Caught between protesting and vulnerability: how safely can employees criticise the Israel policy?

“Have you ever thought twice before saying anything?” asks facilitator Hoessein Alkisaei, doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences in everyday life.

Sitting opposite him is a diverse audience of about 40 staff members and students. A little less than half raise their hand. “That pause, that calculation, should not be necessary,” Alkisaei continues.

This issue was at the heart of the Our Right to Integrity and Safety event in EEMCS’ Ampère room on Wednesday 22 April. The gathering was intended to see how ‘a safer and more responsible university environment’ can be created in which ‘integrity is actively protected’. TU Delft for Integrity, the FNV trade union, and the European Legal Support Centre – a European NGO founded to provide legal support to the Palestine solidarity movement – found that TU Delft employees who express their concerns about sensitive partnerships, policy or behaviour on the shop floor often stand alone.

Fear of reprisals

The event does not attract a full room, but that does not diminish the concerns of the speakers and audience. They are still not happy with the ties that TU Delft maintains with Israeli institutions. And above all, they are worried about reprisals if they express their dissatisfaction.

That fear is based on incidents on campus, such as the intimidation around the architecture course entitled Architecture and Colonialism in May of last year (which will not return). But some anecdotes shared by Alkisaei show that they are grounded in personal incidents too.

‘You are more vulnerable if you have a temporary contract’

Alkisaei brings up the case of an unnamed doctoral candidate who carefully suggested to temporarily put a collaboration with Israel on hold, his/her promotor ended their cooperation, after reacting  with ‘verbal aggression’. Ultimately, the host explains, the doctoral candidate was more or less forced to resign.

Labour law

During the one-and-a-half hours that followed, different speakers try to answer one key question: how can TU Delft employees protect themselves from these kind of situations?

After Alkisaei gives a crash course on TU Delft’s management and representation bodies, Anne van Schaik’s enters the stage. Being a social lawyer specialised in labour conflicts around Palestine protests, she too says to be aware of numerous serious incidents.

She emphasises that fortunately, the Dutch labour law provides protection in many cases. “But you are much more vulnerable if you have a temporary contract. In that case your employer can dismiss you without giving a reason, except in the case of illness or discrimination.” To everyone’s dismay, a large proportion of the employees present seem to be in this position.

Strike or not?

Shortly thereafter – Alkisaei keeps up the tempo – Mathijs Janssen takes the stage. He is an economics teacher at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and co-organiser of the peaceful pro-Palestine strike (in Dutch) that was held there at the end of 2024.

“The goal was to, as teachers, speak out against the genocide and against the complicity of our university in it,” he explains. The method: putting all lectures and almost all communication with students on hold for four days. In the end, the UvA broke almost all ties with Israeli universities. Whether that was because of the strike, Janssen cannot say.

‘A doctoral candidate on strike, primarily strikes against themself’

That his explanation seems to serve as a source of inspiration, becomes clear when Bo Salomons, legal counsel for union FNV, and FNV administrator Bert de Haas take the stage. Could something like this also happen at TU Delft, they wonder.

De Haas points to what he considers a successful strike against the education budget cuts of April last year. But Salomons emphasises that this type of collective action has a clear disadvantage. “A factory strike has a clear effect: the company stops making money. If you strike as a PhD candidate, you’re mostly striking against yourself.”

During the panel discussion at the end of the event, the conversation about a potential strike continues. One FNV member in the audience refers to the recent downfall of student union, VSSD. “But how do we organise strikes if student organisations of the sort disappear?”

The panel members fail to provide a satisfactory answer to that question. “It’s harder to get technical students on board with protests, compared to those studying, let’s say, anthropology,” UvA teacher Janssen sighs in response.

Persistent reality

Another audience member wants to resist the ‘militarisation of universities’ and asks the panellists for advice. He is especially concerned about the renting out of two campus buildings to the Ministry of Defence, a plan which he heard about at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

Many of the questions remain unanswered, primarily because the reality is too complicated to allow for simple solutions. That said, TU Delft for Integrity have issued a statement calling on TU Delft to better protect staff with ‘integrity concerns’, signable for all employees.

The final word has not yet been said about the strike either. An attendee who prefers to remain anonymous has his doubts, he tells Delta afterwards. “I think many academics find it difficult to go on strike because we may feel like harm our students if we do so.”