Down-to-earth dean Agneta Fischer stops after six years in office
It’s all over for Agneta Fischer: after six years in office as dean of the always turbulent Faculty of Society and Behaviour, she has handed over the baton to her successor. How does she look back on her deanship? What went well and what didn’t? “Let me be honest: I have had a very complicated relationship with the Faculty Student Council all these years.”
Days before her departure as dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (in Dutch: FMG) , her room is already half empty. In the middle of the room is a wheelie bin full of papers for the shredder, the bookcases on the wall are almost empty. “The three shelves that are still full go home with me, I still have a Billy bookcase over there. I can always give out some books for free too. Students and scientists are using fewer and fewer books, but their content is far from always available on the internet and then it’s handy to still have a physical copy behind.”
Agneta Fischer (1958) is down-to-earth, even as she leaves. She built a reputation for being a blabbermouth, but she nuances this herself. “I always say what I think, but not always everything I think at that moment.” The deanship came her way and is not part of any career planning, she says. “I had been department chair and research director at psychology, but besides that I was doing ordinary research and teaching, until former Board president Geert ten Dam invited me for the famous cup of coffee, which usually meant that you were called upon. That’s how it went for me too. “Do you want to become dean?” I thought: I’m at the end of my career, is it so bad to be out of content for a few years, because of a busy job as dean? Surely science won’t fall over if I don’t do research for five or six years?”
And then suddenly you were the boss of an impossible faculty, where there are always hassles.
“I went along with it because I got nice people around me and a very good company manager, Michel Telkamp. I needed that too, because according to him I am a bit too good at spending money. Looking back, I had a great time, but there have also been difficult issues. Of course, we had the Covid period, during which it was difficult to keep students and staff involved in their work and studies. I have also had a few complicated staff issues to deal with, including the dismissal of anthropologist Niko Besnier, the Laurens Buijs issue and the women’s rebellion in sociology.”
How do you look back on those issues?
“In the case of Besnier’s dismissal, I was really very surprised that the judge did not rule in our favour. We had had a lot of signals that there was everything wrong with the way he treated PhD students and there was a thick investigation report with distressing stories on the table. There was no sexual cross-border behaviour, but his dealings with PhD students led to socially very unsafe situations. That the judge saw this differently and blamed the FMG for the disrupted working relationship was incomprehensible to me. How much evidence do you have to provide before you are proven right?”
“The issue surrounding whistleblower and lecturer in interdisciplinary social science Laurens Buijs also caused a huge stir, especially because the issue lasted so long, an entire investigation committee was involved and Buijs brought the issue out in full through social media. The issue had the advantage of putting ‘woke’ on the agenda. This is important because students have become much more sensitive, something Buijs appeared to have little insight into. At the same time - especially in science - it is important to keep doubting everything. Many young people are searching for their own identity and some are struggling with that. But they must learn to have a scientific debate about these issues without bringing it directly on themselves. You can learn that through reflection, practice and being taught academic discussions. That whole affair has made us pay more attention to a critical view of identity within educational programmes.”
And the women’s revolt in sociology. Was the position of women that bad?
“Yes. Sociology was really a case study, where it was abundantly clear that women did not get into the higher positions and were disadvantaged in promotions, job distribution, grants or hours. There was a male-female schism there, where women had been on the losing end for years and men were calling the shots among themselves. That was really an old boys’ network, until a sizeable group of women rebelled and demanded change. According to them, there was a toxic culture and it took a lot of (external) coaching and mediation to straighten things out, but I think this has now succeeded.”
What do you notice about this?
“Backlogs have been caught up, there is more diversity in senior positions, relations have improved and deep democracy principles are now used in departmental meetings, the feeling that no one has an exclusive claim to the truth, that there are also other perspectives. The atmosphere is just very much improved.”
With 8,000 students and 1,300 staff spread across four departments, the FMG is a enormous organisation. Wouldn’t it be better to split up the faculty?
“Splitting it up I don’t think makes things any less complicated than they are now. And frankly, I am very happy with how our administrators are doing, despite the size of the faculty. We have also worked on this: managers all attend leadership training courses, there is sufficient support for HR questions, and in recent years we have drawn up many working guides on how we want to work at the faculty. Then, of course, we have to set a good example ourselves: quick and clear communication and commitment to the organisation. The administrators in the faculty are professional and really set a good example themselves.”
And the students?
“Let me be honest: I’ve had a very complicated relationship with the faculty student council all these years. Maybe it was down to me, but certainly not just me. The first few months after their election things went well, but in January, arguments invariably arose between the council and me. It was a hassle every year. The councillors mainly raise study- and education-related issues, whereas those are issues that the education directors should discuss with them. So they sat at the council meetings lately. But often other big and important issues were left unaddressed. For example, the whole issue around the war in Gaza, what the university should do, and the demonstrations on the Roeterseialndcampus (REC) was not once raised by the council. Only the house rules were discussed and then it was about whether wearing a political button or sticker on their laptop was allowed or not. Perhaps this faculty - with four major domain, and split into seven departments - is too big for the student council and would be better split into four separate councils, one council for each of the four domains.”
The pro-Palestine demonstrations at the REC left their mark on this year. You were administrative campus administrator. How do you look back on the past few months?
“The right to demonstrate is there and that’s also good, but not inside. The question is: do we want demonstrations outside on our grounds? Yes, but without overnight and without destruction. The question is also whether you should tolerate tent camps in Amsterdam at all. I don’t think so, because there are just too many outsiders coming with the wrong intentions. In a few months, I had to call the police four times to report it. I found that very annoying, but there was no other choice: there was simply no way to talk to the protesters.”
You did talk to masked protesters otherwise. Was that wise?
“In hindsight it wasn’t good to talk to masked people, but at the time it was, we had little time and wanted to make an extreme effort to get into conversation with the protesters. Then you don’t go and talk about mouth caps for half an hour first. Incidentally, it also became a bit of an inflated story, because we knew who they were and who we were talking to. We knew them all.”
How next? Another demonstration has already been announced this week.
“As long as this terrible war is going on, I fear that we will continue to muddle along at the UvA too and the demonstrations will keep coming, although it is clear that the UvA cannot solve this kind of global conflict from the campus.”
So how is the faculty faring? Major cuts are looming.
“I am very sorry about that and that is why I am also going to the Alternative Annual Opening in Utrecht today. We have worked nationally and in all universities for five years on the Social Sciences and Humanities Sector Plans. This involved 70 million with the aim of achieving national coordination between faculties, improving and aligning study programmes, jointly formulating priorities and conducting joint research on important social issues. The fear is that this cabinet will draw a line under it all at once.”
What would the FMG gain from these plans?
“We want to start working from different disciplines on themes such as mental illness, diversity and inequality and the human factor in technology. We have also set up an interfaculty programme on digital citizenship, because good citizenship is changing as everyone has to do more and more online. These are substantively important programmes. So now we just have to see if these plans can be realised.”
What are you most proud of when you look back?
“The Sector Plans are the most concrete result of my efforts in recent years, but besides that I have also been busy with the establishment of a UvA-wide Amsterdam mental health centre. This aims to provide care for students and PhD students with complex mental problems. Now people run into gigantic waiting lists, which only makes their mental health deteriorate. I hope we can start that soon.”
Are there any issues you failed to resolve as dean?
“The Work Pressure file failed, I have to be honest about that. We have done and tried a lot, but the results of questionnaires on workload do not show that it has become less. So I think workload is largely unsolvable and between the ears because there is a lot of ambition and commitment and few resources. It is very difficult to solve it in an organisation with ambitious people who want to go higher, but also want to do everything very well. Then at some point you just have to accept that there is work pressure.”
