{"id":141030,"date":"2022-06-01T16:27:29","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T14:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=141030"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:18","slug":"even-at-the-knaw-there-are-sometimes-only-men-on-the-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/06\/01\/even-at-the-knaw-there-are-sometimes-only-men-on-the-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Even at the KNAW there are sometimes only men on the panel’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere are more stars in the sky than you see through your car windscreen\u201d, says Ineke Sluiter. \u201cYou have to take a good look around you.\u201d This week the professor of Greek language and literature stepped down as president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).<\/p>\n

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Ineke Sluiter has been president of the KNAW since 1 June 2020. On Monday, she stepped down.<\/span><\/p>

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The coronavirus crisis had just started when Leiden University professor Ineke Sluiter became president of the KNAW. The discussions in society soon became heated. Scientists were threatened, women more so than men, and Sluiter took up the cudgels on their behalf. She asked all scientists to do the same. \u201cThis is no time for irony\u201d, she warned. \u2018\u2019Don\u2019t ask why someone is on television all the time. We need to support them, even if we don\u2019t always agree with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\t

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Ineke Sluiter (63) is professor of Greek language and literature at Leiden University. Since 1 June 2020, she has been president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, together with three other female professors, she founded Athena’s Angels to stand up for the interests of women in science.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

Now that she is bidding farewell, she takes a look back. \u201cDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, what had apparently been smouldering unseen seemed to explode\u201d, she says. \u201cConducting a public debate is one of the major tasks of scientists, but suddenly they were being severely threatened and intimidated, hate speech was flying around everywhere. It was a scary situation, and to make things worse they were working from home and couldn\u2019t see their colleagues. People felt isolated. We asked for attention to be paid to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018Hate speech was flying around everywhere during the pandemic\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

Threatened scientists<\/h2>

Something else surprised her as well. \u201cThere was a shocking difference between the treatment of men and women. Men got verbal abuse but women were also threatened with rape.\u201d She was in a position to speak out, Sluiter realised, so she needed to do just that.<\/p>\n

She had previously spoken out in public as a member of the action group Athena\u2019s Angels, which challenges sexism in science. \u201cWe did that through playful stunts. It was all quickfire and light-hearted.\u201d<\/p>\n

That had an effect. But in her view, as an administrator you are in an even better position to improve things, for those threatened scientists for example. There is now a hotline for threats and the researchers get good information. \u201cHow do you safeguard evidence, how can you save tweets, how do you make your accounts secure? And from now on if you go to the police, someone from the institution will go along with you to make a report as well. The universities have now introduced measures of this sort and I hope it helps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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Read more<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t