In autumn of 2022, the first report was lodged, UM wrote on its intranet yesterday, after which Annemie Schols, dean of the faculty concerned, commissioned an investigation into the professor’s behaviour. He was subsequently suspended, was no longer allowed to teach and not welcome at the faculty. In the end, five reports by PhD candidates and students “were included in the investigation,” says UM spokesperson Koen Augustijn. “The nature, seriousness and magnitude of the professor’s unacceptable behaviour” have now led to a dismissal procedure, according to the intranet message.
UM is not going to disclose the identity of the person concerned; Observant knows who he is, but will not publish this information for reasons of privacy. Nobody has said which department or research school it concerned or what kind of behaviour it involved, this being “in the interest of those involved and because we want to treat the process with the utmost care,” says Augustijn. Dean Schols does not want to say how far the professor went – is he being accused of rape, assault? She is sticking to “unacceptable sexual behaviour towards people who at that time were in a situation of dependence on the professor”.
The past few months, a great deal has been written about unacceptable behaviour in academic circles. A professor of Astronomy from Leiden was in the news last October. A Flemish professor of Didactics in Belgium was convicted of raping a student around the same time; he had previously worked at UM. Recently, in March, it was announced that a professor from the Faculty of Social Sciences in Utrecht was suspended after seventeen reports of unacceptable behaviour. He also previously worked at UM.