The Dutch Internationalisation Debate, Generative AI Models & English as a Competitive Advantage?

For those in Dutch academia, a divisive topic that has been dragging on for sometime has been the attempts by various Dutch politicians to curb the influx of international students flocking to Dutch universities and to require Dutch to be the main language of education.

The likes of Independent MP, Pieter Omzigt, have staunchly argued that it is the legal obligation of the universities to teach in Dutch and any deviation from that (e.g. to teach in English) is something that is permitted only in “exceptional cases.” As things stand, he resented that there are too many international students and to many programs being taught in English, much to the detriment of Dutch students and taxpayers. Those in support of the curb and those against have been vociferously making their arguments: Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Robbert Dijkgraaf, for example, cited to preventing over crowding the classrooms, reducing the already high workload for the teaching staff, and resolving the congested housing issue as some of the arguments in favor of the curb, while those in opposition like the Dean of University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Agneta Fischer, argued that contact with foreign students greatly benefit their research and education.

“We are convinced that curbing internationalisation would harm not only the development of universities, but also the social environment in the regions in which they are based. It would also have an impact on the future of Dutch students, many of whom consciously choose an English-medium study programme and an international study experience with a view to their future professional field. To us, all this seems clear and logical.”
— Rianne Letschert, President of Maastricht University

On a personal level, I think it makes sense for those that live and work in the Netherlands to learn Dutch and for the Dutch universities to adopt some sort of an admissions framework that limit the student intake and to do some quality control (which is a rather unpopular idea around these parts of the world) to alleviate the problems raised by Minister Dijkgraaf. What I want to introduce into this discussion though is a concern that popped into my head as I’ve been trying to ask ChatGPT the “right prompts” on assortment of tasks (and there are indeed right and wrong ways to do this): How does this issue of curbing internationalization intertwine with the growth of generative AI in education?

Image produced by Dall-E with the prompt “students using laptops in van gogh style”

While ChatGPT (currently) supports more than 85 languages from Awadhi to Vietnamese, the OpenAI website is only available in English and they admit that their “models (e.g., GPT-3, 3.5, and 4) are optimized for use in English.” Many of the models are “robust enough to generate good results for a variety of languages,” but it appears that those using generative AI in English has a (slight?) competitive advantage (at least for the time being). We are still at the nascent stage of all this, where even when promoting ChatGPT in English, there are various limitations: While it is more than capable of drafting a decent - albeit generic - recommendation letter, it still can’t write columns for me even in English (at least at a level that I find convincing or satisfactory). However, I suspect that this will soon improve, and as our use and reliance on generative AI continue to grow, a slight competitive advantage earlier on could grow into giant leaps down the line. So in this context, I respectfully disagree with MP Omziegt, who believes that adhering to Dutch as the operating language of universities (and thus following the law) comes with benefits, sans much costs.

People like saying that generative AI is already changing the way we work and to deny this reality, is to risk being left behind. Given the competitive advantage of knowing how to prompt these models correctly in English (as that is the language these models are optimized for), I worry that for the Dutch politicians to disincentivize Dutch universities from operating in English at this very juncture could be detrimental and short-sighted. This move, which carries similar nationalistic sentiments to Brexit, could potentially bootstrap us in the race to remain academically competitive (both in research and education) relative to institutions that enable programs in English to thrive unhindered. Of course, the debate of curbing internationalisation is a very complicated one and this is just a singular issue. Nevertheless, I believe it to be an important one, worthy of more consideration: perhaps as it always has been, English is our lingua franca, but in a world proliferating with generative AI models, English is potentially more than that, as it could be the key to potentially ensuring our future success as well. To disregard this possibility, may come with heavy costs.

On (Blindly) Following Silly Rules of Writing

Like many writers, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is my Bible. While I try to religiously follow the gospel that is the EoS (e.g. Rule #2: use the Oxford comma, Rule #17: omit needless words, etc.), I have a very difficult time abiding by Rule #1: form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s. While this rule in and of itself is not the problem, what I find annoying is the fact that Strunk and White add that we should “Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles’s friend” instead of Charles’ friend.

There are many other sinners and heathens that do not conform to this rule and drop the s after the apostrophe when the final consonant is an s. The New Yorker’s Mary Norris - aka the Comma Queen - wrote about this debate a few years back when the Associated Press Stylebook - the go-to guide for US journalists and publications - changed their stance that used to be in conformity with the EoS Rule #1. The APS declared their new stance via a controversial tweet in 2019: “For possessives of plural nouns ending in s, add only an apostrophe: the churches’ needs, the girls’ toys, the horses’ food, the ships’ wake, states’ rights, the VIPs’ entrance.”

Personally, the -s’s just feels clunky and ugly. Trying to pronounce this out loud feels almost as comical as pronouncing Worcestershire sauce. Nevertheless, I feel conflicted, because I am betraying my faith in the EOS. While this may feel trivial, once I start normalizing this singular deviation, I can no longer consider myself as a devout member of the Church of EoS. In the words of Clay Christensen, “it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold them 98% of the time.” By choosing to ignore Rule #1, I’ve just climbed atop a giant slippery slope and pushed myself down.

The truth, probably, is that we all cater to whatever the publisher’s style guide tells us to do (e.g. “use UK spelling,” which is another source of dissonance for me), but these seemingly trivial compromises create a lot of stress whenever I have to edit my publications. I’m just wondering out loud whether I am alone in my unnecessary piety and self-induced stress. Maybe just blindly following whatever the style guides tell me to do is the path of least resistance, but I find the plurality of these deities and their artificially manufactured arbitrariness extremely frustrating, if not pharisaic. Well there we go. Further down the slippery slope. I've now violated EoS Reminder #14: avoid using fancy words.

* Pharisaic: a word to describe a religious person who is smug and judgmental, especially if their actions prove that they are much less holy than they pretend to be.

Reflections from Another Demanding Teaching Season: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

I’m fortunate enough to have my university teaching all scheduled between January and June, which allows me to - at least in theory - dedicate the period between July and December on my research and my other non-teaching obligations (e.g., attempting to unsuccessfully meet publishing deadlines, organizing conferences, and sitting on assortment of advisory boards/councils for the university). Truth be told, I'm actually doing everything, everywhere, all at once; but having my teaching blocks all contained in a compact, six month period has its benefits and pitfalls.

For instance, as convenient as this schedule is for me, I end up coordinating four courses between January and June across four different faculties (Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Maastricht and the Faculty of Law at Hasselt University in Belgium) at the same time. Throw in supervising theses, drafting recommendation letters, grading and managing resits, providing unqualified career guidance/mentoring to lost souls, and having to constantly update the legal materials taught in the course all into the mix and by the time I make it to the end of June, I am a piñata at an out of control quinceañera (i.e., beaten down and lying on the ground with my insides pouring out for the rowdy children to feast upon).

The saving grace in this chaotic madness - and what arguably preserves my sanity - is that I teach International Business Law at three of the faculties, meaning that there is a sizable overlap in terms of the content from one faculty to another. I do teach and coordinate something else entirely - Global Citizenship Skills - for the interfaculty Global Studies Bachelor’s Program, but that is a course that I got to design myself with a lot of freedom (e.g., we learn about creative problem solving and empathetic listening skills), so it is more fun than anything else (at least for me).

I would also be remiss if I did not admit that this juggling is made only possible because as a coordinator, I have been blessed with the most incredible group of tutors, who are not only highly intelligent and extremely dedicated, but perhaps most importantly, they have the patience to tolerate my unorthodox teaching methods and do the majority of heavy lifting in terms of the teaching load, for which I am eternally grateful for. Thanks in most part to them, our courses receive very solid reviews from students, which is something we always cherish.

While the overlap in content and being surrounded with a great teaching team does make my life infinitely easier, I nevertheless have to tweak how I teach the content and how I engage with the students differently at each of the faculties as there are noticeable contrasts in the cultures and the preferences of the students: Majority of the students in one faculty wants assignments that force them to think more critically, while in another faculty, they just want something that is more connected to practice and “the real life” (although this is a false dichotomy as we try to meet both objectives simultaneously). Some really hate group work, while others feel lost without it. Some groups tend to have particular sensitivities to societal issues, while others seem totally unaffected or even oblivious to it. If I am teaching at two different faculties on the same day, I have to make sure to reset and adjust between classes or I risk losing the students’ engagement (or worse, I end up unintentionally saying something insensitive that triggers a negative emotion for the students).

In short, juggling courses at multiple faculties at the same time has made me a more adaptive teacher that pays careful attention to the subtle differences between the faculties and the students’ preferences therein. Thanks in part to being outsourced to other faculties, I now have a better understanding of the different faculties and their cultures, which gives me a better overview of the different ecosystems that make up our university. Moreover, the chance to work in so many different environments with colleagues specializing in diverse disciplines and developing a sense of rapport with them has made me a better academic citizen.

This opportunity has helped me in many other areas of my work aside from teaching: For example: 1) I feel that I was a better coach for the interfaculty Premium team working on the Digital Future of UM because I had a better understanding of what the students from the other faculties were experiencing; 2) having taught a diverse cohort of students, I have an easier time organizing and recruiting interfaculty groups to join my assortment of pet projects (e.g., running the Harvard Negotiation Project simulations); 3) being embedded in other faculties has also helped me be a better steward for the university in fulfilling my obligations as I serve on the Diversity & Inclusivity Advisory Council, Global Studies Advisory Board, Maastricht Young Academy, and the Editorial Board of the UMagazine; and 4) the diverse teaching experiences even helped me with my research, as I was able to churn out articles on academic citizenship based on some of the insights I collected during this teaching period (e.g., importance of effective communication, creating a safe psychological space, etc.). Like I said, everything, everywhere, all at once.

To conclude my rant (seeking to solicit some level of sympathy, whether deserved on not), teaching at different faculties simultaneously is an arduous task (especially the part about having to deal with the different set of rules and procedures at each institution), but a worthwhile one at that, as it gave me the possibility to work together with a wonderfully diverse group of students and colleagues, all with a unique set of skills and insights different from one another. Not only that but it has broadened my network and it has made me a better teacher, academic citizen, and researcher. I am grateful to the students and colleagues that I had the opportunity to work together with in the last six months (especially my wonderful tutors Carolina, Eleni, Emma, Meggie, Albert, Marc, and Obaa), so much so that I now feel bad for having complained so much about the teaching load going into it and feeling (unjustifiably?) so sorry for myself. I’m sorry about that everyone.

Saying No in Academia

“No is the single most powerful word in the English language, [but…] it's a very tough weapon to deploy. Everyone knows how difficult it is to say no. It's one of the reasons why people seem to be comfortable asking you for favors they have no business asking you for. They know how hard it is to say no.”

Shonda Rhimes in “The Year of Yes”

Tomorrow, I’m running a workshop on “Saying No in Academia'' for the Dutch Sectorplan on Transformative Effects of Globalisation in Law at its annual networking event. The irony of it all is that I’m not very good at saying no (hello imposter syndrome). I actually failed at saying no to doing this event. Part of the reason why I suck at this is because I (used to?) equate being a good person with being a person who did not say no to people asking for help. I’ve always been a people-pleaser and an external-validation addict, which I (very recently) learned are serious character flaws. 

Rousseau once compared being polite to being inauthentic (and thus deceitful). He elaborated that being polite - for example, by saying yes to something you don’t actually want to do - is to compromise on what you really want and to sell your true self short. While I’m not advocating for impoliteness, I do believe that being true to your authentic self and being able to say no are important skills that are seldom taught in classrooms (especially in the Japanese classrooms that I had to sit through).

The wonderful Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho, elegantly summarized this point as follows: “When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.” For the longest time, I was not following Coelho’s advice. I had been mindlessly saying yes to others for so long that at the ripe old age of 40, I still cannot clearly define what it is that I want for myself. There is no shortage of self-help books and “literature” claiming that they can help one become better at saying no, but I find that most of them often tend to be rather superficial. For what it’s worth, I combed over a bunch of them just so that you don’t have to (hello people-pleaser) and the collective summary of the literature goes something like this: 

  • Form a “NO committee” with a group of friends or colleagues that encourage you to say no. Check in with them regularly to share stories of how you turned down something or how they said no to an undesirable task. Bonus points if you can find a group member or an ally more senior than you (or who have more experiences), as they may serve as your saying-no-role-models.

  • Keep track of what you say yes and no to and reflect on it from time to time.  

  • Rethink your priorities. Saying yes to something inevitably means you are saying no to something else. Make sure what you are saying yes to is in alignment, not only with your priorities, but your values. Also, stop comparing yourself to others as they may have different priorities, values, and goals. As the “wisdom” of Instagram suggests, a flower does not compare itself to other flowers, it simply blooms. So go on and just bloom!

  • Don’t answer a request right away (unless you can give an immediate no). If you must, deflect with a “let me think about it and get back to you,” and really think about whether it is something you want to do. If they don’t get back to you, you don’t even have to bother saying no.

  • Saying no may stir feelings of guilt or shame within, and some of us may try to avoid these negative feelings by reluctantly saying yes to something they ought to have declined. What can alleviate these negative feelings is to explain to the favor-seeker, why it’s a no for you (e.g. “I’m sorry but I am super busy with another task” or “I would love to, but I’m in Mars on that day and won’t be on Earth.”). It will help them understand why you cannot. This may diminish some feelings of guilt and shame (as it solicits their empathetic understanding), and in doing so, it may also preserve your relationship with the requestor as you have a good reason for rejecting them. 

  • Offering a “strategic no” may help create an “illusion of scarcity” around you (e.g. “This person is so busy and in such high demand, they must be really good!”).

  • Remind yourself that saying yes can actually be physically and psychologically harmful: “A propensity to say yes to everything can lead to burnout, mental and physical health problems…” 

  • Learn to appreciate the joy of missing out (JOMO). 

All of these tips may help us in some situations, but it may not help - for example - a young academic trying to assess which engagements they can say no to (and get away with) and which tasks they must say yes to (or risk career-suicide). It’s tough out there for young academics just starting up because bosses, supervisors, colleagues, and students will all want something from them (e.g. “Can you teach this course?”, “Can you peer-review this?”, “Can you write me a recommendation letter?”, “Can you be on this taskforce/committee?”, “Can you be my thesis advisor?”, “Do you want to write an article and apply for this grant with me?”, etc.). And as the Shonda Rhimes quote at the top suggests, some people will ask for all sorts of things (that they know they shouldn't be asking), because they know how hard saying no is (especially to a boss). They know that we all want to be a good person and a team player and some people will try to exploit that to your detriment. 

As a side note, the Maastricht Young Academy recently hosted a Growing Up in Science event with the Rector of our University - Pamela Habibović - who noted that for young researchers just starting up, it may be particularly difficult for them to say no (and perhaps they should not), because saying yes will indeed expand their networks and stimulate new trails of thought that may contribute to their research. So we shouldn’t always be saying no, but we just have to get better at saying no to certain things, which brings us to the next point.

For most academics, young or old, we want to strive towards becoming the go-to person in that field or some niche therein. To combine one of the popular tips suggested in the bullet point and the wisdom of our Rector, we should develop a better sense of who we are (i.e. our authentic self), what we want to accomplish, and what makes us happy and use these criteria to determine more thoughtfully what we say yes and no to. We can ask questions such as: “Is this part of my research line?”, “Will saying yes de-stabilize my personal life?”, “Who am I doing this for?”, and so forth. Whether you actually do this everytime you are confronted with a task or a favor, ultimately comes down to your personal incentives and what drives you to want to say no. 

For me, two factors motivate me to want to say no more: 1) Having kids realigned my priorities, and 2) the disappointing realization that having said yes to too many things, the quality of everything I was doing - from research to teaching and being a good father/partner - all suffered a noticeable decline. It still hurts me to admit this, but it is true. So by saying yes, not only did I lose my authentic self in the process, but I was becoming mediocre at everything I was doing. One of my colleagues who I shared this thought with recently responded that he knew exactly what I was going through as he felt the same way: everything he was doing could have been better if only he had more time. How we make time, and to shed this very negative, nagging feeling that we are not good enough, starts with one word: no.

In the end, saying no is a mechanism of protection and an act of self-compassion. I do not want to feel like I am mediocre at everything anymore. Instead, I want to be good at the things I selectively choose to care about. This will inevitably mean that I will miss out on certain things (bye promotion?), but it won’t bother me as much because I made deliberate choices in the interest of my authentic self. Brian Little and Adam Grant’s work note that one’s well-being is intricately tied to the sustainable pursuit of core projects, which are passionate commiments that align with our values. Saying no buys us time for these pursuits. Now say it all with me. NO!

UM University & Faculty Council Elections: VOTE 4 LEAD!!

Back in 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that "politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free men." I think his sentiment is still very valid today (though perhaps I would have preferred the use of a more inclusive language, but Ike lived in a different era).

Inspired by Eisenhower’s words and perhaps by this memorable scene from The West Wing (where President Bartlett quotes Margaret Mead), I decided to run for the Law Faculty Council this year against the prudent advice of most - if not all - of my friends/colleagues. It turned out that only 4 staff members (including myself) actually signed up to serve on the Council, which had 5 open seats. While I am happy to serve my faculty for the next 2 years in this capacity, I found it a tad disheartening to know that people generally do not care (that much) about who presides over these councils. My sneaking suspicion about the cause of this apathy is that people do not care enough to engage because: 1) they are already over-burdened with multitudes of other tasks, 2) they are cynical about the impact that these councils actually have, and/or 3) the combination of the two.

University politics - much like politics in general - does feel like a breeding ground for cynicism and disgruntlements. It’s a lot easier to avoid it all together, while throwing the occasional shade from the sidelines. I for one did this for many years, often just complaining about the things I didn’t like or how someone in charge was “messing up” without really having a full grasp of what is going on or doing something tangible to change it. But a few years back, I realized that this really gets us nowhere, so I decided to engage more actively with matters that impacted all of us.

During my last few years of so-called engagement with university politics and molding of its policies, I have been fortunate enough to meet a group of like-minded, hard-working colleagues with a strong set of values and vision. We’ve gotten together to create the LEAD Party (Leadership for an Equitable Academic Democracy), which is an interfaculty group of academic and support staff, striving to make our university a more supportive and inclusive community.

So while I was spared the burden of campaigning for myself during this election cycle (which kicked off today), I would like to campaign on behalf of my wonderful party members running for University Council. They are all wonderful, dedicated staff members interested in making our University a better place. There are important challenges that lie ahead, from the internationalization debate to implementing Recognition & Rewards and creating a much safer working environment for everyone in the UM community. I would trust each and everyone of these candidates to selflessly dedicate their time and effort for the betterment of all of us here at the UM. With that in mind, I ask - for the UM staff members amongst us - to vote for one of them by following this link. Even for those outside of the UM, I hope that my vaguely disguised virtue signaling serves to remind you of that Edmund Burke quote (which I feel like Mead paraphrased): “Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little."*

*(Seriously, these old white folks with their male-dominant pronouns. This would be one of those issues that if you vote for LEAD, we will work towards addressing in a constructive, non-militant manner).

The Crux of Cross Cultural Communication

Last week, we organized an international commercial contract negotiation between some of my International Business Law students and a group of students from the Toyo University in Tokyo that I taught while I was on my fellowship there. The nature of the case was not too complicated (and something that my former IBL students would probably recognize), but what made this negotiation process difficult was the language barrier and our shared ethnocentrism.

Not only do we all tend to perceive the world through our own experiences and lenses, but when we are unable to clearly articulate our interests and views to the other party, the negotiation process stalls (or derails). One obvious remedy to this problem would be to further develop our language skills, but above and beyond that, there are psychological barriers and issues of conflicting values that are more difficult to overcome. For example, Japanese students generally tend to be more reserved and deferential, even in adversarial situations, because that is how they are taught to be, which may place them in a disadvantageous position in terms of the negotiation. The UM students, on the other hand, may have to learn to read between the lines better and think about what the Japanese party is trying to say by paying attention to what they are not saying. After all, the Japanese are taught from very early on how to “read the air” or as we would say, “read the room”.

In the end, there are “no one size fits all” solutions to any of these cross-cultural communication issues. The only thing we can really do is to practice a lot and gain plenty of experiences working with diverse teams from different cultures, backgrounds, and values. Not only does doing so harness our ability to adapt and to think quickly on our feet, but it also allows us to reflect on our own ethnocentrism and our blind spots.

Special thanks to our participants: Emma Evangelisti, Gabriel Sielaff, Vincent Durán Lagunas, Laetitia Nzungize Teta, Lucie Valachová, Julia Czajkowska, Tamaki Uchida, Asumi Kikuchi, Nao Yamashita, Oozora Seyon, and Urara Tanaka!

Fighting Imposter Sydrome One Book Review at a Time

A review of our book from the European Association of Private International Law!

Last December, a group of academics and advocates of mediation (including yours truly) published a commentary on the Singapore Convention through Edward Elgar. We just received a kind review from the European Association of Private International Law for which we are very grateful for. Amongst other things, it noted the following:

“[The book] provides deep theoretical and practical analysis of the Convention and its consequences for the promotion of mediation as a mechanism to solve commercial conflicts with a cross-border character. In particular, this work includes a comparative approach with perspectives from five continents and a variety of legal traditions, a critical discussion of every stage from the negotiation to the conclusion of the Convention, with proposals for the Convention’s implementation and application by States and regional organisations. A particular feature of the work is that it provides contributions of a diverse group of leading practitioners and academics from diverse legal backgrounds and jurisdictions, including some who participated of the negotiation of the Singapore Convention itself.”

Whenever I write anything and send it out into the world (including this little blurb), I am immediately filled with a feeling of dread and remorse. This is due, in most part, to the fact that I suffer from a serious case of imposter syndrome. That plus an unhealthy need for external validation (although this is getting less and less as I work through an assortment of issues with my wonderful therapist). I feel anxious because I do not feel secure enough in my knowledge and question the level of my analysis. So much so that I doubt whether what I am putting out into the world has any added value. I must say that in a world drowning in unnecessarily negative and dismissive comments (#reviewer2), I am grateful when people do take the time to offer kind (and/or constructive) feedback for the work that I have done or that I have contributed to and I find myself - at least momentarily - feeling happy and relieved.

So thank you to EAPIL and also to Guillermo Palao Moreno over at the University of Valencia for looping me into this delightful project.

On the “Sadness” of Teaching and My New "Hobby"

Erasmus Exchange Students taking International Business Law class getting together for a drink at Cafe De Tribunal

It’s exam week for my International Business Law students (with their final memorandum assignment due tomorrow). This period just flew by and it feels like it was only yesterday that we just met one another. This is one of the small things that make me a bit sad about my job because I feel like having only met these students and having spent the last seven weeks with them, I was just getting to know them better. We were also picking up some momentum to engage with the subject a bit deeper as well.

To be fair, we did manage to put in a lot in this short period of time: We covered the substance of international business law through assignments like drafting a negotiation strategy, conducting a settlement negotiation and drafting a legal memorandum. We also developed global citizenship skills from empathetic listening and creative problem solving by working with Erin Meyer’s Culture Mapping exercise or enabling the students to tap into their own academic curiosities by asking them to design elevator pitches for an IBL related topic of their own choosing. Yet, I still feel sad and unsatisfied because deep down, I believe I have more to offer and if only we had more time, we could do much more (it is possible that the students may not share the same sentiments and enthusiasm here, but I digress).

To release some of my lingering frustrations, I have set up extra-curricular projects starting with an international commercial contract negotiation exercise between a handful of my (soon-to-be-former) IBL students and students from Toyo University in Tokyo (where I taught during my fellowship last year). Some of the other upcoming exercises involve running Harvard Negotiation Project’s multi-party simulations for our students and workshops on international commercial arbitration. While I’ve been told that I should probably take some things off my plate, working on these projects with enthusiastic students is one of my guilty pleasures and dare I say, my hobby? It may sound strange to consider an extension of my work as a hobby, but I’m sure that there are worse hobbies out there like running ultramarathons?

For now, these events will keep me going until I start teaching again in the next period, where I’m coordinating three courses across three different faculties, but that is an entirely different kind of frustration and sadness about teaching.

International Commercial Arbitration Webinar with Bas van Zelst

Every year, I try to get practitioners to come give a seminar for my International Business Law course because students always say that they want to be exposed to actual lawyers working out there in the real world (and I’m so far removed from practice that I don’t even know what it’s like out there anymore).

This year, I am very excited to have Bas van Zelst back to give a webinar on International Commercial Arbitration. Not only is Bas a wonderful lawyer/arbitrator full of experience and wisdom, but he is a standup guy, who I very much enjoy spending time with. While this webinar is intended for my IBL students, anyone who is interested in the topic is more than welcome to come join our session. Looking forward to seeing you there, and thanks in advance to Bas for taking the time out of his incredibly busy schedule to do this for us!

Abolishing Hierarchy in Academia!? A Conversation with Jan M. Smits

Jan M. Smits was not only my PhD supervisor who supported me and mentored me through the agony of writing a PhD, but he was the person who saw potential in me and gave me the idea - and the inspiration - to leave legal practice for the world of academia. While we’ve had our various differences of opinion over the years, I have enjoyed working with him (i.e. translating his contract law book into Japanese), learned a lot from him, and for all of these things, I will always be grateful to him.

Last month, Jan published an opinion piece on the Dutch newspaper, NRC, advocating to abolish the hierarchy within academia (i.e. the distinction between a full professor, associate professor, and an assistant professor). My colleagues in the Maastricht Young Academy and I drafted a response in support of Jan’s opinion, which has not only sparked a discussion, but triggered some fierce resistance to his ideas.

In light of these events (and for many other reasons), it is my absolute pleasure to announce the upcoming Growing Up in Science event with Jan hosted by the Maastricht Young Academy!! Spaces are limited so for those interested, please register ASAP!!