Students in Amsterdam, the Netherlands are protesting and taking quite militant action. We are seeing the most serious student struggles that the Netherlands has experienced for many years. At this moment, a sizable group of students are occupying the Maagdenhuis, the building from where the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is governed. No, I am not one of the occupyers, I am sad to say. I gathered some information, gathered from online sources.
The movement started twelve days ago, with a student occupation of the Bungehuis. That is a large university building used bny the Faculty of Humanities. The students, operating under the heading of De Nieuwe Universiteit (The New University), the site of which (http://newuni.nl/) is mainly in Dutch but contains some Enmglish-language texts as well, protested against a reorganization plan, by which several language studies are to be merged, and thorough which fixed jobs would be destroyed. At the same time, students protested against university financing on the basis of how many diploma-holders were produced, and called for financing on the basis of what the education itself costs. And students called for serious democratization of the institution, with elections on all levels, and the possibility of recall through referendumn. On the whole it was a protest against both neoliberal and authoritarian management in higher education, a call for democracy on the university. The short version of the demands (http://newuni.nl/eisen/) are on the site of The New University, both in Dutch and in English.
The occupation involved at least several dozens of students. After a few days, the number that even mainstream media, for instance, on the website of the newspaper Trouw (in Dutch) mentioned was “about a hundred” (http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nederland/article/detail/3853197/2015/02/17/Bezetters-Bungehuis-blijven-ook-na-aflopen-ultimatum.dhtml) . And the occupatiion lasted for eleven days. This was easily the largest and most sustained student occupation in years.
The university authorities complained and called for 'dialogue '– on condition that the occupiers stopped their occupation, The thing was: resisting students had called for serious dialogue before the occupation, the whole action got going largely because authorities ignored that request. Students refused to evacuate the building.
University authorities then started a legal procedure, and after the first week, a court ordered the students to leave, and imposed a fine of 1,000 euro for every day the students ignored that order. The occupiers ignored the court order, the occupation went on. Day after day, a programme of films and lectures was organised in the building. Academic workers were let in, but work was hindered. Not by the occupation but by university authorities who disconnected the internet and blocked the heating as well.
Negotiations between university governors and occupiers – in which the mayor played a role – led to nothing. University regents offered lectures, and a one-yeap postponement of the reorganization plan on Humanities. The occupiers were not having it. Eviction now was imminent.
On Tuesday, 24 of February, riot police moved in. They arrested 46 people, and though the eviction looked relatively quiet, outside main stream media's eyes several students were roughed up. One got injured by a police horse's hoof . A few of the arrested activists were released the same day, most had to stay the night in cells and got released the next day.
Quickly, a protest march “For Democratic Higher Education” was organized. It spread like wildfire through Facebook, and late this afternoon, "somewhat more than a thousand people” [ (http://nos.nl/artikel/2021351-studenten-op-de-been-tegen-beleid-uva.html )(according to national broadcaster NOS, also in Dutch) took part in the demonstration. This is, for a local student demonstration organized on such short notice, extraordanarily big. There have been national student demonstrations, by the mainstream student groups, that attract crowds that somewhat larger but certainly more sleep-inducing as well. The march was vivid, with a very enthusiastic anger. There were calls to “block and occupy”, calls for the chairperson of the board of regents of the UvA, ironic comments on the “small size” of the number of protesters.
The students assembled before the Maagdenhuis, a building of high symbolic significance. In 1969, there was a five day occupation of that building, an action that is considered the high point of sixties student activism. Everytime students start a protest, people say “Maagdenhuis”, usually in a nostalgic, on a wistful tone. There had been later, shorter occupations of the building. Now, a large group of students stood before the building. After speeches, slogans en spirited yells, people forced the entrance. After a short time, a large crowwde moved in. Hours later, under the threat of immediate eviction, students and people in solidarity with them, are seriously discussing what to do.
It is unclear what will happen now. What is clear, however, is that a strong student movement against neoliberal management an authoritarian rule on the university has exploded in Amsterdam. And it resonates widely. Occupyers are now calling for a strike, at least among teachers, if I understand the livestream by AT5, a local station correctly. At this moment, the chairperson of the Board of regents – the dismissal of wjhich is now one opf the students' demands – is trying to talk the students out of their occupation. Students are shouting: “Aftreden!”, which means: “Resign!” What happens next is anybody 's guess, but the whole thing is a breath of fresh air.
There is a financial campaign going on, to pay for the Bungehuis fines. More details at: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/friends-of-the-occupation-of-the-bungehuis
Pictures of the occupation of the Bungehuis, and its evictions, are to be found here (http://www.vice.com/nl/read/de-ontruiming-van-het-bungehuis-van-binnenuit-712 ).
I wrote a number of articles on the rapidly escalating revolt on my Dutch-language website here (http://www.ravotr.nl). There, you can find more sources of information.
PS I want to get this article out quickly. So I apologise beforehand for the language and type errors this article probably contains. I will get them out later http://libcom.org/sites/libcom.org/themes/libcomz/images/smileys/smile.gif
Peter Storm



source; http://libcom.org/blog/student-protests-escalating-amsterdam-25022015

i'll keep people updated.

[Sasha]

Why we occupy: Dutch universities at the crossroads

Nicholas Vrousalis (https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/nicholas-vrousalis), Robin Celikates (https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/robin-celikates), Johan Hartle (https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/johan-hartle), and Enzo Rossi (https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/enzo-rossi)
2 March 2015



The Netherlands, a mere 10 years behind the UK, seems eager to catch up. Twin pressures of authoritarianism from above and neoliberalism from below make it necessary to develop the democratic alternative put forward by the movement for a new university.




https://dy1m18dp41gup.cloudfront.net/cdn/farfuture/EvkdJydr7Z7cO4YYcYyQqSrTR9YkvhHQdoAerEL5VWY/mtime:1425287927/files/imagecache/article_xlarge/wysiwyg_imageupload/500209/16474621510_b01e31506f_z.jpg (https://dy1m18dp41gup.cloudfront.net/cdn/farfuture/M7z_hwgYWC4H7EQe-pa_4dstxniMa2v2jzTnXvFQmxg/mtime:1425287992/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/500209/16474621510_b01e31506f_z.jpg) Maagdenhuis occupation, Amsterdam, February 27,2015. Guido van Nispen/Flickr. Some rights reserved.



It has been two weeks since the first occupation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungehuis_Occupation) of the Bungehuis, one of the main buildings of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The more recent occupation (http://socialhistory.org/en/collections/occupation-amsterdam-university) of UvA’s Senate House – the Maagdenhuis which was famously occupied back in 1969 – and the breadth of the grassroots movement for a New University (http://newuni.nl/) exposes the problems of Dutch higher education. Increasing student/staff ratios, chronic underfunding, creeping micromanagement of research and teaching, and growing authoritarianism from university management are all conspiring to turn universities into a bureaucratic version of Walmart. The twin pressures of authoritarianism from above and neoliberalism from below make it necessary to develop the democratic alternative put forward by the movement for a new university.
The history of the Dutch university since the 1990s is the history of a market-inspired--or market-mimicking--authoritarianism. By the late 1970s most Dutch universities were committed to openness, democracy and equality for all their members. The university’s main constituency has always consisted of students, teachers, and staff. The descent down the authoritarian rabbit hole began with a set of structural and ideological commitments induced by unyielding government pressure in the mid-1990s.
Around that time, university bureaucracies and top management came to gradually substitute themselves for the university’s demos under the guise of ‘indirect representation’. At the same time, students were insidiously being transformed into consumers--with some needs attended to by the bureaucracy without any corresponding political empowerment--through the twin process of inter-university competition and the widespread introduction of market-inspired benchmarks.
This is what Stefan Collini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Collini), one of the most influential British critics of the privatization of higher education, calls ‘the paraphernalia of market simulation’. The upshot is the bureaucratic equivalent of a sausage-factory: the production of the knowledge-sausage at minimum cost for the maximum number of consumers. The process by which one arrives at knowing thus becomes insignificant and secondary: means (degrees) and ends (the free pursuit of knowledge) are completely inverted. It is typically university managers, indeed, in their ivory tower, who bafflingly claim that this leaves the university’s ‘product’ unaffected.
For all these reasons, Dutch universities today find themselves at a crossroads. They must perforce choose between further privatization and democracy. The first route leads to a degradation of university education in general, and an evisceration of the humanities in particular. The second route leads to a more egalitarian and more efficient public university. Those who question the starkness of this dilemma should think again, especially in light of recent British experience. The structural similarities are striking: in 1999 the Labour government of Tony Blair introduced tuition for university education, at the moderate level of £1000 (c. €1300). Within little more than a decade, undergraduate tuition in the UK had exploded to nine times its original level (c. €11000). This is privatization in all but name. At the same time, Blair installed broader structures of microbullying within universities, ostensibly for the purpose of assessment and quality control of teaching and research. This included bibliometry (citation counts of published work), numerical benchmarks for teaching on the basis of teaching evaluations, numerical targets for the number of publications per year, etc. The Netherlands is a mere ten years behind the UK, but seems eager to catch up.
Most Dutch universities already utilize some of these benchmarks for self-assessment purposes, largely for the purpose of disciplining sub-units like departments and their staff, but also in order to make tenure and promotion decisions. It is well-known that these modes of assessment are flawed: it is a category mistake to believe that the quality of academic work can be measured like beans in the sack. It can be evaluated. This is what widely-accepted practices of peer review, that is, the direct assessment of the quality of one’s research, are there for.
But no amount of quantitative indexing can substitute for peer review. No amount of citations---or indeed of successful grant applications---will be able to replace substantial assessment of the claims and arguments made in academic work. Inversely, no lack of citations can undermine the main tenets of Darwin’s theory of natural selection or Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. Indeed, if Darwin and Wittgenstein were academics in the Netherlands today, they would be unlikely to get tenure (Head of department: ‘Mr. Wittgenstein, you’ve only published one book in 20 years, cited by a mere spattering of people in Vienna! Tenure application refused!’).
The movement for a New University contests this incessant drive to turn universities into supermarkets, with an unelected – and unaccountable – board of directors at the top, and a hapless army of consumers at the bottom. The students and teachers making up this movement are opposed to the opacity and authoritarianism at the helm of Dutch universities, to the hierarchies that the drive to privatization inevitably creates, and to the recent cuts in the humanities that threaten to destroy institutional structures of research and teaching that it took decades to create. It will also be extremely difficult, if at all possible, to recreate even a semblance of democracy were proposed reforms to go through.
These are all symptoms of the structure and direction given to the Dutch university since the 1990s. This is why demands for fully elected and accountable university boards, for a roll-back of cuts in the humanities, for a cancellation of the infamous Profiel 2016 (http://www.foliaweb.nl/tag/profiel-2016/)--a proposal that jeopardizes the jobs of dozens of teachers in the humanities and merges a number of subjects and disciplines in a way that is not driven by informed decisions but by ad-hoc attempts to save money--form the core of any reasonable set of transitional demands for a democratic university.
Thanks to the students and their protests we are now in a political moment where these questions are on the public agenda, where what seemed utopian and unrealistic two weeks ago has become a real possibility.



https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/nicholas-vrousalis-robin-celikates-johan-hartle-enzo-rossi/why-we-occupy-dutch-un

[Sasha]

The Revolution Will Not Be Subtitled

A spectre haunting the University of Amsterdam has marched into the Maagdenhuis and settled within its venerable halls upon an old mattress. Surprisingly, the student movement is entirely English spoken, and many internationals have rallied ‘round the flag — but to what effect?






The University of Amsterdam has survived two historical weeks; both in the sense that history might have been made, and that it is being repeated. As in 1969, students protesting for more democratic and transparent management have occupied the offices of the highest executive echelons. A certain consciousness of the gravity of the occupations of the Bungehuis and the Maagdenhuis has permeated even those faculties somewhat removed from the battlegrounds of the Spui and Bungehuis; those less affected by major budget cuts and the across-the-board elimination of jobs and academic programmes as being experienced in the Humanities.
To many students, however, the occupations, the showdowns between insubordinate students and University president Louise Gunning, the demands and rallies, remain but a distracting news item on Nu.nl in-between revision sessions. One would expect that international students might be among the least concerned: even to those who stay in Amsterdam longer than a semester or two, the situation might seem a little abstract. Yet international academics are enthusiastically jumping into the fray. In fact, non-natives were at the forefront of the crusade against the university’s technocratic leadership from the outset.






Now is the winter of our discontent



However, a quick recap of the skirmish might be welcomed by those who weren’t. Discontent with budget cuts, reorganization of the Humanities faculty and the disappearance of 7 ‘small’ language degrees had been brewing for weeks when on February 13th, a group called De Nieuwe Universiteit (http://newuni.nl/) occupied the Bungehuis, which had just been sold by the UvA so as to be developed into a hotel. In the following week, the board subpoenaed the occupiers, threatening to fine each of them €100.000 for every day of the occupation.






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Although the university stressed that the sum was not unusual, this ham-handed move demonstrated the board’s insensitivity to the intricacies of the symbolic scuffle. Dozens of outraged staff members signed (http://www.foliaweb.nl/medewerkers/100-wetenschappers-uva-chanteert-bungehuisbezetters/) a statement claiming that they too were among the occupiers and should thus also be fined. All subsequent attempts at constructive dialogue failed and after ten days, the occupiers were removed from the Bungehuis by police force.
The next day a small group of students, remaining at the Maagdenhuis after a larger march on the Spui, angrily broke down its doors. Loudly calling for the University’s Board of Executives to step down, a few dozen students went in — and stayed.




An international perspective



A week before the Maagdenhuis occupation, when protest first sparked at the Bungehuis, several internationals from both the UvA and AUC immediately joined De Nieuwe Universiteit. ‘I recently received my PhD. But with the direction the UvA is now taking, I would never have gotten into the same programme had I arrived a year later,’ said one, sitting with a British friend in the bubbling, occupied cafeteria.







‘The bridge is falling down as I’m walking over it’.Originally from Turkey, she was involved in many social movements there, she explained. Perhaps, she thought, internationals from the more activist student milieus could inspire the Dutch with their own experiences of subverting power and repertoires of social action.
Now, in the Maagdenhuis as before in the Bungehuis, significant numbers of international students are present in the occupied administrative centre — many of them attracted to the talks by the university’s more revolutionarily engaged professors like Dan Hassler-Forest (https://webmail.uva.nl/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=vi0jq8ltYYV7otC8Cj-GMYUMIGqeUFRfhugQH0cvPezMsmrGtSTSCGgAdAB0AHAAcwA6A C8ALwB0AHcAaQB0AHQAZQByAC4AYwBvAG0ALwBkAGEAbgBoAGY A&URL=https%3a%2f%2ftwitter.com%2fdanhf) and Linda Duits (https://webmail.uva.nl/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=NKiiihTbTEWX-K1MNQnjaix-hfsKBhE5J18DQ6Wy2a3MsmrGtSTSCGgAdAB0AHAAcwA6AC8ALw B0AHcAaQB0AHQAZQByAC4AYwBvAG0ALwBsAGEAbABhAGwAYQBs AGkAbgBkAGUAcgA.&URL=https%3a%2f%2ftwitter.com%2flalalalinder).

‘I saw a live stream online of what was going on inside here yesterday, and noticed that everyone was speaking English. That was surprising, but it made it clear to me that internationals were a part of this as well — or at least welcome to join’ says James, a student from the UK.‘The university tries its best to attract international students’, says a psychology major from Germany who wishes, like almost all students here, to remain anonymous. ‘And so it should: universities have to be international societies. You cannot invite these people and then expect them not to want to be involved in the way their institution is managed.’ He is hoping to attain a Master’s degree here. ‘It would be relatively easy for me to get my degree and leave for another country, but I feel it’s important for international students to be here today and show solidarity.’




Lost in translation



What began as a purely regional, internal debate on university management grew into a global movement as the week progressed, with the fervor to occupy the UvA’s real estate spreading and prominent academics like Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler expressing their solidarity with the occupation. The protesters themselves partly facilitated this by choosing to debate and communicate almost exclusively in English from the first day in the Bungehuis.






At the general assembly at the Maagdenhuis, one in every few speakers stands out with native English among the many Dutch accents and whispered consultations on how to translate lokaalvredebreuk.
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1500/1*4GYx6Aa5kVj7lvpokDeLCw.jpeg
It soon became clear that neither the majority of Dutch occupiers and self-proclaimed facilitator Jaap Oosterwijk, nor, regrettably, board president Gunning, were gifted at Anglophone oratory, and many scoffed at the ineptitude of both sides to convey their arguments eloquently in their second language, in line with a long-existing argument at the UvA to curb the use of often sub-par English at the institution. What was essentially a Dutch university’s internal struggle, the critics felt, should be settled in Dutch.
And yet, the move seems to have worked in the protesting students’ favour, with international academics, both locally and abroad, chiming in on feelings of discontent more widely shared. ‘It is strange to see what is still a national debate held in English,’ says the German psychology student, ‘but it’s a very good move, and shows the progressive nature of both Amsterdam and this movement.’
And yet, for all they bring to the table, the internationals present in the occupations might have aided its detractors, too. As was the case with the Spinhuis squat last year, the occupation might well have been aided by members of other Amsterdam subcultures, more experienced in these matters. Anarchists, international socialists, squatters and members of other overlapping circles not directly involved with the university, always formed a part of the occupations’ core; some of them (former) students, others only sympathizing with friends or the general subversive cause.
This did not go unnoticed, and the persistent idea that a significant part of this university protest was carried out by unenrolled rabble-rousers provided the opposition with ammunition. An online report on the Parool website attracted comments such as: ‘Most of these protesters are actually those so-called exchange students — students who can’t afford education in their own country, and therefore come here, where the government pays most tuition. It’s unlike Amsterdam’.

‘Go occupy a historical monument in your own country!’, said one, regrettably typical, reply.But all in all, it seems that international and native students have rightfully and successfully joined forces to reach their goals — diverse as those goals may be in the highly individualistic democratic universe within the occupation. A handful of investigative visits to the idealists’ front line revealed, if anything, that international students are exemplary in their fervor for social change, not to mention their much greater ability to eloquently argue for it.
Contrary to critics’ insinuations, the vast majority appeared to be students, although among the internationals were one or two lost VU-postgrads (‘I’m studying social movements, and just wanted to get involved in something’). Students, moreover, who have just as much to lose as their Dutch comrades, if not more. In the words of the Turkish PhD at the Bungehuis:

‘I don’t know what being here will mean for my future, but it’s a risk I’ll take.’As she left for a General Assembly, she quipped: ‘And besides, meeting Roel van Duijn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roel_van_Duijn) here after reading so much about the Dutch Provos was great.’




text: Bob van Toor | images: Daniël Rommens | More at Foliaweb.nl (http://www.foliaweb.nl)




source: https://medium.com/@Folia/the-revolution-will-not-be-subtitled-12b95a82f5e5