ESL PhD candidate loses lawsuit over Gaza letter

PhD candidate Ahmed Maged has lost a lawsuit against Erasmus University over an open letter about Gaza. He wanted to change supervisor because of their view on the genocide and demanded his PhD position back at the Erasmus School of Law.

Ahmed Maged asked for a different supervisor at the Erasmus School of Law because that supervisor had signed an open letter in 2024 that called against cutting ties with Israeli universities. In the letter the accusation of genocide against Israel was described as ‘completely unacceptable’.

That deeply offended the Egyptian PhD candidate of Palestinian descent. Although he had described the cooperation as pleasant up to that point, from that moment on he wanted a different supervisor. In December 2024 he submitted a request to the committee of supervisors.

Not permitted

The committee did not allow it, because the regulations permit a change only in specific cases, such as where supervision is inadequate or a supervisor is no longer willing or able to supervise the PhD candidate. According to the committee that was not the case.

The committee said the open letter was part of a public debate in which there must be plenty of room for differing views. That the supervisor had expressed a political opinion that was very sensitive to the PhD candidate did not make him unsuitable as a supervisor.

Chilling effect

The committee also attached great importance to precedent if a PhD candidate were allowed to demand a different supervisor on the basis of political or religious views. That could have a ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of expression.

Despite several attempts at mediation, the candidate’s contract was not renewed because of his continued refusal to work with the supervisor, and he therefore had to leave Erasmus University on 31 August 2025.

‘Grossly trivialised’

Maged appealed the decision of the committee of supervisors to the court. He argued that the committee was wrong to assume the letter fell within the bounds of freedom of expression. He said that when using freedom of expression account must be taken of the rights and feelings of others. According to Maged, the letter ‘whitewashed, denied, or at least grossly trivialised’ Israel’s genocidal acts. As a result, the relationship of trust between him and his supervisor was fundamentally damaged.

Freedom of expression

On 10 June the court ruled in the case. It emphasised that the case was not about whether the supervisor was allowed to sign the letter, but whether that had consequences for how he fulfilled his role as a supervisor.

The court followed the reasoning of the committee of supervisors that the letter falls within freedom of expression. That Maged takes the views in the letter very personally, the court said, is separate from the question whether the supervisor breached a legal rule and thereby damaged the relationship. The judge also weighed that Maged acknowledged the relationship had been good before he discovered the letter and that the supervisor had never, in his presence, made political statements that offended him.