Activistenpartij Candidate for Faculty of Humanities
Dissent is, and always shall be, the democratic pulse of our university and all universities.
I am a third-year Media and Culture student and a prospective research master’s student in Media Studies. I have relevant experience from being on the student council during high school. Furthermore, my theoretical specialization during university concerns aesthetics and politics, and a historical study of the Left in southern India.
Long pitch – The ongoing deportation of international students and activists not only in universities across the US but in neighbouring Germany, where even EU passport holders stand at risk of state violence, is an urgent call to action. As a prospective council member of the AP, I hope to participate, implement, and advocate for a university where dissensus is not met with student arrests, police brutality on campus and the illegal surveillance of staff, but for a university where dissent is fostered, fertilised and materialised in the very fabric of university policy making, cross institutional collaboration as well as student and staff rights. This uphill battle against the growing institutionalisation and corporatisation of the UvA requires the persistence and endurance of a democratic impulse, of which I find the AP committed and hope to be a part.
Additionally, as an international student, I hope to pursue the goals outlined in the AP’s manifesto, particularly the growing need for Dutch language integration provided by the university and for UvA’s transparency on their insubstantial facilitation, such as in areas of housing, of international students despite increasing enrolment of international students alongside the shortage of affordable housing. As a third year media student with a research interest in aesthetics and politics, I hope to apply my skills to the action and practice lead by the AP, such as in areas of promotion, where the collective mission for a university as the vanguard of student and staff rights is actualised, where severance of genocide-funding collaboration is complete, and the campus a safe but active area of dissent.
Activistenpartij UvA 