One year after 7 October: how did the atmosphere change at the UvA?
Today marks exactly one year since the Hamas attack in southern Israel, that caused a chain reaction in the Middle East and led to tensions everywhere, including at the UvA. How did the atmosphere at the university change over the past year?
“Very emotional and affected,” says lecturer Bart Wallet. His students from the Master in Jewish Studies sat in the study group shortly after 7 October with a depressed mood. For many, the attack had come very close. The need to talk about it was great. This happened on both a substantive level – “Students in the Middle East Studies program (which includes the bachelor in Hebrew and master in Jewish Studies) learn to analyze this conflict to the core,” Wallet says - and on an emotional level. Additional meetings were held to exchange experiences and talk through the backgrounds of the conflict.
However, those backgrounds are extremely precarious and complicated. Especially in a subject like Zion, which among other things deals with the nature of the concept of Zionism and is compulsory for Hebrew and Arabic students (within the Middle East Studies track), this was noticeable. “Those are quite exciting lectures,” says Wallet. “There are students from many different backgrounds and views there, the whole Middle East is then in the classroom.” Besides students from Hebrew, Arabic and Middle East Studies, students from political science, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences also take this course.
“Especially in the beginning, given the events in the Middle East, that group had to get very used to each other,” says Wallet. It could be “somewhat confrontational or awkward” for some students that everyone was asking their own questions about the Middle East conflict. “I can imagine that students occasionally sat listening with crooked toes if they heard another student say something. But at the same time, that is precisely part of academic debate at a university.”
Discussing in class
Precisely because of all these different feelings, even head lecturer in political philosophy Yolande Jansen did not shy away from discussing the conflict in her classes after 7 October. “I find that exciting, because you don’t want to hurt anyone. But I give working groups to philosophy students who, on the contrary, want to learn and talk about justice, and also about Israel and Palestine. By the way, I use the word genocide and then explain why I do so with references to scientific sources.”
According to then-philosophy student Zep van der Visse, within that course’s curriculum, one whole lesson was scheduled to talk about the Middle East conflict after 7 October and Israel’s reaction to it. That went smoothly, he says. He found that he and his fellow students were on the same page when it came to supporting the Palestinians and condemning Israel’s actions. “The tension was mainly with the lecturer (not Jansen), who came from Germany, where they tend to be less critical of Israel because of their history, and because of his position as a lecturer explicitly did not want to express an opinion so as not to influence the class,” Van der Visse says.
Jansen also has Jewish students in the study group. “They actually indicated to me that they find it annoying when Jewish students are pitted against pro-Palestinian students.” I think we really do people an injustice if we assume that they will take a certain position based on ethnic or religious backgrounds. Being more careful with that is also the way to ensure that Jewish and Palestinian students and staff are not pitted against each other.
UvA lecturer Hilla Dayan, herself Israeli, thinks Jewish students in the Netherlands live in a free and peaceful country. Perhaps they are particularly sensitive when others at the university or in the country react irritated or even angry at their uncritical attitude, Dayan admits. “But unlike in Israel itself, you really don't have to feel unsafe if you stand up for your views.”
Changing exams quickly
For some Jewish/Israeli students, however, it was indeed uncomfortable at university after 7 October, says Brünhilde Albers-Den Ouden (57), a Hebrew student and board member of the Hebrew Studies Association Sechel. The closed meetings organized by the Department of Jewish Studies were therefore an important place for those students to discuss their experiences at university, she points out. Albers-Den Ouden: “There may not have been any direct confrontations, but that tension, everyone felt.”
Among lecturers, too, this led to occasional emergencies. In the subject Sharia and Halakha and the Modernization of Religious Law - like Zion part of the curriculum of the studies in Hebrew, Arabic and Middle East studies - an old map of what Israel used to look like according to the Bible was hastily dropped from the examination, Albers-Den Ouden recalls. Probably to avoid hurting certain students in the exam hall, she thinks. “Many students in the Hebrew studies at the time were really like: you can’t change history, this is just hysterical and not very academic.”
Demonstrations
Meanwhile, the first pro-Palestine demonstrations also began at the UvA. Students called on the UvA to respond to the violence Israel showed in Gaza after 7 October, resulting in countless deaths. As early as 19 October, lecturers surrounded by seated students spoke about “a genocide against Palestinians” in the hall of REC-A, demanding a boycott of Israeli research and educational institutions.
The first education-disrupting demonstrations took place on the Amsterdam University College (AUC) campus in February 2024. There, a group of protesters occupied the bridge to the faculty building to force the AUC to negotiate a boycott. A month later, the same action at the AUC saw some students arrested for the first time.
According to AUC lecturer Hilla Dayan, it is not unexpected that the first occupations were initiated by AUC students. “The AUC makes it clear that we are educating global citizens here. Students should engage as broadly as possible with conflicts and violence in the world.” But differences of opinion among lecturers on how to deal with the protesting students certainly existed, confirms Dayan, who was on sabbatical abroad around the time of the protests but continued to follow events surrounding her course closely.
As many as 27 AUC lecturers, for example, called on dean Martin van Hees to stop using police at blockades. Demonstrators’ demand for AUC-wide talks on a possible boycott thereby led to a tense mood among students, staff and Van Hees. The latter did not want to meet the protesters’ demands.
That heated atmosphere at AUC eventually culminated in large-scale UvA occupations, during which Jewish students in turn often felt unsafe, according to an opinion piece in NRC. In particular, slogans such as ‘From the river to sea, Palestine will be free’ were said to have contributed to this.
Confrontation with police
The next day, another occupation took place, this time at the Binnengasthuisterrein, the University Quarter in the center of the city. Evictions there were reported by the Executive Board, during which many students were again arrested. In the process, a number of teachers were displeased by the police violence against students. “Students should be able to protest without confrontation with violence,’ sociology lecturer Sam Hamer told Het Parool. ‘I have no words for a moment,” sighed senior lecturer political science Saskia Bonjour.
A demonstration by staff followed on 13 May to show their support for the arrested students and again the severing of ties with Israeli educational institutions. That demonstration escalated into another occupation in the afternoon, this time of REC-ABC, resulting in destruction of computers and TVs, among other things.
The atmosphere at the UvA hardened and divisions seemed to grow. As the protests continued, lecturer Han van der Maas and 400 other UvA-academics spoke out in favor of the UvA’s actions in Folia, and over a hundred Jewish lecturers and students told Het Parool that they no longer felt safe at the UvA.
New protest
After the summer, peace seemed to have returned to the UvA for a while. But given the fact that the war in the Middle East is still in full swing, this calm may well be short-lived. A new protest for Palestine is planned for Tuesday afternoon, reportedly at Science Park and on REC. It remains to be seen whether the atmosphere at the UvA turns around then.
Either way, both Jansen and Dayan will continue to have the Middle East conversation in their next lectures. “We must continue to discuss as broadly as possible. With all voices and all perspectives,” says Dayan. Jansen adds: “Based on sound knowledge and opinion formation. That’s what makes a university so unique.”
