The Architecture of Exclusion in Dutch Academia
This is an analysis of power. It’s a map of how the Dutch higher education system is engineered, who it is designed for, and who it systematically filters out. Using the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) as a starting point, we will trace the three primary flows that animate this structure: the flow of funds, the flow of policy, and the flow of people. We will see how these flows merge into a single, powerful current that directs knowledge production toward certain ends and away from others. Furthermore, we will follow the path to a hypothetical post-doctoral position, witnessing how intersectional marginalization creates a compounding web of hurdles that makes this path a near-impossibility for many.
Power Avenues
Funding Flow
In Dutch higher education, funding is the primary current that directs the entire system. It’s not a neutral resource; it’s a steering mechanism. Money flows from the government, through bodies like the NWO, and from philanthropic or corporate institutes, each with its own strategy. A research proposal is only viable if it aligns with these pre-approved, “strategic” areas, deemed valuable by those holding the capital. This intertwining of fund and policy directly incentivizes knowledge production in certain directions while marginalizing others. If your work falls outside these lanes, you are filtered out from the start. The flow of funds, therefore, isn’t just about resourcing ideas—it’s about defining what constitutes a valuable idea in the first place.
Governance Lanes
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The governance of Dutch universities is a nested structure of policy, from the faculty level up to the national government. This flow of rules is inseparable from the flow of funds. Policy dictates everything from the linguistic requirements for a job—like imposing Dutch where it’s functionally irrelevant—to the metrics of success, like international publications. As a researcher, you navigate this labyrinth, but your autonomy might be an illusion, bounded by these dictates. The merger of policy and funding creates a powerful filter, defining who is eligible for a role and what research is permissible, long before any actual intellectual work begins. It is the architecture that enforces conformity.
Production Lanes
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At the heart of this system lies a profound paradox: knowledge production is simultaneously an act of creation and erasure. Like the goddess Freyja embodying both love and war, the system produces sanctioned knowledge while systematically erasing alternatives. The lanes for production are narrowly defined by the profit-driven logic flowing from the top, masked by a delusion of objectivity. Research that doesn’t promise direct or indirect profit is deemed not valuable. This isn’t an accident; it’s the outcome of the intertwined flows of funds and policy filtering the flow of people. The result is epistemic erasure, a landscape where diverse ways of knowing are excluded, making our collective understanding of the world inherently poorer and less coherent.