Congratulations on being elected PPE Valedictorian of 2021! How did you feel when you heard your peers elected you?
“At first I was super excited, but I also got a bit nervous, because now I have to give a speech for so many people. It’s really cool because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on three years of PPE and try to envelope it into one speech. Therefore, I feel grateful and honored that my fellow students elected me. I think the other nominated students, Marlene Tröstl and Floris Rozema, were equally qualified to do this, so that makes me even more honored to be chosen. I was doing so many courses within PPE, that sometimes on the fourth floor, people would call me ‘Mister PPE’, so it’s great that I’m now the valedictorian.”
What is your favorite memory at the JSMC?
“In high school, whenever the teacher asked a question, no one really raised their hand, everyone was kind of bored. I remember my first seminar in PPE, Ethics I. When Akshath asked a question, everyone raised their hand because they all wanted to answer. That was so new to me. Within PPE everyone was so motivated to learn and to engage with each other and the material. Perhaps it is not my favorite memory, but it is something that definitely defines my time at PPE.”
What was the subject of your thesis?
“In my thesis, I explored whether economic sanctions can be moral, and effective. The thesis was basically twofold: the first part was a philosophical-political analysis on whether economic sanctions are the morally right thing to do. Is it preferred over war, for example, or is diplomacy better from a moral standpoint. In this part, I employed three philosophical perspectives. The first one was just war theory, the second was utilitarianism, and the last one was capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen. Through that, I wanted to find out whether these economic sanctions were moral or not. The second part was about their effectiveness. I developed a statistical model to test under what circumstances sanctions are more effective or what design of sanction episodes can make them more or less effective.”
What is your main take-away?
“I found two things that were very interesting. What I found is that sanctions aren’t very moral from both the utilitarian and the capabilities approach perspectives, because they inflict a lot of harm on the general population. The damage that economic sanctions do on the population might be morally justifiable, but only if they work and lead to the right outcomes. The second part of my thesis showed that they often do not work. With the statistical model, I was able to determine that for example Sanctions are more effective when they inflict more damage on the targeted country’s economy, but then the moral justification becomes weaker.”
Could you have written this thesis in another programme?
“Through these two different approaches, morality which is more philosophical and effectiveness which is more political-economical, I arrived at a conclusion that was very unique. In the end, my thesis was greatly interdisciplinary because I could not have reached a similar comprehensive conclusion had I only used one of the three perspectives. That is definitely something I’ve learned from PPE, recognizing the value of employing different perspectives to arrive at a new conclusion to a societal problem.”
Looking back on three years of PPE, what was your favorite course?
“I think my favorite course was Political Philosophy 2, taught by Professor Bitumi. It was about international justice, whether the ‘international community’ should intervene in the case of humanitarian conflict. We talked about just reasons for intervention and applied it to the war in the Kosovo and the genocide in Rwanda. We also reflected a lot on the role of humanitarian law in the international political realm, using different philosophical concepts and theories. This course fostered my interest in humanitarian conflict and international intervention, which eventually resulted in the topic of my thesis.”
Is there any piece of advice you would give to new PPE students?
“My advice would be to enjoy it as much as possible. I was really sad, I would have liked to do another year of PPE. Enjoy it and get the most out of it. I took as many courses as I could and did the Internal Honours Programme because I wanted to get the most knowledge out of it. But also go to the events and the parties to relax and destress from all the studying.”
What’s next for you?
“Next year I will be doing a board year for SIB Amsterdam, an UN-affiliated student organization. The association has different fractions in multiple cities in the Netherlands and I serve as the chair of SIB Amsterdam. At the same time I will be doing the Master’s programme Law and Politics of International Security at VU Amsterdam. Although I never studied law related subjects before, I am very interested in doing international law now because it is more applied compared to courses in the PPE bachelor. At the same time it ties in really well with PPE, because it is also an interdisciplinary program that has both the international politics and the international law perspectives.
Beyond your studies, do you have specific career ambitions already?
“I would really like to become a diplomat, so eventually I hope to work for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs or another international organization like the UN or the EU. However, there are days when I wake up and I think: I want to do a PhD and pursue a career in academics. Nonetheless, my ultimate ambition is still to become an ambassador sometime somewhere.”
Bas Bouman will give the valedictory address during the PPE Graduation Ceremony on November 8th. The organisation of the graduation ceremony is of course dependent on the Covid-19 regulations at that time. PPE graduates from the class of 2021 will receive more information about the exact programme and the number of guests they may bring to the ceremony at the end of September.
