Minister of education Jet Bussemaker and author Hanna Bervoets spoke about happiness yesterday, during the opening of the academic year. Bussemaker focused on education, and Bervoets hinted at a love affair with a robot.

Dark wooden doors, roof beams and red velvet curtains. De great hall at De Vereeniging clearly has more grandure than the Gymnasion sports hall, where the ceremony took place until a few years ago. It is not surprising that many listeners showed up at the opening of the academic year. ‘As far as I know, this is the busiest opening ever’, said rector Han van Krieken.

Jealous
But the speakers must have attracted many people too. Apart from author Hanna Bervoets, there was the Minister of Education. ‘This is probably my last year opening. Hopefully, they are done negotiating by this time next year’, said Jet Bussemaker. She clearly could work with the theme of the opening: happiness (in response to a survey among Radboud students). It reminded her of her time at university, when she could taste ’the immeasurable wealth of knowledge’. ‘Sometimes, I am jealous of students who still get to start their studies, and hopefully have a similar experience.’

The minister painted Radboud University as a university ’that looks further than efficiency’. ‘Where you gain knowledge and skills to find your place in society, and not just for the acquirement of a good job.’ She quoted the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who warns us for a society in which everything is about efficiency. ‘A society needs civilians who are empathetic, and able to reflect critically.’

‘You can expect from us politicians that we create the conditions’

We have to educate students to be self-aware civilians, says Bussemaker, after Nussbaum. That involves education that is not just a race to the top, but in which there is also room for things like happiness. ‘You can expect from us politicians that we create the conditions for that, so we can preserve the delicate balance between achievements and students’ happiness.’

Hanna Bervoets did not speak about education and research. She wondered out loud if it was possible for robots to make humanity happy. Can a person love a robot? The short answer is: ‘Yes, as long as we do not judge that love.’ Because, Bervoets says, right now we are still held back by embarrassment. ‘We expect a certain reciprocity, but that is not there, of course.’ And we might fear that robots will not only take our jobs, but also our lovers. With the help of film and literature, Bervoets shows how we never really let that affection become a success. The robot disappears, takes power or spontaneously self-destructs – he never sticks around.
Still, Bervoets thinks that robots can bring us happiness. We just should not look at them as a replacement of people. ‘The joy we get from a relationship with a robot is different than when we are with a human being. But it is not less valuable.’ That joy can distract us from painful emotions. And, said Bervoets ‘what is happiness if not a distraction of permanent suffering?’

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Protest

 

Student union AKKU did not get much attention for their protest against student loan debts. ‘Many of the students who come to the opening are seniors’, Maarten Heinemann from AKKU explains. ‘Some of them still received government funding. In the future, everybody will study under the loan system, there will be more protest then.’

 

In the main hall of the Vereeniging, science union VAWO protested the ever-growing workload, together with PhD and postdoc networks. According to VAWO numbers, 20 percent of scientific labour at universities comes from unpaid overtime, in the evenings, weekends and vacations. Converted to labor costs, VAWO reaches an amount of almost 300 million euros. VAWO handed Bussemar a check with this amount on it yesterday.

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