I remember in high school asking several teachers what political parties they were going to vote for and they all said that they could not answer. It was unprofessional for a teacher to express any sort of political preference. I need to add that I went to a high school in Germany where the culture surrounding politics might be different than in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, I thought it was quite peculiar at the time, but now that I am in an environment where there is no escaping politics, I understand these strict policies.

After my first day at university the difference between my old teachers and the teachers here left me speechless. Through the entirety of the first seminar jokes about Trump, Brexit and Republicans were made. The excitement of the first day soon left my body and a sense of bewilderment rushed over me: aren’t professors or teachers in general supposed to be neutral? After the seminar I asked two family members about it: one has studied at university, one has not. The one that hasn’t studied said, while smiling: “Well, that’s university, you have to think for yourself,” but then the other relative looked at me in surprise saying: “That is very peculiar, professors aren’t ought to give their opinion about politics in case it influences the students too much.” I left my hometown torn about the two statements, but decided to go into the following seminars with an open mind and started to notice another thing: it is incredibly difficult to be conservative at the Faculty of Humanities.

There is something really hypocritical about a lot of left-wing voters right now. They portray themselves as the most tolerant, yet when talking about anyone that has a different, more conservative opinion, these same open-minded voters just laugh away the critics’ ‘stupidity’. The more I started to pay attention to this, the more I noticed occasions where people laughed at Trump, Brexit or the FVD (a Dutch right wing party), but they never had any clear arguments as to why they were laughing. During seminars I often thought that no conservative would dare to speak out, as their opinion would be laughed at anyway. It seems as if anyone who is not leftist is seen as an egotistical racist that has no sense of humanity. That is not the case. To care about the economy does not automatically make you a hungry-for-money capitalist. VVD-voters (again a quite right-wing party in Netherlands), are not all oblivious to climate change, their priorities just lie somewhere else, and that does not make them ‘dumb’ or a ‘bad person’.

As I was writing this article and talked to more people about it I constantly found myself saying: “Well, I am writing this article about being conservative in a leftist environment… but I am not conservative!”. This only further proved the point I am trying to make. I felt the need to justify myself as if being conservative was something bad and I was afraid of being categorized like that. When I was talking to my roommate about this she asked me: “But what are you trying to accomplish with this, you know that the Faculty of Humanities is filled with people that are left-minded.” There is some truth to this statement. However, I also firmly believe there are more conservatives at our faculty than one might think, but in every conversation about politics, in my experience at least, there is no space to utter your opinion if you are not voting left.

The problem is not that the Faculty of Humanities is filled with leftist people, or that seminars are filled with political topics on which the professor takes a stance, but it becomes a problem when conversation disappears. If every conservative opinion is called ‘dumb’ or ‘uneducated’, there is no discussion; just a bunch of people agreeing with each other and that is not the point of a university at all, nor does it create any interesting conversations. We need to engage in dialogue with each other. To have a different opinion just means that you have a different opinion. It is a lot more productive to try to understand others’ opinion than to blatantly ignore it and laugh it away.

As for teachers, I am still not sure whether they should be politically neutral or not, but if they do decide to share their opinion, there should be less laughter and more listening to create a space for an open discussion