The Executive Board should hang its head in shame for blindly participating in this

Jan Willems’ opinion about the WOB request of The Rights Forum

17-02-2022 · Submitted letter

All Dutch universities have been asked to provide documents that show ties with Israeli institutes, and with organisations that propagate support for the state of Israel. Jan Willems, former lecturer at the UM’s Faculty of Law, expresses his displeasure about the course of affairs and role of the Maastricht Executive Board concerning this request based on the Freedom of Information Act (WOB) submitted by The Rights Forum.

I was shocked to hear that the Maastricht Executive Board asked employees to report about their Israeli and Dutch pro-Israeli (read: Jewish) contacts from the past decade. A WOB request from the radicalised anti-Semitic organisation The Rights Forum was unquestioningly passed on. That request can have no other aim than to intimidate people and contribute towards the increasing rousing of public sentiment against everything that is Israeli or Jewish. This makes the request so obviously unreasonable and potentially discriminatory that the Executive Board should hang its head in shame for blindly participating in this.

Jan CM Willems, former lecturer at UM

Postscript of the editors: In the meantime, the universities state on their website The Universities of the Netherlands that The Rights Forum's Wob request has led to feelings of unrest and insecurity. They want to better investigate what to do with the request.