‘In a free state, tongues should be free too’

The Executive Board of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) supports ‘Je suis Charlie’. The Board published its position on the university’s website on Friday.

According to the statement, the Board wishes to express its ‘revulsion at this barbaric act and show its support for the victims’. The Board also stresses the importance of freedom of expression for universities. It refers to the words of Desiderius Erasmus, from whom the university takes its name. The statement goes on to read that ‘“In a free state, tongues should be free too.” An attack on freedom of expression is also an attack on academic freedom. Like other universities, we therefore stand for the right of freedom of expression.’ Rector Magnificus Huib Pols attended the event that took place yesterday at ‘Plein 1940’.

Other universities also took time to reflect on the attack in France and show their support for the victims. Yesterday, the Executive Board at the University of Twente placed a billboard at the main entrance to the campus displaying the text ‘Je suis Charlie’. In Amsterdam, Rector Magnificus Dymph van den Boom referred to the attack as the University of Amsterdam marked its 382nd anniversary. In her address, she said that the ‘attack on Charlie Hebdo impacts on everything we believe in as a university’. Humanities Rally had planned a playful ‘funeral procession’ to protest against measures at Amsterdam University’s Faculty of Humanities but cancelled the event because it would have been inappropriate in the given context. TF