Parliamentary questions about Jewish UvA students feeling unsafe
Lower House members of the PVV, JA21, and SGP parties want the Minister of Education to enter into talks with the UvA about the safety of Jewish students. This is in response to a report in Folia about a group of Jewish students who felt unwelcome at the university after the occupation.
The PVV, SGP, and JA21 parties are asking Minister Dijkgraaff to enter into talks with the University of Amsterdam about the safety of Jewish students. This week, two Jewish students made it known to Folia that they did not feel safe during the recent occupation that took place on the Roeterseiland campus.
In the hall of the ABCD building, banners were hung with the words “Cut ties with Israeli colonizers. Free Palestine,” among other things. The Jewish students experienced this as frightening. They raised the alarm with the UvA administration and diversity officers but said they received no response. “If you do not follow a pro-Palestinian ideology, you will have a hard time at the UvA,” one of them wrote in a letter to the Board.
How does the minister view this, the MPs from the three parties want to know. “Do you plan to enter into discussions with the UvA and other institutions of higher education about the disturbing observation that education is structured in such a way that if you do not adhere to a pro-Palestinian ideology, you will be hit hard?”
The MPs also refer to the minister's response to earlier parliamentary questions on the same subject, that Jewish students are said to feel unsafe. The minister replied that anti-Semitism must be dealt with harshly but that the university is also a place for controversial opinions. And so, according to activists, calls for a boycott of Israel are allowed there.
Is there not a pattern, MPs want to know, as Jewish students at the University of Groningen also felt unsafe. Aren't institutions responsible for “providing a safe learning and working environment in which everyone feels at home and can develop and where a diversity of perspectives is engaged and considered?”
The minister must respond to the parliamentary questions within three weeks or indicate there will be a delay.
