By GS.TS IR. Guus Berkhout
This is an English translation of a letter from Guus Berkhout of CLINTEL was published in De Telegraaf, the largest newspaper in the Netherlands earlier this week.
In recent years we have seen the strangest things happen to our universities. Professors have to be extremely careful about what they teach. If they present scientific results that do not conform to the ideology of the activist movements, their lives will be difficult and they may even be in danger of excommunication. Joining consensus is by far the safest. The Boards of Governors do not protect their professors; on the contrary, they are firmly behind the activists.
The University of Amsterdam believes every student should ‘wake up’. It’s no longer about developing talent, it’s about making serious, straight, white students feel guilty. After all, their ancestors had blood on their hands and they were the new generation of oppressors. Radboud University in Nijmegen has bowed to climate activism and has just decided that all students must be taught sustainability narratives. The climate crisis is at the heart of this, and whether that’s scientifically correct or not, it doesn’t matter in Nijmegen.
My own university, TU Delft, recently adopted the fashion label ‘climate university’. The university also encourages its students by telling them there is a man-made climate crisis that needs to be addressed with solar panels, windmills and biomass plants. Criticism is not tolerated. But I say to the Board, surely the university must be a sanctuary for the unbiased exchange of knowledge? How free would the discussion at TU Delft be if people were pushed into a straight mindset? Do you still want to send your child to such a university?
Honorary Doctor
But the worst is yet to come. TU Delft has just announced that it will award EU Vice President Frans Timmermans with an honorary doctorate (doctoratus honorary cause and effect), for the extraordinary achievements he has achieved with his energy transition policy. But I tell the Board of Governors, Frans Timmermans has done untold damage with her energy policy! He is the great champion of biomass plants, which have destroyed unique ecosystems for years by massive logging.
Timmermans also believes that sustainability can be achieved with windmills. A technical university like Delft University of Technology fully knows that such a policy is technically and scientifically pointless! Hard figures show that wind farms make heavy losses; Their operating costs are severely underestimated. Partly due to Timmermans policy, energy prices are skyrocketing. And then grant such a person an honorary doctorate? It is an insult to all Delft alumni.
The benefits are intertwined
Universities have gone in a direction unworthy of science. The interests of science and politics have become inextricably linked. As a result, critical thinking and truth-seeking have not been the starting point for many years. Governing boards should remember that universities are seen as incubators for new ideas. This requires an inspiring research and teaching environment where new concepts are welcome and students can develop their talents. Filtering out bad ideas should be done by interpretation, reasoning, and observation, not by brooding over creative minds.
Guus Berkhout is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a co-founder of CLINTEL.
Editor’s note: “critical thinking and finding the truth is not the starting point for years.” Correct.
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