Dear council, dear CvB,

I want to express my gratitude first and foremost. Two weeks ago we expressed how out of leftfield this piece felt. We felt that the document before us was confronting us with an already defined assignment to the process supervisor, that they had already been hired, and that the approach was set in stone. Furthermore, we felt that the process proposal lacked proper motivation or reasoning.

In this new, more thoroughly argued document, the CvB makes clear what the ambition is: intensify inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations to solve the most urgent problems of our time. The necessity to strive towards this ambition is also clear. Hans Biemans had explained this two weeks ago, and so we are very glad to see this again in written form, now in this public document. Thank you for delivering this updated, and clearer document, and making it available to the public. You are used to the rhetorical twist that is about to come, the big HOWEVER, but I just really want to emphasize that we recognize and appreciate the efforts you and the authors of this document have put into providing a clearer picture for this. Not ultimately for us in the university council, but also for our university community broadly.

Okay, so let me get to the HOWEVER part of this speech. In a nutshell, my point for the next couple of minutes will be: extraordinary demands require an extraordinary justification. And while the ambition and the motivation to reach this ambition is clearer now, I still lack a solid substantiation for the precise issues and hurdles that currently exist, and that inhibit us from becoming an agile university that cooperates across domains more strongly without making far-reaching changes to our university structure. Phrased differently, as a question: can we not improve and optimize our processes to strengthen each other and work seamlessly together, without merging faculties and causing more unrest in difficult times?

Of course, the CvB offers in this document some argumentation for this; in section 3 to be precise. Again, I’m grateful for your elaboration on the current situation. But you lose me when you make a jump between the analysis of the current situation, and the conclusion you draw from it. Let me walk you through my reading process of key passages.

On page 3, after the bullet-point listing, the paragraph begins with “De transitie vereist een fundamentele cultuurverandering binnen de universiteit met een focus op samenwerking tussen disciplines en externe partners.” - yes, that seems logical, because the way we are working right now might not be always fostering collaborations across disciplines and outside of the academic space, okay, I am following. Then: “Dit vraagt om nieuw leiderschap, training..” here I am a bit startled – why? Culture is not always simply changed by new leadership. Culture is changed through practices. Then in the next page, page 4, the text cites a couple of reports and recommendations. But it doesn’t really get into the specifics of the issues that these reports find: what is it about the tradition-oriented academic culture that inhibits necessary change? If the idea here is to swallow up small faculties into existing large ones, with the same deans, then the only change we have effected is that a couple of deans become more powerful. I cannot find the argument that convinces me that changing our academic culture, and stimulating more intensive inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations become only possible if we just give a few deans more power.

The beginning of the section “De complexiteit in beeld” at the bottom of page 4, continuing in page 5, similarly leaves me somewhat counselless. The picture of the situation at different universities is sketched, listing how different disciplines are embedded within different faculties at different universities. As I was reading this, I was getting excited: I would find here the sentence that proves to me that YES, the structures at these other universities are so effective that they are leaving us behind by miles. But no. Comparing some other reports and evaluations, the Keuzegids 2025 demonstrates great scores for our UCG, CF and the bachelor’s degree for Philosophy, landing on place 2 out of 8 in the nation. All within small faculties. Unfortunately, the document jumps again simply to, what I can only describe with a metaphor, comparing this section to the type of insecurity that the odd kid on the playground has, asking, if everyone else is jumping off a cliff, shouldn’t I do it too? I’m missing both an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in this section and document more generally.

If I squint strong enough, I can find in-between the lines of two paragraphs the issues that the board of the university would like to solve with this change in the governance structure of the university. The second sentence in the fifth paragraph of page 5 is one of these sentences that hides some possible reasons for this entire procedure. It states: “Toch leidt zowel het aantal als met name ook de veelvormigheid van faculteiten in de besturing tot het ongewenste effect dat er veel betrokkenen met een strategisch verschillende positie in de governance zijn. Als gevolg hiervan is het lastig om tot een gezamenlijke meningsvorming te komen en zijn er lange doorlooptijden tussen beleidsvorming en besluitvorming, zowel bij eenvoudige als bij complexere dossiers.” Aha! So I’m assuming the college of deans – by the way, not a democratically nor legally legitimated entity – is a difficult committee to get committed to the same vision! But then again, this makes me wonder what would lead the board of the university to assume that fewer but larger faculties with fewer but more powerful deans would make this trajectory to make decisions more efficiently? Are we not decreasing the diversity of perspectives that help us form sound decisions, even if it may take a bit longer to come to a decision? And furthermore, wouldn’t larger faculties with a wider gap between the faculty board and the workfloor lead to greater difficulties in implementing a new course of action, as opposed to smaller faculties, where the dean is as approachable of a person as any student’s teacher? When I was a student, for instance, I met the dean of the faculty of philosophy, back then it was Lodi Nauta, and the vice-dean of education of the faculty of Religion, Culture and Society, back then Erin Wilson, far more frequently for courses and ideas for research projects, than any of the deans of the faculty of arts, at which I was situated. Do you not think that a random student, who talks with the dean of their faculty regularly, is more easily convinced of the new direction of a faculty, than a student who can do their bachelors, their master’s, and perhaps even their PhD at their faculty, without ever having had to even know of the name of the big boss making the calls? And the same would apply to teachers and researchers, too.

To emphasize, I go through these points not because I am opposed to the ambitions expressed in this document. But because I recognize the mammoth task that the board of the university is asking of us. And within my role in this university council, I cannot in good conscience justify this to our voter base, without having absolute certainty that starting this exhaustive exercise is really necessary for the future of our university. And so I must ask the board of the university again to provide more granular clarity: what specifically are the issues that are currently inhibiting the agile, collaborative, and mutually strengthening culture across the faculties, and more importantly, why can they not be improved within the current structures; by cutting the red tape and solving the hurdles to enable more inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations, rather than fundamentally changing the everyday experience of the workplace of thousands of colleagues and students? I ask these questions not to be stubborn, but to do my part in helping us achieve this otherwise laudable ambition for an impactful university in the region and the world.