Toward an intersectional democratized university - In conversation with the Activistenpartij UvA

Over the past two years, we have seen numerous student protests and encampments – from solidarity with Palestine to opposition to university budget cuts. Far from being spontaneous outbursts of “angry” or “too radical” students, these actions are rooted in years of organized effort and institutional pressure from student groups to democratize the university itself. The Activistenpartij UvA, a leftist progressive student party of the University of Amsterdam, are one of those.

In conversation with Neha, the secretary of Activistenpartij (AP), and Freddie, the vice chair, we are delving into the work of AP, particularly their fights for a more just and democratic university – not just regarding the internal policies of the UvA but also the vast leftist movement of the city.

Gia: Can you tell me more about the Activistenpartij (AP): who are you, how long have you been around, and what is the political stance of AP as a student party?

Neha: Having been around for five years, we are a student party that aims to connect leftist, radical, intersectional and progressive students and staff at the UvA. We fight for a more decolonial, sustainable, just and democratic university not only within the councils or the halls of campuses, but also on the streets of Amsterdam – because we do believe that the student movement should also be connected to a broader working class movement.

G: Can you tell me more about your particular campaigns or interventions in the past few years?

In general, the strategy is to use our position in the university councils to channel the demands of students to the Executive Board, and to protect the rights of students.

Freddie: A big campaign in the early days of AP was the occupation to cut ties with Shell, which we are still fighting. In general, the strategy is to use our position in the university councils to channel the demands of students to the Executive Board, and to protect the rights of students. Another big campaign, obviously, is Solidarity with Palestine. It was also for the protection of students’ rights to protest, given the police’s presence and violence on campus. For example, we have been campaigning to amend the house rules and other sorts of small things that we could, to support what was happening on the ground. 

N: We have also been fighting for a sustainable and affordable canteen for a few years. It culminated in De Nieuw Mensa at the REC campus¹. We are still trying to expand towards other campuses, especially Humanities, which is a food desert at the moment. Other than that, we have been working very hard on accessibility policy centrally, specifically to lift the burden of proof of disability at different faculties so that students can request accommodation at their need more easily. This is also concerned with more flexible study arrangements for working students. We are trying to put this on the agenda of the faculty boards and the central board to make the struggles of working students more visible and to mold education policy in a way that reduces significant delays or setbacks to their studies.

F: An overarching thing that we are working on right now is democratization. Taking all these topics into account, it is about students and staff not being heard or having a real say over the decisions made in the university. A democratic university would mean that the students and staff who make up the university have the power to make the decisions in it.
This core tenant actually stems from a way longer tradition and movements. There were occupations in 1969 and even 2015 pushing the UvA to be more democratic. That was how we got the student council system today, in which the councils at least have advice rights and consent rights. But what we found over the past five years as AP is that, for all the things that we demand, the councils have a very superficial amount of power to make changes. The CvB² can always have the final say and stick to their own decision, so it is no less than a formality. Therefore, we want to fight and bring that struggle back, to make this university more democratic, where our presence in the council can actually amount to some kind of change and we’re not just always having to plead over and over again without getting a lot back in return.

G: I would like to focus a bit more on the student protest, particularly about what happened in the demonstrations and encampments. What was your role in organizing or supporting student protests, for example, what you prepared before, during and after that?

N: AP’s role is a kind of bureaucratic arm, especially in coalitions like The United Front for Palestine. We collect information from inside the university’s bureaucracy and make sure that things are always on the agenda. When a protest happens, they cannot say that we did not try to talk about it first because we have proof that it has been addressed directly to the faculty board or the central board. Last year, when an occupation happened and the police were sent out, the chair of the CvB went on the news and said that we students did not want to talk or negotiate with them. We were immediately able to disprove it, as we had all the receipts from the past two years showing how we have been lobbying for this through the so-called proper channels, which had not worked, and that was why we had to escalate.

F: Since the protest, some negotiations or promises have been made. We are there in the councils to make sure those promises get followed up on. We can sustain that better through this bureaucratic way rather than having constant protests. Yet, despite our constant follow-ups on the promises that had been made, the UvA board still failed to fulfil them.

N: This is one example that proves why we are pushing for more democratic control from students and staff. If you only look at the Palestine issue and the campaign for cutting ties with Israel, it took two years of pressure, including internal pressure and the culmination of external pressure from the protests, just for the CvB to even make a statement about their moratorium on ties. If it was students and staff who were in charge from the start, this decision would have been made way earlier and prevented a lot of the violence and brutality that happened on campus.

G: That is exactly what I want to follow up on. To what extent does the UvA’s announcement of “not be collaborating with Israel at this time” actually comply with the student and staff’s BDS (Boycott–Divest–Sanction) demands?

N: Of course it is a small victory. I was in the humanities council last year as a council assistant and it took two years of pressure to get them to acknowledge the genocide itself. Yet even then, they still refuse to use the word “genocide” in official university communications, let alone “apartheid.”
But beyond the matter of wording, our main issue with the statement is that, at this moment, it still feels like mere words. There are still collaborations with Israel in the Horizon research projects, despite their promises to look into the legal possibilities of exiting those contracts. Despite our constant pressure in every board meeting up until now, it is still the same kind of stalling that we have seen since 2023. The statement has given the illusion that the “Palestine issue” is solved, but nothing is really being done on the institutional level.
On top of that, we are still demanding the UvA to grant scholarships to Palestinian students, so that they can come here and study, as there are no universities left in Gaza. We want the UvA to lobby with other universities in the Netherlands to get Israel out of the European association agreement that creates these Horizon research projects, which are completely possible for them to do but they still do not.

G: Given what you describe about AP’s work in the UvA, I feel like you guys are fighting for a lot of things at the same time. How do you actually navigate these different fights?

F: I think for us it is a big question of how you stay radical with your demands while being in an extremely bureaucratic environment. It’s what we keep talking about and trying to keep refreshing that energy.

N: We have our collaborations with other leftist organizations like ROSA³, which share the same goals with us but do not always work on the same things. For example, ROSA focuses a lot on educational campaigns on militarization, which means that we, AP, can spend more time and energy promoting democratization on our side.
The strength of being the biggest and most radical student party on campus is that our party does not just consist of people on the student councils but also non-council member activists, who do a lot of political organizing to keep up with many campaigns. When it comes to bureaucratic things, the non-council members can rely on the elected representatives to push these agendas on the bureaucratic level. 

G: So, what would a strong, coordinated Amsterdam student movement look like to you?

The idea that there should be animosity between students and staff, even though in the end we are all fighting for the same things, is very problematic

F: A really big point that we are working on is solidarity between students and staff. The idea that there should be animosity between students and staff, even though in the end we are all fighting for the same things, is very problematic. Staff are also bearing the brunt of the budget cuts, contract cuts and other social issues like rising militarization of the economy. Those are the matters that students can support staff, and vice versa staff can support students on other things — we are much stronger if we realize how we are in this together.

N: For us, a student struggle needs to be rooted in class struggle, which means that the students must be in solidarity with the workers, which, within the university are staff, teachers, and professors. There is always that false idea of opposition between students and staff, that the students are more radical and “crazy” for they have nothing to lose. However, with democratization, despite being a campaign brought forward by students, the staff actually benefit the most, as they are the ones who stay the longest in the university. It has way more impact on the staff body’s lives and their ability to control their contracts and their freedom, in order to teach and mold students into critical thinkers, specialists, and in-depth researchers, rather than diploma robots that push through the system to study as fast as possible just to go straight into the workforce.

G: Do you see any space for alliances between student movements and municipal politics? If so, what would that look like?

F: The problems that students face here go much further than the university bounds. For example, high living costs, expensive public transport, and a lot of uncertainty regarding rising fascism and companies putting profits over people. This is why AP is also in a coalition with De Vonk⁴, which is already in the municipal council. It is really important for us as students to involve ourselves in broader movements in the city and to represent the student voice within the municipal council, which is also why I am in the list for De Vonk this upcoming election myself.

N: There are a lot of things we fight for within the university that the university board claims to be out of their hands and directs instead to the municipality. So, for us, building that power cross-directionally is also important. If the university says that things must be done through the municipal councils, then we should, ideally, have a voice in the municipal council itself. It helps in a more institutional way, but ultimately our goal is not to change the system from within, which we are fundamentally opposed to ideologically. What we are for is using the system to build a bigger revolutionary moment for actual liberation and for a different system that does not leave marginalized and working class people behind but, instead, puts them at the center of the struggle – for a just, inclusive university and city.⁵

1) De Nieuw Mensa is a new campus cafeteria that serves affordable and plant-based food. It is located at the Roeterseilland campus, which is the University of Amsterdam’s campus of Faculty of Social and Behavioural Science, Amsterdam Law School, and Economics and Business.

2) The Executive Board of the university (College van Bestuur).

3) The Radical Organization of Students in Amsterdam, a Marxist organization at universities in Amsterdam.

4) De Vonk — a new leftist municipal party in Amsterdam — is the coalition between AP, RSP (Revolutionair Socialistische Partij) Amsterdam and De Vonk fraction in the municipal council. Their programme aims for an affordable, fair, and democratic Amsterdam and they are running for municipal election this year.

5) See more about the work of Activistenpartij UvA at their instagram and website.