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international

Room for Discussion celebrates its 10th anniversary

Dirk Wolthekker,
11 oktober 2018 - 16:36

This month, the UvA debate platform Room for Discussion celebrates its 10th anniversary. Over the years a noteworthy parade of professionals in economics, finance, business and politics have sat on the well-worn chesterfield in the central hall of the Faculty of Economics and Business to be questioned by students. What is the secret of its success?

What do the following public figures — president of De Nederlandsche Bank Klaas Knot, ABN Amro CEO Kees van Dijkhuizen, Shell CEO Marjan van Loon, entrepreneur John de Mol and politicians like Wouter Bos, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Wopke Hoekstra, Jesse Klaver and Lilianne Ploumen — have in common with ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, his successor Mario Draghi, political economist and bestseller author Thomas Piketty and IMF top woman Christine Lagarde? They were all guests on Room for Discussion, the debate platform of the Faculty of Economics and Business.   

 

‘When the banks collapsed, I was on television every day to explain what was going on but no one seemed to notice at the UvA. With this reproach, economics student Maurits Kruithof rushed into my office in early October 2008,’ says Arnoud Boot, professor of financial markets. ‘We decided to do something about it, which is how Room for Discussion came about: as a stage for debate with focus on the financial crisis’. ‘Our initial intention was to wrap it up after two weeks,’ says alumnus Maurits Kruithof, who is now a supervisor at the European Central Bank (ECB). ‘But the news kept coming.’

 

Big names

But it was not only the momentum of the crisis that made Room for Discussion a success. It was also the daily presence of Boot and his fellow professor Sweder van Wijnbergen in the hall of the FEB, on call to answer the questions of journalists and the public. ‘Our being there to interpret the financial news helped launch the platform. The student team around Kruithof also made sure to position the platform at the university and in the media, which helped make it an institute.’ The icing on the cake was the list of of VIP debaters invited to participate. Kruithof: ‘We managed to bring in big names. So big that people started contacting us wanting to partcipate for fear of missing out.’