The victims of the lack of social safety at TU Delft get caught in a web of hierarchical uncertainty, a lack of action and unequal power relationships, reveals an investigation by Delta. This often worsens the situations of those seeking help. “TU Delft shattered me entirely.”
This article in 1 minute
As soon as TU Delft staff member Marianne cycles onto campus, she experiences a familiar feeling: her stomach feels sour and its contents slowly move upwards. She knows that she has one-and-a-half minutes to reach the WC and that she will empty her stomach contents. This has been going on for months, ever since the new manager has arrived. While she rushes to the WC, her thoughts rain down on her. Will he start shouting again today? Who in the department will be the first to receive a disparaging remark? ‘In any case, my colleagues and I have reported this to HR. It will not last much longer,’ she tells herself to keep going.
Marianne is one of the 24 current and former TU Delft staff members that Delta spoke to about the lack of social safety, of which they became a victim between now and the past six years. They experienced intimidation, stalking, physical or verbal aggression, managerial bullying, extortion, sexually transgressive behaviour, institutional gaslighting or other forms of the lack of social safety. The consequences are far reaching. Some people ended up on extended sick leave or had panic attacks every day, others lost all their self-confidence, ended up in a burnout, or even became suicidal. Of the 24 ‘reporters’ that Delta spoke to, seven are still experiencing the lack of social safety. “TU Delft completely shattered me,” says one of them.
Below, (former) TU Delft employees share what happened to them. You can read their stories by swiping or clicking to the side.
Employees internalise prevailing hierarchy
Not only did Delta investigate the lack of social safety itself, but also the hierarchical structures that help cause it and what happens to people who report socially unacceptable behaviour. Whether they currently work for a faculty or a university department, were relatively new or had had a labour contract for years, their individual interests were infringed on the pretext of ‘acting in the interests of TU Delft’.
During dozens of interviews, the journalists at Delta saw that the people they talked to had internalised two types of hierarchy. One is the official university hierarchy: a post-doc ranks higher than a doctoral candidate. Teachers and researchers are one step lower than an assistant professor. And the two highest steps in the academic pyramid are filled by associate professors and professors.
Invisible ranking
In practice, there is another ranking, one that is invisible. Academic staff are higher than support staff. An assistant professor with a permanent contract has more influence than an assistant professor on a temporary contract. And everyone can effortlessly point out who the big shots on campus are: the women or men who ‘bring in the most funding’, the academics who ‘are appreciated by higher echelons’, the rockstar scientists with trendy research subjects, the eloquent academics who are featured the most in the media. On paper all professors are equal, but in practice some are more highly regarded than others and therefore have more influence and power. This invisible ranking runs right through the official hierarchy.
Everyone you talk to thinks and acts in line with this invisible ranking. This turns out to be even more painful in cases where there is no social safety. The interplay between the formal and informal hierarchy often puts the victims of socially unacceptable behaviour at a 1-0 disadvantage. It affects them when they report problems and when their supervisor or other TU Delft departments have to take decisions about follow up.
Outraged tone
In March this year, the Inspectorate of Education drew conclusions on how that invisible ranking keeps the lack of social safety going at TU Delft. It’s 114 page investigative report on TU Delft talks about how the care of staff members is not properly arranged, resulting in mismanagement. The report briefly made the concrete buildings and the well looked after grass lawns of the TU Delft campus the centre of the academic world. And TU Delft’s Executive Board and Supervisory Board only attracted more attention with their response. Newspapers and broadcasters reported in detail over how the board members openly and in an outraged tone cast doubts on the report and wanted to take action. The Executive Board was ‘intending’ to take the Inspectorate of Education to court. After angry responses by hundreds of staff members and students, the Board members withdrew the plan three weeks later.
They replaced their outraged tone with a somewhat milder one. The Executive Board stated in an investigative article in the AD newspaper (in Dutch) that discussions after the report had led ‘to the needed reflection’. At a staff meeting about social safety in April, Vice President Operations Marien van der Meer said that she felt ‘humble’. At the same meeting, Rector Magnificus and Executive Board Chair Tim van der Hagen said that he was expecting a multi-year plan for improvement.
Vulnerability of PhD candidates has been known for years
Among the people that Delta spoke to were four PhD candidates. Three of them had reported ill after months, or even years, of having suffered because of the lack of social safety. In some cases, that had trickled down from above. The situation of two PhD candidates worsened when their supervisors were the victims of socially unacceptable behaviour in their environment. One assistant professor, who ended up at home on sick leave because of an unhealthy working atmosphere in his department, saw this happen to his own doctoral candidate. “If a kind assistant professor is not helped when he talks to his professor, the doctoral candidate is also the victim. I fell by the wayside and my doctoral candidate can’t do a thing.”
Lees meerPlan for Change
The staff meeting was one of four and was intended as a step to a plan of action on social safety which was required by the Inspectorate. Such a plan was made. On 15 May the Executive Board submitted the so-called ‘Plan for Change’. Nearly one-and-a-half months later it received an evaluation. Of the 19 points, 14 were deemed inadequate. More about this later.
‘Reporting an issue will only bring me problems’
One of the measures in the Plan for Change that TU Delft has specified is a central point of contact for transgressive behaviour or suspicion of a breach of integrity. This had to be done as the new Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) of universities in the Netherlands states that every university must have a point of contact. The exact setup is not yet clear but people who file a report could be referred to the ombudsperson or the team of confidential advisors. A fact checking investigation may also be started which may lead to recommendations on how supervisors can solve the issue. The interplay between the formal and informal hierarchy means that not everyone experiences social safety in the same way or dares approach a point of contact, ombudsperson or confidential advisor. “I am of non-European descent, a woman, and I do not yet hold a senior position. Reporting an issue will only bring problems,” said one interviewee for example. On lodging an official report another said: “That would be the death of me. I would never come out unhurt as a doctoral candidate.”
- Do you want to know more about what has happened at TU Delft since the Inspectorate of Education published its scathing report? Read all about it in our dossier.
- Would you like to respond to this article or have anything to share related to social (un)safety? If so, please contact delta@tudelft.nl. You can also leave a comment at tudelta@protonmail.com. We will treat your message and personal details confidentially.
Improving competences
Of the 24 people at TU Delft that Delta spoke to, 11 did file a report in the last five years. They contacted an ombudsperson or a confidential advisor. Some of them do not expect a point of contact to improve much if the competences of the confidential advisors and the ombudspeople are not improved. They say that it is good that there is a listening ear and someone who can think things through with you, but when it comes down to it, they cannot do much. “They can talk to someone about their behaviour or explain to management what is going on, but they are then dependent on the people’s good will,” says one staff member who had had a lot of dealings with the ombudsperson. A staff member who had filed a report said: “They write a report every year in which they list problems. But no one is required to do anything about them. The administrators thank them for ‘signalling the issue’ and then everything goes back to how it was before. They do not take any action, because they do not need to or want to.”
‘Not prioritised enough’
The confidential advisors and the ombudspeople too experience a lack of action, they repeatedly stated over the years. In their annual report of 2022, the confidential advisors wrote that there is an impression that part of the casuistry is made worse as ‘too little is done along the line (the formal hierarchy of supervisors, Eds.) in terms of responses and actions’. ‘If supervisors do nothing, the feelings of insecurity and defeatism grow.’ In 2023 the confidential advisors wrote that dealing with all these problems seems ‘to have little priority in the line’. The Inspectorate of Education calls this ‘Handelingsverlegenheid’ (being reluctant to take action) , where managers and supervisors do not take action.
Six of the 24 people that Delta spoke to experienced this. Take the doctoral candidate in the testimonials whose self-confidence was shattered because his supervisors, a promotor and a daily supervisor, continuously belittled him. He ended up on sick leave, but first told the external confidential advisor, a PhD mentor, the Human Resources Department and the Graduate School about the problems to no avail. When he started looking into it himself, he found out that there were other young researchers who were also victims. “It turned out that before I was accepted another doctoral candidate had dropped out because of my promotor. He had seen the ombudsperson. Two post-docs also had problems with her, but they never reported it. They were still working on publications with her and were afraid that a report would bring problems to their working relationship.”
‘But you’re an adult, aren’t you?’
Other staff members who signalled the lack of social safety to their supervisors, had the problem dumped back on them. They heard that they ‘should not take it so seriously’ or that they had to ‘sort it out themselves’. One staff member, who is currently on sick leave, was told by his supervisor that he ‘just’ had to solve it himself on the grounds that ‘you’re an adult, aren’t you?’. “He was the supervisor so he should have done something or had pushed it further up the hierarchy.” The support staff member who reported being stalked by her boss was told by her management team that she should try to better understand his situation.
The lack of action increases the feeling of a lack of social safety, say the confidential advisors and the Inspectorate of Education. An assistant professor experienced this himself when he was extorted by a colleague. For two years, a departmental chair and other supervisors took no action, not even when they were shown written proof of the extortion attempts. “The deafening silence was the most anxiety inducing part. Nobody took the trouble to say that this was not how we did things at TU Delft. I knew then that this could happen to anybody. There are no limits for influential people at TU Delft.”
Lack of transparency
Op Wednesday 10 January, all staff members receive the exact same email. It is an official message from the Executive Board about the outcomes of the Diversity & Inclusion investigation that was done the previous year among TU Delft staff members. The outcomes had been known internally for four months. But only now the Executive Board decided which measures TU Delft will take in relation to the research, has the report been made known. All 24 people that Delta spoke to long for transparency. Many of them have seen how no minutes were taken during meetings or that these were not shared. They also see that major decisions are not recorded or that colleagues, supervisors and other TU Delft staff members refused to put made agreements ‘in writing via email’. Finalised documents are either not shared or only shared months later with wider groups of staff members.
Lees meerLack of management skills
All the complainants see a lack of management skills as one of the causes of the reluctance to take action. Supervisors are often chosen for their academic qualities and have hardly had any management training. This means that they often do not know what they are supposed to do.
They believe that another important cause of the lack of action is the informal hierarchy mentioned previously. “I had a temporary contract while the perpetrator had a permanent contract and had worked for years with the person about whom I had signalled problems. I will leave in two years’ time. So nothing will be done,” said one doctoral candidate. The assistant professor that was being extorted saw that the supervisors consciously took no decisions. “The choice for the departmental chair was whether to take action and take the side of a relatively new employee, or do nothing and thus take the side of the academic super star that has obtained a lot of grants.” He argues that doing nothing is a strategy. “If you stand by this long enough, I will get so tired that I will throw the towel in the ring.”
TU Delft is more hierarchical
Problems caused by hierarchy occur at all universities in the Netherlands, the consultancy firm Berenschot said this summer in an ‘integrity system analysis’ done at the request of the Executive Board. This observation is in sharp contrast to the stories that have reached Delta. The staff members who have worked at other universities in the country or abroad experience TU Delft as a lot more hierarchical.
‘When I wanted to make an appointment with my dean, someone above me asked how I ‘could even think about approaching the dean directly’’
In one example, two of the interviewees could not make an appointment with their dean when they wanted to make the lack of social safety a topic of discussion. One researcher: “Someone above me asked how I ‘could even think about approaching the dean directly’. At my current university in Great Britain I simply email my dean and she makes time for me.”
The PhD student who had a burnout when she had to take on a full-time job, misses the ability to take decisions at lower levels, in research groups for example. “Everything needs to be requested higher up. The department head has to have a say and then the dean. The latter always says that there is no money. The dean looks at these kinds of requests from the perspective of the bigger picture and not from the interest of the person requesting it.” This is different at her new university. There, a group leader can decide if a technician is needed and pay for one from their own pot.
‘HR is not there for employees’
Back to Marianne, the staff member who experienced so much stress because of the lack of social safety that it made her throw up. She and her colleagues repeatedly told HR about the problems with their supervisor. While several consecutive HR advisors promised to take action, her supervisor remained in place. “The last advisor promised that everything would turn out well, but it just got swept under the carpet yet again.”
She feels abandoned by the HR Department and is not the only one. Almost all the staff members who spoke to Delta have had negative experiences with the HR department at TU Delft. Of course there are positive experiences too. One staff member in education affairs told about how well HR had helped her in finding courses to help her progress in her career. And there is the staff member who ‘found her HR advisor very helpful when things were not going well’. “She gave a lot of thought to the steps that I could take.” But all the others that Delta spoke to are negative and have lost confidence in the department.
‘If my supervisor has an HR advisor, then where is mine?’
The Human Resources Department is rarely called in by complainants themselves, but gets involved at a later stage. HR advisors may be present as a third party in a meeting between employee and supervisor or as a fourth person. For staff members it is not always clear what the purpose of an advisor is. A doctoral candidate: “HR was officially neutral when I talked to my supervisor about inequalities in our collaboration. But when she raised her voice, the HR advisor did nothing. I found that strange.” An associate professor says: “During the meeting I mentioned that my department worked entirely on the basis of nepotism, that everything revolved around loyalty. If I were the HR advisor, I would be shocked by this. But I heard nothing more about this after that meeting.” Apart from designing, implementing and evaluating HR policy, the official task of HR advisors is to advise supervisors and staff members. Yet, the staff members that spoke to Delta said that they did not believe that HR is there for them. “During a meeting with my supervisor, the supervisor put our HR advisor next to him so it was them against me. That was how the table was arranged. “If this is apparently my boss’s advisor, then where is mine?”
Nepotism in appointments
You have conscientiously prepared your 20 minute presentation, have asked about what needs to be included. You have worked for months to collect recommendation letters and write your vision statement. Your hand is now on the door handle. At the other side of the door is an eight person career committee that will decide in the next hour if they will give the dean or departmental chair a positive or a negative recommendation about your wish to climb a step up in the career ladder.
This is a recognisable benchmark for many academic personnel: the mid-term and end-term reviews in the academic career track (ACT). Researchers develop over a period of up to eight years from the position of starting assistant professor (assistant professor 2) to the higher function of associate professor (associate professor 2) in this career path that replaced the tenure track on 1 May 2023. According to six people at TU Delft who spoke to Delta, this career path makes the lack of social safety worse, in part because it leads to power inequalities.
Lees meerHR: ‘You can’t force anything’
Delta spoke to and interviewed current and former HR advisors and staff members. They said that they hardly have any time for contact with employees. “The workload is very high. You often have 300 staff members and their respective supervisors under you. In fact, you only talk to supervisors,” said one of them. HR advisors who do want change run up against the same problems as confidential advisors, ombudspeople and other helpline workers – in the end, they have no real power. “You can’t force anything, just give advice. You are then dependent on the willingness of the supervisor to take action. And every supervisor is different.”
But an investigation by Delta shows that HR advisors almost always choose the side of the person that is higher in the hierarchy, regardless of what has happened and who may have misbehaved. “The argument in the HR department is that a professor is so important in his field, or brings in so much money,” said one HR advisor. One often chosen solution is to transfer the staff member lower down the hierarchy, often the one who has signalled socially unacceptable behaviour, said a former confidential advisor. The Inspectorate also saw (in Dutch) that the informal hierarchy plays a role here. ‘The higher you are in the organisation and the stronger your network, the longer it takes to be transferred or dismissed, regardless of what you have done.’ But there is another reason too. Choosing the side of the ‘higher party is often seen as “being in the interest of TU Delft”’ sources told Delta.
The path of least resistance
One particular HR advisor was given a nickname by staff members for this very reason. That name emerged several times during Delta’s investigation. “Staff members at various departments warned each other about this advisor,” said a support staff member. On the tendency to take the side of the person that is higher in rank, another HR advisor who spoke to Delta said: “You are continuously occupied with how decisions turn out in the long term. You want things to go well for the department which you are responsible for, and you thus often choose the path of least resistance. You need to work for years with a supervisor, a professor for example. That person brings in money or gives TU Delft extra status and can make your department successful. Young researchers are more interchangeable. The interests among staff members lower down the hierarchy are simply not that big.”
‘The reputation of TU Delft must be protected at any cost’
According to one insider who has given support to several people who have reported social safety incidents at TU Delft, this intentionally does not deal with the structural problems. “The reputation of TU Delft must be protected at any cost. If you would deal with structural problems, you would have to admit that there is a structural problem.” The Inspectorate of Education also wrote that the HR Department is geared to ‘upholding the organisation’ and protecting ‘the existing power structure’. This means that staff members lower down the hierarchy draw the short straw. They are transferred or have to sign a vaststellingsovereenkomst (VSO, settlement agreement) which includes confidentiality obligations, if they leave TU Delft. The regulatory body notes that supervisors tend to do this too. They mostly opt for ‘harmony’ and thus the side of the person that is responsible for the lack of social safety.
(Illustration: Liam van Dijk)
In one case, a staff member was verbally and physically intimidated by a colleague and was transferred to a department that was not her expertise. The colleague could stay. “There were a lot of complaints about this person, but I had to move to a workplace where nobody knew what I could do.” Referring to a VSO, a former staff member said: “My badly behaved supervisor continues to terrorise the people in his department like Bokito (a gorilla that escaped from his enclosure in a zoo and terrorised visitors, Eds.), while I am at home with a VSO so I can’t even explain what happened. This is a world turned upside down!”
Developing the Plan for Change
To prevent complainants from coming out of the procedures worse off, TU Delft wants to include a safety check in the social safety point of contact. If a fact check results in an advisory, supervisors and administrators have to explain if they do not follow it.
Is this enough? The people at TU Delft who support complainants are concerned that the informal hierarchy will again obstruct this. “I have seen often enough that advice is not followed as it may be disadvantageous to the friends of supervisors or administrators, after which a careful explanation is invented.”
The current plan for the point of contact – that Delta has seen – does not as yet take this into account. Neither does the Plan for Change. The Inspectorate is critical. It does not think that enough thought has gone into how ‘the hierarchy, status and informal positions of power’ will play ‘a less negative role’, and that HR is ‘barely addressed’. The Inspectorate also does not see any action that would prevent staff members lower in the hierarchy from always drawing the short straw.
There will also be ‘a programme for self-reflection and peer-to-peer coaching in HR’
TU Delft has in the meantime moved on in working out the Plan for Change and talks more broadly about HR in a quarterly report. There will be an evaluation to ‘clearly define’ the role of the department ‘so that staff members, managers and other stakeholders know what they can expect of HR’. The Department will get a code ‘that spreads HR’s responsibilities across all faculties and departments equally’ with ‘special attention to handling integrity reports, confidentiality and transparency’. There will also be ‘a programme for self-reflection and peer-to-peer coaching in HR’. Supervisors will be given extra training in relation to a programme called License to Lead. The quarterly report does not mention either an informal hierarchy or the power inequalities related to it.
Employees find the current plans too meager
The TU Delft staff members that Delta spoke to fear that little will change in practice. Not only because of what is stated in the quarterly report, but also because of what the Executive Board has said about the Inspectorate’s criticisms of the Plan. “In an interview in September, Tim van der Hagen said that the Supervisory Board – about which the Inspectorate was also critical – and the Ministry of Education looked at TU Delft with greater nuance than the Inspectorate. Saying that the Inspectorate is less nuanced makes me think about last March. The Executive Board reacted so heavily then that they did not even want to hear the criticism of the Inspectorate. It’s as though the Executive Board has hardly learned anything.”
Enduring until retirement
All the people at TU Delft who reported to Delta did so with the same goal in mind: they want a more pleasant and most of all a safer TU Delft. Not only for themselves, but also for all the other current and future staff members. They hope that an article in Delta will finally change something.
For eight staff members it is too late. They are at home on sick leave. Or they have found a better place at another university and do not want to return to TU Delft as yet. And then there are the interviewees who cannot leave. They may have moved their whole family to the Netherlands from abroad, or because there is no demand for their specialisation at another university. They hope to keep going long enough to get their pension.
And Marianne? She too will continue working for TU Delft, for good or bad. “I am deadly afraid that someone will find out that I talked to Delta. It shows that my workplace is not safe enough to do so openly.”
Statement from TU Delft regarding the findings of Delta
The Executive Board and the Human Resources department read this research article by Delta in advance. The Executive Board then gave the following statement:
“The article exposes where our academic system falls short and where little was done to protect people against socially unsafe situations. This has been at the cost of staff members, students, and PhDs. We are deeply moved that there are still people who suffer from things that have happened in the past or that are still happening. Our initial response is thus to them. It takes a lot of courage to take the step and share your personal story. We have a lot of respect for the people who took this step, honestly told what had happened and draw attention to it publicly to prevent other people from undergoing the same thing. We recognise that we have to make big improvements in many areas and we are working hard on these. And we also recognise and embrace the points for improvement and the recommendations in the article that have also come under our permanent gaze through the reports from the Inspectorate of Education and the Labour Inspectorate, as well as the annual reports from the confidential advisors and ombudspeople. We have made it our highest priority to bring about lasting change and create a more socially safe and honest TU Delft. We are working on repairing the damage, preventing new situations in which employees find themselves in a bind, and responding adequately if staff members – regardless of their position at TU Delft – show transgressive behaviour. This starts with creating greater awareness and strengthening preventive measures, as well as improving the reporting and enforcement, offering proper aftercare, as well as involving the entire TU Delft community. After all, our desired organisational culture is created by all of us. In this way we want to take the responsibility for and learn from our past, do the right thing today and build on a future in which social safety and integrity are embedded in our staff members and students. A TU Delft where everyone feels at home and can work or study in a safe and comfortable setting.”
“In the article, Delta highlights the role of HR in terms of social safety in the form of case histories. The Executive Board takes distance from the qualifications that are given to staff members. These are examples of a culture that we together do not want. We are aware of the difficult position that HR is sometimes in, in encouraging and upholding the desired culture. We see that HR is aware of its position and plays an important role in the process of improving social safety in our community.”
Journalistic Accountability: why stories about the lack of social safety are important
They were hard words that the Inspectorate of Education wrote about TU Delft in March. Drawing on 148 reports, the monitoring body wrote that TU Delft staff members were at a higher risk of experiencing the lack of social safety as the care for these staff members was regularly neglected. For privacy reasons, the Inspectorate cannot describe the painful stories behind their conclusions. Delta is doing this now, in the context of reflecting. The Inspectorate of Education concluded in July that TU Delft had not sufficiently looked back. Not only do we go into what staff members have experienced, but also talk about the systems that helped create a lack of social safety at TU Delft. The consultancy firm Berenschot had also recommended ‘identifying vulnerable systems’ in an analysis that it carried out for the Executive Board.
As part of our investigation, between March and September we spoke to 24 current and former staff members that had experienced the lack of social safety. Some of the cases were closed – albeit with the aftereffects still felt to this day – and some of them are ongoing. Of the interviewees, six had reported to the Inspectorate earlier while the remaining 18 were and still are unknown. The large majority of the sources were only willing to tell their stories anonymously and if untraceable. The fear of repercussions is great, even if they have not worked at TU Delft for a long time. “My subject area is big, but my former supervisor can still effortlessly damage my reputation and make sure that I never find another job,” said one interviewee about her reasons for remaining anonymous. Others were prepared to be quoted by name. To treat everyone equally, Delta opted to anonymise all the interviewees. We also examined hundreds of pages of documents and carried out dozens of background interviews with current and former staff members to gain an understanding of the issues they considered and the problems that they faced. All the information contained in this article is backed up with evidence such as documents, emails verified for authenticity, or information from third parties. In other words, fact-finding was done, as Delta always does before publication.
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