One of the worst things of teaching at the university is that students are constantly graduating. I wish I could prevent you all from graduating.

This is a sticker that I got from students who graduated last year. These were very impressive students. They played an important role in the city-wide protests against the silence and complicity of this society in the face of the ongoing genocide.

One of the main responsibilities of universities is to remember. So let’s remember this.

This sticker says “decolonize our university”. We teach about decolonization. For me, to decolonize is - in theory - quite simple: to make sure that crimes from the past (large scale disposession of land, genocide, slavery) do not pay in the present. To make sure that those who benefit - in the present - from those crimes recognize this, and cooperate faithfully in a process of truth and reconciliation, and reparations.

Not because they are personally responsible for the crimes of the past. But because they benefit from them, while others still experience the negative consequences.

Why do this? Because for the sake of it. It’s simply the right thing to do. But I believe it is also a matter of incenctives.

If you can simply murder millions of people, steal their land, and sell them into slavery, and less than one hundred years later it is all forgotten and forgiven, why wouldnt assholes simply take what they can? Plunder where they can? Take a few decades of mumbling criticism, and then (have their descendents) enjoy the spoils?

Putin and Netanyahu look at the United States, and conclude: you can commit genocide and steal all the land, pass it on to your kids, and 100 years later, your people will be considered to be entitled to it.

Putin, Trump and Netanyahu look at the Netherlands and conclude: you pillage and plunder the world, steal people’s lives, people’s labour, and from the proceeds you build a beautiful city with beautiful canals, that you pass on to your kids, and 100 years later, your people will be widely considered to be entitled to it.

Putin, Trump, Netanyahu are betting that this will happen again. With Ukraine. With Gaza. God knows with Greenland. That people will forget. And that in 100 year, Russians and Israelis will be considered to be entitled to the land.

This is why it is so essential to decolonize: we have to ensure that - in the long run - such crimes do not pay. Yes, you may be able to steal, murder, plunder in the present (the news is full of it) but we - as a collective - will not let it slide. We will not forget. We will document it. We will trace it. And in the long run we will undo whatever can still be undone. At the very least, we will ensure that nobody benefits from it.

If genocide is the worst thing that can happen, and our failure to decolonize maintains an incentive to commit genocide, pushing for decolonization becomes the most important thing that we can do.

I leave it up to you to conclude what this means for the calls - also within this institution - to take it easy with the calls for decolonization, to not get overly “woke”. Let me just say that I think such comments are not as innocent as those who make them think.

So what can we do? We need to organize. The world is not going to decolonize itself. In fact it is the opposite: those who benefit from crimes also tend to have the means to defend these benefits. Materially and discursively. What they have in resources, we need to build in numbers. And that means we need to find each other, talk and listen to each other. Share concerns, and build solidarity.

And here there is a key role for universities. Because we do remember. We keep archives. We remain faithful to accounts of witnesses. We keep track of the flows. That is why places like this are so hated by the people who want us to forget.

That is of course also why the genocide in Palestine is also a scholasticide. That is why Trump is targeting universities. That is why the far right Dutch government pushed through the budget cuts.

Let’s fight this, by making sure that the networks we build here last. by staying in touch. By building bonds that last, also when institutional funds run dry.

And to use these bonds to bear witness, document and remember.

The lives that are lost. The daily murder. The theft. The lies. And the willingness of self-proclaimed reasonable people to accept it and move on.

Because like this sticker that the students gave me, the stories that we capture are passed on, and they are the fuel of the political action that we need.