Translation of the Dutch text by Shirley Haasnoot | Photos: Peter Valckx
'It is sometimes forgotten, but the Netherlands was already a very pluralistic society in the 19th century, says university historian Ab Flipse in his study on De Boelelaan. 'It was quite a difference whether you were Catholic or Protestant, Reformed, Liberal, Jewish or infidel. And that diversity was special at a time when Belgium was dominantly Catholic, England was Anglican and the Scandinavian countries were Lutheran.'
Abraham Kuyper thought you had to do justice to that pluriformity, Flipse says. 'He was of course a super-original thinker, who wrote bookshelves full of books. The core of his thinking revolves around the question of how to shape a society consisting of groups with views and beliefs that are actually mutually exclusive. Kuyper believed that everyone should be able to participate in society on their own terms.'
'It was something completely new for a society to run its own university'
VU Amsterdam, free from state and church, emerged from that idea, on 5 December 1878. That day, Kuyper and a group of leading Amsterdammers met entrepreneurs from the circle around the wealthy beer brewer Willem Hovy. Dissatisfied with the existing universities in the Netherlands, these men founded VUvereniging, in full Vereeniging voor Hooger Onderwijs op Gereformeerden Grondslag. And it was the board of VUvereniging that founded VU two years later, with Abraham Kuyper as its first rector magnificus.
'It was something completely new,' says Flipse, 'an association that took over the role of the Minister of Education and started running its own university. Paid for by private individuals who thought Reformed higher education was very important and took charge themselves.' The first chairman of the board of directors, who together formed the board, was Willem Hovy. It was a position he would hold alongside his business for almost 20 years.
'Professor Gerard Sizoo went on to give evening lectures to members of VU society across the country'
Entrepreneurs remained on the board well into the 20th century. For example, Henderikus Bos Kzn, director of a large timber trade, was a member of the board of directors for 26 years between 1917 and 1962. Flipse: 'He donated most of the huge collection of old prints and atlases, that he had collected during his lifetime, to the University Library after his death.'
Governing and guarding Reformed identity
From its inception, VUvereniging was responsible for two main issues. First, the College of Directors governed the university. It ensured that there was enough income, that the budget was in order, the buildings were maintained and it decided on the appointment of professors. In addition, an annual general meeting of members took place, where members voted on all kinds of ongoing issues.
Second, there was the Reformed identity, which was guarded by VUvereniging. 'The intention was that everything would touch on that identity,' says Flipse. 'But in practice, of course, that was not always possible. In the 1930s, the first professor of nuclear physics, Gerard Sizoo, also simply went about researching the characteristics of the radioactive decay of certain uranium isotopes.'
'Lower middle-class children were the first in their families to go to university'
It was the case, though, that all professors at that time took it upon themselves to reflect on their field in relation to faith, and so Sizoo started giving evening lectures to members of VUvereniging across the country. For example, on the relationship between quantum mechanics and worldview.
'Other universities were much more distant from society, those were the proverbial ivory towers,' says Flipse. 'Through VUvereniging, those VU professors knew how to reach the reformed lower middle class, the ordinary people, also called kleyne luyden by Kuyper. Also, a new group of students reported at the gate, children of those ordinary people, who were the first in their families to go to university.'
'VU women were, of course, not feminists who took to the barricades'
For the women of the reformed administrators, the organisation Vrouwen VU-hulp, affiliated to VUvereniging, became a way of emancipating themselves. 'They were, of course, not feminists who took to the barricades,' says Flipse, 'and they started supportively, by raising money that their husbands could then spend.'
But soon the Vrouwen VU-hulp with its famous collection box grew into a huge organisation in which some 100,000 housewives across the country participated in the 1950s. In practice, this meant that women took on important managerial tasks and increasingly began to decide where to spend their money, using the savings collected to set up the medical faculty in 1950 and the hospital in 1966.
The changing role of VUvereniging
Two administrative changes, in the early 1970s and in the mid-1990s, led to the original role of VUvereniging changing dramatically. Since a change in the law in 1970, VU, now an institution with some 10,000 students, was funded in the same way as the state universities. The money no longer had to come from collection boxes or large donors.
The downside, however, was that VU largely had to go along with the rules the government had drawn up for higher education. The university of Abraham Kuyper and Willem Hovy had to become more democratic, in keeping with the spirit of the times. A Board of Governors was created and both staff and students were given more say through the University Council - the latter group, incidentally, only after occupying the Main Building for some time.
'Under pressure of the spirit of the times, the special identity changed, from Reformed to more general Christian'
VUvereniging became more distant from the day-to-day management but remained responsible for all decisions that touched on the special identity, such as the appointment of professors.
But under pressure of the spirit of the times, that special identity also changed, from Reformed to more general Christian, which in practice led to fewer discussions about faith and science and more focus on engagement, both in the Netherlands and internationally. VUvereniging started focusing on women's rights, the environment and development cooperation, for example by supporting higher education in emerging countries.
After a change in the law in the neoliberal 1990s, VUvereniging lost even more of its influence, with Dutch universities gaining greater independence from the government and governance being further professionalised. VUvereniging, which had once governed the entire university integrally, now began to focus more on supporting projects that touched on VU's identity and origins.
A huge network of diverse people
'VUvereniging has long held the past as its benchmark, where it governed VU from a broad base,' says Flipse. 'But the last decade has seen a move towards a form of renewal.The new Council of Members that started in October is considerably rejuvenated and consists of all kinds of community stakeholders who feel a connection with VU and its special identity.'
Currently, VUvereniging supports a variety of projects and activities on campus and within the various studies.These include Déjà VU Festival, activities of the Historical Documentation Centre for Dutch Protestantism, debate centre NewConnective and the Martin Luther King Lecture. The members of VUvereniging, together with alumni, form a huge network of diverse people, who can meet at such gatherings.
'Are you any use to those dictations I made of my lecture at the time?'
'Those things can take place because VUvereniging supports them,' says Flipse. 'As a university historian, I often attend them and meet all kinds of people. Sometimes they have old stuff from the past, and they ask: 'Hey, do you still have any of those dictations I made of my lecture back then?' Well, then I make sure they end up in the archive, where the curators of the University Library take good care of them.'
Still VUvereniging feels a special responsibility towards the tradition from which it springs, says Flipse. 'By supporting a university historian, for example.You can come to me with all your questions about when the Faculty of Physics was founded, or your own study association, and indoors we have about three kilometres of archive boxes with material on Protestant organisations and ten metres of Abraham Kuyper's archive.'
The legacy of VUvereniging
VU is now a broad-based research university with more than 30,000 students, some 6,000 of whom come from abroad.However, there are still things that set VU apart from other universities, dating back to the beginnings of VUvereniging.
Flipse: 'A hundred years ago, professors went out into the country to explain nuclear physics to ordinary people. And we are still very much focused on society. In all programmes, there is an eye for the broader context in which one's own discipline functions, with subjects like philosophy of science and history of science. I sometimes teach that myself.'
'Thinking about the responsibilities that academic freedom entails remains as relevant as ever'
VUvereniging was founded 'free from state and church' - what are the responsibilities of an independent university and of academic freedom? The questions VU founders asked themselves are as relevant as ever, and they are being pondered at every level. From speeches at the opening of the academic year or the Dies Natalis, to student debates at dialogue centre 3D and VU Academic Freedom Programme for persecuted scholars, Flipse: 'It's in the DNA of VU.'
VU also continues to attract new groups of students, which currently include many students with a migration background, including many Muslims. 'Perhaps it is because there is room for religion and philosophy of life at our university. Of course that shouldn't directly affect your research, but at VU you don't have to leave it at home either.' Flipse has been working with colleagues since this year on the project 'An oral history of Islam at VU, 1980-2020', which is supported by VUvereniging.
'VU can hark back to the past, with all those interesting people from the early days'
Moreover, the link with business has not been forgotten. Startups are supported on the campus grounds and since 2024 there has been an extraordinary professor of Family Businesses. Flipse: 'I think we lost that connection for a while in the 1970s and 1980s, when the university was quite left-wing and there was little focus on entrepreneurship. But now that that is back, VU can look back to the past, with all those interesting people from the early days.'
'That's how it works sometimes: you forget part of your past and when the time is right, you rediscover it again, so there is always something new to discover in that history to which you have to relate.'
In our current polarised times, the same applies to the thinking that guided its founding: 'Abraham Kuyper believed: you must not gloss over differences or enforce some kind of forced uniformity, but do full justice to the pluriformity in a society. And in the public domain, all these different currents must remain in constant debate with each other. In politics, the press and also at the university.'
University historian Ab Flipse (1977) studied physics and philosophy of science between 1997 and 2003 at VU. He obtained his PhD here in 2014 for a dissertation on the relationship between religion and natural sciences in the Netherlands between 1880 and 1940, entitled Christian science.
