Political Diversity in a Dutch University

Politicization at a Dutch University Intellectual Diversity and Particular Political Persuasions at 'Proud to be Progressive’ Places

BSc. Coen Schuring, 10439625 Master Thesis MSc Urban Sociology First reader: dr. I Tzaninis Second reader: Prof. dr. B. Volker 29-8-2017 [email protected] University of Amsterdam Word count: 23, 827 (Excluding appendices)

Table of contents Page Foreword………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………… 7

Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………… 8

Social-political relevance of the subject………………………………………….. 8

Problem definition……………………………………………………………...... 8

The university and its identity……………………………………………………. 9

Research question………………………………………………………………… 11

Outline……………………………………………………………………………. 11

Chapter 2: Theoretical framework………………………………………………………... 12

2.1 Explanations for the prevalence of leftist lecturers & students at the FMG………………………………………………………...…………………….. 12

2.1.1 The nature of social science(s)…………………………………….... 12

2.1.2 Political ideology and personality traits…………………………….. 12

2.1.3 Political persuasions and personal preferences……………………... 13

2.1.4 The role of education to the political views of students……………. 14

2.1.5 Possible discrimination against conservatives……………………… 14

2.2. Sociology: A Tale of Two Narratives...... 15

2.2.1 Explanations for the current campus culture at the university…………………………………………………...…………...... 16

2.2.2 Identity politics and the social sciences…………………………….. 18

Chapter 3: Methodology…………………………………………………………………. 21

The teacher interviews……………………………………………………………. 21

The student surveys………………………………………………………………. 21

Chapter 4: Qualitative results ……………………………………………………………..22

4.1 The political identities of teachers…………………………………………….23

4.2 Teachers’ philosophy about teaching………………………………..…...... 23

4.3 The interdependency between the political affiliation of lecturers and education…………………………………………………………………………..28

Identity politics, postmodernism and the curriculum…………………….. 30

4.4 Support for quotas to enforce political diversity in the faculty….…………… 33

Chapter 5: Quantitative results…………………………………………………………… 37

5.1 Demographic information…………………………………………………….. 37

5.2 The political identity of students……………………………………………... 39

Individual political labels…………………………………………………. 41

Political opinions of social science students……………………………… 42

5.3 Political diversity at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences………... 45

5.4 Politicization of teachers………………………………………………………47

The task of a teacher during the educational process…………………….. 48 5.5 Changing political views of students during their students at the University of Amsterdam……………… …………………………………….. 49

5.6 The expression of (political) preferences on campus………………………… 51

5.6.1 The number of students that do not express themselves during seminar groups……………………………………………………………. 51

5.6.2 Reasons students give for not expressing themselves during seminar groups……………………………………………………………. 52

5.6.3 Support for speech codes on campus……………………………….. 56

5.7 The campus culture at the University of Amsterdam………………………… 57

5.8 The most important factors that shape the political views of social science students…………………………………………………………. 59

Ordinal regression analysis……………………………………………….. 62

Chapter 6: Conclusion……………………………………………………………………. 64

6.1 Limitations ………………………………………………………………….. 65

6.2 Recommendations……………………………………………………………. 66

6.2.1 Making the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences more welcoming to non-leftists…………………………………………………. 65

6.2.2 Steps the professoriate can take to let right-wing students join…….. 66

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………… 70

Appendix 1: List of abbreviations ……………………………………………………….. 78

Appendix 2: Political parties that currently have a seat in the Dutch Parliament or were influential during the last national Dutch elections ……………………………………… 79

Appendix 3: The teacher interviews ……………………………………………………... 83

Appendix 4: The student interviews ………..…………………………………………..... 110

Foreword This thesis is written as a completion to the master Urban Sociology, at the University of Amsterdam. The subject of this thesis, political diversity at the social science faculty and how the political views of students are shaped by the university, has been a personal topic of interest for quite some time and was chosen after I had some interpersonal experiences during my studies at the University of Amsterdam that I thought were interesting to research sociologically.

I would also like to thank both of my supervisors that helped me with my master thesis throughout the last months. My first supervisor, dr. I. Tzaninis, helped me with the formulation of the research question and his recommendations concerning useful literature also were a great help. I would like to thank my second supervisor, prof. dr. B. Volker, for helping me by assessing the thesis proposal, where she provided critical feedback and input that complemented the other feedback I received earlier.

I have been conducting research on this topic since April, and I found this period of research very interesting and informative.

Coen Schuring Amsterdam, August 2017

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he really does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…”

- John Stuart Mill, 1859.

Abstract Universities have never enrolled so many students as today. Consequently, these places of higher learning have played an ever increasing role during the formative years of countless young adults. This master thesis reviews how students of six educational departments of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences – namely Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Psychology, Human Geography, Planning and International Development, and Communication – are shaped by several different variables, both in- and outside of the university. The (possible) politicization of college students by sociology teachers and how politicization relates to the current climate concerning intellectual freedom will also be covered.

Keywords: politicization at higher education, social science students, intellectual freedom, teacher interviews

1. Introduction My own interest regarding the question of ‘intellectual diversity’ was sparked after a couple of personal experiences I had with regards to expressing different (political) opinions during several seminar meetings1 of sociology courses. These opinions were mostly connected to the topics of meritocracy, race, social inequality and gender. Expressing these opinions to my fellow students led to some instances of social exclusion, i.e. people not greeting me back or excusing themselves shortly after I had joined their group. It gave the impression of a form of ‘groupthink’, where the smallest infraction of going against the narrative was seen as a dissenting viewpoint and the desire for conformity and harmony was what expected and hoped for. This experienced lack of intellectual diversity is what started my thought process about the absence (or presence) of diversity of thought at the social science faculty of my university.

Social-political relevance of the subject Interestingly, the topic of intellectual diversity was also recently discussed in the Dutch parliament, where a motion was put forward by Pieter Duisenberg, a member of the House of Representatives and politician for the political party of the VVD (see the list of abbreviations in Appendix 1 and the list of Political parties that currently have a seat in Dutch Parliament or were influential during the last national Dutch elections in Appendix 2 for a more detailed description of the political parties). The goal of the motion is to let the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen or KNAW) investigate if “self-censorship and limitations of diversity of scientific perspectives play a major role in the Netherlands” (Hendriks, 2017). The fact that the Dutch parliament wants to know if (social) scientific disciplines are influenced by a lack of viewpoint diversity underlines the social-political relevance of my master thesis. The KNAW will have a meeting in the fall of 2017 and subsequently take a position in relation to intellectual freedom within the social science faculty.

Problem definition Universities are suitable for this research subject as more Dutch students are attending college than in any other decade (DUO, 2016: 4), these places of higher learning constantly teach and confront students with new ideas and the faculties of higher institutions increasingly have more influence in shaping the ideological predispositions of college students (Horowitz 2006, 2007). This confrontation with new ideas inevitably leads to processes of politicization; however, the

1 A seminar group is when students meet in a classroom and discuss course readings, presentations or other texts.

theories on politicization processes do not pay a lot of attention to the experiences of individual students (Hanson et al. 2012: 356). The teaching staff of the sociology faculty, in particular, has been interviewed, seeing as American studies throughout several decades have repeatedly found that sociology professors tend to be the most liberal professors in academia, politically speaking (Turner et al., 1963; Lipset & Ladd 1970, 1972; Klein et al., 2005). A recent study done in the United States corroborates this sentiment, where they found that Democratic professors outnumbered their Republican counterparts on a ratio of about 12:1 (Langbert et al., 2016). This article primarily looked at voter registration of faculty members at 40 leading U.S. universities in the fields of Journalism/Communication, History, Economics, Law, and Psychology. These results showed that D: R ratios have gone up since 2004 and the age profiles suggest they will probably go up even further in the future (Idem.). This shows the end of an ‘institutionalized disconfirmation’ (Haidt, 2016), where an institution with little political diversity among the professoriate that institutionalizes critique and disconfirmation by filtering out the bad, partisan and/or biased ideas and research in academia does not always work. Similar findings came from two scholars at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands, who showed that the social psychology department is overwhelmingly politically liberal (left- wing) and that this lack of ‘intellectual’ diversity leads to ideologically biased selection of research questions, selective interpretation of evidence, and even to discrimination against libertarian and conservative (right-wing) students and faculty members (Inbar & Lammers, 2012).

The university and its identity During the introduction week at the beginning of the year, a faculty speaker said that “we would be studying in one of the most wonderful and inclusive cities in the world and were going to make a great impact in society at large”. This could be seen as evidence of a larger, faculty- wide sentiment of a university that self-identifies as “internationally oriented, innovative and involved” (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017b), compared to Amsterdam as an inclusive, liberal city. The identity of Amsterdam as a liberal city is corroborated by the exit polls from the March 2017 Dutch national elections. This shows that GreenLeft is the biggest party in the Dutch capital city with 19,3% of the votes, followed by the D66 that has 18,2% of the votes (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2017; Slot et al., 2017). The University of Amsterdam has historically been a liberal place, both in principle and sovereignty, but has gone in a different direction since the early 1970s. This was the moment that the protected status of the municipal-university was no longer valid and the Executive Board (College van Bestuur) could, for example, decide

which professors to hire (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017a). This eventually led to growing neoliberal trends that focus on efficiency (rendementsdenken) and had an adverse effect on the quality of education (Van der Wusten, 1998: 36). Since the 1950s, there has been an ever increasing rate of diversification in regards to the curriculum at universities throughout the Western world that came alongside more democratization (Idem.: 38). The eventual consequence of this can be seen in the case of the UvA Maagdenhuis occupation in 2015 that occurred after the university announced it would be eliminating several degree programs because of austerity measures and budget issues. Students and staff members alike decided to protest and demand more democratization and decentralization (Commissie Democratisering & Decentralisering, 2016). The interdependency between the previously mentioned trends of neoliberalization, the politicization of students and the role faculty members and fellow students play in this process by advocating for a particular stance all come together in the university of the present day. Actually, does a university that is guided by these neoliberal policies employ many left-leaning professors at all? This remains to be seen. Still, it has to be noted that all these trends at universities are occurring amidst a Dutch society that has (partly) gone towards the right side of the political spectrum in the past several years. This argument can be supported in light of the results from the last Dutch national elections. If these are reviewed, we see that all of the widely considered right-wing parties received 64% of the vote, with conservative (more nationalist) right-wing parties gaining 7 seats in parliament and progressive (more globalist-centered) right-wing parties gaining 5 in comparison to the last elections in 2012 (Kiesraad, 2017; Appendix 2). With universities being largely influential in higher education, the teachers are quite literally the first and (maybe even) foremost source that give students new information. The role lecturers play in this possible politicization process cannot be underlined enough. Therefore, the question how – if at all – the teaching philosophy of lecturers form the political opinions of university students is a crucial one. It could also be that another variable is more influential when forming students’ political views. All this information begs the question if and how the political views of graduate and undergraduate2 social science students are affected by several different factors in and around the university.

2 The study programmes bachelor, undergraduate, master and graduate students are used interchangeably.

Research question This leads to the formulation of the following research question: “How are students’ political views formed at the social science faculty of the University of Amsterdam, in light of the teaching philosophy of lecturers?” The aim of my thesis is to research how the political views of social science students are formed at the social science faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and how this relates to the lecturers’ philosophy about teaching. My expectation is that higher education has changed the political views of both liberal/left-leaning and conservative/right-leaning students in considerable but different ways. I am also personally interested if other social science students have experienced some form of social exclusion after they have expressed (political) viewpoints that were not very popular.

Outline This master thesis will precede as follows. Various explanations for the prevalence of leftist students and lecturers will first be discussed in the theoretical framework, along with previous research and the discourse around identity politics. The subsequent methodology chapter will briefly cover the research design, data collection and sampling. After this, the qualitative and quantitative data analysis will be conducted. The thesis will be concluded with an evaluation of the main findings, a discussion and recommendations for future research.

2. Theoretical framework This chapter will represent the necessary theoretical framework to answer my research question. The theoretical topics will include: (1) several explanations for the prevalence of left-leaning students and lecturers at the Faculty of Societal- and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) and (2) an explanation why sociology mostly covers topics and information in the curricula that could be considered as left-leaning.

2.1 Explanations for the prevalence of leftist students & lecturers at the FMG Before we look at the current situation of intellectual freedom at the UvA social science faculty, we must first find out what the reasons are for it currently being the way it is. The social scientific literature does not seem to give a singular all-encompassing explanation why there are so many left-leaning professors (and students) at the social science faculty. The answers that many academic have put forward, which are manifold, mainly seem to be connected to (1) the essence of social science(s), (2) differences in personality traits, (3) differences in interests and self-selection, (4) liberalization during education, and (5) – perhaps to a smaller extent – discrimination.

2.1.1 The nature of social science(s) The first explanation is connected to the nature of the inquiry in the discipline (Eitzen & Maranell 1968: 152), where intellectual examination of traditional beliefs discuss the negative and positive consequences for social arrangements (like tradition) that result in a milieu of social critique and a subsequent weakening of traditional belief. Therefore, it could be likely that either (A) individuals who have previously experienced these aforesaid weakening of tradition select the disciplines that critically examine these or (B) individuals in the behavioral/social sciences are socialized towards liberal attitudes by virtue of them being members of the discipline (Idem.). The latter is unsurprising as challenging frequently held beliefs and changing the status quo is the antithesis of conservatism, by definition.

2.1.2 Political ideology and personality traits The two personality traits that most parsimoniously explain the personal differences between the political orientation of liberals and conservatives are Open(ness) to (New) Experience(s) and Conscientiousness, respectively. Conservatives tend to avoid unfamiliar situations with uncertain (financial) outcomes and are attracted to careers that are both structured and practical in nature. They are also more inclined to be more robust and behaviorally significant with regards to social dimensions of ideology (Carney et al., 2008). Liberals are more drawn towards creative fields and are, generally speaking, more open-minded, novelty-seeking and curious

(Idem.: 816). Wilson’s psychological theory of conservatism (1973) (as cited in Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Solloways 2003: 356) argues that liberals gravitate to having personality traits that are more often associated with ambiguity and uncertainty. This could be a reason why they go into a field like academia where they can satisfy their curious minds (McCrae, 1996). Conservatives, on the other hand, could be more inclined to have jobs in private employment or to be attracted towards the larger salaries that are found here. This might explain why there are so few right-wing students (and teachers) in academia.

2.1.3 Political persuasions and personal preferences Apart from the fact that liberals tend to be “less interested in financial success and more interested in writing originals works” (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2009a, as cited in Duarte et al. 2015: 28), these disparities in individual interest may be augmented by the concept of “birds of a feather flock together”, also known as the “homophily” effect (Byrne, 1969; McPherson, 2001). When a domain or field starts to favor a certain way of thinking or is inhabited by certain kinds of individuals, the field will likely become increasingly attractive to the people befitting that predilection. Over time, the group itself may become characterized by its group members and people outside of that field will come to recognize the entire field by that characteristic, just like firefighters are typically thought of as being male or social scientists are seen as left-leaning/liberal (Duarte et al., 2015: 28). When that happens, right- wingers/conservatives could get the impression that they do not belong there and decide to opt out of enrolling in these disciplines altogether. This form of self-selection, coupled together with the personality differences, might generally explain a sizeable part of the under- representation of right-leaning individuals in the social science faculty.

2.1.4 The role of education to the political views of students Research done in the 1970s studied how conservative students were ‘liberalized’ during an introductory sociology course in university (Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979). The politicization process was measured by incorporating conservative and liberal items into a questionnaire that they answered at the beginning and end of their semester. The students were found to shift overwhelmingly towards a liberal direction, regardless of their age and/or their professor’s theoretical orientation. The most notable reasons (apart from the curriculum and teachers’ influence) for this shift were: “the absence of parents, new experiences and the exposure to a wide range of persons, ideas and peer pressures” (Feehan, 2004). When the topics covered in the curriculum were taken into account (racism, sexism, power and wealth distribution, social inequality and unrest, crime and poverty) and led by a liberal professor, a significant portion of

the class were persuaded to (join) the political left (Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979: 123). So, education has shown to be of importance in the politicization process of college students. Parents, educators and politicians also feel that students are directly influenced by liberal college environments (Fish, 2004; Horowitz, 2004) and while it may be true that there are a sufficient number of liberal college students, it is also true that not all colleges actually liberalize students. Alternatively, it could also be that conservative or liberal students enter college and become even more entrenched in their own values during the first year of college because of the (mostly) liberal views of their peers. This entrenchment of values among conservative and liberal students is part of a phenomenon that has aptly been described as the Entrenchment Hypothesis (Feehan, 2004). However, other longitudinal studies that have followed several thousands of college students found that political socialization mostly develops as a function of one’s peers, and not necessarily education (Astin, 1993; Dey 1997). So, group norms and being surrounded by individuals that have particular political persuasions would be the defining factor when it comes to being conservative or liberal in university.

2.1.5 Possible discrimination against conservatives Maranto & Woessner (2012) suggest that discrimination against conservatives could partially explain why there are so few conservative or right-leaning students in the social sciences. They note that this discrimination might not necessarily be done intentionally. Instead, conservatives might become isolated or disconnected from the rest of the ‘liberal’ campus simply because they are in the minority. This could lead to conservatives assessing that that specific college experience is ‘not for them’ and subsequently self-selecting out of completing an advanced degree in the social sciences (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner 2009a: 3). The political-ideological imbalance in the humanities and social sciences could be explained by the significant importance that is put on ideals; this might be one of the reasons the political disparity among students is less prolific in the business, economics and math departments (Langbert et al., 2016). This does not mean that there are no individual cases where conservatives experience (some) hostility in certain disciplines or individual courses. It does seem to mean that it does not profoundly affect their overall assessments of the college experience (Woessner & Kelly- Woessner 2009a: 4). This group can still thrive in higher education; professors on the right side of the political spectrum turn out to be “just as happy as their liberal counterparts, if not more so” (Abrams, 2016: 7) .

2.2 Sociology: A Tale of Two Narratives Sociologist Christian Smith (2003) argues that the academic field of sociology has become a cohesive moral community throughout the years and developed specific, and complementary, sacred values. This ideological shift was mostly done in “various social sectors where the public authority of religion has diminished, in particular, education, science, law, and journalism.” (Smith, 2003). He describes the view of the (current) cohesive sociological moral community thus:

“Once upon a time, the vast majority of human persons suffered in societies and social institutions that were unjust, unhealthy, repressive, and oppressive. These traditional societies were reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism … But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality, and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic… welfare societies. While modern social conditions hold the potential to maximize the individual freedom and pleasure of all, there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation, and repression. This struggle for the good society in which individuals are equal and free to pursue their self-defined happiness is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving” (Idem.: 82).

This narrative – which Smith (2003) refers to as that of Liberal Progress – might explain why there is a copious amount of sociological research done on topics like social change and control, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, social stratification and inequality, and stereotypes. The goal of (mainly) doing research on these topics is “to identify privilege exploitation, prejudice, and unequal opportunity in order to inform cultural practices and policy and legislative reforms that will make society more free, equal, and fulfilling for its individual members. In particular, this means identifying and critiquing class inequality, racism, sexism, heterosexism, corporate exploitation, and other forms of discrimination privilege, and injustice” (Idem.83). This often leads to sociologists developing policy that could eventually provide the intellectual foundation of many political causes and, consequently, taking up progressive (political) causes themselves. However, sociology is not always preoccupied with forward-looking progress and emancipation that is difficult to envision. Another possible and competing extrascientific narrative is that of Ubiquitous Egoism, which stands in stark contrast to the forward-oriented narrative. Whereas the Liberal Progress narrative is one of forward-oriented thinking, the

perspective of Ubiquitous Egoism is considered a retelling of the more sinful half of the Enlightenment. This perspective is formulated as follows:

“Once upon a time, people believed that human self-centeredness was a moral flaw needing correction through ethical and spiritual discipline towards self-sacrificial love for neighbor and commitment to the common good. Even today, many people believe this. But as noble as it sounds, more perceptive and honest thinkers have come to the cold, hard, simple fact that, beneath all apparent expressions of love and altruism, all human motives and concerns are really self-interested. In fact, notions such as love and self-sacrifice themselves have been tools of manipulation and advantage in the hands of Machiavellian actors. Idealists persist in affirming moral commitment to the welfare of others, but they are naïve and misguided. Truly honest and courageous people who have intellectually “come of age” are increasingly disabusing themselves of such illusions and learning to be satisfied with the substitute idealism of helping to build the best society possible, given the constraints of ubiquitous rational egoism” (Idem. 83-84).

This gives the present day sociologist the choice between a (paradoxical) “inspiring drama and credulous optimism or more sobering satire and cynical pessimism” (Idem. 85). There are, of course, more narratives that offer more romantic and nostalgic views of the past (like the Community Lost perspective which is a narrative on the tragedy of industrialization, modernity, and globalization), but these were more prominent in the last century and have since lost a lot of influence in contemporary sociological thinking since the 1980s. Although all these narratives involve a particular and specific reading of history and a certain set of assumption with which to interpret the social world, it seems that the previously mentioned two narratives most often vie for ideological supremacy and explanatory power within the academic field of sociology (Isik 2015: 122).

2.2.1 Explanation for the current campus culture at universities The sociologists Campbell and Manning (2014) explain how victimhood culture has come to be the dominant moral culture on (some) university campuses. This new moral culture is a new (transitionary) stage in the evolutionary process from two and distinct types of cultures. They argue that previously, humans either lived in an honor culture or in a dignity culture. The former is a culture where people’s reputation is seen as honorable where “one must respond aggressively to insults, aggression, and challenges or lose honor” (Campbell & Manning, 2014: 28) and not fighting back is interpreted as a failure to conform to the cultural zeitgeist, even

insofar that “in honor cultures, people are shunned or criticized for not exacting vengeance but for failing to do so” (Cooney, 1998: 110 as cited in Campbell & Manning, 2014: 28). The reliance on authority and law – even when it is available – is also despised, because letting your own affairs being handled by others is viewed as lowering your standards (Idem.). Dignity cultures, on the other hand, emphasize a status that cannot be affected by other people’s opinions – dignity. Public reputation is less important, developing a “thick skin” is even preferable and children might even be taught that “sticks and stones might break your bones, but words will never hurt me.” Non-violent, but direct, solutions should be pursued when a clash seems unavoidable. The court system or the police could be helpful in these situations and playing judge, jury and executioner yourself is widely denounced, although the use of authority figures or institutions should only be done as “quickly, quietly and rarely as possible” (Idem. 30). Victimhood cultures contain elements of both honor cultures and dignity cultures, as they highlight sensitivity and status with a strong moral dependency on third parties. The cultural heterogeneity of contemporary social settings, like university campuses, reinforce the importance of public opinion and organized authority (the dean or a teacher) and these remain effective tools for social sanctions (Idem. 32). This could mean that the authorities are notified when a person (unintentionally) insults someone else and use the opportunity to enforce their own (perceived) oppression and social marginalization to underline their need for assistance and respect, instead of bolstering their own strength, dignity and/or honor (Idem. 31). Social- psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2012; 2016) – partly inspired by the sacred values of the cohesive moral community in sociology that were referred to earlier by Smith (2003) – identified six so- called sacred (victim) groups on university campus and these are (1) Blacks, (2) women, (3) the LGBT(QIA+) community, (4) ethnic minorities (like Latinos in America), (5) people with disabilities and the most recent addition: (6) Muslims. It must be noted that referring to these groups as sacred victim groups, does not mean these groups do not face any discrimination, however. Haidt continues by saying that students can not only gain status by being a victim, but also by “sticking up” or protecting other victims from their peers/other students who marginalize or attack these victim classes. A great example of this moral dependency could be seen at Emory College during the American elections of 2016 (Haidt, Idem.; Robinson, 2016), when a student chalked ‘Trump 2016’ on several places around campus. After some students said they felt they were ‘in pain’, ‘feared for [their] lives’ and ‘thought a KKK rally was going on’, they went to the president of the Atlanta college who, in turn, send a campus-wide email in which he promised to make policy changes regarding the ‘regular’ and ‘structured’ for

difficult dialogues. According to Haidt (Idem.), the consequences of the moral dependency of this type of culture are manifold. First, once the moral status of the victim has become the prevailing social currency at a university, it is very hard to change this form of looking at the world as students are taught there are two groups – victims and oppressors. Second, there “can never be peace in a victimhood culture as there is eternal conflict and grievance because of the (constant) struggle for [victimhood] status. Third, students are afraid to speak up/out and are self-censoring. Fourth, students advocate for the implementation of a “safety” culture because words and ideas are seen as “violence” and need trigger warnings and “safe spaces” to solve this issue. Any transgressions against a student should be solved by involving a third party that is an authority figure. Lastly, the victimhood culture could extend to other spaces and places outside of university and student might support these concepts elsewhere in the form of protests. A recent survey done by the Higher Education Research Institute (2016) underlines this predilection and shows that college students have become much more engaged with politics and student activism than in previous years (Eagan et al. 2016: 7). These have mostly taken the form of other student protests that have occurred at several high-end universities throughout the Western world. Becoming more politically involved might not be a bad outcome in and of itself, but it does seem that these student protest sometimes target or affect people who are not involved. A good recent example of this is can be seen in the case of Evergreen College, in May 2017. This is where leftist students targeted their leftist professor – who was sympathetic to their cause and a political ally - because he dared to go against the marginalized or sacred groups on campus. Other examples of student protests can be found at the protests at Yale University and the University of Missouri in 2015 (Pearce, 2015) where student activists marched to end racial hostility in the institution, the case of the University of Berkeley, California earlier in 2017 when a protest against conservative speaker Milo Yiannapoulos resulted in violent students denying him access to give a talk to the Republican student body (Zurcher, 2017), or in the UK, the Netherlands and other European countries against tuition fees.

2.2.2 Identity politics and the social sciences But where do all these underlying ideas and concepts come from and how have they become so popular amongst students especially? The study of literature first encountered a hermeneutical problem when they noticed complex texts could be interpreted in multiple (and perhaps even an unlimited number of) ways (Heidegger, 1927). Eventually, this became the central claim of

French intellectuals like Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979) who took the ethos (which was then referred to as postmodern, as virtue of it being popular in a period of contemporary history known as postmodernity) out of the domain of art movements and into the realm of philosophy. This lead to the idea that it wasn’t difficult how to interpret the (social) world but how to see it. Humans, for example, can be broken up into a variety of ways; they can be selected for based on their hair color, their gender, the color of their skin, their weight, ad infinitum. Then the question became what are the right categories to parse humans apart by? The initial postmodern thinkers like Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida made a successive claim of deconstruction, where Western values like reason, truth, and reality (meta- narratives) are critically evaluated because they argue that Western civilization has used these concepts to oppress, destroy and dominate the world (Rorty 1989; Derrida, 1995). Lyotard contends that: “Reason and power are one and the same. Both lead to and are synonymous with prisons, prohibitions, selection process, the public good” (in Friedrich 1999, as cited in Hicks 2004: 3). Everything is seen through the lens of power politics and power dynamics and, whilst discursive analyses of power precede the postmodern ethos, the argument that reason is used as a tool to suppress marginalized groups is often made in these circles.. This is exemplified by the following quotes:

“It is meaningless to speak in the name of – or against – Reason, Truth or Knowledge” (Foucault 1993: 2) and “Reason is the ultimate language of madness” (Foucault 1965: 95).

Political injustices are therefore most prominent in the West because this is where power and reason have been developed. This pain and suffering is not distributed equally, however; “males, whites, and the rich have their hands on the whip of power, and they use it cruelly at the expense of women, ethnic minorities, and the poor” (Hicks 2004: 3). Where the old Marxian axiom had the economic struggle of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as its center, it has since then morphed into an oppressor-oppressed group dichotomy that is preoccupied with the struggle for (institutional) power. The second generation of postmodernists came out to push for a kind of equality because weaker narratives were marginalized. This explains how students who are unfamiliar with names like Derrida, Rorty or ones that are more familiar in the social sciences such as Foucault, Bourdieu and Habermas might not necessarily know these theorists by heart because their ideas outlive their authors. If some groups are oppressed, or at least more oppressed than others, then that will (over time) create a specific protected status which will consecutively make that person

part of a sacred group. Being sympathetic to and coming to the defense of these groups makes you easy to identify as an ally and come across as a virtuous person. Furthermore, postmodern thinkers reject some of the most important Enlightenment values like the importance of individual agency and identity, and governance in relation to liberalism (Idem.14). Instead, they replace these with social subjectivism, dividing people into groups based on sex, race and other social or demographic groups (Nicholson & Seidman, 1995: 2), oppression and conflict, and communitarianism (Fogel, 1999) or various other forms thereof. The (political) application of this anti-individualist and collectivist strain of thought is often times referred to as identity politics (Kruks 2001: 85) which is defined as “Political formations around identity [people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc.] with typically [the] to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context [in order to] assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination”(Cressida, 2016). An individual then becomes the exemplar of his/her race or gender, which leads to notions like white privilege or male privilege (McIntosh, 1993). The influence of identity politics in education should, therefore, accentuate the harmful deeds of the oppressor groups (the rich, whites, and males) and focus on the accomplishments of these oppressed groups (the poor, ethnic minorities, women) (Hicks 2014: 18). Eventually, members of the oppressor group are - hyperbolically - sacrificed to the weak in a form of compensatory social justice; if you think the strong, smart, powerful and the rich have been using their positions of power to damage the interests of the weaker for several years, it is a noble cause to immolate them (Hicks, 2017). When identity politics is coupled with social justice, it leads to ideas no longer being evaluated on their merit but “on the identity of the speaker and [this is] multifaceted, incorporating sex, gender identity, race religion, sexuality and physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie for primacy” (Pluckrose, 2017). The latter group of oppressed are especially inspired to do so when the identities of marginalized groups are part of overlapping magisteria that create independent systems of advantage or discrimination, which are also known as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), where having power and privilege are seen as profane and victimhood - in the intersectional way of seeing the world - is akin to sainthood. Lastly, it would stand to reason that if all narratives are equally important, then voices from the political left and right would both see equal representation on campus. The validity of this notion will either be falsified or verified from the results in the qualitative and quantitative

data. We could expect to find teachers among the sociology faculty that advocate equal space on campus for all narratives, seeing as all narratives are equal; or at least not better than others.

3. Methodology

The teacher interviews This master thesis has a mixed methods approach, where in-depth, semi-structured interviews were first conducted with 7 teachers from the sociology department and were done between April 10 and April 20, 2017. A qualitative approach was chosen to answer the part of the research question concerning the teaching staff – viz., whether the teaching philosophy of the professoriate is in line with the political views of students – because a large amount of personal information was needed from a relatively small number of individuals. The topics covered in the interviews included their personal and political identities, their own philosophy about teaching, their opinion on political diversity quotas and their answers to several statements. The qualitative interviews have been used to cross-reference the political viewpoints later on, even though the former were done at an earlier point in chronological time. Some details were altered to guarantee the anonymity of the interviewees. The transcripts of the interviews can be read in Appendix 3.

The student surveys The teacher interviews were followed up chronologically by surveys that were distributed among many graduate and undergraduate students of the six departments from the Faculty of Social- and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) – Anthropology, Communication, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology and Human Geography, Planning and International Development - and 250 respondents have since participated, aged 18 to 26 and over. The students were of national and international background and were randomly approached through social media and on the university campus – both individually and in seminar groups. The response rate via social media was low; only 2% of respondents that were approached took the time to fill in a survey. That is why students were also informed they could win small prizes as an incentive to bolster their participation. These prizes included gift vouchers between 15 and 20 euros, agendas and notebooks. The (sub) questions and topics that were covered in these interviews are: the distribution of left and right-leaning students at the social science faculty, the politicization of teachers, the general and political identities of students, their past voting behavior, their own political values, the nature of their political views during their studies at the University of Amsterdam, what factors influence or form their political opinions, the free expression of their

own (political) views during seminar groups, the representation of (other) political views on campus, their own living situation, the role of the city in the politicization process and some demographic information. Most of the questions had multiple choice answers and the resulting demographics were weighed to correct for unequal selection probability and nonresponse, so that a sample size that is representative of gender, educational level and all educational departments within the social science faculty was achieved. For results based on this sample of college students, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The surveys can be read in Appendix 4.

4. Qualitative results This chapter will examine the interviews with academics from the social science faculty (FMG) and will cover (1) their own political identities; (2) their own philosophy about teaching; (3) the interdependency between political affiliation and education; and (4) their opinion on the use of quotas to make the sociology faculty of the University of Amsterdam more equitable on a political level.

4.1 The political identities of teachers The political identity of a teacher was determined through the following questions: (1)”What label would you use to describe yourself politically?”, (2) “How would you describe your political affiliation?”, (3) “How left or right-leaning would you consider yourself?”, (4) “What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?”, (5) “What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?” and (6) “How important – if at all – would you say your political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?” Six out of seven teachers described themselves as left-leaning. This ranged from two teachers saying they were on the center-left to two other teachers describing themselves as a left-wing liberal. One teacher said he/she was a left-wing progressive and one teacher was the odd one out in the sense that he/she labelled him/herself as a centrist. Unsurprisingly, the political affiliation of teachers was (mostly) in line with their political labels3 and this was also applicable to the question about how left or right-leaning they considered themselves. The lack of political diversity and the possible resulting absence of institutionalized disconfirmation was somewhat expected, as these findings underline the results of a study concerning the ideological distribution of sociology professors (Klein and Stern, 2009); indicating that although the

3 One teacher, for example, said his own political label was “liberal” and his own political affiliation was “leftist”. This makes sense, as most liberals tend to be on the left side of the political spectrum.

political affiliation of teachers is not monolithic, it is still overwhelmingly liberal and left- leaning on college campuses. Five out of the seven interviewed teachers of the sociology faculty were eligible to vote in the last Dutch national elections and 3 out of those 5 said they voted for GreenLeft. The two other teachers voted for the Party for the Animals and the self-styled moderate or ‘centrist’ voted for the Christian Democratic Appeal, respectively.

4.2 Teachers’ philosophy about teaching This paragraph reviews the qualitative answers of the professoriate in regards to how they would describe their personal attitude towards teaching and what they think the (ideal) goal of the curriculum should be. This was done to check if the teachers are more open towards having colleagues (or students) that hold opposite political preferences. The first teacher started out by saying that his/her philosophy about teaching was that students should be shown what the most promising tools and ideas in their own field are. He argued that teachers should be open about their own biases and inclinations, and said:

"Look, these are my own biases [as a teacher], these are more or less my subjective elements I want to emphasize, but this is something you can't get around and is essential to the field, so it would be crazy not to mention it. […] The fact that many of us [sociologists] are thinking a lot about inequality, for example, is a value statement. Teachers are out on that podium and should watch out for their own blind spots and be open to arguments from the other side or another perspective that they might not even be open to because of their own socialization or position that they are currently a part of.”

He/she continued by giving a neutral rating to the statement about educating students about injustice in the world as an important part of his/her way of teaching (see Crosstabulation 1 on page 25), because it was very class-dependent. An interesting finding came up when the teacher was asked about the principle of separating the activity of teaching from political views in class: “We know that is impossible, but we should aim for reflexivity with regards to our own biases whether they be political or speaking from the privilege of male-ness or whatever power basis.” The reference the teacher made on the discourse around power, privilege and male identity was very telling, seeing how these concepts were covered in the theoretical framework. Lastly, the teacher argued it is impossible to detach your personal teaching style from your political views whenever possible as “trying would imply consciousness and I would argue that

it is part of your habitus and it happens in the heat of the moment. So although I don’t think it is possible, in an ideal world I would really hope to do so.”

The second teacher made the same argument as the first teacher regarding the separation of political views and the classroom, as he/she agreed with the statement in principle, but it’s very difficult to do in practice. He/she continued by saying that he/she hoped his/her political views did not influence his/her teaching style and tried to do so, but was fairly certain they did influence each other on an unconscious level. The third teacher stated that, relatively speaking, the transmission of knowledge is an important part of the teaching process but not extremely important. Educating students about injustice in the world was an important part of his/her way of teaching, because “For sociologists, equality is a value in itself, but that is rather self-evident.” The professor had a neutral opinions towards the process of students deciding to become more politically involved after his/her classes and seeing this as a good outcome, for “on the one hand, I do encourage students/colleagues to be public sociologists and it that sense I would agree, but this sounds more like politically active and I'm not totally sure about that.” The statement pertaining to the activity of teaching staying separated from political views in class did not warrant an answer from the professor. He/she did have the following to say about it:

“I'm not teaching in order to influence their political ideas, but obviously, these aren't two totally separated worlds either. [At least] to the extent that it might be common that being a sociologist influences your political views. That can be [seen] in various ways, there could be right-wing liberals that we train in sociology so there's not one way that is thinking in totally individualized terms, for instance. So, it should not and it is not my intention to influence it, but I'm aware of the consequences of my teaching.”

This lecturer was the only interviewee that agreed with the statement about how his/her teaching style is completely detached from his/her political views, however. His reason for arguing in favor of this was as follows: “I hope my style is dialogical and non-hierarchical that is not motivated by my political style. But it might be that [way] if you have very hierarchical political ideas. [So] you won't teach in that way. I would say that [my teaching style] is detached from my political views [in that way].” He concluded that trying to detach your teaching style from your political views whenever possible is not about those two per se, but it’s about being explicit about it towards your students.

Crosstabulation 1 Teachers’ answers to various statements about their philosophy about teaching4 Teaching staff Statements Teacher #1 Teacher #2 Teacher #3 Teacher #4 Teacher #5 Teacher #6 Teacher #7 The transmission of knowledge is an 5 5 4* 5 4 4 3 important part of the teaching process Educating students about injustice in 3* 4 3* 3 4* 2 4 the world is an important part of my way of teaching There is nothing wrong with 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching Students deciding to become more 2 4 3* 3 4* 4 5* politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome The activity of teaching should stay 3* 4* -* 3* 2* 3* 3* separated from political views in class My teaching style is completely 3 2* 4* 3 2 3 - detached from my political views I try to detach my personal teaching 2* 4* 4* 2* 2* 4 3 style from my political views whenever possible

4 The answer options were: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neither agree or disagree, (4) agree and (5) strongly agree. The asterisk implies a small caveat is needed to somewhat nuance the position of the teacher in question.

The fourth teacher made a small comment about being neutral towards influencing the teaching process with your own political views in class. He said: “They [political views and the educational process] should be separated. I don't think you should really try your best to make sure they don't influence each other because you bring your own preferences into the teaching process, but you should be aware of that fact.” Furthermore, he/she disagreed with the statement about detaching your personal teaching style from your political views whenever possible, but argued it was also related to the way the question was phrased:

“I think that's a weird question because the two are not linked to each other. I don't understand how the way I vote once every four years could influence my personal teaching style. But I don't try to separate my political preferences that are related to the teaching process because that's just the way I am. So it's not related to my voting behavior but more to my awareness that there's is always an aspect of power involved.”

Just like most of the other members of the sociology faculty, the fifth teacher underlined the relative importance of educating students about injustice in the world in this teacher’s way of teaching: “I [teach students about injustice in the world] on the sidelines because the course I am currently teaching is not about the development of poverty for example”. He added that it could be seen as a good outcome if students decide to become more politically involved after his/her classes: “Yes and it doesn't matter so much in what direction they eventually go, although I do hope that they don't get racist.” Great methodological or ontological discussions could be had from taking political views into account when in class, so this teacher disagreed with the statement about the activity of teaching staying separated from political views, although he/she did do so in the past. The penultimate teacher was the only one that disagreed with the notion of educating students about injustice in the world. This person also disagreed severely with the statement “there is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching” and keeping education and politics separated is not possible, because “everything is political”. The seventh and last teacher was the only one who said educating students about injustice in the world is more important than the transmission of knowledge. In regards to students deciding to become more politically involved after his/her classes should be seen as a good outcome, he/she had this to say:

“My job is to give students the skill sets or capacity to think about what is going on around them. It's not because I'm going to lecture them on Marxism and would hypothetically say that Marxism is great and they should vote for an extreme left-wing party. If through teaching the critical thinking skills students decide to be more interested in politics and then vote or rally then that would be a great outcome, but I think it's mostly about citizenship and facilitating it.”

Other useful answers the professoriate gave concerning the link between higher education and possible politicization include: (1) “Having [certain political convictions] is fine, but that is not very pertinent when you’re a sociologist – you have to try and contradict yourself.”, (2) “As a teacher, I want to be clear about my own political preferences from the onset. The sociology faculty does not want to indoctrinate the students with all kinds of leftist material; at least that is something I personally would not find to be a healthy attitude from an institution of higher learning. Universities are shaping students in their younger years, so teaching them something about reflexivity and distance in regards to their biases is very useful.” All of the lecturers have stated several times over that they are not actively trying to shape the (political) viewpoints of their students, for various reasons. However, although all teachers said they did not actively tried to shape the political views of their students (in any way), it cannot always be kept separated. When these two different domains do eventually collide, it can sometimes lead to conflict in groups settings, as is exemplified by the following quote from one of the teachers:

“I have had one student who explicitly said he voted for the VVD and I've had another student who openly stated he voted for the PVV. That was pretty awkward, to put it mildly. It was someone who expressed some very right-wing viewpoints during a seminar group and I thought it was difficult to lead the discussion from that point on because that person instantly becomes a focal point for the entire group. The last thing you want to have as a teacher is a fierce political discussion. A lot of the subjects we discuss [in sociology] are topics that very relevant to a lot of people on a daily basis, and that's what make them political.”

This teacher also gave an explanation for why these situations do not occur often:

“I am sure that there is a self-selection process going on among sociology students that selects young adults who are mostly on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum and they will most likely not bring up those sentiments.”

His/her answer underlines one of the previously mentioned explanations for why the social sciences (like sociology) tend to be overwhelmingly left-leaning: the self-selection of both conservative and liberal students when choosing a discipline to study and the subsequent silence of bringing up sentiments that go against those of their fellow students when they do end up having opinions that are no widely supported.

4.3 The interdependency between the political affiliation of lecturers and education The previous quote showed how one teacher put forwards the concept of students possibly self-selecting out of certain academic disciplines (in advance) in order to prevent having confrontations during their studies or study seminars. On the other hand, the qualitative interviews also showed one example of a teacher (who was left-leaning himself) saying he felt uneasy to publicly declare his criticism of the European Union:

“I am also quite skeptical about the European Union and that is something you should watch out with expressing in left-leaning circles because the left is usually quite Europhilic. And you often get labelled as a Wilders (PVV) or Forum for Democracy- supporter and that's not my sort of Euroscepticism. I know there are also Eurosceptic sentiments coming from the Socialist Party and the Party for the Animals, but you often get associated with the aforementioned right-leaning parties if you are Eurosceptic. [Do you feel you can you freely express those sentiments here among your fellow faculty members?] I have never done so before, so I don't know how they would react, but when I do bring it up during seminar groups I always mention that it is my own opinion and might not necessarily reflect the opinion of most teachers.”

Here we can see some evidence that teachers sometimes do not speak their mind when it comes to critiquing topics that are generally held in high regard in left-leaning circles. His/her exact reason(s) for not doing so any further were not asked and therefore unknown. Research shows that the social sciences contain courses in which the overwhelmingly left-wing politics of the faculty members are most likely to interfere (Woessner & Kelly- Woessner, 2009b), so teachers of the sociology department were asked exactly how much they think the educational process is shaped by their own political affiliation. One teacher had this to say:

“I think [the question of political affiliation shaping education] is a pertinent but highly sensitive one. I think you are aware that the [Dutch] Parliament recently accepted a

notion of researching how scientific disciplines are influenced by the political views of scientists. Now, I am [a member of a well-known social science association] and we recently had the March for Science where we had this huge debate within [the association] where all [social science] departments where present, because there obviously is this idea that some departments are more political [than others], which I would argue is nonsensical and not necessarily true but there are some people who say that the social sciences are overly politicized. I object to that and I don't think it is overly politicized, but as I already emphasized there is always a risk that your own political views color the interpretation of the data. Obviously, the types of questions you ask and the topics you think that are interesting, like nationalism, are topics I think about a lot myself and do research on. I am not a positivist5, so I will never say that my political views do not influence what I am studying at all. My claim would be that what I am studying and the results of my study - and therefore also what I teach - is barely influenced by my political views and as far as it is influenced I try to be as open and reflexive as possible. I also often say to my students "Listen, this is a normative discussion. That is not what we do here, we are going to discuss this on a more empirical basis." Obviously, that sounds overly positivist as if 'facts are just facts', but these days it is important to say that there are at least degrees of factuality and that there are not things like 'alternative facts'. It's not just about your political opinion and that you can, therefore, say whatever you want because that's not what science is about.”6

The answer this teacher gave shows that he actively tries to prevent active (conscious) politicization in the classroom by “trying to be as open and reflexive as possible”, but that the inactive (unconscious) influence of political views in research topics and the types of questions social scientists ask can’t always be abated. The distinction between active (conscious) and inactive (unconscious) political bias and how these are counteracted in class was also mentioned by another one of the faculty members:

”I am sure the texts we decide to put on the reading list are partly influenced – be it conscious or unconscious – by our political leanings. I also think the subjects we find interesting in the field of sociology are also subjects that are on the agenda of several

5 Positivism is the philosophical and epistemological notion that all information that is gathered through the five senses – once interpreted through logic and reason – is a valid form of knowledge (Macionis & Gerber, 2013). 6 Several key parts of information were altered of removed to maintain the anonymity of this lecturer.

left-leaning political parties. Topics like social inequality, discrimination, being part of a (social) group or not are all related to important questions, so that begs the questions if we can cover those topics objectively of course.”

This answer demonstrates the validity of the Liberal Progress narrative in the academic field of sociology and how this relates to politics; topics that are frequently discussed in the classroom are also often found on the agendas of socially progressive/left-leaning political parties.

Identity politics, postmodernism and the curriculum The concept of identity politics also came back several times in the interviews. These three quotes shows the importance several professors put on (parts of) the race and gender of the theorists covered in the curriculum:

“I do believe there are too few female sociologists in our courses. The canon is pretty classical, western and dominated by white males. However, many of the important sociologists happen to be Jewish white male thinkers who were from the upper-middle class.”

And:

“[Does your political preferences influence the curriculum?] Yes, it does. In the sense that some years ago I thought I was only discussing male methodologists and I tried to work on that. Although I am sympathetic to claims about southern or African methodologies, I am not very often convinced of the validity of their content. I think I do put a lot of stress on feminist methodology in my teaching and the importance of feminist methodologists for qualitative research.”

Feminist methodology, according to the teacher, was about “talking about taking your methodology as serious as your theory, or at least that's how it works for me. Because how can you do research among the oppressed when you use methodologies that tend to have oppressive backgrounds in it?” The focus on being responsive towards or wanting to research the oppressed is also noticeable from this short excerpt. The marginalized were also mentioned in an interview with another teacher:

“I especially think the topics of identity, the self and how to think about marginalized groups should be infused into the course material more.”

Several notable postmodern thinkers or thinkers that have influenced postmodernism were mentioned multiple times by the teaching staff:

“[Michel] Foucault and [Pierre] Bourdieu should also be part of the curriculum. More feminist literature should also be included in the curriculum, because the bulk of the course material seems to revolve around Women's Studies, and that is more of a way of thinking that I think is very useful and goes very well together with Foucault and Marx' earlier work that is not connected to his communist or political work, but his philosophical and theoretical work. […] Judith Butler should also be discussed more.”

Michel Foucault thought knowledge was an expression of social power and that “power could be seen everywhere” (Foucault, 1991). He also used the concept of ‘power/knowledge’ to represent how this it created through science and other narratives that make truth claims and urges the actors in the social world to question institutional power or hierarchies in order to expose the ways they legitimize power. However, it should be noted that Foucault – who was gay himself - was staunchly opposed to identity politics (Downing 2008: 114). Pierre Bourdieu is well-known for popularizing the concepts of field and habitus. The latter notion displays how individual agency is dependent upon the field (part of the social world) that person occupies, where there is a special role for practices (Bourdieu, 1984). Another concept, symbolic power (and its accompanying symbolic violence) can be described as relating to an individual’s place in an institution of social hierarchy and how this is validated through the (mis-)recognition of power politics (Bourdieu 1991: 168). Judith Butler is a postmodern feminist that emphasizes the performative aspect of gender that has been very influential in the fields of third-wave feminism and queer theory (Butler, 1990).

A teacher had this to say when the interviewer asked what he/she thought of the relevance of the theorists’ identity in relation to being selected in the curriculum:

“[Identity politics] is a dominant thought process I often encounter and where courses are based on and we would like to get away from that perspective in the Sociological Perspectives course. You just can’t get seem to escape from the fact that the ‘granddaddies’ of Sociology are all white males. But then again, it shouldn’t be the starting point that we are only going to select white males who were born in the 19th century.”

Yet another teacher wanted to make the following statement about the association between the course material and the teachers’ own political preferences:

“I would like to make abundantly clear that the fact that I vote for GreenLeft is totally unrelated to the kind of texts the students are going to see on their reading list. I think that is an almost ridiculous assertion to make, but I do think that the faculty at the sociology department should be aware of the topics that we think are important.”

The same teacher did, however, say the following about how his/her political preferences influencing the curriculum later on:

“I think [asking if his/her political affiliation influences the curriculum] is a dangerous question; especially in the current climate. Because I think that politics - as in the way that politics is usually practiced with political parties and a parliament - is another form of politics than how I would practice or define it. The political system is made up out of elections and political parties, among other things. The political sociology that I am personally associated with has nothing to do with political parties; it’s purely political because I am interested in power dynamics and the fact that I’m interested in the latter absolutely influences the curriculum.”

Yet again, we see the contrast between the vigilance of the teaching staff when it comes to intentionally/actively politicizing their students and the more inattentive thought process of the political sociology which seems to be influenced by the power politics of the postmodernist school of thought (Nash, 2010). The teacher continued by saying:

“I think one of the most important things is that there is some room for differences, power, how those positions [of power] are institutionalized and how incredibly difficult it is to break them, delineate from them, go against them and the fact that I think those things are important definitely influences the curriculum. Some sociological frameworks do not focus on power at all, but I think that's important to show as well; how you can do sociological research without referring to power dynamics at all and if you compare [that sociological research] to another paradigm you start to notice that theories can be multi-layered.

This teacher notes that sociological research and/or paradigms that “do not focus on power at all” should be given proper attention during courses on political sociology. To prevent the

formation of a collective blind spot, a member of the teaching staff suggests the following should be done:

“We all have our own biases and that could be influenced by our experiences, what you know well and resonate to, what you can talk about in a coherent way. […] That is why reflexivity is so important and taking your 'taken for granted' assumptions that are structuring our entire field seriously. It's not only Bourdieu that talks about reflexivity. You have to institutionalize reflexivity at the collective level, so we can really try to challenge our collectively deeply held assumptions/biases and get out of the comfort zone and move forward. The question [about political preferences influencing the curriculum] might be interpreted as pointing in an individual direction and I think that would be misguided.”

4.4 Support for quotas to enforce political diversity in the faculty This concluding paragraph will show the answers teachers gave to the question about implementing quotas and the answers they gave to four different statements. All teachers were asked if they would be for or against the implementation of political quotas to combat the political homogeneity of the sociology faculty7. Six out of seven teachers held a negative view towards the concept of using political quotas to represent teachers that held minority political opinions. Most of them added they were against quotas in general, regardless if these were based on race, gender or political preferences. The only teacher that wasn’t entirely negative about quotas had this to say about their usefulness:

“I am hesitant towards quotas in general, even though I think they can be useful in the short-term but never in the long-term, however. I am not in favor of this regarding political views at all. We have to be reflexive whether we are open to people with various political convictions and I would blame myself if people don't feel at home here [at the faculty/university] because they feel politically marginalized. And I think it is important

7 The question that was asked was: “The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teachers that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?”

to have plurality anyway because we have known very dogmatic times - both in sociology and society as a whole - and I am very sensitive about that.”

A selection from the answers the six other teachers gave showed several different impressions. First, the fact that a teacher at the faculty argued they “keep hiring [themselves] over and over” is important shows that the professoriate might be aware of the development of a possible ideological echo chamber. She continued by arguing that it did make sense because it “is a lot easier to work together with people that you agree with. […] I would be truly interested to see how things would work out if we decide to hire someone that we do not see eye to eye with at all during the job application, but who does have a good CV.” Making that process mandatory would signal the beginning of an all-out war at the faculty, in his/her opinion, and it should be more about creating a sensitivity towards the political disparity of teachers instead. Secondly, the successful implementation of quotas could be dependent on the setting they are applied in, and might not get a good response from people on the left:

“I don’t like quotas very much because I don't think they will work in a Dutch setting. America is a different story, but I wonder if that is going to yield the desired outcomes. I do think that it is useful to have people with other or opposing political views in our group. However, our faculty is overwhelmingly left-leaning. There's an example where some American scholars who were seen as right-leaning said some useful stuff about counter-terrorism that no one saw coming. They were the outliers who saw it coming and were less ideologically blind-sighted. Group-think within the sciences is a big problem. It's very intellectually challenging to hear about alternative viewpoints and what's very important about that is that you see a very knee-jerk reaction coming from the left. Especially from publicists and people on social media.”

The third reason quotas are not a good idea is because - according to the teaching staff – there are very few right-wing sociologists.

“I don't think you are going to find a lot of hardcore right-wing xenophobic sociologists doing really good work. Given the extremely small pool of quasi-fascist/national- socialist/extreme right-wing, I would say maybe in an ideal world for political balance you would want it. But what kind of freak show are you going to bring in? It's just a tiny pool. If you look at the mainstream left-progressive sociologists, then they make up about 98%. You can look for quality there, but you can't do that with when there are 12

people on the planet with a degree in sociology and they have these preferences, so you're fishing in a huge pond or you're fishing in a tiny pond. So I think that is more of a pragmatic problem, but I will grant you - and I know that is where you are going - that there is a serious argument about finding a mechanism that will force more political balance with people that are taking these alternative views and I think that should be explored actually. It definitely gets people way out of their comfort zones. But we have really good people here, I wouldn't want to let go of that because they have alternative views. I do have a lot of respect for the idea that scientists at universities should not be classified in terms of their political preferences. This is the default setting, as you know, and it’s there for a reason.”

When asked if he would then support our current meritocratic system, the teacher answered:

“Yes [the current system] is meritocratic, it's pragmatic and it's a reflection of the field. I mean, who becomes a sociologist? Well, not somebody who favors these authoritarian regimes; it just doesn't happen.”

When the teacher was asked if he would be more welcoming to a sociologist that is more centrist, such as a supporter of the Christian Democratic Appeal or the ChristianUnion, as opposed to a supporter of a right-wing party like Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, he/she had the following to say:

“Again, it is not about being or feeling welcomed or not. I would welcome a really well- informed, top level sociologist who came down on the PVV-side. I would actually welcome that. It would be really interesting when we have our discussions to have somebody say "Wait a minute, you are overlooking this or you're not sensitive to this." It’s very similar to race. When you’re categorized as white, you don't know what it's like to walk down the street in Leeuwarden8 as someone who is classified as black. You simply don't have any lived experience of that.”

The last two teachers remarked the importance the university sometimes put on certain kinds of diversity whilst not talking about intellectual or political diversity:

8 A Dutch city in the north of the Netherlands. 35

“I am against quotas in any form. I do think it is a very interesting question because there is a lot of talk here about sexual diversity and ethnic diversity, where the latter is especially easy to determine. So when we are talking about diversity it's almost always about a form of 'leftist diversity' and I personally think that there should be more political or intellectual diversity to make sure we keep things fresh and interesting. Because I do think at the end of the day that your political preferences heavily influence your research topics and the subjects you decide to cover in class.”

And:

“I have mixed feelings about the quota system. The interesting thing about diversity is that we need dialogue. You often hear people about diversity in gender and sexuality terms, but not about political diversity. So it's not about the number of diverse people, but more about the open dialogue. I would be against political diversity quotas.”

We can make several conclusions from the interviews with academics from the social science faculty. Firstly, the professoriate at the social science department is overwhelmingly left- leaning ; both in their own political identity and their voting behavior. Secondly, six out of seven teachers thought the transmission of knowledge was a more important part of the teaching process than teaching students about injustice in the world. Thirdly, all lecturers universally disagreed with the statement that there was nothing wrong with teaching political view or ideology over another when teaching. Fourthly, teachers disagreed amongst themselves the most in regards to the statement about students deciding to become more politically active after their classes and if this should be seen as a good outcome. However, teachers explicitly stated they hoped students did not become more racist or that they are (actively) teaching students far- left political ideologies. Fifthly, the academics were positive about the separation of politics and education and thought it was a good idea to strive towards in principle but more difficult to attain in reality. Sixthly, some teachers referred to the discourse around power, privilege, and identity politics several times when they were asked about the topics and thinkers they thought were important to cover in the curriculum and whether their political affiliations influenced their teaching style. Seventhly, a lot of professors were very welcoming towards the idea of (more) political diversity at the social science faculty but also added several caveats why it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. These included the aforementioned self-selection of conservatives from academic disciplines like sociology, or having the choice from a very small pool of potential conservative/right-wing sociologists when hiring new personnel. The use of

quotas to make the faculty more politically diverse were (almost) universally condemned by the teaching staff. Lastly, there was no evidence of (intentional) discrimination towards conservative sociologists at the UvA, apart from some comments about referring to (some) right-wing sociologists as “hardcore xenophobes” or “quasi-fascist/national- socialist/extremists” and the unlikeliness of them being well-informed on sociological topics.

5. Quantitative results The overall quantitative results will first be presented and evaluated in this chapter. This will have the following structure: (1) initial demographic information; (2) the political identity of students and their opinions towards political diversity at the social science faculty; (3) students’ opinion on the politicization of teachers and their role in the educational process; (4) the politicization of teachers; (5) if, and how much, the political views of students changed during their studies at the University of Amsterdam; (6) the expression of political preferences on campus; (6) the campus culture at the University of Amsterdam; and (7) the most important variables that form the political views of students.

5.1 Demographic information Firstly, the ratio of female to male respondents in the social science faculty seems to be about 2 to 1 (see Table 2 below). This is in line with the UvA statistics on the distribution of female to male students, where exactly 69% of social science students in the year ’16/’17 were female (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017c). Interestingly enough, if we contrast the number of female to male students to the percentage of bachelor and master students, it appears to be almost entirely the same. The overrepresentation of women and undergraduate students in this data sat has been accounted for in the analysis by virtue of a weighing factor. The unweighed distribution of the social science students among their corresponding educational departments seems to be fairly evenly divided, apart from the Human Geography, Planning and International Development department. When compared to the overall population of students that are enrolled at the University of Amsterdam, we notice that the educational departments of Sociology and Anthropology are numerically overrepresented and the other departments – especially Communication and Psychology – are very underrepresented (Idem.). According to the enrollment statistics, there were almost as many Sociology (248), Political Science (527) and Human Geography (371) undergraduate students enrolled in the academic year of 2016-2017 as there are Psychology students (1189).

Table 2 Demographic information, by educational department, gender, and educational level Frequency % Anthropology 47 19,5 Communication Science 44 18,3 Human Geography, Planning and 7 2,9 International Development Political Science 48 19,9 Psychology 42 17,4 Sociology 53 22 Female 165 67,9 Male 76 31,6 Other9 1 ,4 Graduate 73 30,3 Undergraduate 168 69,7 Total 241 100

Evident from Bar Chart 3 below is that (1) most students were either 21 or 22 years old, (2) the mean age of surveyed students was 22, and (3) a relatively large amount of respondents were 26 years and older.

9 The answer options to the question “I identity my sex as…” were (1) Female, (2) Male, (3) Intersex, (4) Female- to-male transgender, (5) Male-to female transgender, and (6) Other. The sexual identity of the individual who chose the latter category remains unknown, as options 3 to 5 were not chosen.

Bar Chart 3

Age of respondents (N = 240, M = 23,32)

respondents of Number 10

5 0 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 and over

5.2 The political identity of students Students were asked where they saw themselves on the following political spectrum (see Table 4 and Q10 in Appendix 4). The largest group that social science students identified with was the center-left, followed by the centrists and the far-left. The least popular choices were the alt- right, conservatives and political bystanders.10 The arbitrary categories in Table 4 have been merged together into five overarching groups for the sake of analysis. These are: (1) the far left, which is a fairly small (12%), but varied group of anarchists that also comprises self-styled Marxists, communists and socialists; (2) the center-left, by far the largest group among graduates and undergraduates (60%) and entails progressives, social liberals and so-called greens that emphasize the importance of the environment; (3) moderates, liberal democrats and (classical) liberals that are classified as the liberal center (20%); (4) the smallest but most diversified group of people (5%) that will simply be referred to as the right; and (5) the political bystanders who are not well-versed enough in their political knowledge to know where they belong or are not interested in politics (3%).

10 There was another option that respondents could select, namely “Far-right” and was positioned between the center-right and the alt-right. This answer option included examples such as hyper-nationalist, ultraconservative or neo-fascist but was not factored into the analysis as no student chose that answer.

GreenLeft received the most amount of votes in the city of Amsterdam during the last national elections (Het Parool, 2017). The results of students in the social science faculty are in line with local statistics about the voting behavior of the population of Amsterdam, with the progressive party that is mainly focused on environmental sustainability receiving 41% of the student votes. Likewise, the D66 received about one-fifth of the votes which is also in consonance with the local election results and the Animal Rights Party ranks among the three most popular parties on the University of Amsterdam’s campus with 9% of the votes. The fact that - just as with the teaching staff - the aforementioned People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the largest political party in the Netherlands, appears to be fairly unpopular (2% of the votes) amongst the highest echelons of Dutch social scientific education is an intriguing but somewhat expected given. Even the Labour Party, which is not very popular at present after the recent loss at the ballot box, obtained the same amount of votes on campus as the VVD. It highlights a possible disconnect between the political beliefs of social science students at the UvA and the general public in the Netherlands. This could mean that the way Dutch society is purported to be studied on a political level is lost on these young adults.

Table 4 The political spectrum and where students say they see themselves Frequency % Post-left (anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, anarcho- 8 3.3 communist or variations thereof) Far-left (communist, (democratic) socialist or 22 9.1 social populist) Center-left (progressive, social liberal or green) 144 59.8 Liberalism (liberal democrat and (classical) 21 8.7 liberal) Centrist (a moderate that subscribes to ideas from 28 11.6 both the left and right side of the political spectrum) Conservatism (neoconservative, traditional 1 .4 conservative, libertarian conservative and Christian conservative) Center-right (Christian democrat, libertarian and 10 4.1 neoliberal) Alt-right (ethno-nationalist or neoreactionary) 1 .4 Political bystander (I am not interested in politics 6 2.5 and/or do not know enough about politics to say where I find myself on the political spectrum) Total 241 100

Fifteen percent of students intentionally did not vote during the last national elections. Those that wanted to vote but couldn’t (for various reasons – being a foreign student or not having a Dutch passport for example were mentioned frequently) composed about three percent of the total. Generally speaking and unsurprisingly, students voted for a political party that aligned with their own political identity; almost all of the students (11 out of 12) who identified themselves as being part of “the right” voted for right-wing parties (see the list of Political parties that have a seat in the Dutch parliament) during the last national elections and students from the far- and center-left did the same. Only four out of 144 students from the center-left voted for a right-wing party, but no students from the far-left voted for a right-wing party.

Individual political labels Respondents were also asked to think of one label to describe themselves politically. Individuals could pick any label that they could think up for themselves, so they had no limitations whatsoever.11 The results of this question can be read in Table 5 below.

Table 5 The individual identities of students based on their personal political label Frequency % Left-leaning 48 20 Liberal 41 17,1 Feminist 31 12,9 Progressive 28 11,7 Far-left (Socialists, Marxists and 24 10 anarchists) Green/environmentalist 19 7,9 Miscellaneous 17 7,1 Centrist 10 4,2 Right-leaning or conservative 10 4,2 (Social) Democrat 7 2,9 Center-left 5 2 Total 240 100

11 Students were given some examples that were displayed in brackets behind the question, however, and these could have had a suggestive influence in their eventual answers. The examples that were given are: Marxist, conservative, feminist or liberal.

Several findings stand out when the answers the students gave are observed. Firstly, and unsurprisingly, we notice that around 75% of students gave themselves a political label that was related to the political left.12Secondly, when we compare the results to the previous table we see that there are less students who use the personal political label of right-leaning, conservative or center-left in comparison to their place on the political spectrum (see Table 4). Thirdly, an interesting finding is how many women describe themselves as feminists; 18% of women used the label, which proports to 13% of the total amount of students, but - interestingly enough – not a single male student used the feminist label to describe himself politically. The theoretical framework was more suggestive of students agreeing with identities that underlined “sacred victim groups”. Fourthly, socialists, communists and anarchists of the far left – when coupled together - make up ten percent of the student body in the social sciences, when these are asked about their own political labels. Conservatives, the Christian right and the libertarian right are, number wise, on par with the political center and both groups constitute approximately four percent of students.

Political opinions of social science students Respondents were also asked to answer several statements concerning their political values/opinions and could choose from two answer options, where one is generally considered to be (more) left-leaning and the other (more) right-leaning.13 As can be seen in Crosstabulation 6 on page 44, eight out of nine political topics that were relevant to the analysis of the sociological department - including the concept of identity politics - showed to be supported by opinions that can be classified as politically left-leaning. These political topics can generally be described as follows: (1) Do we live in a meritocracy?14, (2) Ethnic minorities who are not doing well in society can be blamed for their own condition15, (3) Poor people have easy lives because

12 Even though a lot of students personally use the individual political label of “liberal”, when many of these individuals arrived at the question about their place on the political spectrum, they said they saw themselves as belonging to the (progressive) center-left. This could be explained by a political landscape that is always changing where the semantic value of certain words could have different meanings to various people, where you can describe yourself as a liberal but also purport to hold or subscribe to progressive values. 13 This assessment of statements being either left or right-leaning was done by looking at the election programmes of all Dutch political parties of the last elections in 2017, their description in Appendix 4, and the book Political (Heywood, 2002). 14 Yes = right-leaning, because of its focus on individual agency, no = left-leaning, because it could be explained by structural/institutional barriers they face. 15 Similar reasoning as statement 1.

they can get government benefits without doing anything in return16, (4) The growing number of newcomers are a net benefit to this country/my country of origin17, (5) This country/my country of origin needs continue making changes to give ethnic minorities equal rights to white people18, (6) Immigrants strengthen this country/my country of origins because of their hard work and talents19, (7) It’s best for the future of this country/my country of origin to be active in world affairs20, (8) Everyone has it in their own power to succeed21, and (9) Efforts from the Western world to solve problems around the world usually end up making things worse.22 Other political subjects also tend to be overwhelmingly supported by the (more) left- wing answer option. These topics include (1) the amount of power the largest companies have (89 to 11 percent)23, (2) the protection of the environment (99 to 1 percent)24, (3) the best way to ensure peace (98 to 2 percent)25, (4) how to defeat terrorism and the use of military force (85 to 15 percent)26, (5) corporations and the amount of profit they make (63 to 37 percent)27 and (6) the usefulness of government regulation of businesses (86 to 14 percent)28.

16 Yes = right-wing, because it is generally against welfare and public provision and in favor of residual welfare, no = left-leaning it is generally in favor of welfare, public provision and institutional welfare. 17 Yes = left-leaning, because it is generally in favor of looser border control and citizenship for all, no = right- leaning, because it is in favor of tighter border control and vetting newcomers. 18 Yes = left-leaning, because it is generally in favor of government intervention and equality, no = right-leaning, because it is generally against government and in favor of individual freedom. 19 Similar reasoning as statement 4. 20 Yes = left-leaning, because they are more globally-minded, no = right-leaning, because they are more nationally-minded (in the Netherlands, at least). 21 Yes = right-leaning, because it believes in the power of the individual and its agency, no = left-leaning, because it is more collectivist-minded and/or argues there are institutional/structural barriers in place. 22 Yes = Similar reasoning as statement 7. 23 The answer options were: (1) “Too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies.” and (2) “The largest companies do NOT have too much power.” 24 The answer options were: (1) “My country (of origin) should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.” and (2) “My country (of origin) has gone too far in its effort to protect the environment.” 25 The answer options were: (1) “Good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace.” and (2) “The best way to ensure peace is through military strength.” 26 The answer options were: (1) “Relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism.” and (2) “Using military force is the best way to defeat terrorism around the world.” 27 The answer options were: (1) “Business corporations make too much profit.” and (2) “Most corporations make a fair and reasonable amount of profit.” 28 The answer options were: (1) “Government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest.” and (2) “Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”

Crosstabulation 6 Political opinions of students on various topics, by political leaning Political leaning Right- Political topics Left-leaning leaning Total Hard work (generally) pays off in 124 116 240 order to be successful29 (51,7%) (48,3%) Ethnic minorities and 203 30 233 discrimination30 (87,1%) (12,9%) The lives of people in the lowest 194 37 231 economic classes31 (84%) (16%) The growing number of newcomers 179 48 227 and their role in Dutch society32 (78,9%) (21,1%) Equal rights between ethnic 185 55 240 minorities and white people33 (77,1%) (22,9%) Immigrants and their role in Dutch 213 21 234 society34 (91%) (9%) Interventionalism versus 194 46 240 isolationism35 (80,8%) (19,2%) If an individual can become 93 137 230 successful on his/her own volition36 (40,4%) (59,6%) Western involvement is a force for 152 83 235 good in the World37 (64,7%) (35,3%)

29 The answer options were: (1) “Hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people.” and (2) “Most people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard.” 30 The answer options were: (1) “Racial discrimination is the main reason why ethnic minorities can’t get ahead these days” and (2) “Ethnic minorities who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition.” 31 The answer options were: (1) “Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don’t go far enough to help them live decently.” and (2) “Poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.” 32 The answer options were: (1) “The growing number of newcomers from other countries strengthens Dutch society.” and (2) “The growing number of newcomers from other countries threaten traditional Dutch customs and values.” 33 The answer options were: (1) “This country/my country of origin needs continue making changes to give ethnic minorities equal rights to white people.” and (2) “This country/my country has made the changes needed to give ethnic minorities equal rights to white people.” 34 The answer options were: (1) “Immigrants today strengthen this country/my country of origin because of their hard work and talents.” and (2) “Immigrants today are a burden on this country/my country of origin because they take our jobs, housing, and health care.” 35 The answer options were: (1) “It’s best for the future of this country/ my country of origin to be active in world affairs.” and (2) “We should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems (here) at home.” 36 The answer options were: (1) “Success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control.” and (2) “Everyone has it in their own power to succeed.” 37 The answer options were: (1) “Efforts from the Western world to solve problems around the world usually end up making things worse.” and (2) “Problems in the world would be even worse without involvement from the West.” 44

An interesting finding is that all political topics concerning the earlier identified sacred victim groups are all overwhelmingly supported by social science students. The related statements are those about ethnic discrimination, the lives of people in the lowest classes, the growing number of newcomers in Dutch society, equal rights between ethnic minorities and white people, and immigrants and their role in Dutch society; part of the explanation could also be related to identity politics.

5.3 Political diversity at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences This paragraph will commentate on the views students hold in relation to the amount of political diversity in their faculty. The very first question of the survey was: “What is the ratio of left to right-leaning students in your faculty, in your opinion?” (see Q1 in Appendix 4). The question about what the ratio of left to right-leaning students in the social science faculty is showed no unexpected results; (1) 51 percent of students responded that the faculty is more left than right which loosely translates into a ratio of 70 to 30 or 60 to 40 percent of the students being on the political left, (2) 40 percent of students said it was overwhelmingly left, resulting in 80 to 90 percent of them being of this particular political persuasion. (3) A very small minority (4%) replied that the ratio is more right than left-leaning and (4) another five percent argued it was about the same percentage (50-50). Crosstabulation 8 on page 46 displays the weighed dispersion of the ratio of left and right-leaning students in the faculty per educational department. We can see that, proportionally, the percentage of students from the Anthropology department that answered that students in their own department were (1) more left than right or (2) overwhelmingly left approaches 100%. The unweighted data shows a small correction; 1 out of 47 Anthropology students answered that the ratio of right to left-students is overwhelmingly right, meaning that approximately 98% of Anthropology students say their own department is (at least) more left than right-leaning. The Communication department proportionally has the highest ratio of right to left-leaning students (13%) and it also contains the biggest percentage of students who said the department consists of about the same percentage of left and right-leaning students (18%).

What the ratio of left to right-leaning students should be and openness to political diversity A more interesting result came from the questions asking respondents what the ratio of students with different political beliefs should be, 42% of the total amount of students argued that it should be more left than right-leaning and the proportion of students that want an overwhelmingly left faculty is 22%. In addition, 33% of students took a more nuanced position and favored a faculty where political preferences are distributed more evenly where the amount

Crosstabulation 8 What the ratio of left to right-leaning students is according to students, by educational department (weighed) Educational department Human Geography, Planning and Political International Communication Ratio of left to right-leaning students Sociology Anthropology Science Development Science Psychology Total Overwhelmingly left (90-10 to 80- 9 13 6 10 13 26 77 20%) More left than right (70-30 to 60- 8 4 29 14 25 49 129 40%) About the same percentage (50-50) 0 0 1 0 10 4 15 More right than left (70-30 to 60- 1 0 0 0 7 2 10 40%) Overwhelmingly right (90-10 to 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 80-20%) Total 18 17 36 24 55 81 231

of left to right-leaning students should be about the same percentage (50-50). The rest of the students (3%) chose a more right-leaning faculty. The notion that left-leaning students on campus want to encounter fellow students with political perspectives that run counter their own is not strongly held at present. This is supported by the results of another question concerning how comfortable students would be if they had room- or housemates that had political conviction that ran counter to their own (see Table 7 and Q48 in Appendix 4). Table 7 How comfortable students would be if they had a room- or housemate with opposing political views to their own, by political identity How comfortable students are with room- or housemates with opposing political views Political identity Comfortable Uncomfortable Neither Total Far-left 4 (25%) 6 (37,5%) 6 (37,5%) 16 Center-left 23 (33,3%) 24 (34,8%) 22 (31,9%) 69 Liberal center 17 (68%) 1 (4%) 7 (28%) 25 The right 5 (62,5%) 0 3 (37,5%) 8 Political bystander 1 (100%) 0 0 1 Total 50 (42%) 31 (26,1%) 38 (31,9%) 119

Generally speaking, students who are on the left feel less comfortable having a room- or housemate with opposing political views than students on the liberal center, the right or political bystanders. When compared to the others groups, we notice that 37,5 percent of students on the far-left and 34,8 percent of students on the center-left responded that they felt uncomfortable whereas only one student who was on the liberal center (4%) answered the same. The amount of students who felt indifferent towards having a room- or housemate with opposing political views was relatively higher amongst all categories; 37,5% of right-leaning students, 28% of liberal centrists, 31,9% of center-leftists and 37,5% of far-leftists. The validity of a previously held postmodernist notion that all narratives are equally important and that this would lead to voices from both the political left and right seeing equal representation on campus can be (partly) falsified based on these quantitative results. The reasons why conservative voices are not more dominant on campus cannot be known from these findings, however.38 It does seem that the cohesive moral community that Haidt (2012, 2016)

38 This also does not mean that if the situation was the other way around, conservative students would overwhelmingly want left-leaning or liberal sentiments on their campus but – unfortunately – there currently is no data to support that thesis.

describes as being present within the social sciences, is maintained by students – albeit not actively and most likely unconsciously – so that fellow peers who hold views that run contrary to their own are unlikely to join, resulting in a so-called bubble or echo chamber where students keep meeting and talking to the same people over and over who also share similar opinions. This way, social science students could miss covering the other half of a society or research objects (and subjects) that are so valuable and/or interesting to study.

5.4 Politicization of teachers The theoretical framework underlined the importance of lecturers in higher education (Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979; Feehan, 2004). This subchapter covers (1) whether students think the teaching process should be clear of political views and/or talk (2) if students think their teachers are politicized or politicizing in their teaching style and (3) if students think teachers should be.

The task of a teacher during the educational process Sixty-eight percent of students said the teaching process should not be clear of political views and/or talk. Their reasons for saying why politics and the teaching process should stay separated can be divided into twelve categories and are as follows: (1) students should form their (political) opinions on their own (21%), (2) teaching should be objective (15%), (3) teachers should clearly state (in advance) what their political preferences are (11%), (4) university should not be politicized (8%), (5) students are easily influenced (7%), (6) miscellaneous reasons, (7%), (7) my study has nothing to do with politics (6%), (8) science is neutral and politics isn’t (6%), (9) politics is a personal issue and personal issues should stay out of education (6%), (10) it can make students with minority opinions feel excluded (4%), (11) education should be value free (4%) and (12) politics and the teaching process should be separated, but that is impossible to do (4%). The slight majority of students (55%) answered that teachers are politicized or politicizing in their teaching style – to varying degrees.39 However, most students think teachers should not be politicized or politicizing in their teaching (41%) or it simply does not matter if they are, because most teachers can separate their teaching style from personal political preferences (see Table 9 below).

39 These are students who answered (1) “Definitely yes” or (2) “Yes, somewhat” to the question “Do you feel your teachers are politicized/politicizing in their teaching style?” (see Q3 in Appendix 4)

Table 9 Students’ attitudes towards the idea that teachers should be politicized or politicizing Frequency % Yes. 29 12,4 No. 95 40,8 It doesn't matter, because most of 85 36,5 them can separate politics from their teaching style. It doesn't matter, because their 24 10,3 personal politics and the material in the curriculum do not overlap Total 233 100

5.5 Changing political views of students during their studies at the University of Amsterdam The role of the university as a politicization process among college students is a topic that has been written about in the social scientific literature at great lengths (Van der Wusten, 1998: 5; Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979). To research this, students were asked three questions about their political views in relation to the university; (1) “Did your political views change during your studies at the University of Amsterdam?”; (2) “How much did it change?”; and (3) “In what direction did your political views change?“. The results show that 80 out of 238 of students (34%) said their own political views changed during their studies at the University of Amsterdam, to varying degrees. When asked how much it changed, most students said it either changed a moderate (47.5%) or a little amount (45%). Only 7.5% of respondents said their political views changed a great deal during their academic career in the capital city of the Netherlands. Of the students that answered their political views changed during their studies, 59% said they became more entrenched in their initial political beliefs, as opposed to going in the opposite side of the political spectrum by becoming more left-leaning whilst being right-leaning or becoming more right-leaning whilst being left-leaning (see Table 10 on the next page).

Table 10 The direction of students’ political change Direction Frequency % I became more entrenched in my initial political beliefs (I was 44 58.7 left or right-leaning when I entered university and became more left or right-leaning during my studies) I changed my political views towards the opposite side of the 31 41.3 political spectrum (I became more left-leaning whilst I was right-leaning or became more right-leaning whilst I was left- leaning) Total 7540 100

The further distribution of the direction their political views changed towards and how much it changed can be seen in the following Crosstabulation 11.

Crosstabulation 11 The degree of students’ political change and how this is distributed In what direction did your political views change? I became more I changed my political views towards Degree of entrenched in my initial the opposite side of the political change political beliefs spectrum Total A great deal 2 4 6 A moderate 21 14 35 amount A little 21 13 34 Total 44 31 75

When the degree of students’ political change is split up by the direction their political views changed towards, we notice that two findings stand out: (1) the number of students who argued their views changed either a little or a moderate amount towards their initial political beliefs are exactly the same; (2) four out of the six students that said they changed their political views a great deal during their studies did so towards the opposite side of the political spectrum. This goes against the aforementioned Entrenchment Hypothesis (Feehan, 2004); where we should expect to see more students that answered that college changed their political convictions a great deal but not towards the opposite side of the political spectrum. Overall, there are more students who became more entrenched in their initial political beliefs

40 Five students did not answer this question. 50

than there are students who leaned towards the opposite side of the political spectrum. To control for an inferential relationship between these two variables, the Chi-square test of independence has been performed to examine the relation between the degree political views have changed during studies at the University of Amsterdam and the direction in which it has changed. The relation between these two variables was not significant, X2 (2, N = 75) = 1,724 p <.05. We can conclude that the degree of political change is unrelated to what direction students’ political views change into. In conclusion, the Entrenchment Hypothesis (Idem.) appears to validated somewhat, but only to a certain extent. According to these answers, one third of the total number of students that were surveyed claimed their political views changed (a lot) during their studies at the university and 59% of this group said they became more entrenched in their initial political beliefs. Seeing as most students overwhelmingly identified as being on the political left, we can assume that, - in the end - 18% of students (44 out of 238) have – in degrees varying from “a little” to “a great deal” - become more left-leaning during their studies at the University of Amsterdam. This finding highlights a study done by Woessner (2011), namely that: “For every one student who is actively recruited to a leftist political cause, a vast majority complete their education with their values largely intact” (Idem.). Although, we currently do not know for certain what the most important factors are that influence the political views of college students. This will be addressed in paragraph 5.7.

5.6 The expression of (political) preferences on campus This subchapter will detail the answers students gave pertaining to the expression of political opinions at the University of Amsterdam. This will include three paragraphs about (1) the amount of students who stated they do not express their (political) opinions during seminars, for whatever reason, (2) their reasons for (not) doing so, and (3) which students argue in favor of a positive learning environment by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that they deem offensive.

5.6.1 The number of students that do not express themselves during seminar groups All respondents were asked the following question: “Do you feel you can say whatever you want during you seminar groups, for whatever reason?” The amount of students that say they feel they (sometimes) couldn’t say what they want during their seminar groups is detailed in the table below (Table 12).

Table 12 Students feeling that they can say whatever they want during their groups, for whatever reason41 Frequency % Yes, always 79 32.4 Yes, most of the time 105 43.0 Sometimes, because 44 18.0 No, not often, because 13 5.3 No, not at all, because 3 1.2 Total 244 100

Based on these answers, we can see that 25% of social science students (sometimes) do not feel they can say what they want during their seminar groups, for whatever reason. However, this might not always be related to their own political views not being popular or well-received. Their reasons for (not) doing so have been divided into multiple different categories and will be covered in the next section. The following quotes are a small selection from the 51 students42 who commented that they (sometimes) do not express their views during seminar groups. Several of them were edited for the sake of time and brevity. It must be stressed that these only reflect the opinions of social science students and do not represent the view of the University of Amsterdam.

5.6.2 Reasons students give for not expressing themselves during seminar groups The smallest amount of students (6%) said they did not speak out during seminar groups because seminars do not operate at the level of discussions; they are either predominantly confined to talking about the texts in an objective manner or do not leave a lot of time for extended discussions. Another group of five students answered they felt they weren’t knowledgeable enough about certain topics during seminar groups to discuss it confidently, as exemplified by this quote:

41 The question that was asked was: “Do you feel you can say whatever you want during your seminar groups, for whatever reason?” (see Appendix 4). 42 Nine students did not leave a comment explaining why they (sometimes) do not speak up during class.

“[I (sometimes) do not speak out during seminars], because I do not have enough knowledge to critically argue against a topic that I do not agree with (like slavery) during discussions.”

Staying quiet for very specific personal reasons that are unrelated to their own political views composed a small percentage of the results. These included not speaking out because the seminar groups were big, not feeling at ease when doing so, having social anxiety, or:

”[I (sometimes) don’t speak out during seminars], because I am shy or I feel that what I’ll say won’t resonate with my fellow students.”

Or even:

“No, because I am afraid to be seen as someone who thinks differently or is ignorant.”

This group was somewhat larger and comprised 10% of students who left a comment explaining why they stayed quiet. The largest group by far were the students who asserted that they encountered a hostile climate when they expressed their own political views that went against the left-progressive hegemony. Twenty-four percent of social science students who do (sometimes) do not voice their opinions during their classes claim that this is because of their political views. Most of these students postulated to have experienced some form of political exclusion after strongly delineating from the norm. The next four quotes briefly identify their experiences:

(1) “No, often times I do not speak up during class because I feel there is a left-wing progressive censorship going on where you are seen as a monster for merely wondering about certain topics that most of the other students agree upon, instead of being sure the left-wing parties are in the right.” Self-proclaimed liberal Psychology student.

(2) “No, because my faculty does not give any attention to sentiments from the center- right.” Sociology student.

This undesirability of non-left or non-progressive sentiments can also be observed in this quote:

(3) “No, I do not express myself in class because I have the feeling I am part of a leftist stronghold and, consequently, saying an opinion that is right-leaning would mean that people interpret that as racist/nationalistic rhetoric. For example, I think that the

preservation of traditional Dutch values is important.” Center-left social liberal and Political Science student.

Or:

(4) “No, because there is a strong feeling of moralism and an “I am right”-mentality which is a ‘lefty’ sort of moralism.” Egalitarian Anthropology student.

It appears that students were not only marginalized because of their political opinions. The topic of religion in relation to political views was also brought up by a single student: “[I don’t speak my mind during class] if it is related to religion. People are really negative about religion and say that they are open-minded when they actually aren’t. Very right-wing thoughts or ideas are also not always welcomed and can end in huge discussions.” A very interesting observation is that students make the claim that the professoriate is afraid of the student body – either for fear of offending them or otherwise:

“No, because there is a strongly held opinion within the group where even teachers are afraid to go against. You should really have some good arguments if you wish to do so.” Far-left social democrat and Sociology student.

One Anthropology student who reportedly identifies as being center-left had this to say about the milieu at his/her educational department:

“Anthropology students that are on the far-left act as if they are open-minded, but they are prejudiced against everyone that is not left-leaning.”

Another libertarian-socialist Sociology student said he/she was labelled as a conservative after he/she was critical about people who inhibit one of the self-appointed victim groups on campus:

“I (sometimes) do not feel I can say what I want during seminar groups, because non- feminist statements are not accepted. Denouncing the ‘social justice war’43 is seen as a conservative expression.”

Even students who have similar (political) views and opinions to their fellow classmates (16%) declare that they often have to “walk on eggshells” during class discussions, because their peers

43 The term ‘social justice warrior’ is an increasingly popular but “pejorative term to describe people who hold socially-progressive views” (Oxford Dictionary, 2016) and often advocate in favor of identity politics.

chastise those who do not acquiesce to the dominant narrative of the group. Nine of the following quotes highlight this tendency:

(1) “No, because I feel when I play the devil's advocate and make a "right-wing" opinion, I don't feel accepted or taken seriously - even when I make clear I want to simply start a discussion. I think it is very important to be open to everyone's ideas and opinions.” (2) “No, because my entire seminar group could be pitted against me.” (3) “No, because my ideas can sometimes trigger fierce reactions from my fellow students and that is something I definitely do not want to experience.” (4) “No, because I know that would have to argue with some students or professors.” (5) “No, because I don’t know enough about a topic but it could also be that there are a lot of left-leaning people occupying an echo chamber and I do not want to be the one that goes against the grain because that would mean that I would get the brunt of the attack.” (6) “No, because people with other opinions will probably attack me verbally and that will lead to a discussion. (7) “No, because people with other opinions don’t let it go and want to start a discussion.” (8) “I don’t consider myself as right-wing, but I know these kinds of statements are not appreciated in class at all. Actually, sometimes my statements are not extremely left wing and then I often choose not to speak.” (9) “No, because the group will soon think you have an extremist view if you say something that is not in favor of everyone’s opinion.”

Twelve percent of students apply a form of self-censorship when it comes to being afraid to offend other students and teachers. The latter group is not approached or talked to because criticism and offense are sometimes conflated:

“No, not if it’s something very negative about the way of teaching or the personal characteristics of the teacher.”

This carefulness in regards to not being unintentionally offensive also extents to students, albeit that opinions that go against the viewpoints of others can also be interpreted as insulting or disrespectful:

”No, because people are so sensitive about certain topics which makes it virtually impossible to be critical about it without it rubbing the wrong way. Those topics are usually related to emancipation, immigration and equality.”

And:

“No, because this is an academic, professional environment where people have to be aware of the mores and the feelings of everyone else.”

The last group makes up 27% of students that gave other, miscellaneous reasons for not airing their opinions and were related to (1) not having enough time to nuance an argument, (2) feeling that they had to be value-free within the social sciences while not wanting to be, (3) not wanting to have a discussion (for the sake of having a discussion), (4) not liking the teachers because he/she is biased (towards various people and for various reasons) and (5) being afraid to voice a dissenting voice in general.

5.6.3. Support for speech codes on campus The section of this chapter will report on the current state of intellectual freedom at the FMG of the University of Amsterdam. Crosstabulation 13 shows the weighed percentage of students who are in favor in speech codes on campus and is sorted by groups who are most supportive to least supportive.

Crosstabulation 13 Percentage of students who are in favor or against the implementation of speech codes

Opinion on academic learning environment % Positive % Open environment/ environment/allow prohibit certain Educational department and demographic group offensive speech speech Human Geography 58 42 Psychology 43 57 Anthropology 35 65 Female 34 66 Undergraduate students 34 66 Communication Science 31 69 Male 27 73 Sociology 26 74 Graduate students 26 74 Political Science 21 79 All 32 68

Support for both the prohibition and the protection of certain speech on campus amongst educational departments and demographic groups appears to be varied. The results show that, on average, 32% of all surveyed students back speech codes on campus. Four out of seven students of the Human Geography, Planning and International Development department stated it is more important for create a positive learning environment, but seeing as this group was very underrepresented in the sample size this statistic should be interpreted in its specific context. Undergraduate students are more sympathetic towards prohibiting offensive speech than their graduate counterparts whereas female students fall behind their male cohorts when it comes to advocating for an open learning environment. Students associated with Political Science were the likeliest to be in favor of creating an environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints. The Sociology department seems to be more lenient towards an environment that exposes students to all kinds of speech and viewpoints than 4 out of the 5 other surveyed educational departments. It must be noted that we do not have enough information to say anything about their reasons for doing so, but the way the questions was phrased (particularly concerning censoring hurtful or hateful comments) does give us some idea about their reasoning.44

5.7 The campus culture at the University of Amsterdam This is not to say that the University of Amsterdam as a whole does not encourage (political) discussion or debate, as there are some programs that encourage debate on a variety of topics. Programs like Room for Discussion are a good example of this. This is an interview platform that “organizes weekly interviews with professors, entrepreneurs, economists, politicians, philosophers, CEOs and journalists to talk and discuss relevant economic topics and recent events” that has as its goal to “help students close the gap between the world of academia and the world of economic and political reality” (Room for Discussion, 2017). However, when Thierry Baudet – a politician and leader of the right-wing political party Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) – was invited to come to the University of Amsterdam in December 2016 to give a talk, he was (apart from dozens of students) greeted by several protesters. One of the protesters, who was a spokesman for the International Socialists (ISA), said how: “it is important that Thierry Baudet’s thoughts are not normalized” (Wolthuizen, 2016). The first fifteen minutes of his talk was spent defending an opinion piece he wrote

44 Several comments that were made about this question were mostly related to the (undefined) concept of hate speech. Examples included: “I don’t want any KKK opinions on my campus”, “hate does not belong at a university.” and “Offending other shouldn’t be a valid reason for saying what you want.”

himself that on the “seduction game” that men and women play (Baudet, 2017). He was also accused of being a racist, an islamophobe and a climate change denier (Idem.). Notice how he was challenged after he had been talking about or was critical of three out of the six sacred groups on campus (Muslims, women, and Blacks/ethnic minorities) that Haidt (2016) has described. The International Socialists had set up a small stand in the middle of campus on the 15th of June, 2017, where they were handing out flyers for anyone who was interested. They were approached and asked if pictures could be taken and subsequently be used for this thesis, to which they agreed. The following is an explanation of some pictures that were taken that day and around campus at different times over several weeks (see page 60). Top left corner: A stand on the university campus from the International Socialists, including various pamphlets about human rights activist Malcolm X, socialist leaders and activists James Connolly and Eleanor Marx, and Marxist theorists like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Marx himself.45 The socialist newspaper - aptly named The Socialist – and a small leaflet containing 7 reasons why to join the International Socialists are, coincidentally, pictured on the left side of the red table. The most interesting item can be seen in the top right corner of this picture; a book called Springtime: The New Student Rebellions. Edited by Tania Palmieri and Clare Solomon, the paperback bundle contains “first-hand accounts of the momentous student movement that shook the world […] looks at how the new student protests developed into a strong an challenging movement that demands another way to run the world […] [and] Springtime will become an essential point of reference as the uprising continues.” (Palmieri & Solomon, 2011). Top right corner: A call to action to go onto the street (again) in support of the “LGBTQI+46”-community and recognizable staple of identity politics. Bulletins that are not pictured on this stand (like the one on the center-right and those on the bottom) are regularly found around different parts of campus, however. Center left: A picture taken during the student occupation of the Maagdenhuis47 occupation in 2015, when the university had to cut several educational programs (such as the

45 To be sure; this is a very unfamiliar sight, as it does not occur often that students on campus are seen openly advocating for certain (political) ideologies. 46 An acronym for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex” and all other (queer) identities that have not been mentioned. 47 The administrative center of the University of Amsterdam.

graduate programmes Romanian, Hebrew and Slavic languages) because of austerity measures. Center right: A pamphlet that was popularized after students occupied the Maagdenhuis. Bottom left: A sticker found in one of the restrooms, designed by Antifa - or better known nationally as AFA, the Anti-Fascistische Actie (Anti-Fascistic Action) – which is a nationwide network that, as the name might suggest, fights against “fascism, racist parties and government policy that is increasingly becoming more right-wing” (Anti-Fascistische Actie, 2017) and identifies itself with anarcho-communist & anarcho-syndicalist flags and symbolism.48 49 The sticker itself says: “Stop right-wing populism. Racism is not a solution.” and shows the Antifa symbol in the bottom right corner. Bottom right: An advertisement for a demonstration in Amsterdam against racism and discrimination. The signs at the bottom say (from left to right): (1) “Against extreme right-wing parties.”; (2) “Solidarity with refugees.”; (3) “Kick Out Zwarte Piet50/Black Piet”; (4) “Against sexism”; (5) “Stop islamophobia”; (6) “Against anti-Semitism”; and (6) “LGBT”. Precisely how influential the campus culture is compared to other variables when forming the political views of social science students will be examined in the next paragraph.

48 The American chapter of Antifa made the national news headlines several times throughout 2016 and 2017 after being involved in different protests, especially in relation to the previously mentioned University of Berkeley free speech riots (Fuller & Saul, 2017; Williamson, 2017) and a more recent “Trump Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon (Cullinane, 2017). 49 The Dutch chapter of antifascist protest groups has had some experience with violent protest in the past, when they attacked the two political parties of de Centrum Democraten (the Centre Democrats) and Centrumpartij (Centre Party) in 1986 - who were centrists by name but leaned towards the (extreme) right (Parlement en Politiek, 2017) - that were busy meeting in a secret and undisclosed location (a hotel in a small Dutch village). This all went by relatively smoothly until a group of several hundred protesters pin pointed their position and attacked the building with rocks and smoke grenades, resulting in a curtain catching fire and the hotel burning down which, in turn, led to a secretary falling from a window and becoming permanently paralyzed after one of her legs had to be surgically removed (Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, 1986). 50 Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) are part of an old Dutch tradition and children’s feast but have recently become the subject of controversy after accusations of racism.

5.8 The most important factors that shape the political views of social science students The last paragraph of this chapter will review the most important factors that influence or form the political views of students, including the curriculum, the teachers or other faculty members, fellow students and the campus culture at the University of Amsterdam. So precisely how influential are all of these variables?51 Measures of central tendency were computed to summarize the data each of the following variables. The measures of dispersion were also computed to understand the variability of scores for these variables. The variables are listed in descending order from most influential to least influential in relation to the political views of social science students and is displayed in the following Table 14.

Table 14 Different factors in shaping students’ political opinions (N = 244) M SD Global, international or national events 3.43 .92 My parents or other people I (used to) live with 3.05 1.05 My personal friends (outside the university) 2.99 .90 Books, podcasts and other informational sources that are 2.82 1.14 not part of the curriculum My fellow students 2.61 .98 Several forms of (social) media 2.47 .94 The curriculum or other study materials 2.43 1.11 My teachers or other faculty members 2.16 .97 The campus culture at the University of Amsterdam 1.70 .88 My fraternity or study groups 1.67 .89

Evidently, we can see that global, international or national events are the most important factors that influence or shape the political views of social science students (M = 3.43, SD = 0.92) and that students’ own fraternity or study groups are the least important factors that influence political views of students (M = 1.67, SD = 0.89). It seems that, judging by these results, most politicization of social science students occurs outside of the university. Factors such as the curriculum or study materials, fellow students (M = 2.61, SD =.98), their fraternity or study groups (M = 1.67, SD = .89) and the campus culture at the University of Amsterdam

51 Students were asked the following question: “How often do the following factors influence or form your political opinions?” (see Q35 in Appendix 4) and they could answer “(1) Never, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Very often, and (5) Always.”

(M = 170, SD = .88) seem to be one of the least important factors. Table 16 on page 63 displays the percentage of students that answered various factors shape their political opinions either sometimes, very often or always. We see that, percentage- wise, global, international or national events is the most important factor when shaping the political views amongst females and males, bachelor and master students, and students of the ages 22 and over. Only students between the ages 18-21 answered that their parents or other people they (used to) live with were more important in the forming of their political opinions, followed by their personal friends (outside the university).

Ordinal regression analysis The goal of determining the ability of age and gender to predict global, international or national events was explored by performing an ordinal regression analysis. A standard ordinal regression was performed to assess the ability of age and gender to predict the variable global, international or national events when forming political views of social science students, and the description of these variables can be read in Table 15.

Table 15 Description of variables

Variable Mean (SD) 95% CI Age 23,32 (2,18) 23.04, 23,60 Gender 1,34 (.55) 1.27, 1.41 Global, international or national 3.43 (.92) 3.31, 3,54 events

A significant regression analysis was found (F (-1.016, 4.777 = 27,648, p = 0,002) with an R2 of .118. Participants’ increase in global, international or national events is equal to .121 + 1.128. Gender is coded as Female = 1 and Male = 2 and Age is measured in years. The total variance explained by the model was 11,8%. We can conclude that both age and gender are significant predictors for the importance of global, international or national events in shaping students’ political views, and that females who are approximately 23 years old are especially likely to have their political views formed by global, international or national events.

Table 16 Percentage of students saying various factor shape their political opinions, by category (weighed) Demographic variable Most important factor forming political Ages 26 and opinion Female Male Ages 18-21 Ages 22-25 over Bachelor Master Books, podcasts and other 61% 73% 54% 68% 86% 60% 76% informational sources that are not part of the curriculum Global, international or national events 84% 92% 47% 86% 96% 83% 95% My personal friends (outside the 73% 77% 69% 77% 75% 71% 81% university) My parents or other people I (used to) 79% 53% 80% 66% 57% 74% 65% live with Several forms of social media52 55% 40% 52% 49% 50% 49% 53% The curriculum or other study 47% 51% 39% 53% 57% 44% 58% materials My fellow students 55% 51% 59% 50% 46% 52% 57% My teachers or other faculty members 35% 34% 37% 29% 50% 33% 38% The campus culture at the University 24% 13% 25% 17% 82% 21% 18% of Amsterdam My fraternity or study groups 21% 16% 24% 17% 14% 20% 19% Total number of students 165 77 93 119 28 168 74

52 Several forms of social media only shape the political views of students either sometimes or always.

6. Conclusion This final chapter will conclude by answering the research question and showing other relevant quantitative and qualitative results.

Answering the research question The research question is: “How are students’ political views formed at the social science faculty of the University of Amsterdam, in light of the teaching philosophy of lecturers?”

The quantitative results show that, based on their individual political labels, their place on an political left-right axis, their voting behavior during the last national elections, the perceived ratio of left to right-leaning students at their faculty and what it should be, social science students are overwhelmingly left-wing. The dangers of the sociology department becoming an ideological echo chamber are made even worse by this latter result. All of these findings are in line with previous research around the political affiliations of college students. It seems that global, international and national events is the most influential factor when forming the political views of social science students and that most politicization of college students occurs outside of university. One third of the total number of students (both conservative and liberal students) claimed that their political views changed a lot during their studies at the UvA. Feehan’s Entrenchment Hypothesis (Feehan, 2004) had posited this to be the case; but only 59% of this minority of students argued they had become more entrenched in their initial political beliefs. Fifty-five percent of students say that teachers are at least somewhat politicized in their way of teaching and add that generally teachers should not be politicized or politicizing, but that the teaching process should not be clear of political views or talk. A majority of students are positive towards the idea that certain (“sacred victim”) groups should be protected, and one third of social science students are in favor of prohibiting certain offensive or hurtful speech. The social science faculty should be somewhat worried about this, as 25% of social science students (sometimes) also do not speak up during seminar groups, for various reasons. Most of these reasons include: having to “walk on eggshells” during seminar groups or class discussions because they are afraid of offending other students, not speaking out because of social exclusion when voicing views that go against the left(-progressive) hegemony or for simply not feeling confident enough to speak up in large groups in general for personal reasons. The professoriate are overwhelmingly left-leaning, but are generally welcoming towards potential conservative sociologists, and mention either self-selection, the nature of the

social sciences, and the left-leaning professoriate itself as likely reasons why there are so few right-leaning students and teachers. Other factors like discrimination and differences in personality traits or were not mentioned by them, but some comments about the nature of conservative sociologists did come across as biased. There is no active process of politicization towards students - according to the professoriate - and there currently is no evidence to support this argument. However, the frequent mentions of identity politics (the race and gender of the sociologists that are covered in the curriculum), postmodern thinkers and the subsequent discourse around power are examples of a more subconscious and inactive bias. And finally, support for quotas to solve the lack of political diversity among the professoriate had very little support during the teacher interviews. In fact, all teachers except one said they were against all forms of quotas – whether they are based on race, gender or political preference. Their reasons were manifold; quotas could be open to cheating or fraud so that a teacher could declare he was right-leaning just to get hired at the university, it would mean that the university should select from “a tiny pond of sociologists, […] and that would be more of a pragmatic problem”, it would be a short-term solution for a problem that needs one for the long-run, and it could “maybe work in another setting, like America” but it would not lead to the desired outcomes in the Netherlands. In the end, six out of seven teachers were not in favor of quotas to represent teachers with other political convictions but every single teacher from the sociology faculty mentioned they found the idea of political diversity important.

6.1 Limitations The shortcomings of the student surveys were mostly related to the questions about their own political values as many students complained about the questions only having two options when answering. These were taken from the 2014 Political Typology Quiz (Pew Research Center, 2014) and were chosen because they were easy to code as being either left or right-leaning because of the binary nature of the answers. However, there were several problems with the questions themselves, where respondents were asked which of the following statements - as related to their own political values – came closest to their own view. Firstly, there were a number of students who argued these questions did not leave a lot of room for nuance and they are correct as students could only choose option A or B. Students were forced to choose from either answer, who were usually also on the extreme opposite side of a spectrum. The question about the position of people who are in the lowest social economic class in society is a good example of this. The options were either (A) “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.” or (B) “poor people have hard lives

because government benefits don’t go far enough to help them live decently.” Complaints about the answers not being mutually exclusive were also plentiful and one students complained that some questions were double-barreled. This also relates to the question about having to choose between a positive or open learning environment; protecting groups from hurtful speech is not necessarily the opposite of an open learning environment. The quantitative finding concerning the changing political views of social science students during their studies at the University of Amsterdam could be (partly) explained by the way the question was phrased. The question that was asked was “Did your own political views change a lot during your studies at the University of Amsterdam?”, so this might explain why some students answered negatively. Certain examples that were given (like neo-fascist or hyper-nationalist) could have also discouraged right-leaning students to choose that particular option in relation to their political identity. Lastly, there was a small chance that teachers and students gave socially desirable answers. However, the fact that the surveys were anonymous, all references to personal details of teachers were also changed or removed, and main findings that went around that problems with the forming of political views in relation to the most important factors.

6.2 Recommendations First, I discuss what the social sciences can do to make the field more accessible for non-leftists. Second, I discuss what the professoriate can do as teachers to foster an environment where students of other political backgrounds are encouraged to join. Third, I discuss what the University of Amsterdam can do to ensure that the current state of freedom of speech stays the way it is and is not affected in the future. Duarte et al. (2014) give several recommendations to promote political diversity within the field of (social) psychology. I personally think these recommendations could, broadly speaking, also be applicable to the social science faculty at the University of Amsterdam.

1. Include (more) viewpoint diversity in the (teaching)material Including viewpoint diversity in its (teaching)material on diversity as another kind of diversity that is equally – or maybe even more - important than diversity based on gender, race, sexuality or other characteristics. This master thesis has shown that, although the university itself might not shape the political views of college students a lot, it is still important to foster an inclusive environment where students are not afraid to speak up during seminar groups.

2. Adopt the principles of the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression The student governing body should follow the example of the University of Missouri and adopt the principles from the “Chicago Statement on Freedom of Expression” that came from the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression (2017) at the University of Chicago. This should be done as a precautionary measure to make sure that freedom of speech remains a sacred value at the University of Amsterdam that should not come under fire in the future. The following quotes from their policy statement to commit to free speech principles should be advocated for and subsequently pursued by the University of Amsterdam: “Mizzou affirms that [f]reedom of expression is indispensable to a university’s ability to transmit knowledge and it fundamental to the ability of members of a university community to discover, explore, interpret and questions knowledge. […] [T]he University of Missouri is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it is uncompromising in its efforts to provide all members of the University’s academic enterprise the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. […] Of course, the ideas of different members of the University community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. […] The University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed” (University of Missouri, Columbia 2017).

6.2.1 Steps the professoriate can take to make right-wing students comfortable during class Steps the professoriate can make to let non-liberal students feel at ease during discussions:

1. Raise awareness and consciousness (Duarte et al. 2014: 36). Several professors have openly stated that there is a problem with a lack of political diversity at the sociology department, and that they would like this to change (somewhat). They can raise the issue during faculty meetings about promotion and hiring, informally among faculty, during graduate courses, and during social science conferences.

2. Welcome feedback from non-leftists (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner (2009a). Professors can invite students who are conservative, center-right or libertarian to join the group discussions. This can be done to talk about the dangers of groupthink within

academia to bolster a more welcoming environment towards students with minority opinions.

3. Clearly and openly state in the online course manuals which courses are influenced by, or are related to, postmodernism. This way, students can make up their own minds in advance if they want to join that particular course. The ideological backbone of left-wing identity politics can only be tackled at its roots and stop the divisiveness of segregating students based on their race and gender in an academic and scholarly environment.

Let us hope that some of actions results in a faculty that contains both teachers and students that are more open towards political and intellectual diversity. This way, the university can lead the way to start solving current trend of political polarization in certain parts of society, so that - hopefully - the following sentiments can become a thing of the past:

Picture of a Post-It taken on a wall where students could leave their comments or thoughts, somewhere at the Anthropology department at the FMG. The first two Post-Its read: “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” – Thomas Sowell. The answer reads: “Why would we need more racist and sexist capitalists in our university departments, when they’re already colonizing every other area of our society?”.

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Appendix 1: List of abbreviations

CDA Christen Democratisch Appèl (Christian Democratic Appeal)

CU ChristenUnie (ChristianUnion)

DENK (THINK)

D66 (Politieke Partij) Democraten66 (Democrats66)

FMG Faculteit voor Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen (Faculty of Societal and Behavioural Sciences)

FvD Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy)

GL GroenLinks (GreenLeft)

PvdA Partij van de Arbeid (Labour Party)

PvdD Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals)

PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid (The Freedom Party)

SGP Staatskundig Gereformeerde Partij (Reformed Political Party)

SP Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party)

UvA Universiteit van Amsterdam (University of Amsterdam)

VVD Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy)

Appendix 2: Political parties that currently have a seat in the Dutch Parliament or were influential during the last national Dutch elections

Parties that are considered left-leaning and progressive (globalist-centered)

Article 1 (Artikel 1): Founded in 2016 by television personality Sylvana Simons – who was formerly associated with the political party of DENK – the party is a reference to the first clause of the Dutch constitution which prohibits discrimination on the bases of gender, religion, race or political preferences and is the only party on this list that does not have a seat in the Dutch parliament. The party is considered as the most progressive party in regards to social-cultural issues, like fighting racism, supporting a higher minimum wage and LGBTQ+ rights, endorsing a feminist manifesto, and arguing in favor of government quotas for ethnic minorities and women. Recently, it had to change its name because of legal reasons and it currently does not have a new name (yet).

THINK (DENK): Founded in 2015 by two politicians of Turkish origin who parted ways with the Labour Party, this party concentrates on multiculturalism and respect for all Dutch citizens. Just like Article 1, it seeks to diversify the corporate world with the use of diversity quotas and is heavily against discrimination by striving to educate 1000 discrimination experts in the Dutch police force to combat racism and it wants people who are accused of racism to pay a fine. Lastly, it aims to decolonize the names of Dutch streets, bridges, tunnels and museums, accompanied by a formal excuse from the Dutch government for past historical crimes related to slavery.

GreenLeft (GL): Founded in 1989, it focuses on environmental sustainability and solving climate change by stimulating durable alternatives. Its liberal attitudes towards immigration, wanting a just distribution of income to ensure a fair chance for everyone to get education, care, recreation and work are in line with its advocacy for a pluriform society where individual freedom should be its leading value. It also supports a stronger and more integrated European Union. Recently during the national elections in 2017, it received the best result since its political inception with 14 seats (out of 150) in the House of Representatives.

Labour Party (PvdA): Founded in 1946 by a collection of socialists, liberals and Christian democrats, it currently wants to invest in health care, public safety and public education. The reason for doing so is because fighting poverty is the party’s focal point. This is done by

concentrating on social security, welfare and employment. The Labour Party suffered the biggest electoral defeat in Dutch history during the last national elections in 2017 and lost 29 of its 39 seats (Kiesraad, 2017).

50PLUS: This political party is the result of a fusion between a centrist party called Livable Netherlands and the Labour Party, and was founded in 2009. As the name suggests, it is mostly concerned with pensioners’ interests such as lowering the pension age, tweaking the pension system, and recognizing people over the age of 55 as valuable workers.

Democrats 66 (D66): Founded in 1966, it is a party that currently has two strong political groups within it – radical democrats that are in favor of the American two-party political system and proponents of democratic reform, including the abolition of the Senate and binding referenda and progressive liberals that advocate for environmentalism and corresponding social liberal policies like deregulating the education system and making it more competitive. It can be considered leaning (slightly) right of center for its rock-solid belief in the free markets, but it also has one of the most pro-European stances in the entire Dutch parliament as it favors a federal European State with an accompanying European army, so defining the party as being either left- or right-leaning is very difficult.

Parties that are considered economically left but conservative (more nationalist- centered)

ChristianUnion (CU): Founded in 2001, this Christian democratic party has center-left sympathies with its emphasis on social security, the welfare state, a green environmental policy and an open border policy in regards to refugees but the party’s religious policies in regard to keeping Sunday a day of rest, the reduction of abortions and its position on the Netherlands as a sovereign political entity within the European Union make it a more conservative party.

Party for the Animals (PvdD): Founded in 2002, this party started out as a one-issue party that wanted to protect everything that is sought valuable (the environment, the climate and energy) and to divide everything that is scarce in a fair and just way. Apart from the evident focal point of animal rights, welfare, and protection – which is done by reducing the national consumption of meat, closing dolphinariums and aquariums, turning public zoos into temporary animal shelters, and issuing required licenses for animal breeders – it is also skeptical of the idea of a federal European state.

Socialist Party (SP): Originally founded in 1971 as the Communist Party of the Netherlands/Marxist-Leninist and as a result of other communist/Maoist organizations merging together, it changed its name one year later to the Socialist Party. The party’s three leading principles are solidarity, equality and dignity and is well-known in the Netherlands for being one of the few political parties that is left-leaning and Eurosceptic. Its main issues are social welfare, health care, extra investment in education, more affordable housing, and the redistribution of wealth. The latter is done by adding a fifth tax bracket of 65% for those who earn more than €150.000.

Parties that are considered right-leaning but progressive (globalist-centered)

Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA): Founded in 1980 by combining smaller catholic and protestant parties, the party is currently the most Europhilic in the Dutch political spectrum as it sees a vital role for a stronger Europe in the future. The role of its Christian heritage can be seen in its wish to close all coffeeshops, and the limitation on prostitution, abortion and euthanasia. However, party leader Buma has recently taken the party down a more centrist route with the introduction of an eco-tax, a flat tax, more investment in higher education and a more open immigration policy.

People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD): Founded in 1948, the conservative-liberal principles of the party (laissez-faire economics/free-market capitalism, and classical and cultural liberalism) have successfully carried it through many elections. Currently, it is the largest party of the Netherlands and wants a common defense and security policy within a broader European context, but also supplemented by more individual freedom, tolerance, equality (under the law), and social justice (in the form of equal opportunity and not equal outcome).

Parties that are considered right-leaning and conservative (nationalist-centered)

Forum for Democracy (FvD): Originally founded in 2016 as a think-tank by Thierry Baudet, it has since changed into a political party with a national-conservative bend. The main concern of the party is the abolishment of the so-called “party cartel”, where the leading political parties in the coalition tend to collude with each other by agreeing on competing ideas which results in a shared outcome that the people of the Netherlands did not vote for. Other issues are the (return of) national sovereignty of the Netherlands in relation to migration of refugees from the Third

World, a direct democracy where mayors can be chosen by the people and binding referenda, and a withdrawal of the Netherlands from the European Union. The party was on the ballot for the first time during the last national election and received two seats.

Reformed Political Party (SGP): Founded in 1918, this radical Protestant conservative party is the oldest political party in the Netherlands and strives towards a society that is ruled by the Christian Bible. They base most of their party persuasions on the Bible, such as party membership only for men, the reintroduction of the death penalty, positive media campaigns about the virtues of marriage, and the removal of pornographic magazines from tank stations. The SGP also stands with the Jewish community and wants to issue mandatory education about the Holocaust during integration lessons, and stop the demonization of the Jewish state. But more left-leaning policies like supporting the corporate sector with export finance and ceasing commercials on the public broadcasting networks are also part of their election program.

Freedom Party (PVV) Founded in 2006, the party is led by one of the best known and most recognizable politicians of the Netherlands, Geert Wilders. Although it widely seen as a nationalist-conservative political party it actually has a wide range of liberal, conservative, left- wing, and right-wing political persuasions. More nationalist/populist ideas include a Nexit from the European Union, the closure of mosques and the banning of the Quran, but their plans on elderly care, social services and health care are more left-wing/liberal.53

53 The description of Dutch political parties was based on the political agendas of the individual parties, the website www.parlement.com and van den Noort (2016).

Appendix 3: The teacher interviews

Interview #1

So, my first question is: What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- In terms of politics?

Just generally, anyway you want.

- Oh my God, label... Uhm.

I know it is tough to ask a sociologist what label he or she would use.

- I guess an American/Dutch sociologist.

Okay, and what label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Generally, left-progressive.

And your political affiliation? Would that also be progressive?

- Generally, yes. Just like 98% of all sociologists.

And how left or right-leaning would you consider yourself?

- Yeah, I think we all have little issues where we veer away from what's basic to our orientation. So, for example, I would be seemingly right-wing on terms of discipline and schools but this is a statistical blip. On most issues, whether it is the environment or the welfare state, I'm solidly in the left-progressive camp that – again, certainly in the USA and also in the Netherlands - the vast majority of sociologists would be in.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- I don't vote nationally because I don't have a Dutch passport. At the local level, I honestly don't even remember. Probably GroenLinks (GreenLeft) or SP (Socialist Party).

Okay, and the elections before the last one?

- I don't know, but it was probably on that side of the political spectrum.

How important - if at all - would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- I think the interesting thing here is that it's almost completely unconscious. The party affiliation, be it Democrat/Republican [in the United States] or whatever it might be in the Netherlands, I think it functions in everyday life beneath the level of consciousness. You feel at home, people speak your language et cetera or you decide to shift - you vote PvdA (Labour Party) first and now you're PVV (The Freedom Party) for example - generally operates beneath the level of conscious thinking that what is easily put into words. So when you ask me about my

personal identity in this interview setting I have to struggle with an answer, because I usually just go with the flow.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material? I know you're the coordinator of [the course] Sociological Theory 4.

- Yeah, I very rarely had pushback from people. You know, you get a little bit of an odd look if you don't include their favorite theorist or you get a bit of a joke when you put someone in you like and they don't like.

"They" being students, or...?

- Usually faculty, sometimes students. Students who get into the subject for the first time don't know the field well enough to say if a theorist is absent or this is getting a lot of attention - usually. People from the faculty do, but I never had pushback on it. Maybe I acted before, because I was afraid I would get pushback, so a form of self-censorship if you like, but I've never had anyone blow a whistle or say "hey, we need to talk about this selection of texts."

I see. But so, you personally have a lot of influence in the selection?

- Yeah, absolutely.

What should be the (ideal) goal of your own curriculum?

- Ooh, that depends on what you're trying to do. I mean, for ST4 we're clearly trying to give you a sense of the overall feel of contemporary sociological theory. And then you [as a teacher] should say: "Look, these are my own biases, these are my [you know] more or less subjective things I want to emphasize. But this is something you can't get around, it is essential to the field, it would be crazy not to mention it. There's a huge chapter about this subject in the book for a reason because it has had much influence." It's a balance between focusing on what you want to do, what you think you can do and what you think would be useful to discuss. And on the other hand, you are trying to introduce them to the field. Sometimes you think there is material that is totally useless and stupid to cover, but you feel compelled to bring it in because it's had so much influence on the field so then you (or a guest speaker) say[s] it in a way that is not completely negative. But I think I would say to students what is or isn't useful. That could be said for anything. But again, the political stuff is going to be less conscious. [The sociologist] Max Weber said it himself: the concept of being "value-free" is something that will never get to zero. There is no way to have the curriculum for a class be devoid of your own values. So, the fact that many of us [sociologists] are thinking a lot about inequality, for example, is a value statement. When you [as a teacher] are out on that podium, you should watch out for your own blind spots and be open to arguments from the other side or another perspective that I maybe can't even be open to because of my own socialization or position that I am currently part of in my network that will probably be biased by the articles and books I read. There's no way around it.

Who do you think are important scholars to cover in the curriculum and what do you think are important paradigms to cover in the curriculum and why?

- Well, I think it depends on whether you are looking at basic theoretical or basic methodological paradigms or [even] whether you are looking at things that are a little bit more

empirical, like schooling or healthcare. Rising inequality is a huge problem and threat of exploding gaps between exploding life chances. Privileged kids and less privileged kids are certainly something that is of sociological interest and something that societally can get out of control and something that we can definitely contribute to understanding better and intervening in, so I would start there. In terms of theory, I think we should work with synthesizers, people who bring together both the macro and the micro or what I usually call the more subjectivist/constructivist on the one side and the more structuralist/materialist and objective moments of analysis. So that would be Bourdieu, Elias, Goffman, Foucault, Habermas, and also mixed methods.

How would you describe the most important aspects to cover in the curriculum?

- There are other easily identifiable domains like ethnicity and race, migration and certainly gender. Education is also important because it is related to inequality. Also (fear of) violence in any domain, so [that] could be domestic or political violence.

Does your own political affiliation influence the curriculum? Or doesn't it?

- We all have our own biases that could be influenced by our experiences, what you know well and resonate to, and what you can talk about in a coherent way. But it is also not individual and more related to "what is hot" in the field. Things that everybody keeps coming back to. That is why reflexivity is so important and taking your 'taken for granted' assumptions that are structuring our entire field seriously. It's not only Bourdieu that talks about reflexivity. You have to institutionalize reflexivity at the collective level, so we can really try to challenge our collectively deeply held assumptions/biases and get out of the comfort zone and move forward. The question might be interpreted as pointing in an individual direction and I think that would be misguided.

What is your own philosophy about teaching?

- That depends on the class and if they are first-year students, BA students of MA students et cetera. I personally want to show students what the most promising tools and ideas in my own field of interest are and is related to policy. To light the proverbial fire by students and make them love what you love. There are a lot of sociology students that go into policy and I think it is important to equip the junior or senior policy making person at the municipal level. I hope that having a sociology degree would help these people with their job.

What is the most important task of a teacher?

- Again, depends on the class. It is the same as my own philosophy about teaching.

What is the quality of a good teacher and how does one develop this?

- Definitely [having] knowledge of the field and the content, but that is obvious. But something that is less obvious is empathy. Are you finding a way to connect to students - even if the student- teacher relationship does not offer a lot of room for interaction? You have to inspire people to do the work, because we have to compete with a lot of distractions (nightclubs, drugs and sex).

Are you aware of the way your political views are influencing your teaching style?

- Hmm, no I don't think about that very much.

I am going to read out a couple of statements and I would like you to answer by giving a number between 1 and 5, where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree. The transmission of knowledge is an important part of the teaching process.

- 5.

Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching.

- Depends on the class, so 3.

There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching.

- 1.

Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome.

- I can't speak to that, 2.

The activity of teaching should never impede with political views in class. So politics and teaching should be separated.

- We know that is impossible, so I would say 3. We should aim for reflexivity with regard to our own biases whether they be political or speaking from the privilege of male-ness or whatever power basis.

My teaching style is completely detached from my political views.

- I [already] answered that, I would say a 3.

I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible.

- Trying would imply consciousness and I would argue that it is part of your habitus and it happens in the heat of the moment. So I would say a 2, although it should be a 4 or 5 in an ideal work.

The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teacher that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?

- I don't think you are going to find a lot of hardcore right-wing xenophobic sociologists doing really good work. Given the extremely small pool of quasi-fascist/national-socialist/extreme right-wing, I would say maybe in an ideal world for political balance you would want it. But what freak show are you going to bring in? It's just a tiny pool. If you look at the mainstream, left-progressive is like the 98%. You can look for quality there, but you can't do that with when

there's 12 people on the planet with a degree in sociology and they have these preferences, so you're fishing in a huge pond or you're fishing in a tiny pond. So I think that is more of a pragmatic problem, but I will grant you - and I know that is where you are going - that there is a serious argument about finding a mechanism that will force more political balance with people that are taking these alternative views and I think that should be explored actually. It definitely get people way out of their comfort zones. But we have really good people here, the quality is really good. I mean seriously, if you sit down and talk with somebody they know their stuff and are serious about it and they are publishing in international journals. I wouldn't want to let go of that, because they have alternative views. I do have a lot of respect for the idea that scientists at universities should not be classified in terms of their political preferences. This is the default setting, as you know, and it’s there for a reason.

So you've just argued in favor of keeping the current meritocratic system.

- Yeah it's meritocratic, it's pragmatic and it's a reflection of the field. I mean, who becomes a sociologist? Well, not somebody who favors these authoritarian regimes; it just doesn't happen.

So would you be more welcoming to a sociologist that is more centrist, like the CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal) or the CU (ChristianUnion) when compared to the PVV (Freedom Party)?

- Again, it is not about [being] welcome [or not]. I would welcome a really well-informed, top level sociologist who came down on the PVV-side. I would actually welcome that. It would be really interesting when we have our discussions to have somebody say "Wait a minute, you are overlooking this, you're not sensitive to this." Very similar to race. When you categorized as white, you don't know what it's like to walk down the street in Leeuwarden as someone who is classified as black. You simply don't have any lived experience of that.

Interview #2

What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- When I am at the university I am a teacher, but when I am at home I am a father and a teacher. It depends on the role I am playing. When I look at the things I like to do, those would be related to the skateboard- or punk culture. Politically speaking, , I would consider myself on the left side of the political spectrum, but there is quite some variation my own political values and views. For example, I have conservative views when it comes to the family and the role it should play in the larger society, which is something that has traditionally been embraced by the CDA (the party of the Christian Democratic Appeal). But I am very liberal on the other hand when it comes to our national policy on drugs and I would be considered a D66-voter. Another example would be the welfare state, where you could see me as having classic socialist views but, then again, I am also in favor of a healthy market in regards to healthcare.

I am also quite skeptical about the European Union and that is something you should watch out with expressing in left-leaning circles because the left is usually quite Europhilic. And you often get labelled as a Wilders or Forum of Democracy-supporter and that's not my sort of Euroscepticism. I know there are also Eurosceptic sentiments coming from the Socialist Party and the Animal Rights Party, but you often get associated with the aforementioned right-leaning parties if you are Eurosceptic.

Can you freely express those sentiments here among your fellow faculty members?

- I have never done so before, so I don't know how they would react, but when I do bring it up during seminar groups I always mention that it is my own opinion and might not necessarily reflect the opinion of most teachers.

What label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Left-wing liberal.

How would you describe your political affiliation?

- Leftist.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- The Animal Rights Party.

What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?

- Probably The Animal Rights Party or The Green Party.

How important - if at all- would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- I think those two variables would probably correlate. I would consider myself left-leaning, so I would probably vote for leftist parties in the parliament.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material?

- Quite some influence, but that depends on the course. Some things were already there when I started teaching sociology here. We have some learning goals, for example, that have been given to us from up high but those are very general and are more about how we are going to do so and so, instead of the actual content of the material. The general learning goals are about learning academic skills, how to use a theory accurately, how to critically evaluate an academic paper et cetera. These are "neutral indicators" that are unrelated to politics - although I am sure there is some French philosopher that has a different opinion about that. But I am sure the papers we decide to put on the reading list are partly influenced - consciously and unconsciously - by our political leanings. I also think the subjects we find interesting in the field of sociology are also subjects that are on the agenda of left-leaning political parties. Topics like social inequality, discrimination, being part of a group or not - which are all big and important questions. That begs the question if we can cover those topics objectively. My colleagues and I do try to nullify this factor somewhat by inserting a moment of reflection at the very end of the course where students can tell us - within a small framework - how we tackled the subject with some form of objective distance. I don't think it is possible to completely detach yourself as a sociologist from said politically influenced conversations, but you can at least try to give the students tools to think about it themselves in a critical and self-reflexive way. The way you look at the world is determined by your position in the larger social economical societal hierarchy and your own political ideas. That will most likely trickle down into the curriculum - consciously or unconsciously - I think, and you certainly should not be naive about that so that a blind spot develops itself. For example, I have previously explicitly expressed my thoughts about the war on drugs in a negative way and I consequently think drug

use should be legalized. That's a political statement and a very leftist/liberal statement at best. So when it comes to how we treat out women in the Netherlands - which you could say is left- leaning or emancipatory - but so at the end of the day, everything is political. Sometimes it is very explicit and sometimes you just don't know. It could very well be that there is social inequality in a society and that is a concept that you can measure and describe quite independently and objectively - some people simply have more money to their bank account or some people just have a higher educational level - without giving that a value judgment. And so next, when you try to explain that empirical fact, your own political convictions could come into play; do you adopt a Marxist or liberal approach to explain that disparity? What kind of socialist policy do we use to solve that or do we even try to solve it at all? I have never seen the latter approach in the sociological literature. It could be that it is there and I haven't seen it or could be that my own political bias does not let me see the 'social inequality is a good thing' sentiment. That could be interesting to research, actually. However, that collective blind spot is not only perpetuated by the teaching staff but also by the students. I am sure that there is a self-selection process going on among sociology students that selects young adults who are mostly on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum and they will most likely not bring up those sentiments. I have had one student who explicitly said he voted for the VVD and I've had another student who stated he voted for the PVV. That was pretty awkward, to put it mildly. It was someone who expressed some very right-wing viewpoints during a seminar group and I thought it was difficult to lead the discussion from that point on because that person instantly becomes a focal point for the entire group. The last thing you want to have as a teacher is a fierce political discussion. A lot of the subjects we discuss are topics that very relevant to a lot of people on a daily basis, and that's what make them political.

What should be the (ideal) goal of your own curriculum?

- I think you [as a teacher] should be clear from the onset what your own political preferences or that you are such a good teacher so that you could cover it up or blur it out. In the sense that you can express yourself in such as way that it's does not play a big enough role to 'shape' the students. We do not want to indoctrinate the students with all kinds of leftist material; at least that is something I would not find to be a healthy attitude from an institution of higher learning. The university if shaping and forming students in their younger years, so you can teach students something about reflexivity and distance in regards to their biases to nullify the politicization process somewhat. The whole idea that people on the right are prejudiced, but that people on the left aren’t is an obvious example of this reflexivity about personal (political) bias. The fundamental questioning of everything is a very useful tool to give students in the curriculum. Critical thinking is an explicit learning goal, but then you could wonder from what perspective we are teaching them to think critically. It's never free of value, whether it's on the left or right.

Who do you think are important scholars to cover in the curriculum and what do you think are important paradigms to cover in the curriculum and why?

Durkheim and the other ‘granddaddies’ of sociology are obvious examples like Messerschmidt, Connel, Dorothy Smith & Collins – who are prominent contemporary sociologists. The most notable topic would probably be gender.

How would you describe the most important aspects to cover in the curriculum?

- Already answered.

Does your own political affiliation influence the curriculum? Or doesn't it?

- Already answered.

What is your own philosophy about teaching?

- Already answered.

What is the most important task of a teacher?

- That you teach students academic skills, broadly speaking. It's not only writing, but also critical thinking skills and how to ask good questions. The most up-to-date knowledge of a field, but when we are talking about general knowledge you should think of a set of skills that is related to being not believing everything that you are told.

- 5.

Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching.

- 4.

There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching.

- 1.

Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome.

- 4.

The activity of teaching should never impede with/influence political views in class. So politics and teaching should be separated in its intention.

- 4. I agree with that statement in principle, but it's very difficult to do in practice.

My teaching style is completely detached from my political views.

- 2. I hope so, but I think that [my political views] unconsciously influence my teaching style.

I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible.

- 4. I try to.

The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teachers that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?

- I am not very much in favor of quotas, because I don't think they will work in a Dutch setting. America is a different story, but I wonder if that is going to yield the desired outcomes. I do think that it is useful to have people with other or opposing political views in our group. However, our faculty is overwhelmingly left-leaning. It's not healthy to use quotas from a scientific and intellectual viewpoint, absolutely not. There's an example of American scholars who are seen as right-leaning, but who said some useful stuff about counter-terrorism that no one saw coming. They were the outliers who did saw it coming and were less ideologically blind-sighted. Group-think within the sciences is a big problem. It's very intellectually challenging to hear about alternative viewpoints and what's very important about that is that you see a very knee-jerk reaction coming from the left. Especially from publicists and people on social media.

Interview #3

What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- As agnostic as possible that is trying to be as reflexive as possible. It's hard to have more outspoken ideas, particularly as possible. So to be as open as possible as a scholar.

What label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Left-wing liberal in an American sense of the word.

How would you describe your political affiliation?

- Leftist.

Is there a difference between a progressive and a liberal?

- Let's for the moment say there is no difference between the American liberal and the Dutch progressive, but clearly, I don't see myself as a right-wing liberal in the sense of the VVD. I am closer to the position of the Green Party and D66, so that's why I identify as a progressive. In my writings, I underscore that 80-85% of the Dutch are progressive in terms of values. Those values could also be described as liberal values, but that's more of my own position on the terms.

How left or right-leaning would you consider yourself?

- Answered elsewhere.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- GroenLinks (the Green Party). My inactive membership of the Green Party is not pertinent to my own political identity.

What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?

- GroenLinks (the Green Party).

How important - if at all- would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- Answered elsewhere.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material?

- That depends whether I am the only one that is teaching, but most of the time I am co-teaching. But some of the course were developed from scratch or there were some courses that I took over from other people, so then I change it somewhat. Most of the time I am quite influential and I have a lot of room for personal input.

What should be the (ideal) goal of your own curriculum?

- I try to inform the students in own classes as broad as possible and as historical as possible, so to show the development of certain approaches over time. A good example of this is my course on social movements, where I do not convince students to take or another position, but that they should know what kind of approaches have been there over time and are there at this moment so that they can orient themselves. There is far too much to know, so I want students to select and eventually position themselves in the end, but that's not always necessary.

Who do you think are important scholars to cover in the curriculum and what do you think are important paradigms to cover in the curriculum and why?

- I think the four courses we currently have on ST are quite good, but I do think it's important to show that the materials in those courses are the result of internal battles within sociology and it has broadened over time. If you look into the curriculum of sociology department elsewhere in the Netherlands, you will often find that there are barely any courses like Sociological Theory. There is an obsession with empirical topics and theory is seen as an ethereal force that exists 'somewhere out there'. That's not my approach at all because I think the theory is condensed empirical research we did in the past. I think we show students not to be relativistic but surely not to be dogmatic because they can see there are various approaches out there.

How would you describe the most important aspects to cover in the curriculum?

- This is answered elsewhere.

Does your own political affiliation influence the curriculum? Or doesn't it?

- I think it is a pertinent but highly sensitive question. I think you are aware that the [Dutch] parliament recently accepted a notion of researching how scientific disciplines are influenced by the political views of scientists. Now, I am [a prominent member of an association related to the social sciences] and recently we had a manifestation for the March for Science where we had this huge debate within the [related social science association] where all departments where present, because there obviously is this idea that some departments are more political

[than others], which I would argue is nonsensical and not necessarily true but there are some people who say that the social sciences are overly politicized. I object to that and I don't think it is overly politicized, but as I already emphasized there is always a risk that your own political views color the interpretation of the data. Obviously, the types of questions you ask and the topics you think that are interesting, like nationalism, are topics I think about a lot myself and do research on. I am not a positivist, so I will never say that my political views do not influence what I am studying at all. My claim would be that what I am studying and the results of my study - and therefore also what I teach - is barely influenced by my political views and as far as it is influenced I try to be as open and reflexive as possible. I also often say to my students "Listen, this is a normative discussion. That is not what we do here, we are going to discuss this on a more empirical basis." Obviously, that sounds overly positivist as if 'facts are just facts', but these days it is important to say that there are at least degrees of factuality and that there are not things like 'alternative facts'. It's not just about your political opinion and that you can, therefore, say whatever you want, because that's not what science is about.

What is your own philosophy about teaching?

- I do not have a very elaborate position concerning my philosophy about teaching. I try to open up students' minds and try to show them that they don't know a lot. When I was a student I really thought that I understood the world and the older I get I really realize how little I know, how much people have known long before I started carrying out research I just don't know about. There is not so much a cumulation of knowledge, to be honest. So what I try to do it to give them tools to know what we know and not just to say "you have to learn by heart ten books, or whatever, but to orient yourself with all the modern techniques we have that in fact make it easier to know what we know than when there are just books in a library. Students today have it easier to orient themselves, position themselves and to start new research in the future. My own philosophy would, therefore, be to provoke those students who have very strong normative and political convictions to really challenge them and to say "okay, you might have these ideas - which is all fine - but it is not very pertinent for being a sociologist. If you want to be a sociologist you really have to try to contradict yourself. That's not always very well received because people are happy that they developed some ideas about the world and there obviously is a bias there. I don't think that I have influenced my students politically, but I do think that there is a self-selection in those who start studying Sociology and developing a sociological perspective on the world is something we should help students to develop, but a lot of time they already something like that. Although I have recently thought about the kind of articles and books I'm writing, I often criticize scholarly of political debates that are underrepresented in sociological analyses. In the debate about the restructuring of the welfare state it's all about the individual strength and power, but in the domain of immigration and integration, we see populist parties with some sociological notions. The notion that "people do things because they have a religion or a culture". Then we would say "okay, this is overly essentialized" or "these sentiments are not "equally important". So [those populist parties] don't think about individuals, but they think about people in groups. To a certain extent, there is a form of sociological reasoning out there that is overly sociological. And therefore it's important to know that when you ask this question to be very precise what a good sociological approach is that should neither be 'under-sociological' or overly sociological. That was obviously also the case for Marxist sociologists, left-wing sociologists who only think in terms of class and overly and very one-sided. So it's not that we are all neoliberals and there are no categories out there anymore; I would say that there are maybe too many categories.

What is the most important task of a teacher?

- Teaching students how to think instead of what to think. We can't teach all we know or all that has been written, so it's partly about learning skills and partly about having a sociological approach that has the right balance between discerning the important of individuals and of groups.

What is the quality of a good teacher and how does one develop this?

- Providing tools, having students questioning themselves and it is a bit about being a role model that does not have to be exemplary. When I claim I want to open up their mind then I should also show that myself. If I am still too enthusiastic about a certain approach when compared to another, then I am not helping them open up their minds. I should at least be responsive to my own ideas and live up to them.

Are you aware of the way your political views are influencing your teaching style?

- Answered elsewhere.

- I relativized it a bit because it is important but not extremely important. 4

Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching.

- 3. For sociologists, equality is a value in itself, but that rather self-evident.

There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching.

- 1.

Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome.

- 3. On the one hand, I do encourage students/colleagues to be public sociologists and it that sense I would agree, but this sounds more like politically active and I'm not totally sure about that.

The activity of teaching should never impede with/influence political views in class. So politics and teaching should be separated in its intention.

- I'm not teaching in order to influence their political ideas, but obviously, these aren't two totally separated worlds either. To the extent that it might be common that being a sociologist influences your political views. That can be in various ways, there could be right-wing liberals that we train in sociology so there's not one way that is thinking in totally individualized terms for instance. So, it should not and it is not my intention to impede [with] it, but I'm aware of the consequences of my teaching.

My teaching style is completely detached from my political views.

- I hope my style is dialogical and non-hierarchical that is not motivated by my political style but it might be that if you have very hierarchical political ideas that then you won't teach in that way. I would say that it is detached from my political views. 4

I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible.

- 4. The detaching is not about detaching those two, but it's about being explicit about it.

The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teachers that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?

- I am hesitant regarding quotas in general, even though I can imagine it can be useful - not for students, I would say - but for teachers and not for all kinds of differences as a temporary solution, but never ever for a pertinent and long-term solution. I am not in favor of this at all regarding political views. Even though we have to be reflexive whether we are open to people with various political convictions and that if people don't feel at home here because they feel politically marginalized I would blame myself for that. So I think it is important to have plurality anyway. That's my ideas as the chair of the Dutch Sociological Association because we have known very dogmatic times - both in sociology and society as a whole - and I am very sensitive with that.

Interview #4

What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- Writer.

What label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Center-left.

How would you describe your political affiliation?

- Center-left. I had more radical left-wing viewpoints when I was younger and I guess you could say I have become less left-leaning throughout the years in the regard.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- GroenLinks (the Green Party).

What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?

- Partij voor de Arbeid (Labour Party).

How important - if at all- would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- Important, because it is connected to the fact that I - as a writer, academic or thinker - have to contribute to the world. That is partly connected to politics, because I think we always need people who are politically active and protest a lot, for example.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material?

- I am going to focus on the program for master students who came from the Dutch vocational education or did not have the required undergraduate diplomas because that's a program where I personally have had a lot of influence in. There are some required readings that I think are necessary to cover in the sociological canon and are influential and important all over the world - doesn't matter whether you're from Australia, China or Amsterdam - and those are texts that I do not and cannot choose to leave out of the curriculum. But we also have left some texts out, because we have limited time when compared to the undergraduate students so that's where we decided to look at the graduate students and what theories they are using and/or learning a lot. I also think the topics of identity and self should be infused into the course material more so that students get to think about marginalized groups . I do think your own values always influence your research.

What should be the (ideal) goal of your own curriculum?

- The ideal goal is to show students that they are going to be authors themselves. Just like sociologists like Max Weber were the result of a certain time period that gave them an insight into certain topics. Science is a creative process in which you will need a lot of self-reflection and openness towards the world around you and that you never have an objective and demarcated view of the social world that you occupy. My goal always is to first totally convince students of the importance of structural functionalism as advocated by Parsons by letting them read a number of texts in a certain order and tell them that's the way they should look at the social world. Then, I tell them about constructivism and argue that "if structuralism says the social world operates so and so, then we would be missing so and so." My intention behind that way of teaching is to show them that you need all the various paradigms if your goal is to know as much as possible about the social world. If students say that they don't need or want to know everything about the social world, I opt for a heavier focus on micro-interactions or macro-structures. But if your goal as a discipline is to show them the complete the inner- and outer workings of the social world, then you need teach them all of the different paradigms.

Who do you think are important scholars to cover in the curriculum and what do you think are important paradigms to cover in the curriculum and why?

- Marx, Weber, Simmel, Tocqueville and Durkheim are the five most important classical sociologists. DuBois should also get a more prominent position in the curriculum. Foucault and Bourdieu should also be part of the curriculum. More feminist literature should also be included in the curriculum, because the bulk of the course material seems to revolve around Women's Studies, and that is more of a way of thinking that I think is very useful and goes very well together with Foucault and Marx' earlier work that is not connected to his communist or political work, but his philosophical and theoretical work. Judith Butler should also be discussed more.

How would you describe the most important aspects to cover in the curriculum?

- I think it is interesting to use a thematic approach. One of them is the macro level of society that looks at concepts of the state, the economy and the environment which are all shaped by sociological concepts like capitalism and neoliberalism - big topics that have a lot of baggage. The meso level looks at companies, organizations and sectors. The interdependency between the three is, in my opinion, the most interesting aspect to cover in the curriculum. Another theme that I discussed earlier in one of the courses if that of gender. A good example I used in my classes was that of Mead and DuBois and how they developed the sense of a 'self' in relation to others, and there you can see how it relates to the work of Judith Butler and other feminist theories.

Does your own political affiliation influence the curriculum? Or doesn't it?

- I think this is a dangerous question; especially in the current climate. Because I think that politics - as in the way that politics is usually practiced with political parties and a parliament - is another form of politics than how I would practice or define it. The political system is made up out of elections and political parties, among other things. But the political sociology that I am personally associated with has nothing to do with political parties; it's purely political because I am interested in power dynamics. And the fact that I am interested in the latter absolutely influences the curriculum, but I can really imagine that I can vote for the D66 in five years. I think one of the most important things is that there is some room for differences, power, how those positions [of power] are institutionalized and how incredibly difficult it is to break them, delineate from them, go against them and the fact that I think those things are important definitely influences the curriculum. Some sociological frameworks do not focus on power at all, but I think that's important to show as well; how you can do sociological research without referring to power dynamics at all and if you compare [that sociological research] to another paradigm you start to notice that theories can be multi-layered. I would like to make abundantly clear that the fact that I vote for the Green Party is totally unrelated to the kind of texts the students are going to see on their reading list. That is an almost ridiculous assertion that can also be seen in the way the question is phrased. But I do think that, as a sociologist, you should be aware of the topics that you think are important.

Has political sociology - as a discipline - always been focused on power dynamics, or is that a more recent phenomenon?

- Yes, that is at the core of political sociology. Politics is the battle for power and the political system is one example of that, but so is the organization within the University of Amsterdam or a group of students within your seminar group. So, if there is a situation when a student that deviates or steps out of line during one of those seminars gets 'put in his place', then he or she would also be a part of the political power struggle within that social group. Not in layman's term of politics with political parties et cetera, but in the sense of the power play that happens on a micro, meso and macro level that is more related to the Bourdieusian sense of 'distinction'.

So, political sociology has always been involved with power play? Ever since the dawn of the discipline?

- I was obviously not present during the inception of political sociology, but it is fairly characteristic of the discipline that they are concerned with how people can make sure their position can be improved, how people fight the establishment and what kind of micro-scenarios

people apply. A great example of a topic that epitomizes political sociology is the function of gossip plays among women in marginalized groups. Within certain cultures, women have no power within the political system so they use gossip to influence and manipulate others. That's a good example of what I mean when I talk about 'the political' and that is deeply sociological and has nothing to do with the political party system.

What is your own philosophy about teaching?

- That it is fun and inspiring for students and that they feel that the social sciences is about 'us' and is happening right here and now. To link the personal to the sociological and vice versa.

What is the (most important) task of a teacher?

- To involve people and to make them responsible for the outcome of the course.

What is the quality of a (good) teacher and how does on develop this?

- That is connected to my previous answer, so you need to throw yourself into the fray as a teacher and that might not necessarily be something you could learn. It is something you could do and is not necessarily connected to your pedagogical skills, but also to you own social skills and that you see what your students are like. You never have the same group of students, so you can't go into auto-pilot mode because you never have the same conversations. You can develop this by trial and error and ask/talk to other teachers how they handle difficult situations.

Do you think your political views influence your teaching style?

- If I look at the fact that I vote center-left, I would also think that is important that everybody gets a voice and not only the ones that take their voice. Everyone has something valuable to say, so I also implore the shy students to speak up during class. So while I might be more interested in equality or equal positions or sensitive to the concept of power because of my political preference, I also have more right-leaning elements that I take into account during my teaching style like liberalism, personal freedom, if you didn't do the readings or bring your books then you are responsible for your own actions, the people who did do their homework get an A for effort et cetera.

I do think there aren't any political sentiments that I cannot say out loud, both here at the faculty or during my seminar groups, but I also think I should say everything I want. I often doubt my own convictions, so the seminars often are the first places where I do so. What I sometimes do is to bring a newspaper to class and discuss a headline with them. One such example was when I showed them an article about the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the crime statistics and I asked them how we can catch criminals without a list of the 500 most wanted - 99 of which were of Dutch minority background. I am obviously not going to say that all people of Moroccan-Dutch background are criminals because I don't think that is the case but I do want to know how it's possible that the 500 most wanted are mostly comprised of people of a certain ethnic background and I do think we should be able to formulate an answer to that question. So I think I use the seminars more to discuss the questions I have about certain topics, instead of sharing the opinions I have and I think that's a good thing for students to hear and learn about. I'm not really interested in opinions or my own political preference; that's one of the least interesting things about politics. The search for questions and answers is much more interesting.

Is there a distinction between the concept of a liberal and a progressive?

- That's all related to the political landscape in which things are constantly moving. Take the example of populism and nationalism that has supporters among the Dutch left and right-wing, whereas it used to be a more right-wing phenomenon and I sometimes hear some of those sentiments expressed during my seminar groups. I always try to ask questions to my students whenever I hear sentiments like "but isn't it just a fact that all those foreigners do X or Y?" Those [questions] are mostly related to where they got those ideas from because I think that the assumptions you have come second to the overarching discourse that you are using and that says more about the speaker himself. I am not going try and convince my students in my seminars that you should not say or express those sentiments, but I want you to think about why you say it.

So you don't think "how should I handle this?" whenever you hear right-wing populist views during a seminar? Or do you always apply the Socratic method of constantly asking questions?

- I think there were one or two instances when I got pretty annoyed during class. There was this male student who had fallen asleep during my lecture about gender and sexuality. So he had missed both halves of my class and he woke up at the very end just to say: "Yeah, but it's just a fact that men have a lot of testosterone and women have a lot of estrogen. There's nothing you can do or say about that." And then I told him: "You should've just paid attention, I am not going to explain this again and I think this is a very short-sighted comment after I've just stood here for two hours to try and explain the difference between gender and sex et cetera." So then I got annoyed because I found his comment quite silly and tiresome, but not because I think he isn't allowed to express those ideas. I actually would have been quite grateful if he had just asked or said it during the first fifteen minutes of the lecture because I could have used it to say: "Yes that is true, but there are more ways to look at men and women." So I'm not often startled by apolitical or politically incorrect comments because I know they exist and I understand where they come from, but I think we - as sociologists - should first be aware of those kinds of comments when we say them ourselves and that we should educate our students as reflexive scientists instead of teaching them what to think.

So it's more about teaching them how to think instead of what to think.

- Exactly.

- 5.

Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching.

- 3.

There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching.

- 2.

Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome.

- 3.

The activity of teaching should never impede with/influence political views in class. So politics and teaching should be separated in its intention.

- They should be separated. I don't think you should really try your best to make sure they don't influence each other because you bring you own preferences into the teaching process, but you should be aware of that fact. 3.

My teaching style is completely detached from my political views.

- 3.

I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible.

- I think that's a weird question because the two are not linked to each other. I don't understand how the way I vote once every four years could influence my personal teaching style. But I don't try to separate my political preferences that are related to the teaching process because that's just the way I am. So it's not related to my voting behavior but more to my awareness that there's is always an aspect of power involved. I don't try to detach it. 2.

The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teachers that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?

- I am not in favor of quota, but I am in favor of a form of an awareness process of which we are aware of the fact that we keep on hiring 'ourselves'; as in people that almost always think alike. That is something that seems to repeat itself endlessly. But it does make sense because I think it is a lot easier to work together with people that you agree with. I would be truly interested to see how things would work out if we decide to hire someone that we do not see eye to eye with at all during the job application, but who does have a good CV. We should not decide to make that process mandatory, however, because that would signal the beginning of an all-out war at our faculty. So, it's a lot more about creating sensitivity - which is extremely lacking at the moment - about who we are and what kind of powerful position we have by constantly separating our self as a group from the rest [of society] and to keep thinking that the current situation is normal and neutral and that we can't even imagine there are other perspectives out there. I think that is a big disadvantage of our current system.

Interview #5

What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- My label is very dependent on my situation and the Goffmanian role I am in.

100

What label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Leftist.

How would you describe your political affiliation?

- Leftist.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- GroenLinks (the Green Party).

What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?

- Partij voor de Arbeid (Labour Party).

How important - if at all- would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- It's pretty important because this year I voted against the upcoming populist right-wing parties.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material?

- A tremendous amount of influence; actually we're in a very luxurious position. My position is very flexible which puts me in a comfortable position, but that's because I gained a certain position here throughout the years. In that sense, I can do and think quite a lot. My colleagues can also decide on the courses.

What should be the (ideal) goal of your own curriculum?

- This is answered elsewhere.

Who do you think are important scholars to cover in the curriculum and what do you think are important paradigms to cover in the curriculum and why?

- I believe ontology and epistemology are very important to cover in our curriculum. I do believe there are too few women sociologists in our courses. The canon is pretty classical and western and dominated by white males. However, many of the important sociologists happen to be Jewish white male thinkers who were from the upper-middle class. I would love to see more Schütz and probably a little more Garfinkel, but those are just my personal favorites.

And what are your own methodological proclivities?

- I am more of a critical or subtle realist, so I do see constructions everywhere but I'm also a pragmatist.

How would you describe the most important aspects to cover in the curriculum?

- This is answered elsewhere.

101

Does your own political affiliation influence the curriculum? Or doesn't it?

- Yes, it does. In the sense that some years ago I thought I was only discussing male methodologists and I tried to work on that. Although I am sympathetic to claims about southern or African methodologies, I am not very often convinced of the validity of their content. I think I do put a lot of stress on feminist methodology in my teaching and the importance of feminist methodologists for qualitative research.

And out of interest - because I can imagine feminist theory playing a part - what is feminist methodology?

- It's about taking your methodology as serious as your theory, or at least that's how it works for me. How can you do research among the oppressed when you use methodologies that tend to have oppressive backgrounds in it?

Like patriarchy?

- Yeah, and Oakley wrote a great chapter in which she discussed interviewing and especially survey interviewing as very much male dominated, classical, white coat scientist going to people and using body posture and their voice in order to obtain results rather than talking and discussing with people to create report and reciprocity. She said how you can do research - as a feminist researcher - when you use exactly the same positivist, male dominated methodologies? And her chapter was really influential - but also criticised a lot - and the greatest part is that she turned into a very positivist researcher during the late 1990s and early 2000s. She started doing double-blind experiments because they were even more liberating according to her. So I especially like the growth of her argumentation rather than sticking to one thing.

What is your own philosophy about teaching?

- The nicest thing about teaching is to inspire students. That is obviously very self-focused because that's the best thing about being a lecturer, but I think it's also the best thing to happen to you as a student. What's also really important that you learn a trade as a student, not in the sense of a profession but as an academic and a sociologist. Which means your knowledge of methods and theories I think the role of knowledge is important as well. It's not just about personal growth and self- reflection and all that. I started with that because that's really important but it's not only that. I think we become pretty empty self-reflective navel gazers if we only focus on gaining and passing on knowledge to the next generation of sociologists. We need to put the emphasis on scholarship and the way to do that is by making the students do a lot of interesting assignments. A lot of students are not intrinsically motivated, so I always hope they become more motivated when they start to do the assignments and become more inspired in sociology along the way. The best goal is to inspire students to become sociologists themselves and personal growth would be a nice bonus.

102

- 4.

Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching.

- I do it on the sidelines because the course I am currently teaching is not about the development of poverty for example, but I did teach Introduction to Development Sociology in Leiden and there that was much more important. I think for a methodologist I do put a lot of emphasis on it - at least with some side remarks. 4.

There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching.

- I do think there's something wrong with that, so I would say a 2.

Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome.

- Yeah, and it doesn't matter so much in what direction. Although I do hope that they don't get racist. 4.

The activity of teaching should never impede with/influence political views in class. So politics and teaching should be separated in its intention.

- I think you can get great methodological or ontological discussions from political views, so I disagree. 4.

My teaching style is completely detached from my political views.

- I don't think so. 2.

I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible.

- I did try to do so in the past, but I am doing less and less so. 2.

The University of Amsterdam wants to use quotas in the future to make it a more socially just university, concerning more female and minority students and teachers. Do you think it is a good idea to use the same principle to hire teachers that have different political affiliations to make sure the University of Amsterdam is represented equally on a political level? Why or why not?

- I don't think there are a lot of right-wing sociologists out there, but there probably are more right-wingers in the Law or Economics department. It would be pretty funny actually because that would mean I could apply for a job and I would just say: "Yeah, I vote PVV and you should hire me for that reason. So I think it is ridiculous in that sense."

Interview #6

What label would you use to describe yourself generally?

- An accessible people's person.

103

What label would you use to describe yourself politically?

- Centrist.

How would you describe your political affiliation?

- Non-existent.

How left or right-leaning would you consider yourself?

- Centrist. I have a lot of respect for people that can make a very strong choice to opt for self- describing themselves on either side of the political spectrum. I always find myself in the middle, because I think you are going to miss a lot of useful information if you pick either side of the political spectrum.

What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?

- CDA.

What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?

- D66.

How important - if at all- would you say your identity or political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?

- Not very important because of my centrism.

How much influence do you have in the selection of the course material?

- The following 6 questions were not used to answer my research question, because the audio file was corrupted.

But so, you personally have a lot of influence in the selection?