On 31 August, Ahmed Maged’s PhD track at the law faculty was terminated, following a dispute that began almost a year earlier. The PhD candidate believed that his supervisor and another professor had made unacceptable statements about Gaza and Palestinians. He requested a different supervisor after an open letter opposing the severance of ties with Israeli institutions was published. His supervisor had signed this letter in May 2024, in which the accusation of genocide against Israel was described as ‘completely unacceptable’. “The accusation (…) traffics in ugly canards and tropes about the sinister and malevolent Jew”, the letter states. In other words, according to the signatories, the accusation of genocide is antisemitic.
For this article, EM contacted all main parties involved. EM also reviewed twenty official documents and emails, and had access to the open letter and screenshots of the (re)tweets posted by the director of the European Doctorate in Law & Economics (EDLE), the ESL programme of which Maged was part. Only Ahmed Maged agreed to be interviewed by EM. Dean Harriët Schelhaas and Maged’s supervisor were also asked for an interview or a response. Schelhaas and the supervisor stated that they could not comment due to ongoing legal proceedings and ‘the wellbeing of our staff’. The supervisor did, however, provide feedback on factual details, which has been taken into account in this article. The EDLE director declined to respond for personal reasons. Because the EDLE director and supervisor did not actively cooperate with this story, EM decided not to mention their names. Schelhaas is named because of her position as dean.
Maged also filed complaints against the director of the European Doctorate in Law & Economics (EDLE), the European programme his PhD belonged to. This professor had shared various tweets and retweets on X about the war in Gaza. Based on those posts, Maged accused her of ‘racism, discrimination and incitement to hatred’. In early September, the organisation Muslim Rights Watch Netherlands demanded that the university dismiss this professor and threatened demonstrations in response to the tweets.
‘Bloodthirsty Nazi Arab jihadists’
Maged collected around sixty (re)tweets from the EDLE director, which have since been deleted but of which EM has screenshots. These screenshots show that in August 2024, she reposted an X message claiming that an Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israel was ‘actually a Hamas terrorist who took part in the 7 October attack’ (the evidence provided by the Israeli army was reportedly manipulated, according to an Israeli publication). The professor also retweeted a post from March 2025 that described Palestinians, in reference to the Hamas attack a year and a half earlier, as ‘bloodthirsty Nazi Arab jihadists’.
These and other tweets, as well as the open letter, were unacceptable to Maged. The Egyptian national of Palestinian descent arrived in Rotterdam for his PhD in November 2024. When he learned that his supervisor had signed the open letter, he contacted him. In an email, he wrote that the letter denied the genocide of his own people and therefore questioned whether it was still benificial and healthy to continue the supervision of his PhD. To Maged’s surprise, the reply came not from his supervisor but from dean Harriët Schelhaas.
Request denied
The dean rejected his request for a new supervisor, stating that the PhD regulations provided no grounds for such a change. She regarded the open letter as an expression of the supervisor’s freedom of speech and not as something affecting his professional conduct. A change of supervisor is only allowed in specific cases, such as when the dean finds supervision inadequate or when the supervisor is no longer willing or able to continue. In exceptional cases, a change may occur with the consent of all parties, but the supervisor was willing to proceed.
Two mediation meetings between the PhD candidate and the dean followed, without result. On 18 March 2025, Schelhaas made the final decision that the PhD candidate would not be assigned a new supervisor. If he refused to continue with his current one, his PhD trajectory would end on 1 May. After this decision, Maged sent an email to the EDLE director, demanding her resignation. If she refused, he would report her ‘behaviour and discrimination’ at the faculty to various institutions, including the International Criminal Court (ICC). On 26 March, he also appealed the decision to the Doctorate Board, which temporarily suspended the termination of his PhD.
‘Threatening emails’
The EDLE director responded by filing a complaint against the PhD candidate, accusing him of sending threatening and inappropriate emails to large groups of staff. The Undesirable Conduct Committee (COG) agreed that the emails could be perceived as threatening and stated that his accusations were ‘in no way objectively established’. The Executive Board urged him to stop contacting her. Maged, however, does not understand why his email was seen as threatening. “There’s a difference between an ultimatum and a threat. And if her tweets were innocent, she has nothing to fear from the ICC”, he told EM.
In addition to the appeal procedure regarding his PhD, Maged filed further complaints with the Executive Board on 12 April against his supervisor, the EDLE director and Schelhaas. These concerned the open letter, a breach of privacy (because the supervisor had forwarded the personal matter to the dean), the director’s ‘inciting and hateful tweets’, a guest lecture by a dean from the University of Haifa, and ‘abuse of position’ and ‘institutional discrimination’, because the three staff members allegedly forced him to work with a supervisor ‘who denies the genocide of my people’.
Unfounded
In July, the Executive Board responded to his complaints based on the investigation and advice of the COG. It deemed all complaints unfounded. According to the Board, the director’s tweets fell under freedom of expression and therefore did not violate Maged’s ‘personal integrity’, as Executive Board president Annelien Bredenoord wrote to him.
The rejection prompted Maged to go public. He sent emails to a large group of colleagues and posted on LinkedIn, accusing the university of ‘corruption’ and a ‘sham investigation’. He also shared the EDLE director’s contact details and a photo of her.
Legal action
Maged’s hospitality agreement with the university ended on 31 August. This puts his PhD, which takes place in stages at different European universities, in jeopardy. He is no longer a PhD candidate at ESL, but he may be able to continue his research at the other universities in the EDLE programme. He is now taking legal action to regain his position at ESL.
An external lawyer, on behalf of the university, sent Maged a formal notice on 2 September, demanding that all social media posts accusing staff be removed within ten days. If not, legal proceedings could follow. Maged has not removed the posts, though several of his LinkedIn articles have been deleted by the platform. He regards the formal notice as intimidation of him as a whistleblower and a restriction of his freedom of expression, he told EM.
According to a university spokesperson, the EDLE director has been addressed internally about the tweets. She has since taken her X account offline. In a University Council meeting on this matter, Executive Board president Annelien Bredenoord stated on Tuesday that the university’s social media policy is being reviewed, but that the Executive Board will not actively monitor accounts. “Academic freedom is a valuable principle; scholars must be able to say a great deal.” When asked where she would draw the line, she said: “Incitement to hatred is definitely not allowed. And perhaps the question isn’t just whether you’re allowed to post something, but whether, as a staff member, you should post it”, Bredenoord told the council.
The University acted wrong in not accepting the PhD initial petition to change the supervisor. There was a clear conflict of interest between the parts that in the long term would affect the quality of the doctorate work. Those supervision guidelines should be reviewed. The criteria should not be defined only on academic base. Also, the fact that the relationship could be broken only by agreement of two parts needs review too. As it entails an asymmetrical position, there should be a safe mechanisms to terminate it as it could lead to even worst situations when one of the parts feel imprisoned and can barely demand a change or has the burden of proof, such as in cases of harassment and abuse of position. At a higher education place, healthy human relations should be more important than just following academic criteria or respecting freedom of expression and legislation to inform codes of conduct and action.
How can the school proclaim to support free speech when a professor re-tweets hateful rhetoric but demands that a student take down their own social media posts? The fact that professors felt compelled to sign an open letter supporting a State that bombs hospitals and denies food aid to children is within their rights. But so is sharing your experiences on social media, especially when institutional power is balanced against you. Free speech works both ways.
Wow, so unfortunate. The fact that they claim the professor’s posts fall under freedom of speech, yet still attempt to pursue him for them, perfectly illustrates the attitude of: “This is freedom of speech, but only when it aligns with my own sense of morality.” No one buys this anymore. Sadly, this trend is becoming increasingly common in the West, and it’s something we should all be deeply concerned about.
The situation should have been handled differently — the PhD student should have simply been reassigned to another supervisor. Period.
At a university, people work together from a variety of backgrounds and views. This helps make universities special. Should a faculty member be able to drop a PhD student if his/her political views were different than theirs? I think not. Thus, I am not surprised the university denied the transfer when it was the other way around.
Let’s be honest: if you think this case is unfair but would support punishment for pro-Israel or anti-Gaza statements, that’s hypocrisy. Free speech doesn’t only apply to the side you agree with.