There was no blockade; OAY visitors were able to walk past the protesters. Photos Resource At the opening of the academic year (OAY) yesterday, protests took place both inside and outside Omnia. Although one activist was removed from Omnia in a somewhat heavy-handed manner, the protests proceeded peacefully. This was not the case at OAY protests in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, where the police even had to intervene.
The protest outside Omnia had been announced in advance. At the bottom of the long concrete staircase, around fifty activists from Wageningen4Palestine loudly expressed their views on why WUR should sever ties with Israeli universities. They chanted slogans, handed out pamphlets to OAY visitors and displayed large photos of the atrocities in Gaza, cynically accompanied by the well-known WUR credo ‘For quality of life’ and the theme of this 2025 edition of the OAY, ‘Food for health: what really works’.
There was no blockade, although it sometimes looked that way from a distance. But OAY visitors were able to walk up the Omnia stairs past the activists.
Cutbacks
At the other Omnia entrance, more hidden away to the side, representatives and members of the trade unions protested against national education cutbacks and the way in which WUR is tightening its belt. In terms of noise and number of protesters, their protest was somewhat overshadowed by the Wageningen4Palestine protest. But in the run-up to the elections, there will be more anti-cuts protests, expects FNV trade union official Annelies Coppelmans. ‘There will definitely be another national action, and perhaps also a specific Wageningen protest. In any case, people are very willing to take action.’
Interruptions inside
There was also some protest inside Omnia. Shortly before the President of the Executive Board, Sjoukje Heimovaara, was about to start her speech, one of the more familiar faces of Wageningen4Palestine stepped forward: lab worker Livio Carlucci. Although unannounced, he was given the opportunity to make his statement. His criticism was harsh: ‘How dare WUR dedicate an OAY opening to food & health, when it is crystal clear that Israel uses starvation as a weapon?
How can we trust WUR to have good solutions for food, agriculture and the living environment if the university seems to have no problem with partners who are starving people?’
A little recognition after all?
That opportunity to speak was not granted to the student who stood up a little later during Heimovaara’s speech. He interrupted her when she stated that ‘hunger is not caused by insufficient food production, but by mismanagement and conflicts’. Among other things, he shouted that ‘it can no longer be denied that WUR is complicit in genocide; we know that Israeli universities are directly linked to the army’.
It was precisely at that moment in her speech that Heimovaara, difficult to hear due to the interruption, broached that sensitive subject. She said: ‘We know that in some conflicts, hunger is even used as a weapon of war to starve specific population groups. And we are all too familiar with the examples from Sudan, Gaza, Tigray and Yemen, as documented by the United Nations and various other agencies. These horrific crimes must stop! We agree on that. But we disagree on the role of the university in this.’
The protesting student probably did not hear those last sentences; he was pushed back into his seat by two security guards and, moments later, somewhat roughly removed from the room when he refused to be silenced. Outside, he appeared shaken.
Not an isolated incident
The protest in and around Omnia is not an isolated incident. At the opening of the academic year at the University of Twente, the speech by Prime Minister Dick Schoof, whose visit had already been heavily criticised in advance, was rudely disrupted. In Eindhoven, where outgoing Defence Minister Brekelmans had been invited to speak, the police even had to intervene to remove activists. The police also took action during the protests at the University of Amsterdam. There, after persistent protests, Rector Magnificus Peter-Paul Verbeek ultimately cancelled the ceremony altogether.
Translated with DeepL.com
