Han van der Maas | Why did Martin Bosma engage with a department he wants to eliminate?

The dissertation of prominent PVV member Martin Bosma, who is also speaker of parliament, has been rejected for the second time by a doctoral committee of my faculty. That shouldn’t really be news. Such decisions are confidential. Nor do we know why it was rejected or even what the dissertation is about. Bosma’s dissertation does not consist of a compilation of published articles as is normal in more and more fields of science. We do know that the dissertation is based on his 2015 book.

Of course, it is news because Bosma is a politician from the largest ruling party, a party that sees Hungary as its foreland. This government has launched an unprecedented attack on science and higher education: the long-study fine, cuts to NWO, the termination of start-up grants, generic cuts and cuts to international students. And then we have to fear the foreign-language education test, part of the Internationalisation in Balance Act. If that also passes, the survival of some universities and colleges of higher education is really in danger.

When asked why higher education has to contribute disproportionately to the cuts, only the PVV gives an answer: It wants to combat political activism. The UvA, and certainly the political science department, more or less symbolises this activism, whether we like it or not.

Abolish

That makes the Bosma issue extra interesting. Why does Bosma want to do his PhD at a department he would prefer to abolish? And why does this department engage with this radical right-wing politician?

The cynic might think Bosma is suffering from the Oedipus complex (something to do with recognition and parricide) or wantonness: look at me, I am stealing flowers from the garden and I am just getting away with it (not so). But presumably Bosma is seriously seeking a debate with his opponents. A scientific debate in which we come ever closer to a correct description of reality.

Gap

This is a gap that needs to be bridged. Bosma’s thesis is, by all accounts, an adaptation of his Dutch book Minderheid in eigen land - Hoe progressieve strijd ontaart in genocide en ANC-apartheid. Much can be found online about this, e.g. on Wikipedia.

The title quite nicely covers it. The white farmers of South Africa are treated terribly which is giant injustice because, after all, they came with good intentions and only occupied empty land. They have done some things wrong (who hasn’t), but also brought a lot of good. The ANC did much worse things which is systematically ignored by the Dutch left. And now those poor farmers are a minority in their own country and that, because there is something to learn here, is our foreland. Still this century, the Netherlands will be taken over by Muslims and we will order our cappuccino in Arabic. To what extent this is also the content of the thesis we do not know, but the main message is surely the same.

I wrote a column earlier about the racist thinking when it comes to IQ. When it comes to the IQ discussion, which plays a prominent role in far-right thinking, it’s not at all simple to put your finger on the sore spot exactly. Bosma’s book also seems to me to be explicitly racist but by now that is not a sufficient reason to dismiss it.