The bone of contention for Kluveld – who had just arrived at the faculty to teach – was the slogan We don’t want no Zionists here. “Hate speech,” said a visibly affected Kluveld. “I am a Zionist. That slogan is aggressive. I am being discriminated against in my own faculty.” There won’t be much teaching today: “It is unsafe.” In October of last year, Maastricht University filed a police report on Kluveld’s behalf after she received threats on social media platform X.
The bone of contention for the protestors was that Kluveld was recording them from a distance. “She’s going to dox us tonight”, they said – sharing footage on social media to name and shame people online. And to FASoS director Constance Sommerey, who tried to mediate between the two: “We’re in danger because of her. And you’re not doing anything. If anything happens, it’ll be your fault.”
"I'm fed up with it"
One student, who had been recording Kluveld in turn, offered to delete her footage if the FASoS historian would do the same. She refused – “I want to have evidence of discrimination. I’m fed up with it, I’m going to make a complaint” – to which some students responded by chanting “you’re not the one being oppressed”.
Sommerey told Observant that she would talk to the students this week, at their request, about their concerns surrounding “the sharing of identifiable footage”. Kluveld asked for a meeting with the dean of FASoS, Christine Neuhold, and the coordinator integral security for the university, Mireille van Emmerik.
Clash
Once the discussion died down, the students left the faculty they had just been marching through noisily. Just as they had previously marched noisily but peacefully through the University College and the Student Services Centre. They handed out flyers with their demands: cut ties with Israeli institutes, and ensure that students can protest safely. There was a verbal clash at the Faculty of Law with a man shouting pro-Israeli slogans; his protest is simply drowned out. And a literal clash, when a passing students appeared to shove one of the protestors.
Remarkably, none of the security staff present intervened all afternoon. Last year, the Executive Board determined that protests are permitted, as long as teaching and research are not disrupted. Some of this afternoon’s teaching was most definitely disrupted. In the words of the dean of the Faculty of Law, Jan Smits, it will be tolerated “as long as it doesn’t last too long”; intervening would only lead to more hassle.