Susanne Täuber will be giving the keynote address on International Women’s Day at Radboud University. Täuber was fired by Groningen University last year, after publishing an article in the Journal of Management Studies. The recently published Academic Freedom Monitor called the dismissal “highly unprofessional and vindictive.”

Susanne Täuber is a researcher of social safety and gender equality in higher education. Based on that expertise, she wrote an article about programs meant to help women, and how those can be counterproductive. In that article, she used her own institution in Groningen as an example.

The article led to her dismissal, according to Täuber. Last January, in an appeal to the firing, the Court stated that the case concerned a damaged working relationship and that the firing was justified.

Täuber remains active as a scientist, she says. ‘I’m still doing what I’ve always done: supervising PhDs, writing papers, giving lectures, and various editorial tasks. A future at the university depends on the possibilities that arise.’

Your firing has caused quite a stir in Groningen. Is it still an open wound?

‘That is difficult for me to judge, but whenever I discuss my case with university employees, I’m told that talking about it is like walking on eggshells. I don’t think the gap between managers and employees has been bridged in my absence.’

What will you be talking about in your keynote speech at Radboud University?

‘I will talk about how universities might backslide from mediocrity into tyranny. Mediocrity arises when scientists are scared to publish on societal issues, despite that being our job. There is a culture of fear that stifles certain discussions. As a result, the only things being researched are trivialities.’

‘Tyranny is what happens when critical scientists are actively removed. Cancel culture does not impact conservative right-wing scientists, but rather those scientists investigating gender, migration, poverty, climate, colonialism, or slavery. We saw this happen in Groningen with Sujatha de Poel, as well as at other universities where tenured professors stepped away.

Tyranny is a far cry from the common conception that managers are mainly concerned with preventing damage to their reputations.

‘Many administrators rightly think that negative publicity will blow over eventually; they can weather the storm. But what happened to me, happened to a lot of employees, and it will continue to happen. If you’re critical, you’re fired. That holds true across Europe. That policy continues to exist because there is a lack of external oversight; administrators don’t have to answer to anyone. Privileges and power structures are maintained.’

And yet more and more women end up in executive boards across the country. Won’t that lead to change?

‘Not if women need to act like men to attain those positions. Numerical diversity is not normative diversity. If everyone in a group thinks and acts the same way, there is little hope for change.’

‘Women no longer put up with having to work much harder than men in the same position’

Is change even possible?

‘I think we’re at a turning point. People are done with unpaid overtime. Women no longer put up with having to work much harder than men in the same position. Another important factor is that a lot of people no longer want to work at a university; this is something I’ve heard from many colleagues in Germany. Something will have to change.’

That does mean that students will end up paying the price.

‘That would be a shame. There is a movement that advocates for the shuttering of universities if these situations persist or worsen. But I think we haven’t explored all possibilities. There should be an external hotline to file grievances, another ombuds person, and external regulation. I think we’ve proven by now that universities can’t self-regulate.’

Recently, there was a report on a hostile work environment at the TU Delft; the university’s board thinks the report is insufficient. Additionally, there were reports of intimidation and discrimination at the Nijmegen School of Management, who are also in the midst of financial turmoil. Are these managers making odd, panicked decisions that they wouldn’t make when things were quiet?

‘I think that is a misconception. There are always lovely policy documents, but those are mainly used by admins to show what a good job they’re doing. My colleague Sarah Ahmed (British-Australian researcher in the field of feminism and postcolonialism, eds.) refers to it as ‘You end up doing the document rather than doing the doing.’ They distract from actual policymaking.’

‘Zakia Essanhaji, another speaker at Nijmegen’s International Women’s Day, has shown through her research that issues of diversity are always foisted onto those outside the majority. She also showed how filing a complaint at a university is made nigh impossible.’

‘Documents and procedures are written in such a way that the whistleblowers themselves are individually problematised’

‘Documents and procedures are written in such a way that the whistleblowers themselves are individually problematised, despite them reporting on structural injustices like racism, discrimination, and abuse of power. The undertow of these practices of inequality is ever-present. But in those cases with additional pressures, such as reorganisations or budget cuts, the undertow comes bubbling to the surface.’

How can we begin to find a solution?

‘Do not leave it up to the people who benefit from inequality to solve inequality. Any factor that encourages or facilitates bad behaviour needs to be removed from the system. Think of temporary contracts and precarious working conditions, but also of hierarchies. If everyone is a professor, universities will become uninteresting to people who are mainly in it for status and power. A lot of misconducts would vanish overnight.’

The celebration of International Women’s Day 2024 will be hosted by the Radboud Gender & Diversity Studies network, as well as the Radboud Women Professors Network. It will take place in the chapel of the Berchmanianum building.

Translated by Jasper Pesch