Reflections on the Politicized University: II. Triparity and Tripolarity in the Netherlands

Abstract

As I mentioned at the end of the preceding article on the academic crisis in the Federal Republic, some observers see traumatic events in recent German history as one chief explanation of the sharp conflicts, divisions, and polarization which seem to have affected contemporary German society as well as its universities. The Netherlands appears to at least one American observer and grateful temporary resident as a lonely outpost of national homogeneity and consensus in spite of the horrors of World War II, the loss of a huge colonial empire, and critical readjustments of long-established patterns of national life.1 Yet Dutch universities are also in a state of crisis which may be as profound as the one which afflicted German universities, if not more profound.