Thoughts about Distributed Leadership at University

Already some years ago, our university management coined the issue of ‘leadership’ and suggested that each of us, working at our university in the realm of our tasks and formal competencies, could be a true leader, by taking the lead or taking initiatives without waiting to be asked, adopting responsibility for the results and impacts of what we do, instead of just being satisfied, when we did what we were asked to do, irrespective of if it fulfilled its objectives, and also by being visionary and by looking forward, to anticipate what needs to be done to improve and to formulate ambitious but feasible new objectives. These slogans are, of course, taken from the heart, and represent principles we can easily associate with. Yes, indeed, this is how you expect every professional to operate. This is so obvious, that you cannot be opposed to it.

As a chair of the geography group, we are usually not selected for this job on the basis of our management skills, but rather on the basis of our experience and derived skills in scientific research and teaching and our specific competence in that specific disciplinary field. So developing a conceptual framework for our daily managerial tasks is not our daily business, but acting as a truly academic professional is. From that perspective, it is easy to associate our daily practices with the above-mentioned principles of professional leadership. Yes, this is what we usually do and practice, and also what we would self-evidently expect from our direct colleagues. This is standard academic practice. Certainly, we should also admit that sometimes we perform better and sometimes a bit worse in these respects. It is not always our day… and we — for all kinds of reasons — have our ups and downs.

But being the chair of such a group of great academics certainly makes us aware of what it needs for each group member to perform as ‘a leader’. They should be able to develop themselves further instead of staying put where they are right now. Being agile and ambitious, curious and oriented toward lifelong learning seems to be priority attributes for (young) academics. We should keep on the move…, intellectually, and geographically, always exploring new horizons and following our ambitions to contribute new knowledge for a better future world. Academics grow through different phases, from Bachelor, to Master, to PhD, to Post-Doc, to Assistant Prof., Associate Prof. to Full Professor, etc. etc. This kind of academic career, therefore, is not just a job and also not just for the money or for other rewards, but is about realising individual humanitarian values and about contributing these values as a public service to society. Being successful in a university career is not about basic job security and bread on the table but is about being part of a movement, of an intellectual debate, of a collaborative team and of a larger academic and societal community. As the chair of the group, you feel happy when all members of the group could at anytime find a job elsewhere. That might sound strange, as every valuable colleague who leaves our group of course also leaves a big void which is never easy to fill again, so why not try to keep them? But on the other hand, it is also one of the best proofs of the high quality of our work to be wanted and needed elsewhere and it is a confirmation that we keep being on the move. I also see myself as a wanderer, and I keep asking ‘what is next’ and ‘where will I be next’, I am always searching for new horizons and always keep hoping to discover new and better worlds. It is therefore also a self-evident task for each of us, to develop a strong, group- and individual profile, to be well geared for the journey. This becomes increasingly important when one moves up the ladder of development of our ‘leadership’. This is therefore also what our leadership as a chair by nature focuses on and attempts to establish for the group: having a sensible distribution of different enhancing competencies within the group, enabling a good team performance in both teaching and research; having a lively, inspiring and stimulating internal and external intellectual debate; positioning each of us in such a way that we can develop our own core competencies and develop our (individual) profile, and also take up (managerial) leadership tasks which suit that profile in that specific stage of development.

One might say that most of this focuses mainly on the enabling input factors of a good academic performance. The other side of the coin is of course that this should also result in a good performance and a good ‘output’, in teaching, research and organisational teamwork. To make sure that we try to keep improving ourselves in these respects, it is self-evidently also needed that we keep assisting and supporting each other and that we also do not shy away from addressing things which are less successful. In a good academic tradition, this should not just come from ‘above’ but should be part of the mutual debates about our daily performance. Also in academia, there is, of course, some kind of hierarchy, but usually not determined by one-sided authoritarian criteria, but rather by different functions and responsibilities. So each of us in our specific realm of responsibility is somehow at the virtual top of a leadership hierarchy. Yes, the chair of the examination board should be able to take well underpinned final decisions on examination and admission issues, and yes, the principal investigator of a research project, should be able to take responsibility for spending the research funding in an appropriate way, and yes, the master-programme coordinator will be responsible for the recruitment of new Ma-students and of developing the Ma-curriculum, and yes, the post-doc should be allowed to develop new research initiatives and take the lead in building consortia and proposal writing, and yes the PhD candidate can also take the initiative to develop their teaching portfolio, and yes the PhD supervisor should take his or her responsibility in supporting the PhD candidates to develop their research project, and yes the chair takes the responsibility to develop and discuss the longs term strategies for personnel decisions, and long term research and teaching programmes, again others are focussing on internationalisation etc. etc. So each of us is somehow a ‘boss’ and leader for our own field of responsibilities, while in total it is a team performance. I do not know, how this would be designated in ‘management-speak’. In other blog entries I have discussed this idea as ‘collegial management’, but one may also denote it in other terms: See my earlier entry on Collegial Leadership

These kinds of routine academic practices can be observed in many places and occasions. In the past decades, universities have suffered from increasing managerialism, in an attempt to transform universities into knowledge factories mainly driven by and organised according to principles of efficiency and fund-raising potential and not by the principles of scientific curiosity or by an endeavour to contribute scientifically to a better society. See e.g. the Academic Manifesto also mentioned in my vision on research on this blog site:

The newest managerial ideas within our university are inspired by the concept of ‘Distributed Leadership’. Again a leadership model, which in the first instance sounds very sympathetic, but mainly because we have the feeling that we recognise much of our traditional academic practices, and not because we think this is totally different or new in academia. It is always nice that what we daily practice now seems to have gotten a clear name and label. One of the prominent proponents of the concept of distributed leadership is Prof. Alma Harris. For those who are interested in an extended elaboration of the details of this concept, one can have a look at the following YouTube video lecture of 2009 (click on picture to start the video):

When you listen carefully, you will notice that the description of this leadership model positions itself mainly negatively in contrast to certain assumed bad practices which are described as ‘traditional’ and much more ‘hierarchical’. Indeed we know some of these more hierarchical practices from the recent ways universities tried to organise themselves and which were already heavily criticised in the Academic Manifesto of 2015, referred to above. But nowadays we live in 2022 and to a large part, our university, or at least our Department has moved on and has revisited our old liberal academic traditions and progressively attempted to reinstall and practice these in our everyday professional life, sometimes even in resistance against hierarchical demands from above. In that respect, this new call for distributive leadership to a certain degree seems ‘old wine in new bags’. So one might wonder how far, in our department, there currently is an identified problem that this new managerial strategy is supposed to help us solve? Certainly, the way we organise our everyday professional practices needs continuous attention and fine-tuning and can be helped with these ‘not-so-new’ conceptual frameworks, but they certainly do not represent a radical change in our liberal and rather egalitarian academic traditions, even if it is nice that we can now at least give it a name. This qualification might not be valid for all parts of our university, but we are certainly proud of the way we created our own ‘academic place’, our academic agora, within our faculty and university, a placemaking endeavour which is in good hands with geographers.

References

Bolden, R. (2011) Distributed Leadership in Organizations: A Review of Theory and Research. International Journal of Management Reviews. Vol. 13, pp. 251-269.

Harris, A. (ed.) (2009) Distributed Leadership. Different perspectives. Springer, Amsterdam.

Harris, A. (ed.) (2014) Distributed Leadership Matters: Perspectives, Practicalities and Potential. Sage, London.

Leithwood, K., Mascall, B. & Strauss, T. (eds.) (2009) Distributed Leadership According to the Evidence. Routledge, London.

09.10.201817.10.2018

Collegial Leadership as Placemaking

Universities are organisations which are not easy to run and manage. Most employees are highly educated professionals, and as such often self-confident intellectuals with their own independent visions and ideas and not necessarily diligent and willing employees happy to follow any directives of their superiors. They are not easily managed or steered. Leadership in these kind of settings can not easily be characterised. Of course knowledge in the ‘knowledge industry’ of a university this specialised knowledge is a crucial asset for leadership, but also experience with different kinds of settings and situations in which knowledge is created are of equally great importance. Seniority expressed in this kind of knowledge and experience, often in a very specific specialised field, therefore is an important resource, and often the main criteria for appointing professors. At the same time especially full professors as chair holders are supposed to also have the scope and overview over the broader disciplinary and inter-disciplinary field, as well as the ability to think outside of the box based on experiences with doing ‘science’ in very different organisational situations and settings. These are essential qualification for leadership in knowledge oriented organisations. So even when we would seek to create a flat organisation, we need to accept that we are dealing with a situation where there is a kind of natural hierarchy with respect to the professional background and experience. On the other hand in this situation also an autocratic authoritarian leadership will always fail. There is no-one able to have the competence to overview it all and know it best. So hierarchy is somehow naturally given within specific professional fields, but respectful collegial team work between peers in different disciplinary fields is needed.

Given this situation in universities and other organisation in higher education, one often prefers a collegial model of management and leadership. ‘The academic environment seems to be particularly suited to collaborative leadership. The presence of numerous semi-autonomous academic, administrative, and staff structures characterised by relatively highly educated individuals makes the academic particularly susceptible to silo thinking and a lack of a level of communication and interaction across areas necessary for optimal success’ (Mooney, Burns & Chadwick, 2012, p. 144). But what does this entail?

What is collegial leadership?

Bush (2003, p. 65-67) report that collegial models have the following major features (adapted from http://www.opentextbooks.org.hk/ditatopic/17925):

They are strongly normative in orientation. This is not so much leadership because of formal procedures and division of authorities, and much more based on the normative visions, convictions and strategies, and therefore much more ‘content’ and less process and structure based (Webb & Vulliamy, 1996, p. 443). Usually, taking in the competences and experiences of the leader into account, this also implies that the leader takes the initiative and comes with elaborate proposals. Here hierarchy thus pays a role.
Collegial models seem to be particularly appropriate for organisations such as universities that have significant numbers of professional staff. Scientists have an authority of expertise that contrasts with the positional authority associated with formal models. Scientists require a measure of autonomy in the lacture hall and in their research but also need to collaborate to ensure a coherent approach to teaching, learning and researching (Brundrett, 1998, p. 307). Collegial models assume that professionals also have a right to share in the wider decision-making process. Shared decisions are likely to be better informed and are also much more likely to be implemented effectively.
Collegial models assume a common set of values held by members of the organisation. These common values guide the managerial activities of the organisation and are thought to lead to shared educational and research objectives. The common values of professionals form part of the justification for the optimistic assumption that it is always possible to reach agreement about goals and policies. Brundrett (1998, p. 308) goes further in referring to the importance of ‘shared vision’ as a basis for collegial decision-making.
The size of decision-making groups is an important element in collegial management. They have to be sufficiently small to enable everyone to be heard. This may mean that collegiality works better in elementary schools, or in sub-units, than at the institutional level in secondary schools. Meetings of the whole staff may operate collegially in small departments but may be suitable only for information exchange in larger institutions. The collegial model deals with this problem of scale by building-in the assumption that scientists have formal representation within the various decision-making bodies. The democratic element of formal representation rests on the allegiance owed by participants to their constituencies (Bush, 2003, p. 67).
Collegial models assume that decisions are reached by consensus. The belief that there are common values and shared objectives leads to the view that it is both desirable and possible to resolve problems by agreement. The decision-making process may be elongated by the search for compromise but this is regarded as an acceptable price to pay to maintain the aura of shared values and beliefs. The case for consensual decision-making rests in part on the ethical dimension of collegiality. Imposing decisions on staff is considered morally repugnant, and inconsistent with the notion of consent.

One can also have a look at this brief video by Dan Wood on different collegial leadership styles (click on image):

Essential to this collegial idea is that leadership should not just be seem as a vertical relationship, but also as a horizontal leadership relation between equals. In practice this implies that there is a hierarchy in decision making based on differing level of qualifications and competences, but that this vertical leadership is based on persuasion creating sufficient support. At the same time the horizontal leadership is based on respectful acceptance of the specific competences of one’s peers. With respect to decision making this requires a consensus model in which final decisions need to be taken by unanimity, or to put it in other terms, that each of the members of the decision making body have a right to veto the decision. In a working consensus model this will probably be a very rare case. In case of a consensus decision, in a collegial system this decision is also presented as a joint decision, and the decision making body would also be jointly responsible for the implementation of the decision. If no consensus can be reached usually the next higher level of authority would come to a final verdict.

These collegial ideas are, in my personal view, very essential for the kind of Place a university is and for the kind of Culture which characterises our Department as an intellectual breeding ground for great scientific ideas for the future.

Bureaucracy and Workload at Universities

Yesterday (18.09.2018), Marc Tribelhorn, a geographer by education, published a commentary in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), the Swiss quality Newspaper about the development of ‘Bureaucracy’ in today’s world which resembles a lot of what we observe in modern universities and which is next to continuous budget cuts one of main reasons for a killing work load and crumbling quality of teaching and research. Not very new, but story which is right from the heart of many scientists working at universities and doing their utmost to inspire and educate our future generation and to create the knowledge our society needs to address the problems of tomorrow. Here is my free translation of that brief commentary:

Those who want to express the discomfort in our service society in one word are well served by the Anglicism: ‘bullshit jobs’. For example, David Graeber, ethnologist, anarchist and professor at the prestigious London School of Economics, described a phenomenon which is not limited to public sector, but can also be found in board rooms of private companies: jobs of which do not seem to make any sense and which you probably will also not miss it if they did not exist. Graeber coined this idea on the basis of the answers to the question ‘What do you do for a living?’ posed while socialising at parties. Increasingly the answers puzzled him when professions like ‘Human Resources Management Consultant’, ‘Regulatory Compliance Manager’ or ‘Senior Compensation & Benefits Specialist’ were mentioned. In England, in a representative study, nearly 40 percent of respondents said they do not contribute anything useful to society through their wage labour. Graeber first wrote an essay and then a book on this issue that caused a stir around the world because they strike a nerve despite the thin empirics: Many contemporaries have the impression that in the administration and in the middle management of companies more and more well-paid people work without being productive in the narrow sense of the word, i.e. without contributing to consumption and investment. Worse yet, the bullshit jobs are not just an expression, but are the drivers of ever more bureaucratic excesses.

Undoubtedly, more and more activities require more and more time to document the work done and to justify the future work, as the Zurich economics professor Bruno S. Frey stated several years ago. We all know this from our everyday work? Everything is diligently questioned, controlled, administered, optimised and reformed, supervised, outsourced, reintegrated and harmonised – in an endless Möbius loop. Rarely, this results in something tangible and useful, but it always produces a lot of paper and ever more administration. What is sold as a recipe for simplification, streamlining and improving work processes often cause exactly the opposite.

The power of numbers

A prime example is the evaluation, which one can no longer dismiss as a fad, so omnipresent it has become in the modern organisation of labour. In the third decimal place, companies and authorities are now collecting so-called key figures that are supposed to prove, for example, ‘performance’ or the ‘satisfaction’ of the employees. Entire internal departments and an army of external consultants specialise in such ‘monitoring’ in the sense of ‘quality management’. There is nothing that cannot be measured. Only: Not every measurement leads to findings that deserve this name. It’s like with medication, where the dose determines if it is poisonous or not. Not to mention the monstrous ‘evidence-based’ reports, that are produced but not read, but nevertheless are followed by further meetings, debriefings, as well as action plans, regulations, and guide lines. The complaints about the rampant ‘administration’ in all spheres of professional life are fierce and omnipresent. Doctors, teachers, police officers, bank client advisers, nursing experts or scientists, all complain about the protocols, questionnaires and other forms of data collection that would hinder their actual work today.

These are historically and culturally interesting findings. Could it be that in recent decades the way we deal with bureaucratic processes has imperceptibly, but fundamentally changed?

The concept of bureaucracy, when coined in the 19th century, was limited to actions and functioning of powerful civil servants. The sociologist Max Weber later enthused about the ‘formally most rational form of exercise of power’, an ideal for a lean and efficient organisation that guaranteed standardised processes for modern societies. But soon there were signs of degeneration. The dubious reputation of the bureaucracy, for example, observed by British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who had a keen sense of the absurdities of the world of work. In the mid-1950s, the ‘Darwin of the Manager Age’ (‘Time’ magazine) published its famous Parkinson’s Law on Administration, which basically anticipated Graeber’s bullshit job thesis. Firstly: ‘Every employee wishes to increase the number of his subordinates, but not the number of his rivals’. Secondly, ‘Employees create work for each other’. And Parkinson says this work will never end because it will always expand, in the same rate as the time available for it. So the bureaucracy keeps on growing – no matter if its actual tasks are reduced or not.

Even digitisation, of which one expected a relief like in the so called paperless office, in reality mainly produced additional administration

Ever since Parkinson’s seminal classic, the state administration of liberal spirits is scolded as a juggernaut, insatiably generating new jobs, fields of activity and idle procedures. Bureaucracy has become a political swearword, and nothing is more popular and easier than tuning into the song of the indignant. But to the chagrin of their critics, bureaucracy has transformed everything that has been designed to stop bureaucracy into even more bureaucracy. Even digitisation, of which one expected a relief like in the so called paperless office, in reality mainly produced additional administration.

Meanwhile, the concept of bureaucracy has become more and more the metaphor for all kinds of meaningless self-employment – even in the private sector. The fact that excessive bureaucracy is not an exclusive phenomenon in public administration was already acknowledged by the analyst Parkinson. Shortly after publication of his laws, the author received enthusiastic letters from business circles: ‘How is it possible that you know our company?’, was asked with a degree of surprise. This already called into question the capitalist master story, according to which the market automatically eliminates the irrationality and inefficiency of economic actors.

«Cover your ass!»

In the private sector, however, on tends to explain the rapid increase in administrative work with state regulatory rage. That is only partially true: in Switzerland alone, the systematic collection of laws by the federal government between 2004 and 2015 grew from 53,958 to 69,354 pages. The world is increasingly interconnected. This also calls for more ordering and coordination, which is why the state increasingly intervenes with laws and regulations in the economic processes. As an example, one can think of the compliance regulations in the banking sector, monitored by countless legally educated employees. And the administrative paperwork that companies incur as a result of such activities is expensive. In 2013, the federal government estimated the direct regulatory costs in the most important economic sectors at around 10 billion francs per year. The Swiss Trade Association even puts it at 50 billion francs.

But the bureaucracy problems in the private sector are also home-made and follow a general social trend: the avoidance of risks, the fear of mistakes and the flight from responsibility. For these reasons, management departments such as controlling, communications, internal legal departments and, of course, HR are flourishing, which has long ceased to be concerned only with employment contracts and conflicts. Everything has to be meticulously transcribed, measured and double-fused in order to be protected against negative headlines or lawsuits, both in private companies as well as in state agencies. ‘Cover your ass’ is the English name for it.

The emeritus Bernese professor Norbert Thom for economics, who spent decades researching ways of reducing bureaucracy, also observes how the zeitgeist is characterised by the drive to avoid uncertainty and to permanent preservation of evidence. Therefore, with Swiss precision everything is logged, evaluated, quantified and controlled from above, which has led to a massive increase in internal bureaucracy. The corresponding departments would develop a considerable life of their own and grow steadily.

This ‘all risk’ mentality, based on dense regulations, but without any error culture, has consequences that go beyond the loss of efficiency and the immediate cost increases: It smothers the cardinal liberal virtues of employees such as personal responsibility, intrinsic motivation, expertise and common sense. Ultimately, it also undermines the mechanism that, according to sociologist Niklas Luhmann, reduces complexity in modern societies and in companies – trust.

03.09.201830.09.2018

Curiosity Driven Research and Teaching

The opening lecture at this year’s opening of the academic year was presented by Bert Wagendorp and addressed the topic ‘Curiosity’. As a researcher socialised at a real Research University, curiosity is very close to my heart, and I felt strong sympathy and agreement with the words of Bert Wagendorp. Below you find my own free translation of his speech.

It is a great honour for me to be here today and to be able to contribute to the opening of the academic year. That has never happened to me at my alma mater, the University of Groningen.

Nijmegen is a special place for me, my mother was born here, my grandfather was a teacher at the Hazenkampseweg and my great-grandfather was a well-known Nijmegen farmer. And then somewhere in my family tree there is also a verger of the St. Stevens Church.

The fact that I can sing the praise of curiosity and doubts here at a former Roman Catholic university as a journalist of a former Roman Catholic newspaper makes it extra special. Progress exists.

I am a journalist and I find it a happy coincidence that the topic of this afternoon is curiosity. Because curiosity is the basis of my profession. A journalist without curiosity can better do something else. In that respect, there is an agreement between journalists and scientists.

I do not know how that is with scientists, but there are many more journalists who lose their curiosity than you might think.

‘Losing’ is, by the way, the wrong word, we can not lose something that is ingrained in our minds. But there may come a time when we deny our curiosity, stop asking questions, because looking for answers is too strenuous for us. Journalists caught by this, for example, become university educators. Then the taming of curiosity has become their profession. Other journalists who have put aside their curiosity remain journalists, because denying your curiosity does not mean that you do not have to pay the mortgage anymore. Scientists who lose their curiosity, often then become university administrators.

The loss of curiosity is tragic and an important signal, at least, according to the Portuguese writer José Saramago. According to him, old age starts where curiosity ends. He died in 2010 at the age of 86 as a curious man who had never become old.

Incidentally, I can understand the man who puts his curiosity on the back burner. Keeping curiosity alive requires a lot of effort and answering the questions that emerge from the curiosity as well. And then you have to wait and see if those answers are sufficient. Usually they lead to new questions that also beg for an answer. The life of the curious person is restless, boundless and endless. Curiosity can lead to disillusionment and the loss of security. But it also leads to enrichment.

According to the Bible, Eva, the wife of Adam, was the first curious person. Seduced for this by the serpent, she took a bite of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have seen where that led to. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the blissful paradise of ignorance and ended up in the rugged world of eternal questions and the arduous search for answers; in short, in the world in which curiosity reigned, our world. Without curiosity, As it turned out, there was no survival outside of paradise.

But, to be honest, it was also incredibly boring in paradise. There was nothing to experience. It was even worse than in Centerparcs. How Adam and Eve should have endured eternal life in paradise, God alone knows.

Life only began to become interesting and exciting when the gate of paradise was locked behind them and doubt appeared on the horizon. And that was because of the bonus given to any kind of curiosity: the curious constantly explores the distant unknown, meets great minds and experiences things that will remain unknown to the less curious. The most important of these experiences is the surprise, the overwhelming new insight that turns everything upside down. Curiosity leads to better understanding, to explanations for the hitherto unexplained. And to new curiosity.

Coincidentally, a novel by my hand appeared last year about a journalist who reached the end of curiosity. When my editor-in-chief read the book Masser Brock, it counts 412 pages, he said that I could also have done with a letter of resignation of two A-4s. In that comment was a truth and an untruth. The truth was that whoever loses his curiosity is no longer suitable for this profession. And then I’m not just talking about the journalist. It had made little difference to the core of the novel if I had made Masser Brock a scientist.

The untruth was that the protagonist in the novel and the author of the novel should never be equated.

Coincidentally, Masser Brock had developed a theory that I often use myself. Like me, he called it the Theory of Layered Truths. This theory is based on the stratification of reality and the different truths that come with it. According to Masser, you can divide the news according the depth of each level of truth. A bare news item can consist of one single layer and then it is unambiguous and uninteresting. But there may also be several layers of truth, the news item may then only be the tip of the iceberg. In that case it forms a layered story, in which you can set one truth against another, or in which a truth is thrown upside down by the truth underneath. Digging for the different layers of truth is done with the help of to the five W’s, Who, What, Where, When and especially: Why.

For science too, the Theory of Layered Truths is a useful tool. There the ‘Why’ is the magical abacadabra of the curious truth seeker.

We have just heard the beautiful song ‘Dare to Doubt’, and I can assure you that Masser Brock could have joined in with full conviction. There are few ‘doubters’ in the Dutch literature of the same calibre of Masser Brock. He doubts everything; he not only dares to doubt, he actually can not do otherwise. That does not make his life easier.

Doubt and curiosity are brother and sister. Who doubts is researching, for those who know for certain, research is superfluous. Eventually the doubter is driven by a certain despair, for doubt is an exhausting state of being. The doubter is life-long looking for security, with the only certainty, that he will never find it. That is not really a pleasant fact, but that is life, we call it la condition humaine.

In a moment of great lucidity, Masser suddenly sees that reality has the form of a pyramid. Under every truth, There is not one other truth, no, there are at least two. And below them there are four. Etcetera. And that continues until at the base of the pyramid it becomes so complicated that nobody really understands it any more. The deeper you dig, Masser thinks, the more confused it becomes. There is no single truth, there are infinite truths.

The truth is a convention, an article of faith to keep things a bit clear and reassuring.

Then Masser leaves for the Provence, where he observes the growth of the grapes, without even wondering how that actually works.

What I want to say with this is that the curious does not choose the easiest way, he gets a lot of trouble and hassle on his neck. But we can not do otherwise. The former ‘Thinker of the Fatherland’, the philosopher René Gude, said that our incessant, curious striving for knowledge is nothing more than an attempt to supplement ourselves, to brush up, to develop. To put an end to a gnawing sense of emptiness and to find an answer to the disturbing question of what we are doing here and why. According to him, curiosity had to do with a desire – without knowing exactly what we desire.

That desire is endless, just like our curiosity. Our observation is limited, Gude said, following Descartes, our minds are limited, our whole ability is limited, but our will, our desire for knowledge, our curiosity knows no limitation.

In biology we know the concept of neoteny: the human being who, for much longer than other animals, continues to exhibit youthful characteristics and whose brain is not fully mature until around the age of 25. That, in turn, is related to the fact that we are actually born too early and therefore have been working for a relatively long time to become adults. It concerns physical characteristics, but perhaps curiosity is a mental form of it. The human being who is curious about the world around him will always stay young and keeps asking questions. Who, in the terminology of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, constantly enters new spheres and tries to understand them… We are born curious and curiosity always stays with us.

And fortunately, because our whole civilisation is based on it, and shaped by it. It is a direct result of our curiosity. The greatest minds of our culture were the most curious spirits. You undoubtedly know Albert Einstein’s famous statement: ‘I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious’. Great scholars and great artists are united in curiosity. In the work of the greatest Dutchman in history, the philosopher Spinoza, the curiosity sparks from it. Look at the work of the painter Picasso and you see a life-long quest driven by pure curiosity.

Religions know that curiosity is the ax at the root of faith, and therefore did not stimulate it. In fact, they prefer to put curious people at the faggot. Even in my own youth in a conservative Protestant milieu, curiosity was seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Curiosity, questioning, searching, was dangerous because it would irrevocably lead to answers that were not in accordance with the dogmas on which the belief was based. Dogmas are never curiosity-proof.

In the West, the Enlightenment opened the for curiosity, and immediately the absolute truths were questioned – although they are still very persistent to this day.

Here, I am a guest in a centre of curiosity. I am not sure whether we are still sufficiently aware of this, in this profit- and output-based society, in which the most curious question is: what does it yield? That is not the first question of the curious person. He/she wants to know something much more fundamental, period.

I would not want to nourish the politicians who think that curiosity and its financing should be in the service of the gross national product, the employment and the export of tomatoes and cucumbers. That is legitimate, as long as it is not the only purpose of scientific research. Because then something essential is lost, not only scientifically, but especially in what we ideally and in our deepest sense are: the curious, searching human being.

Every civilised society cherishes the curiosity of artists and scientists, without immediately asking about the utility. It is easy to make a caricature of the artist who is freely creative in his atelier or the absent minded scientist in his ivory tower. But what we then seem to forget is, that they bring us further, perhaps not directly in the economic sense, but as a human beings. We would still live in caves or swampy marshes, if there had not been these incomprehensible searchers who have the why-question remaining on their lips. We would literally have stayed primitive and would never have reached beyond our status quo. Curiosity also stems from dissatisfaction, from the refusal to accept that things just go the way they go.

Saramago’s definition of old age – and perhaps of death – as the end of curiosity, applies to the individual. But perhaps you can generalise it, to society as a whole. Perhaps a society in which curiosity is not or not sufficiently cherished is ageing, or approaching death. Curiosity is connected with doubt, but also with vitality. It prevents stagnation, lethargy and complacency. A sensible government does not just address the usefulness of innovation by mouth, but it also stimulates curiosity and fundamental research. And is willing to provide the necessary budgets for it. If we really want to look at costs and benefits, I dare to claim that the benefits – and then I am not just talking about the monetary benefits – will far outweigh the costs.

In other countries, people seem much more aware of this than in the Netherlands, the country of utility thinking par excellence. That needs to change, otherwise we will pay a high price for it.

Saramago was a child of poor Portuguese farmers. He was allowed to go to a technical school by grace of God and then worked for years as a car mechanic. But every night he went to the village library to read everything he could get, driven, as he wrote himself, by nothing but curiosity and the will to learn. In 1998 he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

I wish you all an academic year in which the curiosity, the desire for knowledge and the doubt are passionately celebrated and given free rein.

Bert Wagendorp

01.08.201830.09.2018

University in Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Traveling this summer through Kirgistan and Uzbekistan, provided us with great new experiences and knowledge of places we did not know enough of before. Since we moved into a new university building last Christmas, and still need to make that new place to ‘our’ place… it was fascinating to see this early university built by one of the founding fathers of our today’s science, and one of the founding fathers of our own discipline Geography, Ulugh Beg, and what this place expresses and how it impresses you when strolling through them. Then you get the feeling that the architect of our modern, transparent, and unrecognisably similar to almost all modern office buildings all over the world, could have done better in making a special place for science… The art of place making…