Rianne Letschert: smart, kind and attentive, with respect for freedom of the press
Rianne Letschert (D66) had a rapid career in academia and became a university administrator. She is highly praised for her management style. She will now be able to demonstrate this as the new Minister of Education, Culture and Science. A profile.
Since December 2025, Rianne Letschert has suddenly been in the spotlight of national politics: she lead the coalition negotiations between D66, CDA and VVD as an informateur. She received this request while she was in her car, she explained later in the press conference in which she introduced herself to journalists. “I almost crashed into the crash barrier.” She considered the assignment an honour, but also exciting.
One of the journalists in The Hague asks about her style: how would she describe her approach? Letschert replies: “Focused on the content, not the person. And warm in my relationships.” It may sound trite, but others say it’s true.
Victimology
Rianne Letschert (Doetinchem, 1976) grew up in Stiphout, Brabant. She studied international law and then went into academia. In 2005, she obtained her PhD in Tilburg on the position of minorities in international law. There, she became a professor of victimology in 2012. Among other things, she conducted research into victims of war violence.
In 2013, she became a member of De Jonge Akademie (DJA), a society of relatively young top scientists who want to improve the academic world. Two years later, she became its chair.
She was actually set to become dean of the Tilburg Law Faculty in 2016, as the next step in her career, but then she was offered the position of rector magnificus at Maastricht University. She did not pass up this opportunity. At the age of 39, she became the youngest female rector magnificus ever. In 2021, she moved up a notch and became chair of the board.
Free press
Letschert is friendly and attentive, says editor-in-chief Wendy Degens of the Maastricht University newspaper Observant. “A university employee had lost her mother. Letschert knew this and on the next Mother’s Day she sent her a text message to wish her strength.
Moreover, Letschert attaches great importance to a free press. “We sometimes write critical stories that she doesn’t like,” says Degens. ‘She sometimes responds to them, but it has never had any consequences. We can simply be the ‘watchdog’ and she is always willing to talk to us.”
Observant wanted to send a weekly newsletter to all students and staff, but was unable to do so under previous chairpersons. Letschert immediately agreed, says Degens.
As a president of the Board of Maastricht University, she did not shy away from lobbying. Degens: “She often went to The Hague to talk about internationalisation. She received support from the entire region: mayors, the province and other educational institutions. She has charm, but she is also very smart. She sees things she wants to tackle and goes for it.”
Better academy
At DJA and later as a president of the Board, she was very concerned with “recognition and appreciation”, or rather the ideal that the academic world should be more than a competition to see who can publish the most articles in authoritative journals. Scientists can also have other talents, such as leadership, teaching or sharing knowledge with society. She believes that people should be able to choose different career paths.
Letschert saw in her own field the consequences of rigidly counting scientific publications. Writing annotations on case law was hardly valued anymore and had turned into a hobby, she said in 2015 at a meeting on evaluation systems and careers in academia.
The problem is that discussions about the system are often led by the winners of the system, Letschert noted. Once we are in control, she told her young fellow scientists, we have to do something about it.
Entertaining
VU professor of philosophy Jeroen de Ridder knows her from that time, although he joined DJA a little later. He became chair two years after her. De Ridder: “What I remember most is that she is incredibly nice. You might think that administrators are ‘important’ people who talk to other important people, but she wasn’t like that. She took plenty of time to get to know new members of DJA, and the conversations were always pleasant, entertaining and informative.”
Even after she left the association and became rector, she wanted to catch up with him every few months for an hour to discuss DJA's plans and projects. De Ridder: “That’s quite special. As rector, you have to make time in your diary for that.”
And Letschert did not abandon her ideals. Once she was at the helm in Maastricht, she continued to fight for “recognition and appreciation”. “A department simply needs different types of people, with talents in the fields of research, education, leadership and social impact,” she explained in 2020. “A football team doesn't just have strikers or goalkeepers either.”
Hack
There have been plenty of dramatic events at Maastricht University over the past ten years. Take, for example, the hijacking of the systems by hackers. The university gave in to the blackmail and paid a ransom in bitcoins. The damage would otherwise be too great, they reasoned. Years later, thanks to police work, the bitcoins were returned to the university and turned out to have increased in value.
And let’s not forget the coronavirus crisis. Under her leadership, Maastricht University was the first in the Netherlands to decide to break open its piggy bank. Letschert: “We need to invest now and release reserves. Those reserves are precisely intended for times of crisis.”
As at other universities, there have also been many protests and occupations in Maastricht recently. A meeting with a pro-Israeli speaker was disrupted by demonstrators, and the university subsequently decided to cancel another meeting for safety reasons. This led to fierce criticism of her.
At the same time, Letschert also had a building cleared that had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters. She was also a member of the task force on combating anti-Semitism set up by the Schoof cabinet, partly in response to the fierce protests in higher education, which sometimes made Jewish students and staff feel unsafe.
Not modest
Over the years, she became politically active and joined the left liberal party D66. In 2018, she forged a council of mayor and aldermen in Maastricht in negotiations between parties with very different visions: CDA, D66, VVD, GroenLinks, SP and the Senior Citizens’ Party.
She stands out from the crowd. In 2019, for example, she was voted Top Woman of the Year, which did not come out of the blue: she had been approached several times before and accepted the award. “Look, it’s not my ambition in life to be in the spotlight, but now I thought: I’ll do it, I can show what I can do,” she told Observant. “Then I’ll just be the token woman from time to time, but in the hope that the image will really change: more women in senior positions and a different tone in the debate about working women.”
Within D66, appreciation for her style grew – at least among party leader Rob Jetten. She had previously been approached for a position in the liberal Rutte IV cabinet, but at the time it was too soon. She turned it down.
Dog’s job
But it was no secret that she would like to become a minister. “Being a minister is a dog’s job, not an honorary position,” she said last August in the daily newspaper De Limburger. Yet she was willing to do it: “If everyone passes up the complicated jobs, we won’t get anywhere.”
So once she became an informateur, everyone could guess that she wanted to become Minister of Education, Culture and Science on behalf of D66. On 23 February, she will stand on the steps of the Palace with her fellow ministers and show whether her much-praised style can achieve anything in the polarised politics of The Hague.
